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APRS tracking my car has been pretty fun just using a FoxTrack and a UV-5R as a transmitter. Now to use this IC-25E mobile rig as a digipeater out in the boonies where I spend the summers, I always wanted to build infrastructure and this is the next best thing.
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Jun 20, 2013 10:26
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eddiewalker posted:I had to put a large washer on the back side of my NMO mount to get everything to line up right, otherwise the center pin sat too high, and the outer threads were too low to get an antenna screwed on without leaving more than an 1/8th inch of exposed NMO mount threads. The washer is normal, and fine. Make sure it doesn't have some weird high-resistance coating that ruins your grounding. If you want to edges of the hole to not rust, they need to be painted. You can usually take the last few digits of your VIN and contact the dealer for 1 ounce bottles of touch-up paint in your color, or you can just use like nail polish remover or clearcoat or something(get it in spray can, spray a puddle on to a piece of cardboard, apply with a little brush). The hole _will_ rust over time if you don't coat it, the O-rings help but will never prevent it.
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Jun 20, 2013 15:17
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Jonny 290 posted:The washer is normal, and fine. Make sure it doesn't have some weird high-resistance coating that ruins your grounding. I had a dent on my old car that I used nail polish (not remover that's just acetone) on for the ten years I owned it, and it never rusted. Just had to check & reapply regularly.
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Jun 20, 2013 20:40
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Oh god, why did I say remover....nice catch, haha. Nail polish, yes.
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Jun 20, 2013 22:01
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I was just concerned that the mount would need an actual bare metal to bare metal connection to ground, which is why i was thinking dielectric grease, but if that's not an issue, I'll paint it up.
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Jun 20, 2013 22:15
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On the _underside_ of the hole, like on the inside of your trunk lid, or whatever, you want a solid, metal-to-metal connection. Trunk lid -> washer -> mount bottom lip. On the _edge_ of the hole, you want a coating of paint. Some people just paint it all, then use star washers, which cut back through the paint to metal. Others install the mount and then spray the whole underside shebang with paint. The edge is actually more important, because if it's unsealed and the cross-section of metal gets moisture in between the paint and metal, it will start rust bubbling and ruin your whole dang body panel.
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Jun 20, 2013 22:18
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Half drunk eBay shopping strikes again, picked up a used Icom IC-T70E for about $180 shipped (new price in Norway is close to $350). Of course I'll have to buy li-ion batteries for it, but the nickel based one should work fine for the summer months when it's warm out. Now unfortunately all my other equipment is Kenwood-style so I'll have to buy a nice hand microphone, any recommendations? I'd prefer something that's at least IP54 or better to match the radio, if it has some buttons on it that would be nice but I managed just fine without it before. It uses the standard two-prong 2.5/3.5mm system. Best bet seems the HM-131.
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Jun 21, 2013 09:32
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Sometimes I see a radar dish on TV rotating, how does the connection work with a rotating dish? I know amplifiers are listed for certain frequencies but won't they work for other frequencies? I don't know what the factors to consider are, but it seems to me a 70cm amplifier should work for 2m?
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Jun 23, 2013 22:13
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Some amplifier can be made to work for new bands by adding new filters to it. What will happen if you try to run an amplifier in a band that it's not made for, without the proper addition of filters, will be horrible splatter perhaps across several bands. You might also cause other horrible side effects. (Don't do this.) If you look at an amplifier, you might find that the 10/12 m and 15/17 m filters are the same for two bands, but that the 20, 40 and 80 meter filters are single band. Radars work in the microwave bands, so rather than a feedline, they can use wave guides (hollow tubes) to transfer the energy from the rotating part to the actual radiating element, which is in the non-rotating part. A 23 cm quarter wave radiator is after all only about 6 cm long. The typical rotating part you see on a ship radar, is just a piece of metal with plastic-covered slots which emit the radio waves reflected up through a hole into the non-rotating part where the actual "whip" or emittor is placed. The motor which drives the slotted waveguide, is also in the non-rotating part. So no wires actually have to go from the non-rotating to the rotating part of the radar. As for more advanced forms of rotating radars, like those used on military ships or airports, I don't know. I think I've seen some of those radars have a horn feed that rotates with the dish, in which case there must be some other clever arrangement which brings the radio energy into the antenna. Edit: Correction, not all radar operates in microwaves, but the ones we're most familiar are. The HF over-the-horizon radar is a bane of amateur radio operators everywhere when the Chinese decide to use it right in the ham bands, but these use antennas more like broadcast and amateur radio than dishes. Vir fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jun 23, 2013 |
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Jun 23, 2013 22:32
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Field day was kind of disappointing. I went to the big local club that brags about how well they place each year. Put a face to all the repeater weirdos I try to avoid. Somehow I got pushed into logging 40m voice in an RV for an old blind guy who kept his hand down his pants. He couldn't keep track of call signs or sec/state info in his head, and obviously couldn't read it off the log. I'd log the info right, he'd repeat it on the air wrong, other station would try to correct, he'd repeat it back a different incorrect way, then give his own club call wrong, etc. Back and forth like that until the distant station gave up and blind guy started calling CQ again. That went on for 4 hours without changing frequencies. No one ever came to relieve me on the logging computer, so when the old guy finally wanted his wife to lead him to the bathroom, I ducked out.
