During Blackout, Ham Radio Shined 476
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Seems that ham radio (which recently had a bit of backlash here on Slashdot from a few people thinking it was useless, outdated technology), really shined through during the blackouts.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."
Power line emissions (Score:5, Funny)
You break the usability... (Score:5, Insightful)
If no one is left using the technology because of problems under normal conditions, these people won't be there to save your ass when you need paramedics called and the phones don't work.
It isn't real? Tell that to the RACES teams... (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't real? [google.com]
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...
Not informative. (Score:3, Interesting)
What in the F?! (Score:5, Insightful)
To call amateur radio operators simply hobbiests does them a disservice. They're licensed by the FCC. Listen on your local repeater [artscipub.com] the next time some severe thunderstorms roll through. I bet you'll hear a SKYWARN [skywarn.org] net, courtesy of your local ARES [google.com] group. What's ARES? This is. [arrl.org] They are volunteers that work closely with the National Weather Service. If you're lucky enough to still have an active RACES [races.net] group in your area, I suggest you go look at that site. FEMA, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the governing body that provides assistance to the local governing bodies, specifically the civil defence bodies that sponsor RACES groups.
Enough examples? No?
Check out an Army or Navy MARS [navymars.org] site and note that you can pass a MARSGRAM to any service member, anywhere, through the network of MARS operators. As an amateur radio operator, it was pretty cool to sit (once) at the MARS gateway in Frankfurt, Germany while I was in the Army. More than a handful of messages that came through were on their way to soldiers in Bosnia.
If your metro area lost traditional communications, your local hams would post themselves at the Red Cross, any hospitals, police and fire stations and keep communications going. In fact, this is what they did in New York after the towers came down.
Guess what else. We're volunteers. We don't get paid. In fact, we CAN'T get paid for our radio services. Go read the rules: 47 CFR 97.113(2)
P.S. It says no radio transmissions for hire.
That means every radio operator is out there during emergencies because they want to be. They take an active interest in the community they're serving. They invest in their own rigs and the generators to run them so that they might one day HELP YOU, as well as give them an outlet for their interests. That's a damn sight more dedicated than your whiny, milktoast ass [goatse.cx].
Re:What in the F?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignorant people criticize things they don't understand. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your views) hams look out the ingorant folks too. The people who wouldn't notice if hams were gone are going to be the first ones bitching when the chips are down and you need emergency service coordination or a backup for emergency communications. They will be the ones asking "Why doesn't our government have a backup plan?" Well, despite the best laid plans, backups sometimes fail and our government (local and federal) is notoriously short sited in spending the money for such things (Gee, do I have to give examples of this?) Hams fill the gaps quietly and much better than government ever could.
It is nice to know that hams are covering our collective asses and doing it for free and little to no recognition. As TitaniumFox stated, listen to the local repeater when the next severe storm comes in. You'll get better information quicker than what you ever hear from your local news or on NOAA weather radio. The hams are the ones out there reporting what the talking head on the news station is telling you. The talking head is getting their info from trained spotters who do this work for free to save your ignorant butt. And those trained spotters are almost always amateur radio operators.
Gee, sounds like some of these "hobbyists" may have more to offer the community than most Slashdot posters. (Go look in the mirror).
I'll stop my rant. "73" to those who know what the hell I am talking about.
Re:What in the F?! (Score:3, Funny)
Durned upstarts.
(Speaking as someone who doesn't know any HAM operators, doesn't use HAM radios, and who's perfectly capable of takin
Re:Power line emissions (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, there have been disasters that hams have been involved in providing services for where communications were greatly disrupted, but power was not out. September 11, 2001 New York city had a major communications disruption that hams played a very important part in getting health and welfare messages out of and across the city when the phone system was significantly impacted.
But your post also shows an extreme shortsightedness. Do you expect hams to keep maintaining equipment and buying new equipment, and new hams to come into the hobby, if normally the RF interference is so bad that they could only use that equipment in the event of a massive power failure? When lives are lost because the ranks of the ham radio operators have dwindled because they were pushed off the bands (and they certainly have saved many lives) perhaps you can make your little joke again.
