Online petition to FCC to void HOA and developer antenna restrictions

[KA3JLW]

Most of our emergency communications system was purchased with grant money. Our community is not "rich". Our town and county have \
pooled thier resources for emergency communications. Thier are many communities within the county who have no paid employees at all.
They rely on the county for this sort of thing. If your coumnty hasnt made the attempt to get grants to build an emergency system, they
should have, at the least, gone to the state for assistance.

NI7I

So to be sure I understand - your town, county and many communities throughout the county share an emergency communications system, and I believe you said that system has a backup. And you advocate that where a community doesn't have adequate emergency communications, it should seek help from another government entity, whoever is giving grant money. Is that right?

[N5PZJ]

Most of our emergency communications system was purchased with grant money. Our community is not "rich". Our town and county have \
pooled thier resources for emergency communications. Thier are many communities within the county who have no paid employees at all.
They rely on the county for this sort of thing. If your coumnty hasnt made the attempt to get grants to build an emergency system, they
should have, at the least, gone to the state for assistance.

NI7I

Grant Money? Hey dude, we have been through 4 Hurricanes in 6 yrs. The State built the comm system, a 800MHZ job that died during KATRINA, sheesh, it was the STATE that was paralyzed in KATRINA, you have no idea of the logistics of rebuilding a community, loss of infastructure not to mention 5 Million People out of their houses! Grant Money? We have been granted money here for 4 hurricanes!!!

Parish (We do not have counties) and State Govt budgets are streched and Federal Monies were used to fill in the gaps. Most of the communications here has been rebuilt from the hurricanes. Hardened Communications, heck we are lucky for the rebuild.

Get in a real Emergency like a Hurricane, it is an eye opener from any viewpoint.

[KG4RRH]

500 petition signatures as of 8:00 AM EDST Sunday morning !!!

Why is it so low?

[N4UM]

Why is it so low?

As Yogo Berra used to say..."If people don't wanta come out to the ball park, how can we keep em away?" At 11:05 AM this Monday morning we had 593 signatures. I'm only one guy and I've done about as much as I can to move the ball along by trying to make people aware of the situation. I'm not on Facebook and don't know diddily about YouTube and all this social networking stuff so all I have to work with is eHam.net and QRZ.com. plus a few ham buddies.

Perhaps eHam.net and QRZ.com don't have all that many readers. Perhaps they have lots of readers but most don't care one way or another about the issue. Perhaps they have lots of readers but most of them think the petition is a stupid idea. I don't know what the answer is. I do feel pretty certain that this is likely to be the last time I'll peronally have a chance do amything to improve the lot of hams living under antenna prohibitions based upon land use restrictions in HOA's. I'd really like to see the FCC trump HOA restrictions with more reasonable accomodations but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it if they don't since I've given it my best shot. As John Wayne said..."A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." I guess we just need more men doing what they gotta do.

I might point out that the 593 people who have so far signed the petition is about ten times the number that responded with formal comments to the FCC's request. I've looked over the formal comments that have been filed with the FCC and my impression is that less than a third of them have been put together with much care. Many of the informal comments petition signers have submitted with their signatures seem to be put together more carefully than a lot of the "formal" comments on the FCC's ECFS web page.

[KA3JLW]

Why is it so low?

I count maybe 4 or 5 people taking the opposite stance - which means that of those who've expressed an opinion, approximately 99% are for this, 1% against.

Those against seem to cite DHS conspiracies and misguided notions about how law and governments work in their arguments.

[KA9JLM]

I count maybe 4 or 5 people taking the opposite stance - which means that of those who've expressed an opinion, approximately 99% are for this, 1% against.

Those against seem to cite DHS conspiracies and misguided notions about how law and governments work in their arguments.

They must be Echolink users or not hams ?

[KA3JLW]

I might point out that the 593 people who have so far signed the petition is about ten times the number that responded with formal comments to the FCC's request. I've looked over the formal comments that have been filed with the FCC and my impression is that less than a third of them have been put together with much care. Many of the informal comments petition signers have submitted with their signatures seem to be put together more carefully than a lot of the "formal" comments on the FCC's ECFS web page.

I'm one that filed with the FCC but purposely took a casual, anecdotal approach instead of a more formal cited legal presentation. Given that this is going to Congress, I believe there's room for the personal story as the icing to well-formed argument cake.