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Jun 24, 2013 05:11
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RF amplifiers aren't really broad-band so no, I think what might happen if you try to run 2m on a 70cm amplifier is the filters would only let the harmonics of your carrier through, so your third harmonic might be amplified a few dBs and then everything else would be very much blocked by the various filters and tuned circuits on the input. Or as Vir said, you might run 2m in and find that the amplifier produces horrible harmonics and other spurious radiation since the output filters are designed for the harmonics of a 70cm signal. I hadn't actually though of how to feed a rotating antenna before, a circular waveguide is the obvious choice, but for target acquisition radar they need four signals in, I wonder how that works...
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Jun 24, 2013 09:33
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longview posted:APRS tracking my car has been pretty fun just using a FoxTrack and a UV-5R as a transmitter. I just went through this with APRSDroid and support for a bike race here. The PTT circuit would be the best option. VOX almost works correctly, but: use a stereo 3/8" cord and lift the contact from R2 or it will go to PTT when you plug in the speaker. It will not key vox while receiving, and it has a tail of about 2 seconds before it will un-key. This does not seem to be adjustable. It works more or less though. The city has poor coverage for a ~4W beacon to the digi and it didn't pick me up as well as I would like. The "SmartBeaconing" irritated aprs.fi a bit too and it discarded some of my traffic. Field Day was interesting this year. 80m had an awful racket on it S9+20 all night, so that was out. 6m never really opened. Spent most of the day Sunday talking to Florida. Ran 5A in WNY with the club and ate a ton of grease-laden hamburgers, slept in my car through some crazy thunderstorms, and had gallons of coffee. The usual, not too bad.
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Jun 25, 2013 01:01
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Icom IC-T70 has been really good so far, it does pretty much the same as a UV-5R but it does everything right, and the UI, scanner etc. are all fast as poo poo compared to the chinese rigs I've tried. I would definitely recommend it as a solid brick-like dual bander (only single channel, though it has a priority channel watch feature). I like how the Icom antennas always end up with a slight bend to the right after use. Unsolicited on-air reports said it had a very good microphone, and RX audio is pretty excellent too. Previous owner did the extended RX mod, seemingly with a set of tongue and groove pliers to remove the SMA nut which looked like it had been run over with a car a few times (fortunately I had a replacement one in my junk drawer). No real damage to the plastics so it doesn't show but the SMA connector threads have been damaged a bit. The antenna still mounts just fine though, but definitely not a professional job. Emergency communications was one of the major reasons I wanted to become a ham operator, it's nice to know that when bad things happen, I'll be able to help instead of sitting at home wondering what's going on. So with that in mind I decided to try building a cross band repeater using two handhelds and VOX today. The wiring is so simple I won't even draw up a diagram, put a trimpot to reduce the volume levels going from the speaker and into the mic-input of the other radio, repeat and you're done. I also put coupling caps between the trimpot and microphone input. The cool thing is it actually works, using equipment for less than $100 and in theory being able to operate on internal batteries for hours with fairly heavy traffic. Of course it wasn't exactly perfect, first there's a problem that the Wouxun KG-UV6 (2m) and the Baofeng UV-5R (70 cm) radios have vastly different timeout times for vox, the Baofeng holds the output open for about 5 seconds making it pretty annoying to use. Using two identical radios would be better, but they should be models with adjustments on both sensitivity and timeout time. The second problem is that reliably and continuously keeping the VOX open means the input signal has to be loud enough that the noise floor of the receiver will trigger it, since otherwise it would just drop out whenever you stopped talking, confusing whoever you're talking to. I concluded that this isn't really a solvable problem without adding a continuous tone that won't be filtered out by the receiver (so a subtone won't work), or modifying the radio to gain access to the squelch lines, in that case it would of course be trivial to make this work. So anyway I ordered the Puxing PX-UV973 -- which is apparently the only hand held cross band repeater device on the market -- after futzing around with this MacGyver solution for a while, and I'll try using that in the future.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:51
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I'm all for playing with stuff like that, but for what reason do you want a low powered cross band repeater? What would you use it for? I could see doing a cross band to something with some grunt like a 55w mobile if for nothing other than ease of filtering as compared to a single band repeater, but the only use I could imagine out of that is if you are out of your vehicle and in need of more than 5 watts to make it to wherever you need to get to. We used to have this type of setup on our command cars in the fire service so we could reach dispatch in tougher areas.
