Slashdot Mirror
Ham Radio Served as Main Link to Disaster Area
SonicSpike writes "A University of Central Florida ham radio operator K4VUD (and founder
of their film program) was caught in Port
Blair during the earthquake and following tsunami! He and a team of other ham radio operators arrived in the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands to setup the region's
first ham station 2 weeks prior to the disaster. Once they realized what
happened they immediately began transmitting for 20 straight hours using car batteries as a power source. Most cellular and land-line communication was down. His team became the main link to the rest of the world from the region."
Sunday's Washington Post had an article on another Ham Radio operator (link - probably requires registration - sorry). A real life, very public example of why ham radio is important.
Sleep is for the Weak
Coincidentally, when I was home for the holidays I saw an article about this in the Orlando Sentinel:
/ or l-asectsunamiham01010105jan01,1,2331864.story
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld
It needs a free reg, or bugmenot.com
It's really amazing what they did. Here's a snippet from the article:
And with most telephone lines down and cell phones scarce, the ham-radio club's efforts proved invaluable as the scope of the disaster increased day after day.
The first messages were to let people on the Indian mainland know that those on the island were safe and unharmed.
A young waiter at Harpole's hotel asked them to get word to his mother in Hyderabad, India, that he was alive and well.
"We found a ham-radio operator on the mainland, gave the mother's telephone number," Harpole said. Within five minutes a ham operator in Hyderabad called the waiter's mother and relayed the message.
"He told us the mother was crying with joy," he said.
Harpole's group cheered and clapped. Word spread quickly across the island, and their work went on for hours and hours.
When Indian government officials learned of the hamradio operators, they relayed messages for official requests for medicines, water and blankets. Several of the radio operators headed south to Nicobar.
How likely is it that Joe Ham in some suburbs is going to be capable of talking to India? Even with perfect weather and a great rig, very unlikely. Even with repeaters, rather unlikely.
Not all Ham radio is in the short-range VHF/UHF bands. HF bands in the 15 meter to 160 meter wavelength range can directly "reach" India from the U.S. There are thousands of Joe Hams in the suburbs with this kind of equipment.
Right, but the side receiving the signals from those in the disaster area aren't in a disaster area. BPL noise interferes with the reception of the emergency traffic.
kc8apf
Hams (at least those with interest) can be well trained in this area. They are trained to do everything from serve as simple phones for wellness traffic ("Hi mom, my house is gone but the dog is OK.") to assisting emergency relief personel (operating their radios for them to keep hands free, helping co-ordinate the operation by keeping information on everyone up to date on people's position, how many more people a relief station can handle so those in the field know where to take new ones, that there are X people with Y injuries that need to be medivaced, etc.)They are much more than normal people with "magic cell phones" that still work without the infrastructure.
In the US you can find them doing ARES and RACES (I think those are the big two) which are disaster relief and such training to do the kind of things mentioned above. Not only do they do drills simulating traffic and operating without power and normal communications and stuff, the practice regularly by helping out with the running of parades and other public events to keep their skills sharp in doing that kind of thing.
On my local repeater (RACES repeater, I think) every so often (Wed nights at some time) they practice carrying traffic between people. It's usually unimportant stuff (saying "hi" to friends, party invites, happy birthday, etc.) but they practice. Someone is incharge and they ask for messages and they go through them one by one. The guy with the message will say "this is ____ and I have a message for _____ in _____, can anyone carry it" (or something like that). Someone will volunteer (either they know the person or they will just call them or pass it on to the next 'net). The person sending the message and the person who volunteered will then chat (either there, or more frequently on a nearby empty frequency so things can keep moving along) and the message gets sent. It's all quite interesting actually.
Hams do alot (besides just chat and also neat expirmatents trying to bounce signals off various layers of the atmosphere, the moon, mars, commets, asteroid showers, balloons, and anything else more than 5 feet in the air).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Hundreds of thousands...
http://ah0a.org/FCC/Licenses.html\
General, Advanced and Extra licensees have HF
operating privileges.
That's just in the US.
