July 24, 2006
Net Protocol - Leave Gaps Between Transmissions
This is worthy of printing here. This news piece was received from Richland County ARES:
SKYWARN NEWS
Well, sad to say, but it finally happened. On June 22, 2006 during the severe wind damage event that we had, we had check-ins coming in and they were right on top of each other. On this day however, we had a station from Crawford County give his call and then the next person jump right after his call. What we didn’t know, is that Crawford station was still transmitting with the words “PRIORITY TRAFFIC!” This was the Crawford County EMA Director! He needed to contact the DEC as Crawford County Sheriffs Department had lost communications and Crawford’s ECs were not available.. Thus his call for help here was also killed by not leaving enough breaks on the check-ins. If the other station would have given that time, we would have heard the Priority Traffic. This is exactly why we must give enough time after the callsign to make sure that there is nothing else coming with that traffic. This was a major storm and I know that everyone was exited, I was too. I’m not mad at anyone, but let’s use this as a learning tool. Everyone has been doing a wonderful job and I am very pleased with this. Let’s just slow down the check-ins so something like this doesn’t happen again.
KC8DTW
A.E.C. Richland County Skywarn