Re:Power line emissions (Score:5, Insightful)
And, quite frankly, all these ultra-high tech communications systems the emergency services use are really nice under normal circumstances, but are completely friggin useless when the main systems fail. Many modern vehicle radios *cannot* talk directly to another mobile unit (multi-frequency). The transmission is sent to a tower, and relayed to the other vehicle/handheld. If the tower fails, every radio in the field becomes a high-dollar piece of junk.
Yes, I do know what I'm talking about, I worked eight years in emergency services, and my wife has over 17 years, and is still working in in the field.
Re:Power line emissions (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this a troll? Seriously, let me know and I'll shut up. Otherwise, I have to say you look like a complete idiot with that statement.
No private citizens to depend on? Goodbye volunteer fire, ambulance, and police departments. Yes, thats right, in the majority of cities in the US, most EMS people are volunteers. Private citizens, with day jobs.
You want all those services to be paid for by the
Re:Power line emissions (Score:4, Interesting)
heres some info on the Va Beach Auxiliary police [vbgov.com]
Re:Power line emissions (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to say "Its much more valuable to have thousands of people get broadband internet access than to have ham radio. After all, most of the time, hams just chat and aren't helping with emergencies. Plus, powerline broadband would only affect HF."
However, the general chit-chat that ham operators do IS valuable. Without it, ham radio would become worthless. People aren't going to buy thousand dollar radios "just in case" if they have huge amounts of interference to deal with so they can't chat. Similarly, would YOU pay for internet service that had 99% downtime? Furthermore, current operators will be less willing to keep an operational station if theres nothing to do with it. That radio will just sit in the attic, and if there's an emergency, too bad. Also, people aren't going to be able to do anything even if they have a working station if they haven't ever been able to practice.
Its not that ham-radio is old and more reliable than newer technologies, its that nothing yet can easily replace ham-radio(try to think of something that really can), and seeing how the internet has been turned into a marketing/media tool, there may not be anything for a while. Ham radio is simple, long-range, portable, versatile/flexible, and most importantly, independant of other services.
Cell-phone nets get overloaded with callers.
The internet has no long range portability, and is dependent on physical networks.
Sattelite phones are WAY too expensive and limited.
Etc...
In An Emergency, Trust Hams, Not the Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
You're correct to point out the folly of such opinions.
First, it isn't much of a leap to suggest that expanding broadbnd capabilities plays to the financial and employment prospects of many, or most, Slashdot readers. They're hardly an objective, or even thinking, bunch,
Second, DSL or cable access isn't going to do you much good when there's no electricity to p
Re:Eschew homogeneity (Score:4, Informative)
It did exactly that during the power outage. In fact, there were more than a few news stories about people using good old-fashioned pay phones because the cell network was unusable.
Re:Power line emissions (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, that's not the point... If the broadband signal pushes ham users out of their 'hobby' then, when the power goes out, there won't be any hams with working radios to help coordinate the saving of your unlit butt.
Reminds me of a parable...
The ham system is rather like an insurance policy. It often seems like a waste -- until the day you really need it. Of course, the day you really need it, is the wrong time to put it together.Re:Power line emissions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Power line emissions (Score:3, Interesting)
How's that? My phones (both land line and cell) were both working fine during the whole thing. Couldn't get through to Detroit Edison, though!
Re:Power line emissions (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem comes when the listening station in a safe location cannot hear the signals because his local power lines are working and intefering with the weak signal coming from inside the disaster zone.
As if /.'ers care (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As if /.'ers care (Score:5, Funny)
er, I thought we liked UNIX on Slashdot. Did I not get the memo?
Oh, you meant ham radio! Nevermind...
Re:As if /.'ers care (Score:2)
Which is why we all love CowboyNeal.
Re:As if /.'ers care (Score:2)
Re:As if /.'ers care (Score:2)
Re:As if /.'ers care (Score:3, Informative)
None of the ones I had any experience with - and yes, I was in the area that evening - were usable. They were too jammed...just like they were on 9/11 (and yes, I was there then, too).
