Emergency Communications

[piper]

I am an amateur radio operator. In my ward they are always talking about emergency preparedness and food storage etc. which I support 100% and encourage it. But I have found that when I mention emergency communications I get some blank stares and something about a block captains and a calling tree. I just moved to where i'm at recently, so am just getting involved in the local ARES/RACES groups which, fortunately are quite active here. But I am curious do any of you have active emergency communication discussions in your plans?

[siouxz72]

I'm a staunch believer in smoke signals! :) in all seriousness, that is a very good question piper and not one that I've thought about. Now I need to make some calls.

[brut4c]

Piper, I can only speak for our stake but am sure others had the same thing but were sent a ham radio which I was told every ward would get. We assigned a new calling as operator who would be responsible for getting fcc cert. etc. It was my understanding this was to be a church wide program but have not verified that.

I think the program got scrapped due in part to the fact that the radio they provided would be worthless without power not to mention the repeaters must have power. If things got so bad as to require these radios they would likely be useless anyway.

Communications are Hugely important in my way of thinking and it would behove our members to look into the matter. I am not a hamm guy but I think there are some radios that would fit the bill but not sure on the cost.

If we are not going to have a comms plan then we need to have an air tight emergency plan for each ward and that plan needs to be known by others well outside their area.

You know as well as I do though that there are only a hand full of members willing to even give this stuff any regard whatsoever.

Best regards

[piper]

I'd heard something about that program. It's really too bad if they scrapped it. We always set up so that our radios can be operated with battery power. Repeaters aren't even necessary always. It is sad that only a handful will work for something like this.

[brut4c]

I just had a sit down with our stake pres. I asked him about our Hamm radio program and found out that church head quarters has stated that we are NOT to install comms in the buildings.

[WANDERER]

It would probably be best if it were highly portable.

[brut4c]

I agree completely however the radios that were purchased were not portable at all.

[stltraveler]

I know that my stake and several of the surrounding stakes have implemented a program of their own. It's a purely voluntary program which does not announce it's affiliation with the church, it's more of a dedicated support network. They conduct routine classes for the Ham licensing as well as weekly 2m radio nets and monthly HF nets to the various church storehouses.

All in all it's a great program, it's appears to be steadily growing from what I have heard. I've just now moved back to my home area on a more permanent basis and will be looking into their activities.

I can tell you from experience that you can achieve long range communications very easily and effectively using HF radios with very small footprints. I routinely talk to both coasts as well as maritime vessels from my Jeep while in transit from one facility to another. 100 watts goes a long way with a decent antenna and the right frequency band selection.

[wy0mn]

Good thinking Piper.

My rigs are solar/wind powered at the cabin.

I've never seen, or heard of, a ham radio that was incapable of portability! They all, except hand-helds, require 12 volt direct voltage; the same as most autos. Even hand-helds have mobile chargers, the same as cellphones & laptops.

[dalepres]

I think the program got scrapped due in part to the fact that the radio they provided would be worthless without power not to mention the repeaters must have power. If things got so bad as to require these radios they would likely be useless anyway.

I've been a ham operator for 40 years. I can think of probably a hundred ways that a radio can be used in an emergency with very little power. I have communicated around the world on less than 5 watts power. And VHF/UHF without a repeater can still be useful.

Consider that a person is evacuating a flooded or uninhabitable area with a battery powered radio. There are no reachable repeaters with power. He leaves home but cannot pickup anyone on the radio. He turns it off to save the battery until a day later he hits a fork in the road. In one direction lies more destruction. In the other is humanity and help. He doesn't know which way to turn. Now he turns on the radio and perhaps he gets an answer. He's 20 miles closer to humanity than he was when he left home yesterday. He gets an answer that helps him choose the right path and saves him from certain destruction.

Do radios represent certain help or certain survival in any disaster? Of course not. But then, neither does having a full pantry. :)

[BenRaines]

i am a big procrastinator. I have had the manual to study for my license for two years and only gotten through the first two chapters. Need to get it done and get a hand-held radio to go with all the other emergency preparedness stuff I have.

