Force of Two: In Depth stories from 2 Puerto Rico volunteers on HamRadioNow

34. Equipment dispatched with the “Force of 50” to Puerto Rico included data transmission equipment capable of PACTOR 4 operation, but it could not be legally used in the Hurricane Maria disaster relief effort.​

Did the PACTOR 4 modems actually make the trip with the Force of 50?

 

They did not. According to some witnesses, the offers of the Pactor IV modems were declined.

 

Makes me wonder if the proper cables were offered with the P4 modems.

 

Mike, you might be referring to modems deployed for ShaRes volunteers at the FEMA EOC rather than the Red Cross HQ used by the Force of Fifty (23) hams. The Red Cross hams never saw the Pactor IV modems. As I recall, the ShaRes volunteers arrived as the Red Cross hams were demobilizing.

 

They were there before I got there and I was the first of the SHARES folks to get there. I just know the Red Cross folks didn't use them. I think the ham folks passed along a lot of messages even without using the Pactor modems so props to them.

 

The FoF hams used Signal Link sound cards and Winmor unless they could find a cell phone signal. Then they used Telnet.

 

Telnet, huh? I'm sure that'll make a whole bunch of old timers chuckle

 

I met Gary when I first got down to San Juan. He seemed like a nice enough guy but was evidently involved in some of the drama that occured. Also, one thing he said wasn't really true. It was actually significantly HARDER to send messages thru a Winlink station on the island than thru stations on the mainland. On the occasions when internet was available, it was a lot faster to get e-mails that way than by radio. Winlink via telnet is pretty fast, as it should be. Problem was, internet was broken far more than it was working for most of the island. That, and power was so unstable it clobbered a bunch of stuff even in the EOC. Next outing, I will have a surge suppressor. I was lucky this time. I used my powerpack connected to a wall wart to run my radios. I figured if the wall wart got clobbered, it'd be $15 to replace. Blowing a power supply would be around $100.

Like all of us that went down, there was some bizarre stuff to see. But mostly it was just broken stuff everywhere.

 

ARRL After Action Report

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public Service/ARES/2017 Hurricane Season AAR.pdf

 

The report is not dated. I cannot tell when the report was released. Two of the documents within are dated January 30, 2018. The report came up in a web search and does not appear to be available through the League web site.

Of particular note is Oscar Resto’s KP4RF account of local hams and how they organized and responded.

The report mentions The need to vet volunteers several times. There is a comment on p. 27 at the end of paragraph 2, “It was in the staging area that the first indications emerged that there could be issues with the volunteers working together.”

Page 27 ends with the volunteers departing Atlanta implying that the league handed off all responsibility for the volunteers.

An ARRL manager did not arrive until ten days later and then deployed to the FEMA EOC rather than in a position to manage the volunteers. The Sequence of Events jumps from issuance of Ham Aid kits in Atlanta to the completion of the mission. Operational and management issues during the deployment are not addressed probably because the league feels it was not their responsibility.

Training and vetting of volunteers is mentioned several times as issues that need to be improved upon. Better coordination with the served agency is acknowledged.

 

I Have Found 2 Software Packages to DECODE PACTOR, So Still not Sure WHY the Hard time With PACTOR III & IV via ARRL?

http://www.hoka.com/products/code30...ma_6iMnTPyYRRz63PgpTmTULIlfhMcCGTu7k7CImp6MyY

https://www.procitec.de/en/products...niJxw_1PNgA8nLJDmFeINWFg6piJAI_BxeBeE8uIPmees

It's Seems that the issue may not be PACTOR itself, but The Winlink there using?

 

This one is FREE, All you have to do is Poke Around.. Also information on Decoding Winlink..
http://www.kd0cq.com/2013/07/sorcer...QFy3g4rAvJdwLVS-E2bqEyceHoN1uzTwkxWG7xEakJHWo