Cellphone networks, like all telephone networks are designed on the premise that only a fraction of their capacity will be in use at one time. During a disaster, that assumption crashes in flames, because *everyone* wants to call and let someone knoe they're all r
Phones (Score:2, Funny)
I told you so! (Score:3, Insightful)
You only need HAM radio once in a while, but there is no substitute for it's low-tech ability to keep communicating.
Re:I told you so! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I told you so! (Score:5, Insightful)
II. It's the most dependable emergency communcation network in the world.
III. It requires practicaly NO INFRASTRUCTURE!
IV. It's CHEAP (total cost to implement, see III)!
V. It's reliable. It will be operational when all other methods of long distance communication fail.(See II)
VI. It's democratic.
VII. It is the first worldwide hacker community.
IX. It teaches science and technology without being onerous.
X. It is altruistic (people use their rigs to provide emergency communications for people who could care less about ham radio).
XI. Unlike commercial broadcasting, it serves the community at all times.
Those are just a few of the many reasons I admire and apreciate ham radio operators. We should all fight to preserve a portion of the spectrum for the use of these fine folks.
Too True (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know how anyone could discount HAM radio. You can run it in your car and talk t
Re:I told you so! (Score:5, Insightful)
Another great thing about plain old analogue radio is that it can be implemented using discrete componets in a military-grade package for around 20 lbs. Repariablilty of such a solution is far superior to integrated electronics.
Might not make a difference under normal circumstances, but when faced with things blowing to bits right and left you sure are glad you don't have to locate IC637247 (random name there) to repair the damn thing!
Well, I could have predicted this. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why we burn candles during blackouts.
Big deal, lets get on with the other 99.9% of our lives.
It's worth noting... (Score:2, Insightful)
HF is pretty much done for as a meaningful communications medium. VHF and UHF are where the action is these days.
Re:It's worth noting... (Score:3, Informative)
HF is the only way to communicate (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's worth noting... (Score:5, Informative)
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:It's worth noting... (Score:2)
40 Meters (aka HF) was used between the various OEMs and Albany and Red Cross National
Sweet Mary, I parsed that as Original Equipment Manufaturers, and it still made sense. I need a break.
Whether it's on a hard drive or transmitted... (Score:5, Insightful)
Outdated my ass (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Outdated my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
mod parent down (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, it is illegal to use amateur radio as a commercial service.
* It's illegal to use encryption or voice scrambling over amateur radio. This would make things like https, ssl, and ssh, illegal to use over the service.
* the customers of the service would have to have amateur radio licenses as well as the ISP.
* It is illegal to transmit profanity over amateur radio.
Please moderate this appropriately (down)
You're busted - hand in the license now! (Score:2)
But yeah, it's kind of fun technology, if it weren't for the fact that the FCC can bust you any
Re:Outdated my ass (Score:2)
Cuz we can't rely on battery backed up cell towers (Score:5, Insightful)
Many cell towers are equiped with UPSs to work for a couple hours or so, but hardly enough to cover an outage like what we've seen. We've concentrated on building these things cheap. I can't say I blame them -- who expects a two-day-long outage? Even so, many of the backups didn't even work. You could argue that they should have generators for backup, solar panels, gerbil-wheels, or what not, but its our capitalist nature to try and build these things as cheaply as possible.
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.
You're an idiot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You're an idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, I was up and running on ham the entire time. I'm not saying ham radio is for everyone, but it served me well. It's nice to not have to rely upon a third party to transport my voice during an emergency.
Re:You're an idiot (Score:2)
Re:Cuz we can't rely on battery backed up cell tow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cuz we can't rely on battery -- you are right (Score:2)
That is way you use generators!! Batteries are there until generators come on line. What is why you do not want digial phones in your home as your only phone. They rely on your house power. MA Bell (or kids) still use generators to help keep your phone on, so 911 will work.