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Jul 3, 2013 20:58
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The scenario I was thinking about it mostly for camping, I put the big antenna with the proper ground plane at the best spot to reach the nearest repeater, then I can talk on 70 cm anywhere there's line of sight using the lowest power setting. Kind of like a femtocell is used for mobile phones. This Saturday I was in the mountains and found that I could reach the repeater no problem in one particular spot, but move 100 meters further and I was in a shadow area, if I wanted to camp there I'd put the tiny hand held cross-band there, and I could go anywhere in the immediate area and have consistent coverage with no huge batteries and mobile rig to carry. We're also doing a emergency communications drill using several x-band repeaters next weekend to provide a reliable voice link to a remote mountain area (power company has a major installation and there's no cellphone coverage at all there). I was hoping to get my little toy before then so we could test if it would work as a tiny little fill-in link. The main uplink will be 2-3 mobile rigs strategically parked though, all running 50W or more. We're also going to set up a digipeater network for APRS tracking of any workers/rescuers in the area, this is all integrated into large suitcases with a proper battery and usually a high power mobile rig inside, but some of the digipeaters also use handhelds to fill in gaps in the network.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:43
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eddiewalker posted:Field day was kind of disappointing. I went to the big local club that brags about how well they place each year. Put a face to all the repeater weirdos I try to avoid.  longview posted:The scenario I was thinking about it mostly for camping, I put the big antenna with the proper ground plane at the best spot to reach the nearest repeater, then I can talk on 70 cm anywhere there's line of sight using the lowest power setting. Kind of like a femtocell is used for mobile phones.  longview's post sounds far, far more like something I'd want to be involved with / use ham radio for compared to eddie's experience. Setting up that digipeater network sounds pretty fun.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:51
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longview posted:The scenario I was thinking about it mostly for camping, I put the big antenna with the proper ground plane at the best spot to reach the nearest repeater, then I can talk on 70 cm anywhere there's line of sight using the lowest power setting. Kind of like a femtocell is used for mobile phones. OK, now that's a pretty cool idea. I don't know what the usefulness to effort ratio would be, but it sounds like the kind of thing I'd try just to try it.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:51
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I wasn't part of the last test but I was at the briefing afterwards, for some reason they weren't able to get the I-gate link to work so while they were able to receive and log data locally, none of it made it out to aprs.fi. They also had the sort of failure that only happens in the field, both of the x-band repeaters failed due to corrosion in the antenna sockets and a bad cable (the x-bands are car-mount, the corrosion only shows up when the car is parked for a few hours, normally the vibration keeps it in contact). To make it worse they brought very few tools to measure and repair these things (it was -10*C out and they had to travel by snowmobiles for most of the trip, in all fairness). This time we're definitely bringing more tools, since we can drive all the way up to the camp-site I'll be bringing my stuffed service-suitcase which has everything needed to repair antennas and cables + any minor electronics repairs. There will also probably be a few mobile HF rigs there as a backup for voice comms, but that's not something we're expecting to rely on (not that I see any reason why 2/6/10m cross bands couldn't be set up for the backbone link, aside from equipment availability and antenna sizes). There's a fairly active D-star user's group here too, two simplex gateways on 2m+70cm cover the town. We're also working on installing our first regional repeater on 70cm on top of a mountain later this year, and we have just purchased a new 2m repeater that could be re-worked to act as a DV repeater in the future. There's a lot of old-fashionness here about 2m repeaters though, they only recently added subtone access, and there's no tone encoder on the main city repeater. The main method for opening is still supposed to be a 1750 burst (DTMF is supported and the future recommendation), and it's not been converted to the new 12.5 kHz band plan yet (and probably won't be, the repeater hardware is from 1970). I actually placed my order for the Icom ID-51E today, so I'll be joining the ranks of digital users in a week or two. I suspect I have a lot to learn about D-star operation in the meantime.
