As far as emergencies go,,  that's was one of the main reasons I got my ham 
license..  But in time I relized the people running the local ARES and 
Canwarn (Canadian version of Skywarn) were pretty my a click group and not 
that intersted in new people joining.  One time I ran in to one of the top 
guys for Skywarn/ARES in the grocery store and I walked up to him and started 
talking to him politle and his responce was to turn an walk away from me. 

Another person wanted it manditory ham have all sorts of training for miltary 
style operations in emergencies.. 

Fast forward a few years, and I finally just gave up on getting in to 
emergency stuff and gave up on 2m repeater and simplex and sold off my 
FT2900R.  I still have one of the cheapy china HT's only because I figure 
nobody would buy one used.  I've turned it on  durning what should have been 
the ARES net the past few weeks on to hear nothing, seem the net controler 
isn't even showing up now.. 

So right now I'm just working on getting myself active on HF again.

--- RA2+ FMail
 * Origin: HoloDeck BBS telnet://kentsoftware.com:2323  London ON (1:229/728)