The best system I have seen was in Caribbean. A single base cell tower... Batteries to keep on line for 30 minutes and THREE generators each with THREE fuel tanks, and all buried. Any generator with 1 fuel tank would run
You going to train them? Equip them? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Cuz we can't rely on battery backed up cell tow (Score:3, Informative)
You should educate yourself on what really happens in disasters like this. Hams are well organized to be deployed in these situations. The emergency personel not only get access to the equipment but also to people trained to operate them and coordinate in a very orderly way, not only with other hams but with various emergency services as well. Actually many more emergency responde
Re:Cuz we can't rely on battery backed up cell tow (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus, most service workers and emergency personnell have radios that have anywhere from zero (auto-trunking) to five (old style VHF/UHF) "channels". Training them to use the open spectrum and coordinate such use is ridiculous. They're responding to an emergency, they won't have time or patience to establish a net and communications protocol.
We "old" (27 years old) hams are able to ta
Re:Cuz we can't rely on battery backed up cell tow (Score:3, Interesting)
"emergency personel" already have their o
Re:Cuz we can't rely on battery backed up cell tow (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm 24 and I've been a ham for 6 years. I may be grungy but I'm not old. Did I mention my 13 year old sister is studying for her ham license? Did I mention my 54 year old mother is also studying? Did I mention that I work with 3 other hams, all under 40?
Sure, and while were at it lets give fire hoses to EMTs and let Red Cross volunteers carry guns. Are you nuts? Giving ham radios to
Got our backup power ready (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Got our backup power ready (Score:2, Informative)
Where everybody is: At home or on their way there.
What's going on: Everybody is eating all the ice cream and steak in their freezers by candle-light. We midwesterners do so hate to let food go to waste.
Come on, for any given block in the Twin Cities, power has gone out at least twice in the last five years, due to trees hitting power lines, weather-related incidents, etc
Re:Got our backup power ready (Score:2)
Congrats Ben, I didn't realize you had your license. Are you tech only?
-KC0IOG
Amateur Radio Obsolete??, Try this (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.icomamerica.com/amateur/dstar/in
Amateur Radio is cutting edge, the thing that makes it seem obsolete is that they never delete old protocols or modes of operation. For example the same guy may use CW to contact Brazil one night, and an OSCAR (Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) Satellite to contact France the next.
What good is Censored Communication? (Score:4, Informative)
Hams aren't allowed to talk about business on the air (unlike CB radio or some of the other mobile bands), because that got in the way of the FCC's New Deal views of how they wanted to regulate the quasi-nationalized airwaves and monopoly telephone and radio broadcast companies, and they're not allowed to use encryption (it took a long time before even ASCII was officially recognized, because it's a Code that's not Morse) because Foreign Spies might use it, and I think you're still not even allowed to use Bad Language because it's a broadcast medium (that doesn't totally suck, because it is more polite, but since you can lose your license, it still sucks.)
CB radio used to be semi-censored and did require licenses, and was limited to 5 watts which was usually a moderate distance in those days, but the FCC lost control of it during the 1970s flood of truckers and low-cost radio hardware, in spite of it being a very limited band. So some guy in Florida with a kilowatt linear ham amplifier could blow out CB radios across half the country... And you can use walkie-talkies with very limited range - the non-licensed FRS stuff pretends to go two miles, but you're supposed to have a license to use the GMRS channels which pretend to do 5-7 miles.
The ARPANET had its Acceptable Use Policies against non-official use, and its unofficial very flexible policies that you could talk about anything you want _except_ business, and about official government-or-university-research-related business, but companies that had Arpanet connections and UUCP connections couldn't technically relay email between them unless it was AUP-permitted email. So as the Internet evolved, and had the connectivity to be much more useful than dialup UUCP mail, it was very hard to tell whether you could legally send somebody email about business that your company was doing with their company, because it might be crossing AUP-censored territory. Eventually the Commercial Internet Exchange was formed to let normal businesses use Internet connections, especially email, without violating those laws or policies. But that worked because network connections use wires and fibers that can connect private entities, even if you use TCP/IP on them, while Ham Radio uses the nationalized radio spectrum so it can't escape (unless you wanted to use ham radio technology in metal pipes or something silly like that.)
