Since one works on one side of the State and the Wife lives on the other side of the State, commuting has taken an adventure with High Frequency Radio.

Back in the 70's, when we were dating, the trip, every other week, was made with a Webster BandSpanner and a Swan 350. During those trips, HF CW (Morse Code) was done. Can't say there will be an HF CW effort in the near future. The Government's already talking about making folks hang up their cell, even with Bluetooth. Lets not give them anything else to think about.

At Twitter, one can follow the announced frequencies for the travels. There should also be a link to follow on Automatic Position Reporting System.

Nevertheless, HF mobile operations seems to be fun. Recent contacts have been made with Wyoming, Tennessee, Florida, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and Indiana, just to name a few, on 20, 40, 60, and 75 meter bands.

Come join the fun on HF. One never knows which interesting person will chat next.

73

It has been an active week in the lives of the leadership of the American Radio Relay League.

Coy Day, N5OK, resigned as the West Gulf Division Director.

David Woolweaver, K5RAV, took his place as Division Director. He was the Division vice-director.

J. John Thomason, WB5SYT, is now the Division Vice-Director. He was the Oklahoma Section Manager.

The Oklahoma Section Manager is C. Dean Feken, KL7MA.

Your League leadership has been working hard with the change of leadership. Check for your new leaders on the air on the Section nets and at the hamfest near you.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has come a long way from Hurricane Andrew. Part of that observation is triggered by the recent Twitter event with Chief Paulison and the conference call this weekend with ADM Johnson.

During the latter, my questions centered around two areas:

1) Employees
2) Public Affairs

When asked what qualities FEMA sought in hiring disaster assistance employees and green cards.

One important word that jumped out was Integrity.

Reference.com defines Integrity as "adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty."

It's about time. http://snipurl.com/aerm5 [www_google_com] lists a number of times with "FEMA employees" are arrested for a number of charges.

It is encouraging to see FEMA address the new way of doing things, including investing in training and benefits for Disaster Assistance Employees as they "recognize how important they are."

In the area of FEMA Public Affairs, it has been observed the staff are more engaged in correcting media reports during disasters. This is important in getting the right information to the right people so they can make the right decision.

FEMA Public Affairs deserves a round of applause for reaching out to the Citizens by using Twitter (@femainfocus) to engage a Citizenry that seems to not understand the role of the Federal Government in disasters. There has even been an attempt to address the FEMA "concentration" and "death" camp issues that have moved over from USENET conspiracy folks to Twitter.

Take-aways from the conference call included Johnson comments on GAP analysis, Position of Heightened Alert (where FEMA focuses people and stuff with the events in DC being an example), CPG-1, the local government planning document, and the strength of the Regional offices.

"Career leaders are not going away," said Johnson.

Johnson was asked if FEMA has plans to address climate change said, "If it plays, it plays in Mitigation." Good words of encouragement come to the newly formed National Hazard Mitigation Association. http://nhma.info/

The one question asked of Johnson, "How do you see the relationship between Homeland Security and FEMA", produced the answer that he sees DHS and FEMA having common goals, according to Homeland Security Presendential Directive Five, of response and recovery.

According to HSPD-5, Homeland Security should "prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies". It appears to very much mirror the mitigation, response, recovery, and plans that have been emergency management operatives for so many years.

In the lessons learned from Twitter, many questions were answered by Paulison. However, some questions were missed because the user failed to use #femadrp in the message.

http://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/2009/2009_01_12_twitter_event.pdf is the transcript of the Twitter event.

It is encouraging to see FEMA reaching out to local governments (not that the States have not). Events like these make local folks feel as if they really ARE valued partners in the emergency management process.

As one Tweet stated, "@kc5fm FEMA has been aggressively ramping up their social media efforts -- kudos to them!"

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dhs/fema/transition2009.pdf describes the new FEMA.

The New Boss has a new opportunity to support the New FEMA. Will he?

We can hope.