During Blackout, Ham Radio Shined

Mark Cantrell writes "An interesting bit on AP through Yahoo today. Seems that ham radio (which recently had a bit of backlash here on Slashdot from a few people thinking it was useless, outdated technology), really shined through during the blackouts. When the power went, ham radio operators, using battery backup power, were able to help coordinate emergency workers while the cell phone networks were overloaded. For anyone wondering why interference due to power line broadband is considered a bad thing, well, there ya go."

Comments

Got our backup power ready

[SuperQ]

I keep my HT charged up.. and can plug it into 12v car any time.. Our club repeater has 2 APC's on different parts of the equipment to keep it online for hours. We also have the repeater on a backup generator.

If the power outage had hit minnesota, I'd be 30 seconds away from my radio, ready to find out where everyone is, and what is going on.

-KC0NBY

Was my savior.

[niko9]

I'm a paramedic in NYC, and when the lights went out, I went straight into work at the hospital.

Before I left the house, I took along my HTX-245 Radio Shack dual band radio ($49 on clearance).
I tried several repeaters, and an operator on one, informed me that the repeater was up on battery power, he was standing by with a working landline, and was available to us for phone calls in case we needed to contact our telemetry physician.

The admins and my boss at the hospital were very impressed, more so when the EMS radios went down, and my HTX-245 600mw radio was our only link that time in the field.

73's N2PDB

Re:Was my savior.

[grishnav]

No big surprise to us here in Oregon. We saw the value of Amateur Radio as a reliable communications backup years ago. As things stand, if there were a large-scale outage in Oregon, the HEART (Hospital Emergency Amateur Radio Team) would activate, alone with Oregon ARES, and individual hospotials' groups, and provide a reliable infrastructure for the Portland-Metro area hospitals (and more broadly, any Oregon hospitals - and possibly later even interstate hospitals) to communicate

As things currently stand here, each hospital maintains it's own group of volunteers to staff the hospital, passing communications both between departments internally, and also acting as the voice to the outside world. (I volunteer at Providence Portland for the Disaster Communications Team.) The individual groups (in my case, DCT) interface internally with their home hospital, and externally with their home HEART net to pass traffic between local hospitals (in my case, hospitals in the Portland-Metro area). HEART then acts as the radio infrastructure for local hospitals, and the connection to the district ARES net, which can pass emergency traffic through different parts of the state (via the various nets for each ARES district). In theory, our system could scale up to provide a reliable interstate and even national communications, but I don't see a crisis of that magnitude necessatating it any time soon... Not to mention that I doubt the emergency services between states would cooperate well enough to have it work anyway. :)

The only gap we haven't filled at this point is Ambulance communications, but groups like Mountain Wave, whom do emergency-service style dispatching in other capacities already, are slowly being recognised as a resource and stepping up to the task. Sadly, that's still probably a ways in the future before actual MOUs are crafted. But we'll see...

Re:It's worth noting...

[CharlieG]

40 Meters (aka HF) was used between the various OEMs and Albany and Red Cross National

Disclaimer
I'm the Queens County Emergency Coordinator of ARES - One of the groups called out. I "work" (2 levels down) for Tom from the article

Re:Good use for HAM

[niko9]

Your missing the point. Ham radio is there for YOU when you need it most. It's not just blackouts, eathquakes, search and rescue, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, biblical plagues, it's so much more.

Almost all the hi tech radio technology you use on a daily basis, has had some direct influence from ham radio. You like WiFi? Who do you think were the primary experimenters in that frequeny range? Who do you think you still share some of that band with?

What's the best way to get some young people interested in technology and have some direct hands on experience building their own gear?

Ever see somebody make a repeater out of 2 battery opertaed hand held radios that can extend the range of other portables for miles? Ham's do that on a daily basis when public service departments (Fire, EMS, Police) don't have the resources to do so.

It's just not widley publicized for some reason.
I guess it makes sense to take pictures of firefighters in bunker gear (I'm not knocking them) than to see some guy hunched over a couple of radios relaying important info.

Please check out www.arrl.org to find out more.

Re:stupid question

[Lxy]

A few sites of interest:

American Relay Radio League
QRZ

Hams do lots of things. Most of the time it's general banter, contacting whoever you can contact. Often times it's used as a telephone replacement, since it's easy (and free) to talk to many people at once (aka conference calling). There's also contesting, if you check out the events calendar on the ARRL site I linked to you'll see a bunch of "try to contact as many people in the allotted time according to these rules" type events. While it may seem silly at times, it gives us practice.

Often times contests require us to run on our own power, give us a limited set of hardware, and the objective is to make contacts. Hmm.. sound like an emergency drill? Hams respond quickly because in all our non-emergency downtime we get practice so jumping on the air in a moment's notice is almost second nature.

It's mostly covered in the article, but the things that set hams apart are:

* We always have our own power
* We know how to conduct ourselves on the radio for maximum efficiency (everyone knows how to take turns reporting etc)
* We know how our radios work so when they break, we can fix them quickly
* We can make damn near anything from a coil of wire and a battery in the middle of nowhere

Yes, McGyver was definitely a ham radio op.

You going to train them? Equip them?

[TWX]

"I'd argue that, instead of relying on grungy old men with ham radios, that emergency personel should have access to ham radios. It'd probably cost a lot less to do that than to create a telecommunications infrastructure resistant to blackouts."

Not everyone in ham radio is a 'grungy old man'. I'm 23, and I'm licensed. My girlfriend at the time I got into Amateur Radio is licensed, she was who got me interested in the field. A friend of mine in his 30's is licensed, a former employer if mine is licensed, and he was the Systems Architect for a communications project of very large scale.

You probably know at least one ham radio operator, who probably has some old Kenwood radio somewhere waiting for a need to be used. I don't drive around with five antennas on my car, there is an antenna cable coming into the passenger compartment, but the mount sits in the trunk with the antenna so I can put it up if I feel that I need to use it. I keep good batteries near where I store my radios, and I have one VHF HT for quick use, and one all-mode HT for when real problems hit.

And besides, are you going to train all of the emergency personnel on how to use the equipment and proper ettiquite? It's not exactly rocket science, but there are enough emergency personnel who would rather worry about learning how to keep critically injured people alive and let someone else do the talking that I'll gladly be one of the 'someone else'.

And two hours on a cell tower you say? I can go days on a set of batteries on my 2m HT, and a full day on the all-mode, if I have to, and I have enough power to go miles without any relay. I think that's pretty good odds for an extended blackout.

It isn't real? Tell that to the RACES teams...

[TWX]

"I'd much rather have a REAL backup system than spend money reducing power line interference for HAM radio operators."

This isn't real?

Looks pretty organised to me. RACES (for HAM Radio) and REACT (for CB et al.) have been organized for quite some time. They provide coordinated relay of information when a natural disaster (or worse) occurs. They're usually up and running within minutes, and they listen for emergency transmissions from other operators, to forward to the right authorities. Sounds like a good system to me...