Amateur Radio In the Backcountry?

bartle writes "I spend a lot of time hiking in the Colorado Rockies. Cell phone reception is very unreliable and I'm curious if carrying a small amateur radio would make any sense at all. I don't want to add too much weight to my pack; from what I gather, a radio weighing a pound would give me at most 5 to 10 watts of transmitting power. I have no idea if this is enough to be effective in a mountainous region, and I'm hoping some experienced Slashdot hams could give me a clue. I'm only interested in acquiring a radio and license if it is a lot more effective and reliable than the cell phone I already carry. Otherwise I'll just wait for Globalstar to bring back their duplex service and buy a next-generation SPOT messaging device. (I know some Slashdotters will want to suggest a modern SPOT or Personal Locator Beacon; these are suitable for the worst kinds of emergencies, but I'll point out that reliable communication can help prevent small crises from becoming big ones.) Are small amateur radios effective in the field, or are vehicle rigs really the only way to go? Or am I better off just waiting for satellite?"

Comments

Re:Nope

[Paco103]

So glad to see some people thinking about that. I hate how often the ham community shuns CB and the mere mention of it. Yes, it certainly has it's own problems, but nearly EVERY truck and a good amount of touring motorcycles are equipped with CB. Considering how many charity bike rides that ARS covers that make use of motorcycles, this also seems overlooked. I've never thought of it from the delivery, but I'll certainly keep that in mind in the future.

I'm with you

[fyngyrz]

I've got a ham station, and it includes an AM/LSB/USB base CB radio (top center in that image) and associated dedicated antenna. If the goal is being able to communicate in an emergency (and that is one of my goals as a ham), ignoring one of the most widespread tools out there is not the best idea.

It's also not fair to just say "rednecks and freaks"; there are a lot of folks in this area, ranchers and so forth, not "rednecks" by any definition other than perhaps suntan, who use CB as a practical (and free) means to keep in touch. I know some that are a good deal more sophisticated in both outlook and education than some of the characters I've run into here on slashdot.

For that matter, ham radio is no exclusive preserve of reason, manners, and intelligence, either. So let's keep the "redneck" comments down to a dull roar, shall we?

Re:I'm with you

[couchslug]

"It's also not fair to just say "rednecks and freaks".

It's past unfair and well into "stupid". Those of us who drive long distance often use CB to keep track of road conditions. Just lurking is usually enough. The CB craze is mostly over, (praise be to Allah!) so there are fewer dumbfucks polluting the airwaves.

Ugh, God, there's one in every ARC

[StarKruzr]

"Don't do it." FUCK you, chief. Who are you to discourage a potential future Ham based on what YOU say the Amateur service is "for?" People become Hams for all sorts of reasons. The FCC specifies what we may NOT do on amateur bands, and gives reasons for establishing them in the first place, but EVERY use permissible is entirely valid and should be encouraged to further the hobby.

So this guy starts out with a backpack HF rig to make sure he has a way to get messages out of the wild, and then what? You should know how this goes if you've been in the hobby as long as you say you have. You start out with a specific purpose, and then one thing or another starts interesting you, and before you know it you're watching the waterfall for PSK31 on HF and trying to DX with Zimbabwe a couple months later.

I became a Ham BECAUSE of the service's emergency provisions. I watched a plane fly into the North Tower of the WTC and kill my cousin and her coworkers in Cantor-Fitzgerald, and then heard about ARES and RACES volunteers stitching Manhattan's emergency services together so they could communicate in the wake of having their repeaters turned to ash. I heard those stories and said "I want to be on that team. THAT'S how I'm going to contribute." So I got a license, and got elmered by some of the guys who volunteered on Wall Street, and eventually started learning about how huge the hobby is and how much you can do with it. I found out about MARS and Skywarn and EchoLink and IRLP, and all the incredible things you can do with just a little dual-band HT, and I was hooked. Now my friends and I talk on a number of the local repeaters in town (I've since moved) on a regular basis.

But according to you, I never should have started, because emergency services are not the "primary purpose" of the Amateur Service. Kill yourself. I can't stand curmudgeonly old fucks like you who think if you didn't start on CW on 10m you're somehow illegitimate. Get over yourself.

Re:Ugh, God, there's one in every ARC

[Suzuran]

I didn't say anything like that, and you're just projecting your hate for someone else on me. Did someone burn you at some point? Anyway, let me try to break it down for you.

This guy is not interested in "becoming a ham." You saw 9/11 happen and felt a need to contribute to the situation. You saw the other hams doing their thing and wanted to join them. So you did. However, this guy is different. He does not want to contribute like you did. This guy DOES NOT CARE about ham radio. All he wants is to replace his cellphone with something that "works better". Did you not read his post?

Anyway, so pretend he decides to go along with it. He gets a license and spends a few thousand getting a mobile rig, starts trying to make "phone calls" and all of a sudden he's got people listening to his "phone calls" and maybe some talk over the top of him and oh my gods what kind of stupidity is this? So he yells at these other people to go away, since this is his private conversation and they shouldn't be listening, which is of course missing the point to you or I who expects a radio to be a radio, but to him it's a big expensive cellphone that doesn't work the way he expects. So after a few months of this he gives up and sells the equipment and tells all of his friends (and their friends and so on...) that ham radio is an expensive waste of time full of jerks who listen to your phone calls. This is of course false and seems comically implausible to your or I, but he doesn't understand that!

This sort of scenario is not at all uncommon, and every time it happens it is the fault of the hams who refused to step in and provide guidance or worse, hams who misrepresented what the service really is - under the misguided idea that we are somehow obligated to grow our ranks at any cost. Not everyone is a "potential new ham". You have to evaluate THEIR wants and needs and expectations and give them enough information to properly decide for themselves whether or not they should continue.

All I am trying to say is that if you are expecting ham radio to directly replace some other service, and nothing more, you are going to waste everyone's time and a lot of your money. Ham radio is a hobby and not an appliance. I would rather you not have a license than have an expired license and a misguided hate of ham radio. I fail to understand how that makes me an "old curmudgeon" who should commit suicide. It does not help anyone for someone to have a license and no understanding of what that license means.

Mobile crossband repeater

[Dan East]

Speaking of repeaters, a really good option is to have a good mobile dual band rig in your car, capable of what's called crossband repeating. Basically the idea is you transmit from your HT (handheld) on one band (like 70cm), which is received by the rig in your car and retransmitted on another band (like 2m) preset to the input frequency of a local repeater. If the local repeater has autopatch (most do) then you can make phone calls, or in an emergency just call for help to any of the people listening to that repeater. Also many repeaters are networked, so you can communicate across many hundreds or thousands of miles if you wanted to get in touch with a specific person (like a buddy that listens in for you while you're on hikes).

Both the wattage and antenna gain of a mobile (car-mounted) rig are orders of magnitude better than any HT rig (due to FCC regulation of wattage allowed for handheld transcievers, antenna size, and even vehicle groundplane), so you could reliably work repeaters dozens of miles away in that scenario.

Oh, on another note, many HTs are now multiple band (my Yaesu handheld transmits on 4 bands!), and thus the OEM will include an antenna that is only mediocre across all the bands the HT supports. For best performance you should use an antenna specifically tuned for the band you are going to use. I used 70cm for your HT in my example above, because antennas for that band are nice and short which is good for portability. Then you can have a high gain 2m on your car that can really reach out and touch repeaters far away.