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Jul 4, 2013 11:04
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Apparently there's a contest on tomorrow, I'll turn up and have a look at our clubs field setup, just thought I'd let europeans know in case they want to contact a cool callsign? They'll be on the south downs (hilly bit at the south) of England on 6mtr, 2m and 70cm. These are the contest details: http://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/rules/13rules/VHFNFD.shtml Club callsign is G5RV.
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Jul 5, 2013 23:03
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longview, if you're getting D-Star, perhaps you should get set up to exploit its digital data transfer abilities? That is, if your served agencies are interested in transfer of text and images over the air at all. D-Star voice helps to parially obscure the content of voice traffic from the casual scanner listeners, but apart from that I personally don't see the point of using voice-only D-star for emcomm. AMBE is an efficient voice codec, but isn't it better to use analog voice in marginal conditions? ^^^: Do satellite contacts count in that contest? Let's hope for 6 meter openings too. Vir fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 23:06
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Vir posted:^^^: Do satellite contacts count in that contest? Let's hope for 6 meter openings too. I don't know about satellite's I'll see them tomorrow before it starts, take a 3g card and update the thread, but I doubt they do Sat stuff (they're not young guys). I know they're using Yagi's and I think are limited to 25W PEP. In the talk tonight they said they've contacted Portugal, Spain, Italy (+ sicily) Switzerland, Ireland and Germany. Hopes are high they'll win, have been 2nd place bunch of times.
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Jul 6, 2013 00:07
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Crankit posted:Club callsign is G5RV. Is the THE G5RV of antenna design fame? If so, the UK-derived ZS6BKW revision makes even more sense.
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Jul 6, 2013 00:54
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Motronic posted:Is the THE G5RV of antenna design fame? If so, the UK-derived ZS6BKW revision makes even more sense. Yes THE G5RV (Louis Varney) was club president, and donated his call sign to the club to use for special events. He's silent key now 
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Jul 6, 2013 00:58
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Vir posted:longview, if you're getting D-Star, perhaps you should get set up to exploit its digital data transfer abilities? That is, if your served agencies are interested in transfer of text and images over the air at all. D-Star voice helps to parially obscure the content of voice traffic from the casual scanner listeners, but apart from that I personally don't see the point of using voice-only D-star for emcomm. AMBE is an efficient voice codec, but isn't it better to use analog voice in marginal conditions? Yeah our emcomm stuff will probably be analog for a long time, but we did experiment with using DV last time we did a normal event (just some comms for a football tournament) and the improved voice quality was a plus. Especially since the cumulative distortion of all those repeaters tends to add up, if a DV link was set up it would still sound just as good. Another potential advantage is we could route over the internet, the area we'll be working in has internet normally, so we could in theory use an internet gateway to link some sites together. Obviously it's not a good emcomm strategy but for event coverage it would be neat. As far as I know the ID-51 can be used as a D-star data modem using a separate data port on it, but I haven't actually found any information on how this can be used for anything. If anyone knows what kind of protocols can be used over the 3600 baud link, I'm interested. Running IRC would be fun, but AFAIK most interpretations of the amateur radio rules prohibit internet traffic so it would have to be some kind of HamIRC. Transferring an image over that link would take a while, there is the 128 kbit link over 1.2 GHz but that's probably not practical to set up for the hilly environment we're dealing with.
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Jul 7, 2013 00:10
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longview posted:As far as I know the ID-51 can be used as a D-star data modem using a separate data port on it, but I haven't actually found any information on how this can be used for anything. If anyone knows what kind of protocols can be used over the 3600 baud link, I'm interested.
