raynet freqs

[Admiral]

Now raynet net has a new tool

What's his name?

[stanogs68]

norbet wibblewonker

[paulears]

I'm amazed at the negative comments on Raynet, and St John. Sure - both these groups are very keen on what they do, but both of them do worthwhile work. I know quite a few professional ambulance people who are also St John members. Raynet and St John operate at very different levels in different parts of the country. I realising taking the P is based on some of their weirder behaviour and both organisations have some strange people, drawn to what they do for reasons I don't quite get. It's a long time back, but I spent six months travelling around two counties as a St John Examiner for their radio courses. No idea how it happened, but they called me and I said OK. I saw some total bumpkins, and some highly qualified and resourced groups.

The fluorescent jacket thing I might have an idea on. When I visit some venues for work, I cannot set foot in the building without a hi-viz outer, and in some steel toecaps and hard hat. It's a rule, and on some sites it's because the insurers insist on it. St John have a uniform that has to be worn for their members to be covered by their insurance, and I suspect the Raynet people have something similar. This makes sense.

My own county's Raynet coverage ended with the cold war, and they seem able to cope, but don't forget that Lockerbie used hundreds of Raynet volunteers, not because they queued up to do it, but because they were asked by the Government. My memory of the event says they did a decent job, and a worthwhile and quite unpleasant one until proper radio equipment could be sourced for the teams. isn't that what it's about? Preparing for nasty stuff - by doing fairly trivial practice stuff. Of course there will be some odd-bods, but why continually denigrate them for having their version of the ham radio hobby? Seeing a short, fat, yellow jacket wearing individual with a ¼ wave sticking out of his hard hat is funny - totally get it, but in my area, we also have a land rover group, who use CB, with their discovery's and series 3's with flashing lights and huge aerials. Some of these vehicles are ludicrous - one painted with desert camo, and Camel Trophy stickers and mega tyres - and I suspect they get giggled at too, but when a few local farms got cut off in floods - who rescued them? We have a few coastguard volunteers who clearly relish the emergency stuff - that's the same thing, I think.

If Raynet can do a useful job in certain parts of the country, is that bad?

[Admiral]

Very well put paulears, but I believe Lockerbie was pre-mobile phone era in 1988. The mobile phone and cheap 446 has made RAYNET obsolete.

I have no problem with a bunch of pillocks dressing up like robocop and prancing about with their rigs doing radio checks all day long, and hoping that the very young, very old, and very simple think they're the fuzz. But I question their motives.

The RAYNET concept and mission statement was a good one in 1953 on their creation, and up until 1993 when the Cold War had ended and cell phones started to hit the High St. My opinion is that there is no need whatsoever in 2016.

[MrWeetabix]

just wait until the Zombie apocalypse arrives and the RAYNET lads inherit the earth!

[Metradio]

just wait until the Zombie apocalypse arrives.....

RAYNET and St John may regret what they wished for ...

Mike

[MrWeetabix]

StJA won't survive the apocalypse. Putting an icepack on a bite-wound and telling them to see a doctor isn't going to cut it

[Admiral]

I don't have an issue with St Johns, any institution that educates our youth in the skills of first aid and can drip feed (pardon the pun) people into the ambulance technicians and ultimately paramedics of tomorrow has to be a good thing in my book.

[MrWeetabix]

Agreed Admiral, people shouldn't take my remarks in-jest as ill-will against StJA. I'm just saying that they're not high on my list of people to seek out when the flesh-eating hordes decent on the living

[GeeFull]

Agreed Admiral, people shouldn't take my remarks in-jest as ill-will against StJA. I'm just saying that they're not high on my list of people to seek out when the flesh-eating hordes decent on the living

We already have flesh eating hordes, we tend to call them politicians these days.
Raynet are what they are, as are St Johns Ambulance come to that, neither deserve derision form those not remotely interested in what either of them do or don't do.
Just like most involved with "radio", or any other pass time of one form or another, each to their own, if they enjoy what they do fine, if you don't it's really of no concern to you.

[paulears]

St John here have no issues with money - they run the majority of the FAW courses, have full spec ambulances, and have covered for the local NHS on occasions when they've been stretched. They used Raynet for comms for years, but now have some really excellent comms facilities. Raynet doesn't exist in this part of the Country as far as I know. I think there are some groups inland from here?

I have more bad feelings on volunteers at major events who only do it to get access, and rarely pull their weight. Having a pile of people vanish after a gig, annoys me far more than a few keen radio/first aid people.

Having done a little bit of the incident in 88, cellphones were in use - but this was actually the problem. The sort of people who were using them were often the press, and the limited cell coverage of that time meant that there were suddenly too many users in one place, and the system crashed. The emergency plans of the time having been updated to use this new comms mode - which promptly failed. The search process used everyone possible - the military, civilian volunteers and the Red Cross, St John, 4 wheel drive clubs and the police and emergency services, and in practice there was a church hall, with teams of people reporting back to it, then that church hall operator feeding back into a commercial system. Giving every search group somebody with a radio to be the comms person worked quite well in practice. Quite a few Raynet people did their bit - some of which was very unpleasant. A couple of days passing messages in one of these church halls wasn't that unpleasant, but for the search teams it was horrible. An old friend of mine saw things he remembered for year - nightmare stuff really.

Things have changed, but in a way, these things could happen again. Not maybe so much with equipment, but with people. If a serious and long lasting accident happened that involved large numbers of people, there are no spare people employed any longer. Police forces frequently cannot cope with big events without help from outside their immediate area. Nor could the ambulance service - we see evidence of that all the time. Police, fire and ambulance can in emergencies at least talk to each other - but don't have the feet on the ground to deal with big problems, so it is conceivable that other comms users might be asked to help. That really means hams and CB. These people are skilled in using radios, installing aerials and technical things. Ordinary users of radios probably have no abilities in antenna erecting, power supplies and the sensible use of radios. In most cases, the key to emergency procedures is skill and knowledge. I'm a firm believer that this is one reason why with all the pressure on frequency bands, the hams and CBers are left alone. Probably by design. With the demise of Airwave on the horizon, who knows if the new system will be as good as claimed?