"C Kingsbury" wrote in message ink.net...
snip
but the most immediate effect will be to drive out all of the
good people who remain as FSS becomes one big call center somewhere in
Georgia. Of course, those people are disappearing over time anyway so I'm
not so convinced anything we do at this point is going to make a difference
anyway.

This already happened when the AFSS system was implemented in the
early 90s. Prior to that, you could go into a FSS office in, say,
Burley, Idaho on a bad weather day, and get a comprehesive briefing
from a local FSS expert that was familiar with the local terrain and
weather patterns. With the advent of approximately 1 AFSS for each
state (with the exception of Alaska), much of that expertise
disappeared and, more often than not, a briefing turned into a canned
reading of a standard report, from a specialist that could be located
in a windowless room, hundreds of miles away.

As it stands now, it wouldn't make any difference to me if all of
the AFSS were consolidated into a giant call center in Georgia (the
state, not the republic :-)). The briefing I get would be the same
either way.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)