You ever see a cartoon of some critter busy sawing off a tree limb that he’s also sitting on?

Seemingly unaware that he will soon fall along with the freshly cut limb. It’s funny but not so funny all at the same time.

I couldn’t help thinking of those cartoons when I saw an article in the January 2026 QST Magazine under the optimistic heading, Future-Proofing ARES. It’s on page 69 and highlights the new portable Starlink Mini Roam satellite internet service. That’s no secret, the service is available with a dish small enough to fit in a go-kit (see the photos in the article) and can provide internet connectivity across most of the planet. Runs on 12VDC and is downright cheap.

The author paints it as a benefit for ARES when he writes:

Roam provides a low-latency wide-area-network path that’s suited to Winlink backhaul, National Traffic System traffic delivery, situational awareness maps, and Automatic Packet Reporting System-Internet Service bridging. Using Roam as an additional tool preserves amateur radio frequencies for tactical voice coordination while moving digital traffic (team logs, resource requests, and incident reports) off-net via a resilient internet path.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but it seems Starlink has stolen all the thunder. I thought hams were trying to create digital systems based on ham radio instead of moving all the digital traffic to the internet? Now the plan seems to be to use tactical voice coordination for something, while all the heavy lifting will take place via the internet.

I get it. I understand the powerful utility of having internet service that is unaffected by conditions on the ground. And at five bucks a month, why wouldn’t this be rapidly adopted? In fact, you set up a WiFi hotspot using the Roam service and anyone, even without a ham license, with a smart phone can step easily into the role of an emergency systems operator - and SNAP! there goes that tree limb…