Re:What good is Censored Communication? (Score:3, Insightful)
Things are kept civil on the ham bands. I used to have a CB... I'm glad I don't anymore. They all talked trash, and nothing but trash. I've heard an occasional (*gasp*) trash talk or excessive profanity on the HF bands before. I doubt the FCC did anything. They have better things to do (I'd hope) than sit around listenting to hams discuss baseball waiting for one of the
Was my savior. (Score:5, Informative)
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. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [egosurf.net].) 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 [mwave.org], 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:Was my savior. (Score:2)
But then I started thinking... All the radios in the back of ambulances are encryption free, and in fact, at least out here, less than 10 MHz away from the 2 meter band. (Case in point, I have the local Ambulance-Hospital frequencies in my HT.) They more or less do the same as your HT.
As I said, I'm certainly not criticizing you -
Past tense of Shine is Shone (Score:3, Informative)
shined, shone (Score:5, Funny)
So Timothy is a time traveller from the 1700s. That explains a lot of slashdot spelling now that I think about it
Ok, the coffee is kicking in now.
He who depends, repents (Score:2, Insightful)
That's what we get for depending on electricity so much. HAM radio is nothing special, without those car batteries and other backup power sources it would have been as useless as a pair of tits on a bull.
Just make sure never to get an electric home environment control system.
I don't see the problem... (Score:2)
Um, the power was out. Interference instantly gone when hams are only really useful. Otherwise there is power (interference) and the cell/phone network can re-route traffic as need around the problem area. Sure, the phone network(s) were overloaded during 9/11, but they continued to work and emergency personnel went off their powered radio systems anyway. Show me the problem. :)
Re:I don't see the problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, that makes sense - learn to do something in an emergency situation, instead of working public service events year round, and training "nets" every week.
Your also only thinking blackouts. When they have forest fires out west - how do they do the long haul radio comms? Yep, hams on HF. When there is a hurricane, how do the storm spotting reports come in - Hams on HF - AGAIN. When The shuttle broke up over Texas, what did NASA and the local PDs find was the ONLY thing that worked out in the rural areas. You guessed it - Hams. When they need to do GIS data logging, what did they use? Hams running a mode called APRS
Re:I don't see the problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hams were the first pioneers of almost all the radio technology you take for granted. You like WiFi? Who do you think tinkered in that frequncy range to begin with? Who do you think you still share that 2.4Ghz band with? Sattelites? Etc, etc.
but they continued to work and emergency personnel went off their powered radio systems anyway. Show me the problem.
Umm, FYI, we lost power to the EMS repeaters for a good 30 mins, twice. Repeaters work off of AC, and if they go down, all the little portable radios that EMS personnell rely on make grat paperweights.
I'm a ham, had a radio that day, and was able to communicate that day at work with a few battery powered repeaters. The operators on the other were ready and willing to help out in any way possible.
Please visit www.arrl.org for more information.
Nice troll BTW.
Ham Joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ham Joke (Score:2, Funny)
Ham radio is there when you need it (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason is that our modern communications are very complex and dependent on things like having reliable electrical power. Most ham sets can run on car batteries and provide nationwide or even global coverage if necessary. Voice, video, and data are all possible with ham radio. Just what you need in a crisis.
Blackberries? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Blackberries? (Score:2)
Peer-to-Peer vs. Centralized vs. Popularity (Score:4, Insightful)
The wired telephone network did really well during the blackout, because it was designed with separate reliable power systems, big batteries, generators, and a concern for reliability; except for a few isolated power problems, the real trouble that wired phones had was that too many people were trying to call so there were some capacity issues. Cell phones have similar issues, but the overloading capacity problems are far worse, and the failure methods aren't as clean, and unlike the wired phone network, there aren't decades of work on how to make sure that "important" users get priority during overloads.
Peer-to-Peer systems scale well, and theoretically they'd do better than centralized problems in some kinds of emergencies, but they have to be designed correctly to avoid the overloading-and-failure problem as well. (For example, Napster scaled really well within clusters, but the earlier Gnutella things run out of indexing capacity after a while.)
