FAMILIES OF HURRICANE SURVIVORS TRIGGER GLOBAL EFFORT TO BRING EMERGENCY AMATEUR RADIO NETWORK TO DOMINICA The Yasme Foundation, Yaesu USA, the FAIRS foundation and individual donors to a GoFundMe campaign have joined forces to restore country-wide amateur radio communications on Dominica in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. "Many ex patriot Dominicans wanted to buy ham radio stations for their home villages," explained Michelle Guenard, who started a GoFundMe campaign for this purpose. "With cell and internet services knocked out, the only news of their families and friends was gleaned through the transmissions of local operators." Tens of thousands of Facebook subscribers listened to her live stream of ham radio traffic relayed onto the internet via EchoLink. "But we knew the GoFundMe campaign couldn't raise the amount Dominica needed and we wanted to deliver a coordinated response," added Michelle's husband Brian Machesney, K1LI. Working with a network of contacts developed over decades of visits to Dominica, the couple established a partnership that has pulled together over US$30,000 of radio equipment and solar-charged battery power stations. When fully deployed, Dominica will be part of a robust local, regional and worldwide network of amateur radio stations. "Many of our members lost everything in the hurricane," wrote Joseph Raymond, J73RJ, President of the Dominica Amateur Radio Club Inc. "The donated equipment will dramatically improve our near-term ability to connect towns and villages all over Dominica and to stay connected well into the future." According to its President, Ward Silver, N0AX, "The Yasme Foundation began working with the Dominica Amateur Radio Club and Dominica's NTRC in 2016 to recruit and equip new operators for just such an emergency. We are grateful to Yaesu, FAIRS and the individual donors for joining us in this effort." Mikio Maruya, WA6F, Executive Vice President of Engineering for the Yaesu USA Amateur Division, said, "Radio amateurs routinely provide essential communication services to individuals, aid organizations and government institutions in the wake of disasters all over the world. Yaesu welcomes this opportunity to assist Dominica with its recovery from the devastation of Hurricane Maria." https://dxnews.com/forum/forum/amat...g-emergency-amateur-radio-network-to-dominica
Click for Dominica Airlift Dominica Airlift is flying humanitarian relief missions and supporting Emcomm, with a focus on disaster-resistant HF and VHF communications.
Why does Fundly and gofundme refuse to allow me to use Paypal. I am not using my Credit card on the internet. I have a small checking account at a Bank that I use Only for Paypal. I only use that bank for Paypal stuff, my Retirement gets direct deposited to a bank that is not connected in any way with my Paypal stuff.
The idea of outfitting the island nations with Amateur Radio is a superb one, and long overdue. May I suggest to the people who are choosing the radios to be supplied, that it's very easy to start climbing up the "Bells and Whistles" list and supplies a radio that is overly complicated and difficult for a newcomer to use. My suggestion is a Icom 718 or the Alinco DX-SR8T. Both radios have Memory channels, and once they are set up would be very easy to operate, for the newcomer. If all of the band data is in the memory, it's not going to rely on the operators memory. Things like which bands are LSB and which bands are USB, tend to be forgotten. I wish you well! 73 BOB N2MDA
