OPINION: ARES is Dead; Let's Bury It.

[VA3KOT John]

John, I share the same fear about loss of spectrum:
- attack on 2m in Europe
- loss of 3 GHz in US
- ever increasing use of HF for high speed (AKA wide band) data for stock trading

Even given our misgivings about ARES, RAC is our only advocate against loss of spectrum allocation from the amateur service.  It's really disappointing that the vast majority of Canadian hams do not see the need to support RAC - to the extent that it almost went bankrupt and disappeared a few years ago.  Canadian RAC membership penetration is vanishingly small compared to, for example, ARRL in the US or RSGB in Great Britain (best numbers I could find: Canada: 4500/70000, USA: 160000/700000, GB: 22000/76000).  Those numbers should be an embarrassment to all Canadian hams.  It's really frustrating to hear the litany of excuses people give for not joining RAC.

So if hams won't even do this one little thing (pay a few $$ once per year) to help preserve the amateur service, how can we hope to create and operate an effective emergency comm organization, to help preserve the amateur service?

73
Dave, VE3WI

Agreed Dave. I am a RAC member and even though I don't think they are doing a great job with ARES I do support the organization's principal goals.