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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."
Two years ago, I was in Brazil when they had a huge flood. The only communication out was radio. Fortunately, I had my Icom 706 and was able to establish a CW link through an AO satellite.
To my knowledge, amateur radio provides the only free-as-in-speech global communication network that can operate completely independent of any grid. You can even run computer networks on it, unlike the cell system.
Right.... Have you ever seen a backup power supply for a single cell tower? It is a lot more than a couple of car batteries. But assuming you had a powered cell tower, what then? No powered land lines to connect to just yet.
When disaster strikes, ham radio is often the only reliable means of communication into and out of the affected area.
LinuxGeek, KI4CJJ
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Well, that's the beauty of ham radio. You can power one site and send messages thousands of miles away with a single tower and a car battery. To power all the cell towers, you'd need significantly more power, with significantly more towers and then you have to figure out how to send the signals off island. Plus you have to actually charge the cell phones. I don't think areas of Aceh had or are going to have electricity for a very, very long time.
A family friend is a member of ARES, a network of ham radio operators who spring into action when the power goes off and cellular is a distant memory. These guys take their (volunteer) positions pretty seriously, and have acted a few times in the past decade to get news around quickly when more conventional methods aren't working.
Also, this is the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Some of these islands are being protected by India because they have stone age cultures untouched by modern culture. I would think electricity is pretty sparse, let alone cell phones.
So yes, Ham radio, Wow. Think of them as the Amish of 21th century communications. When the power grid collapses, they're the ones who will be there to save your ass.
Many of these islands haven't been contacted yet, even one week later. This is an excellent scenario for Ham Radio use. Let's hope that along with new seismic bouys they can dot the Indian Ocean with emergency Ham Radio systems.
I wonder if any of these operators were able to contact other costal cities before the wave hit there. I read somewhere that there was somehting like a 2 hour lag between the time the first and last places were hit. Think that would even be enough time to accomplish anything? -Yoweigh
When disaster strikes, ham radio is often the only reliable means of communication into and out of the affected area.
This fact came to mind when I was at school in DC and the Pentagon got hit and they told us not to use the phones unless we absolutely had to, and also when I was in Northern Ohio when that big power failure occurred. I've been meaning to get a ham radio operator's license, and in part it's these emergency situations that have made me decide to at least get licensed for 2 meter. (Not licensed yet, hopefully soon.)
A few years ago, a guy used a light bulb as an antenna and was able to work contacts on all 6 continents. There was an article in the ARRL magazine, but I can't seem to find it...
You can easily work around the world with a 5w transceiver and a simple wire antenna. Does having 1500w running through a 100' tower help? Sure. Is it necessary? Not even close.
A couple of hundred dollars of equipment could allow you to work even the most distant contacts under most circumstances. What did you spend on *game* software last year? Could someone else have chosen to spend the same amount of money on something they consider a valuable public service?
Here's one for you: *DID* a millitary fly in sat phones? If they did, would they be used by everyday people to let loved ones know they were still alive? No. So why do you assume it would happen tomorrow when it didn't happen today?
As for it not having advanced in the last 10 years: how much more advanced is that land telephone in your house? That power outlet that you plug your computer to? Don't you hate the fact that the power company hasn't "innovated"? Sometimes dramatic innovation isn't necessary. Computers are at most 50 years old. Radio is *twice* that. Wouldn't you expect a slower rate of innovation? And by the way, search for PSK31: just because *you* haven't heard of the innovatins, doesn't mean they don't exist...
Ham radio is not for everyone. It's not terribly exciting. But when there's a disaster, it's a community dedicated to serve. When was the last time you heard about those LAN network administrators who were instrumental in helping whole communities to communicate in the event of a disaster? No, that's right: They were too busy whining that their DSL was down...
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Not to mention the day to day deterioration of our civilization by those seeking material wealth. Little propatainment here, little get rich scam there, ...
:(
Yeah, that kind of goes both ways. With a partial consolidation of wealth, entities are able to compete against each other with greater resources and more people participating. For example, we would have not gotten to the moon without some level of greed and unity fueling us.
The thing you have to watch out for are those who think Fox is a superior news outlet vs CNN. All you have to do is stick around for a commercial break on each station and you will see they are pitching to entirely different audiences. Here is what I find typical of both networks:
Fox News - infomercial styled ads in 30-60 second blocks pitching worthless contraptions to uneducated masses. The kicker, people are buying this stuff they could have picked up at Linens 'n Things "As Seen on TV(tm)" discount asile for less. Everything is draped in red, white, and blue and there are lots of sound effects.
