The ARRL and EMCOM:
Many hams belive that EMCOM will take over amateur radio...
My theory is that the ARRL will merely hasten the natural demise of amateur radio emcom by over-hyping it precisely before events and advances would make it largely irrelevant and obsolete anyway.
The ARRL has a long, repetitive history of doing just as I described above. Think about what happened to repeater systems just prior to the advent of widespread cellular phone technology. Here's an interesting quote I read on another forum where a ham talks about that era:
I remember people setting up cross band rptrs with a simplex phone patch.
Cell phone service was over a dollar per minute back then. A bunch of non frequency coordinated automatic simplex private phone patches litered 2M.
It was a way to have cell phone like service.(less coverage area, but free talk time.) One talks about pecuniary interests....Illegal. I heard countless of commercial like communication on 2M and 440 duing the simplex autopatches hayday(1985)
- Then hams got disgusted with repeaters, the cell phones got cheaper and the ARRL had to find some other near-future ( popular) technology to latch on to - the internet!
So the ARRL over-hyped amateur packet radio until it got to the point that they were implying in QST that if you didn't have a packet station, well then you were missing out on what ham radio was all about. I remember that era myself, when hams who had no idea of what packet was, felt so much pressure that they would go around asking for help with getting started on it anyway. When they got it, a lot of hams had no idea of what to do with it.
- Then hams got disgusted with packet, the internet access got cheaper and the ARRL suddenly had to find some other near-future ( popular ) technology to latch on to. They floundered around for a few years until a few executive employees and some moles from TAPR decided to take the reigns of power up and push their pet digital mode - WinLink. - Another ham activity noted for illegal, commercial like communication.
They tried to foist RM-11306 ( bandwidth segmentation ) on the amateur community but were firmly rebuffed by their fellow hams and briefly went into damage-control mode until they were blessed with hurricane Katrina. The hurricane gave them an even bigger target to shoot for, something that would re-justify WinLink at the same time... - amateur radio emcom!
The ARRL emcom hype has been pumped up by the DHS grants, leading to un-looked for profits for the German TNC manufacturer SCS and a nice high ride for the ARRL executives who irresponsibly started the WinLink mess to start with. With unerring accuracy, the ARRL had latched onto yet another item that was soon to be totally eclipsed by emerging technology, and we are currently experiencing the highest point of expansion for that particular bubble.
Now hams are starting to get disgusted with WinLink and emcom... See the pattern?
When the bubble pops, amateur radio emcom will take an overnight nosedive just like with the repeater boom and packet radio. Sure, a few will still participate but the ARRL will by then behaving as if they had never heard of ARES or amateur radio emcom... They'll be pursuing the next certain pathway to obsolescence and failure, the next amateur radio technology that is soon to be outmoded, all energetically puffing up the next new bubble.
But hey - If they get plenty of new "hams" pulling on the gravy train as a result, who gives a hoot if it's all a scam, eh?
You don't think they give a hoot about ham radio, or amateur radio operators, do you? How can that that compare with the fact that if more money and influence flows through the ARRL employees hands, more of it will tend to stick there?
As long as those same persons continue to be employed by the ARRL these shenanigans will continue, over and over again.
