Post by kc8nag on Nov 24, 2007 18:50:26 GMT -5
There is a ham radio traffic net that operates something like a community billboard and takes place as it has every night for years in Detroit at 10:15pm on the 145.330Mhz FM repeater or sometimes at 146.760Mhz FM without fail.
The net has gotten into a controversy because a Canadian ham Harold E. Southward of Ingersol, Ontario has been sending reams of messages with religious sounding endings. Some hams say he sends too many messages where the only difference between them is the addressee.
Most hams in the area relay messages from other hams at least once or twice a year. Call the person up, read it, or write it on a postcard and drop it in their mailbox on your way to work. Some operators say Mr. Southward is overloading the system with spamlike religious commercials.
People say they have had bad experiences passing Mr.southward's messages, that some messages have caused the recipients to get upset with the messenger.
The question seemed to be, Is what Mr. Southward who prefers to be called "Joe" does benign , or is what Joe does a nuisance?
So I handled two of his messages and talked to Joe himself.
The first message was a birthday greeting to David Wheeler in Detroit. When I called Mr. Wheeler he thanked me for my effort and said "It was probably the only one I got".
The other message was a birthday greeting to Robert Siemon in Southfield Michigan, when I warned Mr. Siemion that the message was partly religious he said "I'm religious but not that way". Mr. Siemion also indicated that he was making golf clubs and his hands were full of glue so it was cool.
When I asked him if cool meant "go ahead read the message or don't bother" he said he would rather not hear the message and I thanked him for talking to me and said good bye.
When I called Mr Southward at home and told him about Mr. Siemon's response, he said the messages have a christian content as opposed to a religious content. Mr. Southward said "the receiver doesn"t have to accept it for the message to provide valuable experience in emergency communication".
Mr. Southward said "If a person is bugged then all they have to do is cycle the message back to me and they won't be bothered anymore". "The real value is in getting the message relayer practice in who to talk to and how to relay message traffic in a natural disaster like an earthquake when all other communication is out", he said.
"Your'e bound to get flak no matter what you say." and to that I might add "You never know what you missed."