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Jul 7, 2013 01:36
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longview posted:Running IRC would be fun, but AFAIK most interpretations of the amateur radio rules prohibit internet traffic so it would have to be some kind of HamIRC. In a real emergency, the FCC rules would allow you to disregard those rules on encryption and for-profit use if it's necessary for safety of life communications. It actually tells you to disregard all the rest of part 97 if necessary, and another rule allows you to work cross band with other radio services as well. The FCC is running a request for rulemaking right now about letting amateurs use encryption for limited emergency drills, just like the exception already written in that allows employees to use amateur radio while on the clock for their employers during weekly drills. Until that latter exception was written in, they were only allowed to use it when the real emergency happened. The new rule change is opposed by the well known open source and privacy advocate Bruce Perens, who also doesn't like D-Star's proprietary voice codec being on the ham bands. Personally, I don't see the point of the new proposed rule as if you can exercise with HTTP and telnet on the air, it becomes a trivial change to use encrypted messages in the real emergency, if the emergency demands it. Vir fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 12:54
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Vir posted:The FCC is running a request for rulemaking right now about letting amateurs use encryption for limited emergency drills, just like the exception already written in that allows employees to use amateur radio while on the clock for their employers during weekly drills. Until that latter exception was written in, they were only allowed to use it when the real emergency happened. The new rule change is opposed by the well known open source and privacy advocate Bruce Perens, who also doesn't like D-Star's proprietary voice codec being on the ham bands. Personally, I don't see the point of the new proposed rule as if you can exercise with HTTP and telnet on the air, it becomes a trivial change to use encrypted messages in the real emergency, if the emergency demands it. You may have missed that the PFR was filed by AB1PH, a well known WinLink gateway operator who has been trying to get encryption on the bands for winlink for quite some time. He is building a straw man of HIPAA and emcomm in the petition, none of which matters as there are exceptions written into HIPAA for these very types of circumstances. He then goes on to propose a wording for the rule that would allow me to encrypt everything including my call sign and say "emcom test, suck it" if anyone complained about ANYTHING that I was doing while encrypted if they could even figure out who I am. While I can possibly see some more uses for encryption over the air, this PFR is bad policy, specifically designed to look like something that is needed for emcomm and left so broad as to allow whoever to do whatever with encryption at any time. http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7022424684 Also, if you really need encryption for the type of scenario he's talking about, use your part 90 radios. You're already working with a city/county/state emergency management organization, and they already have spectrum, radios and encryption. Motronic fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 16:05
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Most likely the part 90 radios would still work, maybe with some repeaters or nodes down, but the phones and Internet might be completely down. In a real emergency, there would be some legitimate need for encryption of certain types of long-haul and medium-haul messages, going between the EOC and local facilities, and from the EOC out to state and federal levels. I'm thinking digital mainly. Stuff like patient lists, medical information, locations of vulnerable assets etc. Stuff like what areas have poor police protection, the full patient list with diagnoses, drug lists and CAVE from a senior care facility that's being evacuated, resupply locations, etc. The thing about HIPAA and exceptions for unencrypted radio is that it mainly concerns communications between first responders on scene and dispatchers - they already self-censor themselves somewhat since they know people are listening. Even with encrypted part 90 radios, they know that people standing around at the scene might hear what they're saying too, unless they have a strict in-ear protocol. Doing a huge patient data dump from one hospital to the other would probably not pass under the same exception. But yeah, as I said it's an over-broad proposal. I didn't catch who proposed it, I just recognized Bruce Perens (he's one of the people behind Codec2 as well). Vir fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 19:52
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I had my IC-208H remote mounted in the trunk of my 325i, which got totaled. While stripping it at the junkyard, I neglected to pull the remote cable out - or even cut the ends off, so i was stuck without a cable, and they're /so expensive/. Like 60 bucks after shipping for a four wire cable. It has come time to install radios in my new car, and I said "I'm never going to not have this thing remote mounted" and cut a USB extension cable in half, and soldered the male to the control head pins, and the female to the contacts on the radio itself. Works great so far. Have not tested max distance but I doubt the 12-15 feet I need will be a problem.