There are several million Amateur Radio operators world wide.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Amateur rado "hasn't advanced" in the last 10 years? Sorry, but when I look at the new, yet afforable HF radios with dual DSP, or send GPS data through a sat. link, bounce microwaves off mountain peaks, or use pure digital VHF communication (Which is now possible and commercially available), I can't help but think you haven't seen an issue of QST since 1995. The hobby has matured, and more than kept [ace with changing technology. Rich de KY6O
Some parts of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are home to tribes that have had very little contact with the outside world and who have little or no natural immunity against the illnesses that most of the rest of us take for granted.
They've had cases where vast swathes of these tribes have been wiped out by things like measles, influenza, etc, with recorded instances of deadly outbreaks as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries.
Hence, for their own protection, access to those people has been limited. I guess it's easier to spot a fair-skinned Westerner as being an outsider and avoid them accordingly than it is to do the same with mainland Indians who share similar complexions. Even so, you need a permit to visit the islands, and that's why.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
One thing that you do NOT realize ... BPL *WILL* kill effective long range communication. Making it MUCH MORE difficult to help out in a situation like this.
BPL raised the noise floor from being able to hear a weak signal (less than 5 watts) ... to not being able to hear a station booming out with 1500 watts and a highly directional beam.
THIS is why its brought up ... to shed light and attention to it.
Since the FCC has given BPL a green light, we'll have to see how effective Hams are in the future, hopefully, as in the past, Hams will push the technology forward and overcome this roadblock.
PS, yes, I am a Ham ... and the above scenario is sensationalized ... but a possibility
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I hate to have to ruin my karma like this, but please refrain from lumping "HAM" operators with the CB groups. We frankly don't like that. Although, most "HAM" (amateur) operators usually train for stuff like this just incase we actually are needed. They have quite a few groups/classes that you can do to help learn where you fit in the 'disaster' picture.
Although, I must admit, you at least nailed the point on the head with your second thought you put down. Amateur Radio operators don't just get their license to chit-chat about stuff. Most of us are here for when we're needed.
Case in point: The recent streak of Hurricanes out around Florida. The Amateur Radio community had spotters in the field the entire time relaying information to the National Weather Service and the Hurricane Watch Center.
A good resource for those of you interested in getting your Amateur Radio Service license is:
http://www.arrl.org (Amateur Radio Relay League)
It's considered the "voice" of the community and has quite a bit of news on there.
Harm
Actually, this is not really media contrived or a matter of opportunity knocking. I am part of the University of central Florida Amateur Radio Club (The Moderator can verify this if desired, I do not feel like giving out my email address to thousands).
Dr. Harpole (K4VUD) was actually part of what they called a DXpedition. Where he had gone , there had never in history been an officially sanctioned amateur radio station before. It was mere coincidence that he had been there 2 weeks prior that special permission had been granted for the radio operators to operate there. The ARRL has more on the DXpedition gone into emergency mode
Also, It should be noted that Dr. Harpole was not the only radio operator there. We have been keeping a series of links on this, however, which are available on the UCF Amateur Radio Club's wiki.
I would like to point out that I do not typically reply to Slashdot posts, however, this is actually something of which I am somewhat a part, and figure I should set things straight. (despite the fact people will still continute to put up off the wall posts on the subject anyway)
I've been working on a project in the A&N Islands the last couple of years so I know a bit about this: There are a couple of reasons the islands have been off-limits. The main one is defence security. If you look at a map of the Indian Ocean, the A&N Islands are at the opposite corner of the ocean from mainland India - much closer to Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. As a result a significant chunk of India's navy and air force are stationed there - think forward positioning. One of the first major casualties of the tsunami was the Indian Air Force base on Car Nicobar islands in the extreme south, which was totally wiped out. Even now, foreigners are allowed to visit the northern Andamans, but are prevented from travelling to the southern Nicobars unless they have special permission. Protecting the native tribes is a much less significant concern. There are around 300-400k mainland Indians living in the Andamans now (plus a bunch of migrant Burmese and Bangladeshis) so preventing the transmission of diseases isn't really an issue anymore, with the possible exception of the 200-odd Sentinelese living on North Sentinel Island.