Mounted search and rescue

[Una Smith <una@lanl.gov>]

Jeff Ezell wrote:
>Rec.equestrian? How about more details?  Sources?

Rec.equestrian is a Usenet newsgroup.  Usenet is sort of like
super group e-mail;  it predates the Internet by many years,
but now-a-days you can participate via the web, or via your
ISP (if your ISP carries a Usenet feed), or by several other
means including digital packet amateur radio.  Back in the
old days, Australia got its Usenet feed daily by international
courier (DHL, I think), on a computer tape;  each day they
made an international phone call to feed their own Usenet
articles to the rest of the world.  Most major ISPs do carry
Usenet feeds, so to get started ask yours about this.

On the web, there is even a pretty good archive of old Usenet
traffic, Google Groups:  http://www.google.com/grphp?  To
post to a Usenet newsgroup through Google Groups, you have to
sign up for a Google account.  So it's worth finding out how
else you can get access to Usenet.  There are myriad options.

Now, if you think MSAR-Riders has a lot of traffic, you should
know that rec.equestrian gets 100+ articles (messages) per day.
You will want to read rec.equestrian using a client (called a
newsreader) that knows threading.  Threading allows you read in
logical order the stuff you are interested in, and completely
ignore the rest.

http://groups.google.com/groups?&group=rec.equestrian

Today so far, there are 9 threads active in req.equestrian,
and one of the older threads, which has been running for a
few days now, has accumulated 106 messages in it.  The only
threads I am reading are "Trailering Woes", with 21 articles
so far on Google Groups (a few more have reached me but are
not yet on Google), and "Trailering Woes:  Update" with 8
articles.  Those threads have been running a few days now,
so those 29 articles are not all from today.

        Una Smith
        Santa Fe County Sheriff's Posse, in New Mexico

[I had a SAR mission this morning for two teens missing over
night (both located and well), and learned during it that I
have been officially recommended for recruitment as a Field
Coordinator.  Hm.  In New Mexico, FC's are the pool of folks
from which an Incident Commander is chosen for each mission.]