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Jul 7, 2013 20:24
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Vir posted:In a real emergency, there would be some legitimate need for encryption of certain types of long-haul and medium-haul messages, going between the EOC and local facilities, and from the EOC out to state and federal levels. I'm thinking digital mainly. Stuff like patient lists, medical information, locations of vulnerable assets etc. Stuff like what areas have poor police protection, the full patient list with diagnoses, drug lists and CAVE from a senior care facility that's being evacuated, resupply locations, etc. I still don't understand why part 90 encrypted radios would not be used for this. If it's that necessary to have this as a point to point link that operates on battery power only with no repeated in between for proper operation of an EOC it would be grossly negligent to rely on unpaid amateur volunteers who may or may not show up, may or may not have the equipment and skill to pull it off, and may or may not show up as an asset or a liability. And it's not typically necessary. I'm a former emergency operations coordinator - you move that stuff by vehicle if necessary - and if you can't move it by vehicle nobody's getting in to cause you trouble OR help you so it doesn't matter anyway. The most popular way we've move this stuff to the hospital is by HANDING A BINDER TO THE MEDEVAC PILOT, or simply using the sat phone if it needs to be done NOW. It's not rocket science, but it takes an overall knowledge of how these events work, what resources you have available, and being creative enough to figure out how to use them fully. I can't count how many volunteers, amateur radio or otherwise, that I've had turned away because they have no equipment, certifications and/or no way to shelter and feed themselves in areas where this is already a challenge: if you think you can help that way just stay home. I already have enough victims, I don't need more. So while being an amateur radio operator, I still don't see all that much utility value in someone who has one or more radios and an FCC license. I can hand any doofus a radio. Having an amateur radio license is secondary or tertiary to their usefulness. Like the volunteer search and rescue team that is also trained in high angle and trench rescue that all have their amateur radio licenses, show up as a group with their own supplies and shelter and work as a highly professional team with a leader who knows where he fits in the the incident command system. HELL YES, show up to my scene please. But some gomers with whackermobiles that think I really need them to tell me who's in the red cross shelter across town? Yeah, no.....that's not helpful. Motronic fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 20:33
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Vir posted:The thing about HIPAA and exceptions for unencrypted radio is that it mainly concerns communications between first responders on scene and dispatchers - they already self-censor themselves somewhat since they know people are listening. Even with encrypted part 90 radios, they know that people standing around at the scene might hear what they're saying too, unless they have a strict in-ear protocol. Doing a huge patient data dump from one hospital to the other would probably not pass under the same exception. It's funny that first responders are so much more careful about HIPAA than the actual hospitals and doctors. The docs around here act like their FLEX-A pager system is an encrypted landline or something; happily broadcasting pages of patient details in the clear. 
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Jul 7, 2013 21:07
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Motronic posted:I still don't understand why part 90 encrypted radios would not be used for this. If it's that necessary to have this as a point to point link that operates on battery power only with no repeated in between for proper operation of an EOC it would be grossly negligent to rely on unpaid amateur volunteers who may or may not show up, may or may not have the equipment and skill to pull it off, and may or may not show up as an asset or a liability. Some served agencies encourage their own employees to get ham licenses, but here too unless they get on the air and use it in leisure time and exercises, it will just erode. Motronic posted:The most popular way we've move this stuff to the hospital is by HANDING A BINDER TO THE MEDEVAC PILOT, or simply using the sat phone if it needs to be done NOW. It's not rocket science, but it takes an overall knowledge of how these events work, what resources you have available, and being creative enough to figure out how to use them fully. Motronic posted:I can't count how many volunteers, amateur radio or otherwise, that I've had turned away because they have no equipment, certifications and/or no way to shelter and feed themselves in areas where this is already a challenge: if you think you can help that way just stay home. I already have enough victims, I don't need more. Motronic posted:So while being an amateur radio operator, I still don't see all that much utility value in someone who has one or more radios and an FCC license. I've heard that some place volunteers also getting CERT training, or even dispatch training, or get used for more mundane tasks where radio skills aren't rally required, like clerking or food service. As far as I can tell, those who are serious about volunteering are happy to help out with that stuff too - if that particular emergency didn't take out communications. Vir fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 00:02
