Your analysis is correct to a degree.Could be Government corruption. As occurred in Baguio City Phillippines in 1990, while I was living there.
Chirag VU2QBX confirmed this morning that a team of Hams went from Gandhinagar India today to Nepal. Also another team headed by VU2JAU is actively engaged in emergency communications.
Currently hearing plenty of traffic in Europe.. G/CT/SP 14.215 Details on movements of people and radio equipment on stand-bye for flights out by RAF from Brize Norton Seems in hand to me.. Like they saying "To many cooks spoil the broth"
I have been monitoring N0UN and others on the 14.205 / 14.215 Nepal Nets ( and the deliberate jamming on those frequencies ). Those on the Net are trying to help as best they can. Best thing most of us can do is donate to the Red Cross & Salvation Army Nepal Relief Funds. KH6/G3SEA
AFAIK at this moment they are trying to organise the transportation of equipment from the Netherlands.
61 Dutch aid workers arrived before yesterday including dogs to search for buried victims, and working with the government were put to work immediately. Aid is shipped from the Netherlands now, lots of people donating money to the open accounts to help out.
TBH, why are supplies having to be schlepped halfway round the World? That are the neighbouring countries doing?
Other countries do help, though they have the same problems while the earthquake hit several countries. India is hit by the earthquake and extreme weather with lots of casualties and destruction. Most western countries like the Netherlands have ready to go packages that can be loaded into planes in hours with all the goods needed after an earthquake or other major event. Most of these countries next to Nepal are quite poor and have their hands full of their own disaster fighting.
Coming from someone involved (even broadly) in medicine they are rather strange - if not prevocative - questions. Do you honestly expect to find answers here? If you want to know what neighbouring countries are doing look at the BBC News website, etc. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32477180. I'd be surprised if there aren't other things going on that don't reach the headlines.
I listened for a while earlier today, and all I heard was people in Europe talking (to each other) about transporting supplies. Not emergency traffic, and something that could more easily be communicated by cell phone. There was one other thing. One guy telling the other guy that he sent him an email, and that he should just reply to that email. How is that emergency traffic, and if you have email, why do you need to be using your radio? I have yet to hear something done on these frequencies that couldn't be done better via other methods, which ARE available to the people who are using the frequencies.
If you want to pretend that I'm crying about something, I guess that's your prerogative. But I'm not the one parking on a frequency telling other people to keep it clear so that I can pass non-emergency traffic that I could pass by phone or email. It's called being a considerate operator. If two people in Europe want to chat about putting some stuff on an airplane, fine, but don't tell me that I can't use a frequency because THAT message is important.
Amateur Radio in Nepal – Perspective and a Plea<o></o> The recent disaster in Nepal has drawn attention to the region and has some folks wondering about the conflicting messages coming fromthe 9N1 Amateur community. Let me provide some insight. Amateur Radio came to Nepal in 1951 with Father Marshall D.Moran; he operated in Nepal until his death in 1992.Father Moran, the king and a few others were the only licensed amateurs in Nepal.In1993 there was an Amateur License Test sitting and a few new hams werelicensed.This raised the numbers but there were still less than 25 licensed operators.The country fell into Civil War from 1996 to2006 and the kingdom was abolished in 2008. In November of 2011, 45 potential new hams sat for the first licensing exam in years.The Institute of Engineering at Tribhuvan University in Nepal made attaining an Amateur Radio license a goal for their Electrical Engineering students. The plan was to have 100 new licensed operators on the air by the next September to support a simulated disaster response and to build a 5 site linked system ringing the Kathmandu valley with an Internet connected node and an HF station at the RF Engineering building of the university. I joined the design team for the repeater network In April of 2012. Imagine a country where Amateur Radio was in its infancy. No frequency congestion, no repeaters, few operators and enthusiastic young hams anxious to support to serve the community. Some of those original operators were not as anxious to see things change. A small group has had virtually total controlof the airwaves for over 20 years. They have thrown up a number of obstacles including: Mandating a Morse requirement for all classes of license Making the entry level license HF only and adding VHF/UHF as a higher class Manipulating the UHF/VHF spectrum outside of the ITU standards Controlling the type of equipment that would be allowed in the country Promoting a license fee equivalent to $155 USD Before the earthquake, this was all just the frustrating politicsof a well-connected group of old-guard hams trying to maintain control. For the good of the people of Nepal, it is time to stop the games. I urge the entire Nepali Amateur community to embrace the offers of the international community to help on the ground in Nepal. This is not the time to tell others you won’t let them operate. I further urge the entire Amateur community to apply pressure to release the complete repeater that CAN-USA shipped to TribhuvanUniversity for Radio-Mala over three months ago. Instead of being on the air weeks ago, it has been locked up in customs – a pawn in this tragic game. Lastly, I urge all of you who want to help to read the forums, listen to the nets and understand where you can send your support to do the most good for the people of Nepal. Rick Santna W6IFA
