[FedCom] Civil Air Patrol Expanded Nextel Use?

[Ken]

Hello Loren & the group!!

Thanks for your input!!!

Perhaps this NEXTEL unit use is limited to some wings (states) that have 
very good NEXTEL coverage.  I STRONGLY agree with you on the ME cellphone 
coverage issues... Also some wings were using paging services with a 
discount for pager equipment so that if a mission came up all qualified 
members could be alerted and if they could participate call in their status. 
I would assume that most cellphones now have the option so if a list of 
"qualified" personnel is maintained they could still be contacted.

I was recently talking with one of the WMass area squadron's mission pilots 
at a CAP exhibit & he told me that he got his notification via just a 
cellphone call.  At one time Massachusetts Wing was using a paging service 
wing wide to notify members NOT sure if they still are using this system.

I'm sure there's some wings out there still using some sort of paging 
service. e.g. Colorado....
That would be another interesting project to identify how folks are alerted. 
The old days of the landline telephone alert pyramid rosters have given way 
to all of these technological advances!!!

Ken





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "HornSmoke" <hornsmoke at gwi.net>
To: "Discussion of Federal Government Communications" 
<fedcom at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 10:23 PM
Subject: Re: [FedCom] Civil Air Patrol Expanded Nextel Use?


> Sprint/Nextel blows major chunks here in Maine with virtually no coverage 
> outside of the I-95 corridor and north of Brunswick. The CAP folks here 
> use the standard VHF-hi freqs, backed up by individual cell phones (if 
> necessary.) Primary cell service north of Brunswick/Augusta is mostly 
> covered by Unicel and US Cellular. Verizon has some new towers in Central 
> Maine, as does T-Mobile. Cingular leaches off Unicel's GSM network. Most 
> of the non-Unicel/US Cellular companies only have selected towers up the 
> I-95 corridor, if that.
>
> VHF-hi still "reigns supreme" here in "mountainous" Maine.