Ham Radio & FRS - an engineering study

Well Keith,

Parrrdonnn ME !! Out here in California we have a lot of the "NEWER" hams and quite frankly you need to tell them from time to time.

My apologies for lumping KD7DOS into that category !!!

However, KD7DOS did not say that his/her students were HAMs.

THEREFORE, one would have to analyze the circumstances of what was written. Here we have a
teacher that will, at the most (typically), have the same students for 1 school year. The teacher did not say the he/she was teaching ham radio as part of the class !!! ONLY that they were going to check water quality of a river at various places and need some form of communications.

One then would conclude, absent, a statement of ham radio being taught in the classroom, that
there is a high likelihood that a majority of the students would not be HAMS !!!!! Further, it is safe to say that not all students would necessarily be interested in HAM RADIO, just like everyone is not interested in other hobbies, etc..

BUT do not discount the FRS radios so quickly. They are useful, rugged (some of
them),fairly cheap (a pair can be had via eBay for $80) and provide a means for NON-LICENSED individuals to participate where they would otherwise be shut-out.

ALSO, in your zeal to be so chastising, you offer a radio that is complicated when compared to the FRS units and further complicated by having 2 bands of frequencies to deal with, besides all the buttons and functions. FROM a safety point of view, having a complicated radio is not necessarily a good thing.

The KEY word is STUDENTS!!! With this bit of information, in addition to the above analysis,
the safest approach is to have everything SIMPLE !!!! If there was a problem, and the
communications becomes a REAL NECESSITY, wouldn't it be a shame that the two ends of the radio
communication ended up on different bands and the users lacked the knowledge to realize the mistake.

So, I want to thank you for making this response possible. If it wasn't for your inability to recognise the true needs of the job at hand, I might not have noticed my fault for not providing a proper report in my first response. Now, my second report (this one) corrects that oversight. Perhaps the next time you will
think a little before offering your expertise (?), as well as, chastising someone else !

73's......Bill.......WB6BNQ