Over.

Over
Out
What?
Errr.. red b…
What’s my callsign?
Um..

As a highly professional organisation it’s always reassuring to know that we can grasp new technologies with both hands in order to provide a better service. It would perhaps be nice If we could also grasp slightly older ones.

Last night was Red Cross radio training. We’ve had radios for YEARS. We’re had this set of radios for a fair while too. So it’s perhaps a little embarrassing when you realise that we’re still not entirely sure of the correct protocols. We can use them and get our message across in an emergency with no trouble. Can we all remember to say ‘over’ after a transmission, or tell left from right to pass on directions? Now that’s all a little more complicated. And that flashing red light… what does that mean…. Noone knows. Oh good. Let’s hope it’s not the self destruct.

Apparently for the Wokingham Winter carnival we’re going to use a radio net. This involves adding more people into the loop to ‘help’. The idea is that all communications go through one point where a record is made of the transmissions. All well and good until you consider what kind of situations we tend to need to use the radios for –Emergencies. The last thing you need in an emergency is a very very slow communication path. The whole point of radios is to speed up the process.

I can’t help but think that we’d be better off with a large net to catch the radios with when we inevitably get annoyed and drop them into the nearest water source… Looks likely that we’ll continue to compromise on some of our duties… mobile phones are wonderful things.

Out.