Ben Raines

[dalepres]

Heck, they give you the questions and the answers now And no CW

[wy0mn]

Hey, now.

I like CW, and I worked most of north & latin America with 3w on 10MHz!

Besides, there are several ways to get reduced voltage from an auto battery. One of them is as simple as coiling a wire around a pencil... But all hams know that, right? hihi

73

wy0mn

Edited October 12, 2008 by wy0mn
Erroneous info correction.

[dalepres]

Hey, now.

I like CW, and I worked most of north & latin America with 3w on 10MHz!

Besides, there are several ways to get reduced voltage from an auto battery. One of them is as simple as coiling a wire around a pencil... But all hams know that, right? hihi

73

wy0mn

I like CW as well. CW and QRP represent what amateur radio is about - though I wouldn't mind a kilowatt rig with a 200 foot tower or a rhombic.

But I have to say, I have worked in electronics and two-way radio for 30+ years up to about 10 years ago; now I write computer software in .Net. I wouldn't recommend trying wire wrapped around a pencil on a battery unless it was specifically high-resistance wire. A coil is a dead short to a DC or constant load. To AC, assuming the coil is designed correctly for the load, a coil represents an inductive load that will develop an EMF across it and drop the voltage to a device but for a DC or constant load, it would act like a heater or a fuse...

[wy0mn]

Glad you caught that, lol.

I want a bodaceous vertical. Horizontals & wires don't last long here. Ice/snow/eagles plus WIND take their toll. I've lost one rigid dipole & two homebrew wire aerials in less than 3yrs.

DX Engineering has a few ground mounted monobander verts that seem as if they would answer my prayers.

I get so much wind here that I was forced to guy my stubby 26' Rohn towers! Thats with 36"/320# Sakrete in the base!

[dalepres]

I am just guessing from your screen name that you are from Wyoming? That is where I started in the 2-way radio business as a field engineer for Motorola many years ago. My territory was the entire state of Wyoming. I have probably been to every repeater site in the state at one time or another. Living in Casper, Wyoming and Glenrock, Wyoming, we used to laugh when the news reported hurricanes in Florida with winds lower than what we endured for days on end. I also lived in Buffalo for a few years; now that was definitely God's country!

What size Rohn towers? 25's? And 36" deep or square on the base? I assume that represented three each 10' sections with one buried in the concrete? For a Rohn 25 (edit - make that a properly - as in very lightly - windloaded Rohn 25) that's overkill but then with high windloading and Wyoming sized winds, the risk would be snapping off at the base - especially a base that solid. :). Assuming you didn't have a microwave dish on the thing, a Rohn 45 would hold up with that base and even Wyoming winds at only 26 feet tall.

Edited October 18, 2008 by dalepres

[wy0mn]

Screen name & FCC vanity callsign. Got it 'cause it looked like the name 'Wyoming'. Just gotta remember to append /7 in CW mode. How'ja get the 6 callsign?

Buried the bottom 3' of the lower section of each Rohn 25G tower in 360# of mud each. Odd length due to using used (cannabalized) tower sections as base sections.

Chose to erect vertically rather than lever up entire tower. Swaying at 16' convinced me to guy! Even with stubby towers I have more than enough wind to run my AIR403 turbine almost continuously at peak output.

Building the cabin, 12x20, I had to jack out a short wall & add extra bracing due to wind damage during construction. Only place I've ever been where you gotta accelerate downhill with a load of concrete just to maintain speed against the wind (true story).

Wifes job lets her travel occasionally, shes been to most of the larger 'cities' (hihi). Me, I'm content with my 40ac of cactus & wind.

Sampling other trout streams is the only valid expenditure of fuel in my mind.

PS: Just had my dog fixed, they put one of those plastic cones on him to prevent licking... now he's a hairy wind vane!