And I believe the FCC will look for 3 things in this argument:
- Primarily, strong fact-based arguments.
- Secondarily, trends within the responses ("an overwhelming number of respondants were for the proposal...")
- Thirdly, supporting anecdotal evidence.

In short - THEY ALL MATTER.

Here's the FCC release with instructions on how to respond:
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Rele...A-12-523A1.pdf

[WA9SVD]

It's interesting that the town could be decimated by the colapse of a comm tower.. Was a tenth of the town under the tower? If, in my town, all
of the police/fire/etc comms were silent because of the failure of a single tower, I would want somebody fired.. We have back up repeaters than [
are automatically activated when a primary repeater is off line.. we also have portable back up repeaters and two towers on trailers tht can be Q
deployed in a very short time. We are a small town.. I vbelieve less than 40k in the county. I have heard some hams on this forum
saying that H and W traffic is beneath them.. I believe that that is the type of traffic we should be handling.. It is what, historically, we have
done very well.U

LeeO
NI7IT

E=WA9SVD;2522564]It will be interesting to see the role of Amateur Radio in the aftermath of the April 13-15 2012 tornado outbreak(s). At least one town in Oklahoma was decimated because a tornado took out the tower containing the town's tower that contained the warning siren and communications repeaters for fire and law enforcement. I guess that's an example of the "hardened, and never fail" infrastructure.
Mother nature can always trump man-made "never fail" infrastructure systems. It will be interesting to see if the "infrastructure" can restore emergency communications as fast as Amateurs can (or could) respond. That's why Amateur Radio is to be considered BACKUP, not asked or expected to be first response communications. But if the infrastructure fails, we should be able to provide backup until the "never fail" infrastructure can reestablish itself. And "H&W" communications shouldn't be relegated to insignificant or inconsequential status, it can be important in times of disaster, whether natural or man-made.

[/QUOTE]

It will take a while to get exact details on the OK town. But the point IS, that not every location in the whole wide world ,or even the U.S., is as well equipped as your county. For that, you are lucky. I agree, that H&W should be our main function, but I don't discount H&W as a not very important aspect, or sometimes critical function. While we shouldn't even THINK of ourselves as "first responders," we should be prepared to back up the first response teams if they need additional communications, or if their system fails.
Without proper training and drills, (which require the ability to operate, (not just with an H-T, but sometimes from a home station) an Amateur won't be of any use, and may present a hindrance to proper emergency responses. An Amateur from their home station may be called upon to serve as a relay station or even a net control station in an emergency. If they don't have the ability to operate due to antenna restrictions, it's just one other voice that can't contribute.

[KC2ZPK]

Without proper training and drills, (which require the ability to operate, (not just with an H-T, but sometimes from a home station) an Amateur won't be of any use, and may present a hindrance to proper emergency responses. An Amateur from their home station may be called upon to serve as a relay station or even a net control station in an emergency. If they don't have the ability to operate due to antenna restrictions, it's just one other voice that can't contribute.

+1 for this. I think this aspect is falling on deaf ears.

[WN9HJW]

If they don't have the ability to operate due to antenna restrictions, it's just one other voice that can't contribute.

Having fewer hams that can "contribute" could be a good thing. Have you ever listened to the Salvation Army net or the Marine Net during a hurricane? Way too many half-wits ignoring net control instructions, piping up to "help", to ask stupid questions, give useless information, "Hey Bill how it's going. Winds here about 2 mph and sunny. How's the kids?", breaking in without net control requests to "check in" or report "no emergency traffic here", or say that they're "standing by for the next 20 minutes", otherwise getting chatty, etc. There's already way too many hams trying to "help" with emergency communications who are utterly clueless and just getting in the way.

As for drills and training, that's the real impediment to amateur emergency communications. Having more towers and beams in HOA neighborhoods isn't going to change the culture.

If we're going to ask for HOA antenna restrictions to be eliminated, and be successful, so that we can "provide emergency communications", we'd better have a solid argument for it and data to back it up. How many lives are lost every year due to antenna restrictions? How many injuries? How many billions in property damage? How many yachts and fishing boats sink? How exactly is an amateur tower and tri-bander going to help your neighborhood in an emergency?

I think we're over-playing the "emergency communications" card. If it's not done carefully, after the HOA and developer groups get done with berating their congresscritters, at best we'll end up with a federal law that says amateurs can use VHF ground planes on a temporary basis for use during actual emergencies only, or for drills not to exceed two per year.