2021-04-10, 08:21:19
Adam_VE3FPYou've made valuable points which I hope are well taken. In point of fact my Community Mesh Net project has been designed to more fully engage ARES or simply any radio club with their community. While it is important to support served agencies, in a large scale, long duration emergency the real need for communications will be at the street or individual level.
The installation of LoRa Mesh Net Nodes will allow anyone with a cell phone running the free Mesh Net application to join a local Mesh Network. Such networks, when correctly designed can relay messages across the net. This provides a powerful off-grid communication network that anyone can use in an emergency. As HAM radio operators, and specifically those involved in ARES, embedding HAM stations into such mesh networks, either as portable or fixed stations, we can then relay messages from such a mesh net out to served agencies.
There is a very personal aspect to all this which I generally don't mention. As a father and grandfather I have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren living in Southern Ontario. When I think of emergency communications I think of them. For me, EmComm is all about being able to help those in need. All of us have friends and relatives who would be impacted, as will we all, by a wide area, long duration loss of communications. Community Mesh Networks, if widely established would make it possible for us to maintain some manner of communications with those who need it most.
It is wonderful that as HAM's we can stay on the air in emergencies. However, I argue that just talking to other HAM's will be an exercise in frustration and futility if we know our families are at risk. It is my contention that we need to take a broader look at what we can offer to our communities in terms of our skills and equipment, but also our innovation and inventiveness. Being on the cutting edge of radio technology offers us a chance to bring together a number of different aspects of radio in a practical usable communications tool that can make a real difference.
Consider also that developing such Community Mesh Networks is, in my opinion an excellent chance to make every radio club more directly involved with our communities. Such projects can be supported using kick-starter campaigns and or cooperative ventures with local service clubs like Rotary or the Lions etc. This kind of campaign could breath new life into ARES, and perhaps even attract new HAM's.
It could also give us opportunity to upgrade repeaters adding digital capabilities where none now exists. I propose that not only would the Community Mesh Net Project be practical, it would also be fun. We could engage with local builder groups or high school students to develop prototypes and create the first local networks.
In this era of the internet advertising and development of such a project can be done a very low cost. However I believe that the positive benefit to both ARES and to radio clubs in general can be priceless.
Good points raised in previous posts but without participants and no one to take the reins to bring ARES as active member of our community we can only talk about it and been doing that for past few years.
As a club, the upcoming executive should conduct a survey to get an idea of the number of hams still active and not just hold an amateur radio licence which seems to the case now days. IC website is not updated if ham becomes deceased and not reported we don't know the real count. Also the survey should include the tools each hams has at their disposal, meaning: able to handle traffic in various forms (digital, cw, ssb), station capabilities (mobile, portable or fixed).
With Covid-19 still to deal with, meetings over Zoom or WebEX should be considered in place of a regular meeting so club and/or ARES presentations and training can be done without endangering anyone and still hold on-the-air weekly nets. In many ways I find using the video platform I can attend other club meetings without physically going there.
Right now, "ARES is dead" in Grey/Bruce but like Dave ve3wi said, "we can rebuild it, we have the technology"
73 and stay safe.
Adam ve3fp
The installation of LoRa Mesh Net Nodes will allow anyone with a cell phone running the free Mesh Net application to join a local Mesh Network. Such networks, when correctly designed can relay messages across the net. This provides a powerful off-grid communication network that anyone can use in an emergency. As HAM radio operators, and specifically those involved in ARES, embedding HAM stations into such mesh networks, either as portable or fixed stations, we can then relay messages from such a mesh net out to served agencies.
There is a very personal aspect to all this which I generally don't mention. As a father and grandfather I have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren living in Southern Ontario. When I think of emergency communications I think of them. For me, EmComm is all about being able to help those in need. All of us have friends and relatives who would be impacted, as will we all, by a wide area, long duration loss of communications. Community Mesh Networks, if widely established would make it possible for us to maintain some manner of communications with those who need it most.
It is wonderful that as HAM's we can stay on the air in emergencies. However, I argue that just talking to other HAM's will be an exercise in frustration and futility if we know our families are at risk. It is my contention that we need to take a broader look at what we can offer to our communities in terms of our skills and equipment, but also our innovation and inventiveness. Being on the cutting edge of radio technology offers us a chance to bring together a number of different aspects of radio in a practical usable communications tool that can make a real difference.
Consider also that developing such Community Mesh Networks is, in my opinion an excellent chance to make every radio club more directly involved with our communities. Such projects can be supported using kick-starter campaigns and or cooperative ventures with local service clubs like Rotary or the Lions etc. This kind of campaign could breath new life into ARES, and perhaps even attract new HAM's.
It could also give us opportunity to upgrade repeaters adding digital capabilities where none now exists. I propose that not only would the Community Mesh Net Project be practical, it would also be fun. We could engage with local builder groups or high school students to develop prototypes and create the first local networks.
In this era of the internet advertising and development of such a project can be done a very low cost. However I believe that the positive benefit to both ARES and to radio clubs in general can be priceless.
Good points raised in previous posts but without participants and no one to take the reins to bring ARES as active member of our community we can only talk about it and been doing that for past few years.
As a club, the upcoming executive should conduct a survey to get an idea of the number of hams still active and not just hold an amateur radio licence which seems to the case now days. IC website is not updated if ham becomes deceased and not reported we don't know the real count. Also the survey should include the tools each hams has at their disposal, meaning: able to handle traffic in various forms (digital, cw, ssb), station capabilities (mobile, portable or fixed).
With Covid-19 still to deal with, meetings over Zoom or WebEX should be considered in place of a regular meeting so club and/or ARES presentations and training can be done without endangering anyone and still hold on-the-air weekly nets. In many ways I find using the video platform I can attend other club meetings without physically going there.
Right now, "ARES is dead" in Grey/Bruce but like Dave ve3wi said, "we can rebuild it, we have the technology"
73 and stay safe.
Adam ve3fp