Longview Hills @ Newport Oregon

Somethings that individuals report about CH 6 and my personal opinions thrown in...

At the Cert/Neighborhood Watch meeting yesterday some things came up... I've been thinking about them. Here then are my personal thoughts.

A concern was put forward that there is too much chatter on FRS CH 6 and it should be used for emergency information only....

What I think....

Well, when CERT first thought the idea up it was thought that maybe announcements of what was going on in the park would stimulate interest in listening to the radio which of course is what we wanted. That would add spice as it were.

It also was a good way to find someone if you did not have a phone available.. you could ask if someone was listening and find them anywhere in the park.

But as we can all hear and understand it is foremost a tool for emergency information dissemination. That said I don't think, personally, that the occasional conversations from park residents are "too much chatter". On the other hand...

Folks should realize that long stories and jokes, etc.. would not be a good idea. I haven't heard anything like that at all though. But a solution for that if you want to have a long radio conversation with someone is really easy. Just tell one another to change to another channel and meet there and have your rag chew. Simple as that.

There is another annoying component to the radio chatter complaint. Some visitors and passer by's on 101 use CH 6 and they do have a bunch of silliness that is bothersome. There is a solution for that and we will be rolling that out in the near future.

Our first concern was to get people to learn how to use and listen to their FRS radios. We needed to make it as simple as possible so people would grasp it and use the technology. As time moved on and folks learn to use their new radios we would be able to refine and use more features on the radios to increase their effectiveness. Here is what is on the horizon...

You already have learned to change channels (remember we moved from CH 5 to CH6?). Now let me tell you about another feature on most of your radios...

Between Ch6 and CH7 there are 32 sub frequencies we can use. They are called privacy codes. We are going to use FRS CH 6 Privacy Code 16 (written as CH 6.16). One day, soon, we will switch to this new frequency. Help will be available when we do it.. (don't do it yet! Wait, it's in the future) When we do this it would be a rare thing to hear anybody but a park resident on our LVH Network. So the chatter will fall off and things will be better. Change takes time. Be patient.

When we start this change over is going to depend on you... When we see that we have around half of residents have radios we will institute the change to the new frequency (Channel 6.16).. You can help us find out when we reach this goal by filling out the signup sheet stating you have a radio on the clubhouse bulletin board.. Tell your friends about this because people always tell me they did not read it here on the website and then I say... "it is posted on the bulletin board" and they say, "I never read the bulletin board" and I reply, "It is posted on the mailroom door." and they say, "I don't read that stuff". Quite frankly, it is hard to find the time to go to everyone in the community and verbally tell them this stuff. You know what I mean? So, a little help out there would be appreciated.