W3TDH

You wanted us to provide complete information? If we did that we would have to have you terminated with extreme prejudice. Kidding aside I want to thank you for your work. Tom Horne

The radio would draw from both the battery and the charger adapter so you would have to have a current limiter in the adapter line. That would prevent the radio from overdrawing from the charging circuit and opening its fuse. Check your owner's manual to see if there is an unused fused output in the cabin fuse holder which is usually located under the dash or in the side wall of the driver's foot well. The cabin fuse holder is often supplied by a pair of large gauge conductors that will readily handle the 23 amperes of current drawn by the radio during transmit. It is fairly likely that you will find a unused fused terminal that will at least handle the charging circuit. For any battery type with the possible exception of Lithium Iron Phosphate the charging can be done by a circuit from the alternator but you need to use a battery isolator which will prevent the Starting, Lighting, and Ignition loads from drawing current from the radio battery. With an isolator in the circuit no other load in the vehicle can draw current from the radio battery. Depending on the chemistry of the radio battery you may need a charge controller to prevent the battery being charged at too high a current. That will avoid the charging circuit damaging the battery. If you have more questions please ask. Tom Horne W3TDH 240-688-8590

I called Safety way directly and I sent them a follow up email. Their telephone person, who may have been some sort of manager or even an owner, said they would send me the O-rings for the 2, 5 gallon, DOT approved, cans that I already have as well as any local vendor and the factory direct price for purchasing directly from them. The factory direct price is usually the "Suggested Retail Price" which is nearly always higher than the actual market price when buying from a local distributor or retailer. I'll let everyone know what I find out. Tom W3TDH

Regardless of it's origins a "Lid" has come to mean any malicious or careless operator who has no regard for other operators and considers her/his needs or wants as inherently more important than common courtesy or good operating practice. A person who calls a newly licensed operator a "No Code Phony" is an excellent example of a LID! An operator who calls a rare contact on their calling frequency instead of calling "10 up" or any frequency the rare contact asked be used for replies is a quintessential LID. Tom W3TDH

Walt WA3LTJ The following does not negate anything you have written here. I'm embarrassed to realize that what you have written here is absolutely true. I used to harass my Global Majority Fire and Rescue colleagues, whenever we were out on the road, to wave at any child that looked like them. They put up with it because I asked them if a child waving at a fire truck shouldn't see someone that looks at least a little like them waving back. In order for all the children to see something as a possibility for their lives that possibility must be made visible. So everything you wrote is true for me. I will just need some time to figure out what to do about it. I'm presently serving as a local Emergency Coordinator within the ARRL's Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES®). I would have a hard time leaving the organization as it is the only game, in town or out, that is focused on communications support for an any relief agency and has the flexibility to go anywhere it is needed. Emergency Service has been the primary focus of my life from early on. The problem I see with standing up an alternative organization is that there are very high barriers to entry in that field of endeavor. Served Agencies and Emergency Managers are, understandably, allergic to conflict within and between organizations that offer to serve as assisting or cooperating agencies to carry out THEIR work. That's right it is their work. If we truly want to assist THEM in carrying out THEIR work in assisting the survivors of a disaster who are THEIR clients we have to learn to do what They need done with a high enough level of skill and cooperative spirit to be fully effective. It cannot be about us. We are an instrument that is either suitable or unsuitable to use in getting THEIR work done. The choice of which we are is, at least partially, up to us! ARES® is not yet good at that role but they could be and I'm working hard to try and move the volunteers I have been assigned to coordinate in that direction. Tom W3TDH [Sea Scout Promise] I promise that at all times, in all places, and in all circumstances I will seek to uphold the motto of sea rescue. Aid the helpless first. [Emergency workers promise.] I promise to perform the duties assigned to me without preference or prejudice. I will hold the the public necessity before my personal gain and public safety equal to my personal welfare. These things I do so that others may live.

The best part for me was that in every episode John Banner, as Sargent Schultz, would say "I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing" or some variation thereof. In later episodes he would sometimes add "I was not even here!" Tom Horne W3TDH

