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."

Comments

Another good reason for BPL....

[ColdWetDog]

Just another reminder (the World Trade Center should serve as another one in recent memory) that Amateur radio frequencies should be protected from spectrum auctions and Broadband over Power Lines (BPL).

Sometimes just making money isn't the best thing.

73 - KL1SA

Re:Another good reason for BPL....

[mvsopen]

BPL just might spell the death of Amateur Radio. Think about it, for most of us, the original purpose of obtaining an amateur radio license was to

a) To talk to people in distant places

b) Perform public service (RACES/ARES, etc)

c) Be able to fix/build/repair your own radio gear.

Now, let's see what happens today:

a) Anyone can plug in a $4 mic, use VoIP, and "talk" to almost anywhere on Earth, no license or self-study required.

b) Whip out your cell phone. That is unless a disaster hits, and all the cell sites are down, or your 40 min. battery dies. Also the "big news guys" literally take over a cell site. CNN's truck logs in via cell at every major story, and keeps an open line as a backup. If even 200 reporters did this, kiss off any chance of getting a cell signal, since the towers would be overloaded

c) How many parts inside a modern radio are actually user-servicable? I mean, I *can* probably replace a blown out chip-capacitor, if I had to, but when it is smaller than a pencil point, and 5 seconds of extra heat would wipe out the printed circuit board by lifting the traces, is this something you would want to do to a $2000 piece of amateur radio? The new ICOM rig sells for more than $10,000! Who would ever want to "modify" something like that? Rich de KY6O (Extra class license holder. Proof that if I can do it, anyone can. For more info on obtaining a license, see http://www.arrl.org/ which is the official site of US amateur radio operations)

Re:Why so slow to react?

[YrWrstNtmr]

1. The full extent wasn't (and still isn't) known.
2. Maybe the aussies actually had to load stuff on the ships. You know...stuff that people might need, like medical supplies, water, blankets. Does no good to send empty ships.
3. It takes quite a while for a carrier battle group (the Abraham Lincoln) to steam several thousand miles. Unless you know of another way to get helicopters and 15,000 navy people across a few thousand miles of open ocean.

It seems to me you're bitching just to be bitching.