Edited October 18, 2008 by wy0mn
Inject humor

[dalepres]

I got KK6TF when I got my advanced class license many years ago. I was in California then. At the time, you could apply for a 2x2 license as an advanced but you had no idea what the FCC might come up with. Getting to ask for the 2x2 was as close as there was to a vanity call sign at the time.

I wondered if that was your call; I just couldn't figure out how you got a 0 in Wyoming.

It used to be that you could get a relative idea of how long a guy (or gal :)) was licensed by their call sign. Not any more, though.

[wy0mn]

I wish they'd left things the way they were, but since they didn't, I took advantage of it.

My first call was KD4ZSO, then I got KS4YL as an Advanced. When they offered the vanity calls I jumped at the chance to free up the "YL" call to one of the ladies on a YL net! I was an 'honorary' lady with that call lemme tell ya!

[dalepres]

Wow. I'll bet that YL was sure excited to get a call with YL. But I would have never suspected you of being a YL; your mustache is thicker than that of most women I know. LOL

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to agree about wishing they'd left it like it was way back when. I'm sure it would be much to BenRaines dismay *grin* as he studies for his license, but it was a lot more fun when people who were involved worked harder to get it and had a better technical understanding of what they were doing instead of being appliance operators... and I had to buy crystals at 10 bucks a piece for every frequency I wanted to talk on... Ok, I don't miss crystals but I really, really miss Heathkit!

Edited October 19, 2008 by dalepres

[dalepres]

Ok, wy0mn. Before this gets closed because we've gone really far off topic: now I am really waxing nostalgic. I just did some searching for used Heathkit gear - of course I would love to have found some new, unbuilt kits that someone's grandfather had stashed away. There doesn't seem to be any of it on the market. It's all gobbled up and considered collectible. Of course you may have known that, but it was interesting to me. I did at least find some pictures of some running Heathkit gear with the covers off and the warm toasty glow of a bunch of 12AT7s. (hey... I surprised myself. Pulled that number from deep cranial storage :))

Now this will really tug at your heart strings. It's a link to the NYTimes article when Heathkit quit making kits. Plug Is Pulled on Heathkits, Ending a Do-It-Yourself Era - New York Times

[The_Seeker]

Are there any good resources for getting into amateur radio? I've always had a fascination with shortwave, and I've listened to ham operators with some of my SSB-capable radios. This would be a very useful outgrowth of that hobby.

[dalepres]

I'd start with ARRLWeb: ARRL Home Page. Clip the clubs link and search for a local club. You'll find a lot of folks who will show you the ropes. There may be study groups and licensing help in a local club as well.

[The_Seeker]

Thanks dalepres, I've bookmarked that site. :)

[wy0mn]

There are license study materials available for download (free, I think) on the QRZ website and online sample tests on the EHAM website. I hope you choose to join us.

Ham radio is a truly rewarding hobby. Since '91 I've only been of emergency assistance in three circumstances, but my help was invaluable all three times. Membership in emergency groups & clubs isn't a prequesite for being a ham, but once you get to know a few hams... you'll probably want to!

Dale, I get nostalgic too. But not back to tube days. My dad was/is an illegal over-powered CB operator. Finding some tubes is getting difficult/expensive. My nostalgia comes in building esoteric antennas, trans-matches, and true tuners. Building site specific antennas thrills me, whether it be wire or tubular. Although I must admit that a Smith Chart reeks of black magic & voodoo to me. hihi. I have to build spreadsheets to use most complicated formulas, too many years of too many beers. ( Sober for the last two.)

The most fun I had with ham radio was was a MFJ 30m rig and a wire Zepp that lit up with NE-2's when I keyed the straight key! Confused the heck outta mating fireflies.

I still bemoan the loss of CW, and the day that the Navy/Coast Guard stopped monitoring Morse emergency frequencies. One of the three emergencies I aided, was in CW on 10m, sideband wasn't reliable enough for coherent communication. CW is "cleaner" too, although we're a nice crowd anyway, few ops take the effort to curse in CW!

Edited October 19, 2008 by wy0mn