[HamWAN PSDR] Facts about ham fundraising

[Kenny Richards]

Several of the points that Rob brought up really ring true to me.  I'm not
a core member of this group, but I've been encouraged by what has been
accomplished and I'm trying to assist where possible. (I even bought all
the equipment and spent several days on the roof of my house and at the top
of my tower trying to get online)

When I look at the node map, I see only a few people who have managed to
connect to the system. They are all what I'd consider 'core members' of
HamWAN.  I would consider this typical, but it isn't something the typical
ham is going to consider encouraging. (Why are there so few users? Is it to
difficult to get online? Is it really expensive? Who am I going to talk to,
nobody I know is on there?)

I believe getting your next 10 users on the air should be a goal for the
group. Try to make these next 10 users spread out across the coverage area
and hopefully connected to different ham radio groups.  These 10 people
will drive your next 50 users would be my guess. At that point people will
start feeling like they should contribute to the cost of the system.

The nice thing is that getting users online shouldn't require access to
mountain tops or climbing towers during the winter. Hopefully it is a low
cost activity, maybe only requiring some loaner equipment or something to
confirm the users can get online.

And I know someone who is on the board of the WWARA, which handles repeater
coordinations....

Just my two cents....

73,
Kenny


On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Tom Hayward <esarfl at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll take a stab at a few of these points and defer the others...
>
> On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Rob Salsgiver <rob at quailsoftltd.net>
> wrote:
> > 2)      End-users (individual):  We need to get more of our core online
> and
> > well versed in the system.  From those early users we need a few in each
> > county or metro area that are willing to do site surveys and interact
> with
> > other potential end users to get them onboard.  We need to focus on our
> > marketing, getting the message out (with success stories), and more
> end-user
> > demonstrations – not just the equipment, but from an application
> standpoint.
>
> I'll come out and do a site survey anywhere in Pierce County.
>
> I'll run a custom propagation model for anyone anywhere. This will
> tell you how tall of a tower you need to get HamWAN. HamWAN covers
> everything within 100 miles of a site if you have a tall enough tower
> ;-)
>
> > 3)      End-users (EMCOMM):  We need some served agencies online.  We
> need
> > advocates outside of the ham world.  Hospitals, Red Cross, Emergency
> > Management offices, Salvation Army, maybe even a mobile station.  If we
> have
> > 3-4 hospitals, Red Cross chapters, or similar served agencies
> successfully
> > hooked up, we have a working demonstration platform to work from.  Even
> > then, basic connectivity isn’t.  We need hams in these locations to
> > demonstrate on an applications basis what can be done “when all else
> fails”
> > over HamWAN.  If we can convince 30-50 different served agencies to shell
> > out the cost of a single cell phone each month to support a dedicated
> > Internet connection that is disaster-resilient, then you have up to
> > $2500/month coming in to support the infrastructure.  Demonstrate email,
> web
> > access, and maybe even some specialized goodies targeted at them – use
> > D-RATs for a tactical “chat” interface between locations – who knows?
>  Maybe
> > interface with other digital gateways or extend over other RF links
> > (D-Star?).
>
> The Snohomish County EOC is online with HamWAN. I'd like to see other
> EOCs come online, but we don't have contacts there. HamWAN could be
> very useful for EOC-to-EOC communications (sending video, phone,
> etc.).
>
> If you have contacts in the EmComm world, talk to them! Or see if we
> can schedule a presentation.
>
> Heh, D-Rats is a patch to make D-Star useful. We can just show them
> email, "Look, you can still use Outlook!" Service decoupled from
> network: awesome.
>
> I don't see Internet as the end goal of HamWAN. HamWAN can facilitate
> communications between hams. EOC-to-EOC communication can take place
> completely over the HamWAN RF network, until a hole opens up in the
> earth and swallows one of our sites. Then we just route around the
> outage with Internet; communication continues.
>
> Tom KD7LXL
>
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