So you'd expect Ham Radio to be great, because everybody can talk directly to everybody else once they pick channels, but it's not really that way. When two radios can reach each other directly, and it's an emergency situation, everybody's polite and well-trained enough to prioritize and let the doctors and firemen and police talk to each other and move the idle chit-chat or the "Hi, Marge, I'll be home really late" personal calls to other channels. HF seems to work that way, and CB radio Channel 9 somewhat did, but other CB channels are a total zoo, kind of like Usenet without the scalability. But a large fraction of the cute little handheld ham sets (2m, 70cm, etc.) are repeater-based - there's a repeater up on a hilltop with N channels of transmit and receive which lets the little sets get lots of distance without lots of power, kind of like one big cell site per hilltop. It works really well when it's not overloaded, but its only overflow protection is polite users, and that means that if it's too busy, you can't get through, but the busy signal is friendlier and more interesting. One repeater that got mentioned at ARRL.ORG handled about 500 messages over 20 hours, which is about one call every 2 minutes - not a heavy load.
Does anybody know how well ham repeater towers did for power during the outage? I'm guessing most of them are well-enough designed, with batteries and solar to support most of their needs rather than depending on line power, partly because hams are good at that kind of planning and partly because volunteers would rather not have to drive up some mountain during bad weather to fire up a generator just because the power line went down when they've got better things to do.
Thanks for this follow up (Score:4, Interesting)
Wireless technologies are more than able to fill this need with the same or less effort.
For all you folks dogging the HAMs, consider the do it yourself hacker nature they represent. Don't we need to nurture and cultivate this kind of thinking given the general law making trends today?
Again, its a bad idea that can easily be solved other ways.
Ham needs to be fun to survive (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of the value that HAM radio provides in an emergency comes from the large number of people who have them who wouldn't if they could only use the
Amongst the reasons why I'll keep my license... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just one of those things - you never know when you'll need it, but you'll be glad you had it...
---
KE6FTH
amatuer radio and emergencies (Score:2, Interesting)
Dangerous arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
The simple sad fact is that ham radio is now virtually irrelevant in emergency communications and other direct public service activities. While the non-ham world has embraced analog and digital cell phones, FRS, 802.11, LEO and GEO satellite terminals and the Internet, most of ham radio is still stuck on methods that predate World War 2. And many hams seem perversely proud of it!
The only remaining reason for ham radio to continue to exist (and it's a really important one) is for the utterly unique educational opportunities it provides. Where else can you, as an individual, design your own antennas, build your own radios, conduct propagation experiments, experiment with your own modulation schemes, or participate in the design, construction and operation of a spacecraft? Ham radio has launched many people into productive technical careers, and that has always been its biggest payoff.
Re:Dangerous arguments (Score:2)
Wrong.
I am very active in many facets of public service and emergency communications - and I'm not talking about Amateur activism, either. I can tell you with authority that you are completely and utterly incorrect. Hams play a large role in emergency communications, at least here in the Northwest. I say this as a person who utilizies amateur services on a regular ba
Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
All the technology that you quote apart from satellites requires considerable infrastructure that simply doesn't work or is overloaded during an emergency. Satellite terminals work very well in open country, but they don't like high buildings. A friend of mine had a portable INMARSAT terminal to provide emergency communications. He had to go onto a roof to use it. LEO (Iridium-style) is better, but it still has problems amongst the 'canyon walls' formed by high-rise buildings.
You accuse hams of being stuck in the past. Please remember that the hobby is tightly regulated by the FCC. The fights to even get packet radio accepted took a lot of time.
Yes, the training aspect that you mention is important, but the ability of amateurs to provide emergency support is probably still their best justification for the EM spectrum they occupy.
/.ers anti Ham? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh sure Ham's an old technology. Like Unix. Constantly revising the technology by a community connected by the technology. Like open source. Always informmed like Slashdot working together to keep the signal clear.