My only current disagreement with the ARRL is that I think their doing a poor job on providing applicable recognized training and certification measures for the Amateur Radio community. Their "Standardized Training Program and Emergency Communicator Individual Task Book" is an embarrassment to those of us trying to work within the Amateur Radio Emergency Service framework. I wouldn't want anyone in the Emergency Management business to see it because it would make ARES a laughing stock. It is a Frankenstein Monster that attempts to put a Training Plan, Position Task Book. training catalog for a variety of positions, and 2 Job Guides into 8 pages. The writer had obviously never seen a Position Task Book nor read the FEMA Guidance on the preparation of one. I was detailed to the Davis Development Center of the then California Department of Forestry in the Division of Natural Resources when FIRESCOPE was born. [I think it still has the prize for the most awkward acronym ever devised in English.] FIRESCOPE is supposed to be Fire Resources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies. It is generally acknowledge as the forebear of the Incident Command System. As I was only a seasonal firefighter I had no role in that process but every time the participants were at meals or on break I would listen to their thoughts as much as I could. One of the things that came out of that program was uniform description of fire suppression working positions. That way a Heavy Fire Equipment Operator; lovingly known as a Cat Skinner because he could operate a Caterpillar Bulldozer as skillfully as a pack stock handler could use a whip, was still a heavy fire equipment operator whether they worked for the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Indian Affairs, California Division of Forestry; Now Cal Fire; and so on. [A pack stock handler is often called a mule skinner because they can skin a mule alive with their whip to make it do what they need it to do. That sounds brutal but the pack stock handlers have to be able to deliver resources to a fire line without the stock running off to their deaths at the smell of smoke.] The participants in the creation of FIRESCOPE decided that Interchangeability of personnel was more important then which agency had initial attack responsibility for the point of origin of the fire. An Engine Foreman was the equivalent of a fire captain. A crew boss was the same as a Crew Leader... The process is to identify a job that requires unique skill set. Identify the needed skills, develop a training plan and experience list to teach those skills, and write a Position Task Book to record the completion of the training and the demonstration of the required skills for each individual seeking to qualify for that position in the Integrated Command System. Under this system ALL Position Task Books are individual. Positions are identified (Typed) so that a person to fill it can be requested from any agency that has a qualified person available. By the way if anyone can tell me what an Emergency Communicator actually is my hat's off to you. I find that job title to be absolutely meaningless. I made appointments with senior managers from each of the organizations with which the ARRL has a memorandum of understanding that has a presence in the area for which I am the Emergency Communicator to ask them what they would expect an Emergency Communicator to do for them. Not one of them included anything having to do with the operation of radios to handle local and/or long distance messages. The answers these senior local managers gave covered quite a range of abilities. Some examples were: restore internet service, repair facility telephone system, install a local area network, answer telephones and take complete actionable messages, and the list goes on. That last one was kinda close to an auxiliary radio operators job except it would be done by telephone. So add some field telephones to your equipment cache and run a couple of phone lines outside the facility you are trying to support to a radio operating position, and assign one of these mythical Emergency Communicators to staff those phones, prepare messages on ICS forms for signature by the originating served agency official, transport the message by Facsimile, Local Area Net, or sneaker net to the Radio Operator (RADO), file copies 2&3 of the form leaving the original; page 1; with the originator, confirm message transmission to the originator, and move on to the next message. OK [RANT/]; meaning rant mode off. Tom Horne W3TDH

I heard my Dad quietly say to my mom "Hon Don't use the phone during a thunderstorm." After that every time it thundered my mom would stay away from the telephone by going into a different room. She would also grab a towel and order anyone in the bath or shower out of the bathroom NOW! She wasn't going to give Thor another shot at her if she could help it. What then happened is that my Dad, who was a plumber and believed nearly everything could be solved with a little more solder, tore out all the galvanized pipe that he could get to in the basement and installed all copper. He used the copper cold water pipe to bond everything electric together and that included the telephone company's lightning protector and line fuse block. He pulled the telephone ground rod out without much effort at all. It was 3 feet long! That's how I found out that my dad had started out in the crafts as an electrician. He switched to plumbing when he found out that the plumbers union had a better wage scale than electrical workers did. He brought home a drive in well point and he, my brother, and I took turns using a sliding hammer to drive 20 foot of 2 inch pipe into the earth in the stony soil of southern New Hampshire. Once we got that thing driven my dad filled it with water and rigged one of the downspouts to keep it full. He connected that to the plumbing using copper pipe, solder to threaded adapters, and bronze bonding fittings. He added a jumper around the pressure tank to make the line to the water well part of the whole thing. Tom Horne

5&1/2 decades ago my mother was on the phone in our home in Derry New Hampshire. There was a tremendous boom. The wall telephone flew across the room and buried itself into the lath and plaster wall. Mom sat there stunned for a minute and then realized that she was still holding the handset. She threw that away from herself. I observed that since the phone was no longer attached to the phone wires there was no more danger. The look she gave me made me find somewhere else to be. Tom W3TDH

An AB-86 military surplus antenna mast with base insulator and whip adapter at top with 15 foot whip. 55 foot vertical with an Icom AH-4 Antenna Coupler. Packed antenna fits in the trunk/boot of compact and larger vehicles. Will fit in sub compact hatch back lengthwise. QTY 3 units. Military Surplus GRA-50 dipole adjustable on both sides from 160 Meters to 6 meters. QTY 6 units Buddipole™ Deluxe Package, QTY 1

While I'm thinking about it I should mention that it is considered perfectly good practice to drive a Ground Rod below ground level and cover it with a large PVC pipe section of ~1 foot in length with a female threaded adapter on it. Once you have it set at ground level just below the vegetation, mulch, gravel or what have you screw in a pug style end into the threaded adapter. It is relatively landscaping equipment proof and provides access to check the condition of the connections and measure the impedance to ground during annual system checks. Tom W3TDH

I'm glad that it worked out for you. What are you using as a Grounding Electrode Conductor (GEC); US National Electrical Code (NEC) name for the wire that connects your main grounding busbar, Single point bonding busbar, or your antenna entry bonding panel to the grounding rod. If you have any suggestions for connecting lightning arresters directly to ground rods I'd like to know. The ones available from equipment vendors are all north of $50 and that seems excessive. Tom W3TDH

That's too dam close. I'm glad that you were not hurt. Tom W3TDH

When a disaster mitigation effort is ongoing the ARRL's daily bulletin will contain information on the frequencies being used. The do not seem to be consistent about including information on the ARES efforts which are ongoing and I don't know why. Tom W3TDH

That's about right especially with the misspellings. Tom W3TDH