Clear Frequencies Requested Following St. Vincent Volcanic Eruption

If common courtesy still prevailed not only on the ham bands but in the world in general, a simple QSY request "for possible emergency traffic on the frequency" by one of the Eastern Caribbean stations monitoring it would (or should) suffice. Those days may be long gone, however, and I certainly wish all those living on St. Vincent the very best of luck in their current perilous situation.

It is also a shame that this story is overlooked and under-reported by all of the so-called news outlets; there might be more awareness if the word got out on a much broader scale.

Six of the 11 years my wife and I lived in KH6 were spent less than two miles from the summit of Kilauea Volcano (possibly the world's most active volcano until now) and I wouldn't ever wish anyone
to have to go through what we experienced on a periodic basis in what was an otherwise idyllic setting---clouds of choking volcanic smog (vog) containing dangerous sulphur dioxide blanketed our area for miles whenever the Northeast tradewinds stopped blowing. All we could do when that happened was to close all doors and windows and "lay low" for hours until it passed.

While residents at lower elevations were more in danger of lava flows, we were often on pins and needles thinking we might have to evacuate when the toxic gas levels rose above 5ppm. Frequent small and medium earthquakes only added to a general feeling of uneasiness there, too.

While the scenery around us was magnificent and working lots of dx was great, we finally decided to leave for good. The volcanic activity wasn't the only reason but it certainly was a relief to be out of that general uncertainty and bad air (ironic as that may sound).

I hope the residents of that once lovely Caribbean isle can get whatever help they need and I would encourage everyone here to spread the word about the frequencies being used---they may indeed come in handy should the situation worsen.

 

Another 'emergency' request to avoid several voice frequencies, which is totally okay, but where are the declared digital (amateur email saves the world) frequencies? Many disasters have come and gone since HF email became a thing and yet there has never been a request to stay clear of any digital frequencies. Kinda makes you wonder, with all the hype about just how important HF email is, why never any clear channel requests.

Extra butter and make the popcorn with Flavacol and coconut oil if you want the real deal theater stuff......

 

That's assuming both stations can hear each other due to antenna config, beam direction and propagation. If one doesn't hear any traffic and asks if the frequency is in use and hears no response after asking several times, they have done their due diligence. Yet ops will still assume the other party is rude or a bad operator. Until another station intervenes that they can hear, they have no idea they are interfering.

 

You may not understand the HF email network. Since the link stations are in various locations on various frequencies and bands it does not make sense to make such a request. When I initiate a Winlink message to be sent the VOCAP software runs a quick check and gives me the list of available link stations and rates our RF pathway reliability % at that moment. The best pathway based on my location, and propagation may be on 20M but the second most reliable may be on 80 meters. If I am sending this message to be retrieved via RF by another amateur station the linking stations that work best for them at the time may be on totally different bands and frequencies.

 

Likewise, HF email stations are on published frequencies, usually in the segments for automatically controlled digital stations. Emergency ops can transfer easily from the existing CMS network to an ad hoc peer-to-peer digital net in the same sub-band. On voice, a brief QSO is not always QRM, but I would be courteously mindful if there was a watch net operating on frequency for the purpose of "immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property."

 

Why does a simple request to keep a couple of frequencies clear for disaster relief bring all the smart-arses out of the box? Does it not make perfect sense to have as many options open as possible for communication when the lives of fellow human beings are at stake!

Absolute shame on EVERY SINGLE ONE who is tearing this request apart. No excuse or reason can forgive this kind of child like behaviour...

I only pray you whingers never end up in a situation like those around St. Vincent and all those doing their very best to save these lives and uphold some form of honour in the process.

Shame on you criticising this request!!!

 

Because it seems that so many people these days are just totally selfish and any polite request for the good of others is seen as an affront. Some people apparently just enjoy being contradictory, and when you ask them to please not do something, they want to do that thing just to spite you.

 

My first thought exactly. It's about to fall off the "latest news" section of the ARRL...right under the second advisory reminding us of the Jan. 17th advisory that the FCC prohibits the use of radios in those services to commit or facilitate criminal acts. I really doubt Sammy SOTA, Peter POTA and Contester Carl even know about a volcanic eruption but I digress.

 

Nothing in this article about comms being down but in some places the ash is 3 feet deep and it's still erupting.

https://www.voanews.com/americas/volcano-st-vincent-still-erupting

 

Well it's a solution desperately searching for a problem but I digress. Carry on.

 

Unfortunately I am more than a little familiar with how Winlink works and there is no recent evidence of it's actual use in an emergency. Outside of a lot of testing, ICS213 requests for ice cream and obligatory photo ops for QST, there
have been no apparent "emergency" messages during recent events. Where's the heaping pile of emergency messages? Checking some current high volume Winlink traffic it seems that more than a few stations are using it as a daily email service in direct violation of 97.113, 30+ emails per day by a single callsign constitutes "Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services." There is virtually no place on the surface of the earth, outside of the polar regions, where alternate radio services are not available -- Starlink for instance.

Published frequencies? Usually in the segments for automatically controlled stations? There's two major problems right there. So before anyone operates they need to consult the Winlink owned frequencies list to avoid being crushed because someone needs the latest BBC news feed, weather report, or port entry information? The second problem is not all the automatic gateways are constrained by US rules and can be anywhere. US stations can and do connect to those stations way out of the US ACDS bands. Legal but not nice and one of the many reasons Winlink has such a bad rep. Not to mention some of those gateways operate well outside of the US RTTY/Data sub bands, 80m US Phone
segment, and even if the US clients are running current software that warns of out-of-band transmission the connection is made anyway. The client side "busy channel" warming is also easily overridden and ignored, there shouldn't be any signals on those "published" frequencies anyway -- any non-Winlink signal is only there to block the gateway per the Winlink sysadmin, it's in print, don't doubt it. Oh, Winlink is also on record at the FCC as characterizing anything
less than their chosen wideband modes as "pollution".

Enjoy it while you can, things may change suddenly after the FCC issued a second warning about illegal use of amateur frequencies.

 

Even in the 70s and 80s, the CBers would clear a freq when there was an emergency. Have we lost all common sense? Are we really at that point?

 

Sadly, I believe so.

 

Pretty sure it's almost lost.

 

We're beyond that point. We're too far gone.