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AE5ME > ARES 23.04.16 00:05l 21 Lines 4430 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: ARRL ARES E-Letter April 20th Part 2 of 3
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Sent: 160422/2244Z 36150@AE5ME.#NEOK.OK.USA.NOAM BPQ1.4.64
Baker to Vegas Relay Challenge Supported by Mass of Southwestern Hams
Hundreds of Amateur Radio operators, principally from California, Nevada and Arizona, came out to support the 2016 Baker to Vegas Relay Challenge, March 19-20. The more than one hundred hams from the ARRL Los Angeles Section made up a significant number of those providing communications support. In many cases the operators camped out overnight either before or after the event in order to accommodate the large event schedule. As in previous years, Joy Matlack, KD6FJV, was the Communication Director with significant help from Margie Hoffman, KG6TBR. Together they were responsible for organizing the amateur communications effort, which is no small task and involves nearly a full year of planning and preparation.This event played host to 264 law enforcement teams in a grueling 120 mile relay race course beginning just outside Baker, California (near the south end of Death Valley) and ending in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amateurs provided needed race staffing, but also filled potential emergency communication gaps in remote portions of the course.
Los Angeles ARES (ARESLAX) had teams covering/operating the Relay Challenge stages number three (#3), number eight (#8) and number nine (#9), led by DEC Roozy Mulbury, K1EH; ARES member Jim Stoker, AG6EF; and ARES member Carina Lister, KF6ZZY.
The winning teams by order were the LAPD Department Team, the LASD County Wide Team and the New York Police Department Team.This event allows the southwestern US amateur community to showcase its abilities to the country's law enforcement community. -- ARRL Los Angeles Section Manager David Greenhut, N6HD
Op-Ed: Evolve Our Communication or Wither
Our FCC license grants us privileges within technical standards as operators. We can lash equipment together and establish networks, creating links for agencies with facilities and resources. Then what? Our license takes us no further than the point of pressing the transmit button, for out of the box most of us are indeed operators, but we may not be communicators; often left to chance, especially in the service of larger organizations and complex incidents or events such as the Boston Marathon, my main focus in public service. We are often weak in the communication department.
For 16 years I've volunteered as an operator/communicator at countless public events and for the past three years have organized and led many of them, including the extraordinary group effort involved with the Boston Marathon. Impressing me the most, having served on both sides of the table, is the enthusiasm that volunteers bring. But, depressing me the most, is the misassumption that our FCC ticket automatically makes us experts. Training certainly helps, but reading or listening to a classroom lecture is one thing, applying it is another, hence the sidelining of our service sometimes for an unhealthy know-it-all attitude. We sometimes fail to communicate the right things -- attitude, service orientation, quiet confidence, and the willingness to take direction -- with the very people we aim to communicate for. "We are communicators, first" I tell my team members. We need to communicate a wanting to serve the public and agency, not ourselves. We need to communicate a sense of humility, not hubris.
To accomplish this, it takes empathy, leadership, listening, trust-building, and learning the culture of our served partners. Our local, county, state and national leadership need to recognize, embrace and work to meet this communication challenge in creative and bold ways, such as retooling our own culture. Leaning on old paradigms and culture, offering "when all else fails" is somewhat obsolete: We need to go to work to communicate with, take direction from, and support our partners before all else fails.
If you are in a position of leadership, embrace change and this challenge. If you're a volunteer, press your leaders to raise the bar, to bring us to a level of competence that matches the level of those we seek to serve. It begins with communication. By meeting us with silence sometimes, our potential partners are sending a message: "Evolve, or wither. It's up to you." -- Mark Richards, K1MGY, Littleton, Massachusetts [Richards is a frequent contributor to this newsletter, and a member of the Boston Athletic Association Communications Committee, which supports the Boston Marathon.]
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