CNN - The same three Lexus commercials where they do nothing but show some Guines-yuppy male with glasses who suprises his thick-waisted, loud, wife with a Lexus -- yet all she notices is the over-sized red bow. This bow is the focus of apparently all their ads now. Everything is neutral colors, much more focus on them stuffy europeans and how they do a bad job reporting "overlooked" issues yet never seem to make the simple transistion over to truely balanced news.
Oh and check this! WTF happened to CNNi? Was international news that much of a danger to american eyes? I have no access to non-american news on the satellite anymore (one of my primary reasons for getting it to begin with!).
The only reason the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were so familiar to me was because of ham radio. They're well known for being off limits to ham radio operators. I don't know why -- India's had lots of hams for years on the mainland, but they wouldn't let anyone do those islands. So they remained "rare ones" to the main DX award hunters. Hams have been going on "DXpeditions" to rare countries for years, sometimes financed by DXers looking for the contact and QSL card, and it was in the 1960s that I read some travelogues which mentioned trying and failing to get permission to go to "VU4". What's on those islands anyway? (Or what was?)
It's a fortunate coincidence that Charly finally got permission to operate there only a short time before the tsunami!
Being one of those that has participated in communications for a disaster relief effort, I have seen some of the work hams do from being there. Some of the things they are doing are not done well by the military. The military has some communcations equipment, but they don't have the flexibility to communicate with many of the other law enforcement / relief groups. There are many efforts going on now on the ham bands to assist in the relief effort. One you might find interesting is a http://www.boatwatchnet.org/. If you want the spread sheet short story on the status of many of the boats in the area, you can find that from a link at http://www.winlink.org/ The hams had most of the status on those boats posted several days ago. Many hams were busy on the Winlink system passing various messages about the status of people and relief needs almost from the time the quake was felt. If you wonder what hams do in a disaster, ask someone that is a ham, or someone in the Red Cross that handles communications. You will find there is much more going on than is ever mentioned in the press.
If a ham really did work (ignoring repeaters and things like echolink) six continents with his light bulb antenna, he probably did it via the transmission lines going to his light bulb (if you spread them out and/or make them uneven, they can make a nice antenna. In that case, the light bulb would just be a terminator, and not an antenna by itself.
The antenna is the most important part of a rig used for DXing. If you put 1500 watts into it, I imagine you could get a few watts out of a light bulb as RF, but it wouldn't be able to pick up anything. I just don't buy it.
This is a bit more plausable, though it's certainly not easy to talk to somebody 12,000 miles away with only 5 watts and a simple dipole antenna.Oh, and I'm AD5RH.
Here is an example of how completely innadequate car batteries would be. I have a kiln/studio that until recently, had no power. I used a 12v deep cycle battery to power an inverter, light bulb (high efficiency flourescent), and a mini-itx based computer. If I ran only the light, I would get about 12 hours usuage before my charge fell below 50%. - that's when running nothing but a 40 watt bulb! Turn on the computer and I'd be done in 6 hours.
Electricity is like some magical mystical entity that never runs out as long as you are pulling it off a plug. But when you have to make your own, you realize just how precious it is. My battery must weigh about 50 pounds - lugging that home for charging made me very conservative about my power consumption.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
From my experience, it is almost common for public service to ask the help of Ham radio operators in time of crisis. My local county and state OEM requires them for storm spotting. They might not be the first on the scene, but they will endure and are more flexable than any other form of communications. Talk to fire fighters, police, and other public service personel that served during the wildfires in the west, 9/11 in NYC, and various other disasters. Hams put their lives on hold to help others. The take thousands of dollars of their gear to remote location and provide a service free of charge. All they ask is some respect and bandwidth to "play radio." I think its more important than broadband to remote locations.
What ever happened to the Emergency Broadcasting System during the attacks on September 11? Is it reserved for a tsunami (or other natural disaster)? We get bugged in the middle of all of our programs and yet when we need it it doesn't go off. PS. I happen to attend the University of Central Florida. Go Knights!
There was a very well done [and non-gov't funded] study* done a few years ago that came to the conclusion that NASA - despite falling short of many of its goals - was an enormous boon to progress, abstract and otherwise. In terms of real-world results - improved plastics, ceramics, and other materials; electronics; even medicine - they came to the conclusion that for every dollar that had bent spent on NASA projects, five 'dollars worth' had come back out. That figure included catastrophic loses, failed projects, etc.
Can you imagine a 500% return on your investment in the business world?
*I'd very happily cite the study, but it is somewhere in The Stack(tm) of journals in my closet. I'm about as likely to start going through that mess as I am to spontaneously sprout wings. Sorry.