Many ham ops use Linux and for a good reason the whole Linux community is very much like the Ham packet community.
Today public wifi is a bunch of hacks with repeaters etc but some day a ham will bring out some technology that will make it work on a massive scale.
But people outside the ham community. They don't see it. They look at ham and say "That ugly tower is going to bring down property values" they say "We'll get cancer" they sue and harrass ham ops.
They don't believe a group of hobbyists can do any better than paid profesionals.
Open source and free software communitys live in the same boat.
Hay if brodband over IP interfears with ham packets then what will happen to cell phones, wifi, broudcast TV and radio..
We don't need archaic hams and we don't need open source software. But if you think the alternitive isn't ditching the technology all together your mistaken.
Good bye open source, good bye Linux, Good bye Internet.
Good by Ham, good bye communication inovations, good bye cell phones and yet again good bye Internet.
We can live with out it. Do we want to?
If Ham had a Microsoft there'd be someone saying right now how Ham got lucky.
ham and proud (Score:2)
Yes, this blackout is the best thing to happen to ham radio in a while. Maybe this stupid idea of broadband over power lines will finally be snipped.
Point of information (Score:3, Funny)
Also shining ... (Score:2)
Also shining was my helioscope, but it always does that.
weather (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interference from boradband (Score:2)
Re:Interference from boradband (Score:2)
Re:Interference from boradband (Score:2)
Once there was control-line model aircraft. Now they use radio controls.
As technology progresses, it will become feasible for hobbyists to get their hands on something else. Perhaps laptops with WiFi and big amplifiers and antennas will be the ham-radio of the future. There's no shame in retiring a long-loved technology. The real point to ham radio was the thrill of learning about technology. So why not simply move
Re:Interference from boradband (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HAM ? CB ? (Score:3, Informative)
Amatuer radio(ham) has licensed operators that can run on different frequecies and can run much more power if the situation requires it. (Lots as in 4 watts max AM, 12 watts max SSB for CB (I think) and 1500 watts max any mode most places for the ham stuff)
VAST Differences between the two... (Score:5, Insightful)
CB, on the other hand, has some 40 "channels", is technically restricted in power to something like one watt or somesuch, and simply requires you to get in line at Radioshack to buy the kit. You are in theory not allowed to talk to someone that you know is more than a certain distance away from you, CB is designed for local communcation only. CB is not allowed repeaters, and those that have tried setting up CB repeater networks have found themselves in trouble with the FCC. The "Channels" are set frequencies that CB operates on, not actual raw stuff like HAM operators deal with. HAM operators get a significantly larger piece of spectrum, with stuff as low as 10Hz, and up in the GHz range at the top, with all kinds of pieces in between. CB gets it's one section around 10m or 11m or something like that.
Basically, HAM Radio requires you to follow some rules in exchange for significant privileges, CB is a toy.
Re:HAM ? CB ? (Score:2)
Ham radio operates on different bands and requires a license from the FCC to operate (testing is done by an FCC recognized organized group of hams voluntiers themselves). H
Re:But... (Score:2, Funny)
We would have TCP/IP (
Each one would be tattooed with the appropriate packet type and given a little bag to hold a punched card of data.
You would just number your pigeons, give them their cards and let them go.
Routers would just be called "lofts" and the full message could be put together once all the pigeons had arrived by whatever route they felt was necessary.
Requesting a re-transmission of a dropped packet (damned rednecks and their
Re:But... (Score:2)
Re:stupid question (Score:2, Informative)
Re:stupid question (Score:5, Informative)
American Relay Radio League [arrl.com]
QRZ [qrz.com]
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.
Re:stupid question (Score:2)
Longer explination: On some frequencies (channels) you are looking for a friend who is there often, on other frequencies you simple wait and talk to whoever showes up. It could be your next door neighbor or somebody in Japan. You can even talk to people in areas that don't have internet (yes they exist). You can use short-range radio frequencies to find somebody local when you're from out of town an
Re:Good use for HAM (Score:5, Informative)
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:More low tech than HAM (Score:2)