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Vir posted:I've heard that some place volunteers also getting CERT training, or even dispatch training, or get used for more mundane tasks where radio skills aren't rally required, like clerking or food service. As far as I can tell, those who are serious about volunteering are happy to help out with that stuff too - if that particular emergency didn't take out communications. Exactly. Those are the people you want. Someone with exactly one applicable domain of expertise (operating a radio) is of no use. You need to know what's going on where you are sent, even if they are there for nothing more than communications - to know what is important to communicate requires understanding. If that's food service, awesome. If that's civilian disaster response, great. If that's urban rescue, fantastic. But you need to be more than a radio operator. Like I said, I can hand any dope a radio just the same as I can hand any highly qualified non-radio-type person one and the results are 99.9% of the time the same. Look, I get that a lot of hams think there's gonna be some time when HF is going to save the world. But let's be realistic here: it's unlikely. If I can't get a vehicle to you or talk to you on short distance links with 50-100w radios it's unlikely that anything I have to say to you or anything you have to say to me is of any use, as we can't physically exchange bodies or supplies. Sure, there may be edge cases. But there aren't many, and it's difficult to think of one in an urban or suburban setting. Dispatch? Yeah, I'll need a few local dispatchers if I can't get to county. But there's no way in hell I'm letting someone who hasn't actually BEEN a dispatcher handle that traffic. If I don't have one it's at least going to be a chief officer from an emergency service (or the will very likely and correctly stage a revolt on me). Can HF and long distance comms make people feel better and more connected to the outside wold, knowing loved ones are safe, etc? Sure. But that's so not emcomm in the way that any professional emergency manager is ever going to think of it. That's not the focus of activities, and has negligible value on the best positive outcome of an incident during the critical action stage. That's recovery phase stuff, which usually means it's not necessary as someone has already shown up with a COW and a sat link. I feel bad about what I'm saying here in regards to the hobby that I enjoy so much. But I really, really don't see it's value in the vast majority of the most common type of natural disasters or man made mass events in an area with a functioning government and emergency management organization that's been paying attention to......the last 2 decades. If I'm missing something someone please chime in. Motronic fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 00:17
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Motronic posted:Someone with exactly one applicable domain of expertise (operating a radio) is of no use. You need to know what's going on where you are sent, even if they are there for nothing more than communications - to know what is important to communicate requires understanding. Each person needs to have a common basic set of skills (or "organic" capabilities) like knowing where they fit into the ICS, having the ability to sustain themselves for a certain period, knowing basic first aid and basic radio procedures. It's a bit like how even though there are plenty of MOS'es for radio operators they also say that "every Marine is a rifleman" first. If you know for certain that you'll never need expertise beyond the shared basics, then you obviously could eliminate that speciality from your roster. What I was talking about was that if this particular emergency is not affecting communications, then you could divert your communications volunteers to do other tasks; in more general terms, to use your expert level labor for basic level tasks. It could be a task with no relation to the speciality. Or it could be superficially related like asking the alpine rescue people carrying crates of supplies up some stairs into a shelter, or the radio amateur stationed near a dam to report the water level over the radio. But in case it IS a communications emergency, that's when expertise in the domain of radio operation is needed. In this case the radio operators should be busy establishing and expediting communications, and in my view they shouldn't as a rule be the ones who originate the messages themselves. It's also a question of work sharing - if it takes a lot of work to establish and maintain communications under the conditions, then the rest of the staff can get on with their jobs without having to learn how to keep up with the band conditions, adjust the amps and beams, etc.
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Jul 8, 2013 01:37
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Vir posted:But in case it IS a communications emergency, that's when expertise in the domain of radio operation is needed. In this case the radio operators should be busy establishing and expediting communications, and in my view they shouldn't as a rule be the ones who originate the messages themselves. It's also a question of work sharing - if it takes a lot of work to establish and maintain communications under the conditions, then the rest of the staff can get on with their jobs without having to learn how to keep up with the band conditions, adjust the amps and beams, etc. Can you give me an example of some time this would be required or has been required? I again have to go back to the simple fact that if you aren't prepared for this in house way ahead of time you are being grossly negligent. And when I prepare for these things I'm not going to use amateur equipment or frequencies because we already have a bunch of radios that everyone else carries and it sure would be nice if all of this was compatible so we could talk to each other pretty much like any other time only set to a different channel because the trunking system is down...... I'm not preparing for a "Jericho" type scenario here, and don't know that it's reasonable to. You are tasked by FEMA to prepare for a set of circumstances/eventualities that are likely to occur statistically. These are incorporated into an "all hazards" plan which has very little room for writing in resources that aren't quite well established and necessary. The only moderately labor-heavy communications infrastructure I've needed set up in a hurry in an emergency was a LAN with satellite internet access for FEMA to come in and use to assist residents in filling out paperwork for assistance. And that was well into the recovery phase of the operation. And guess who ended up teaching the electrician how to terminate CAT5 and test it?
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Jul 8, 2013 02:03
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A recent use of emcomm was this winter in northern Norway where there was an avalanche, killing some people on snowmobiles and my local group among others provided APRS trackers to the rescue workers. They cooperated with the Red Cross and I think Norsk Folkehjelp (a broadly similar organization), who provided the actual rescue workers. Our training site this weekend is near the local power company's installations, an area with no cell coverage at all, we're in the process of negotiating a deal for us to provide communications in case of a problem with their installations. As far as I know we have no current deals with the local emergency services, in fact earlier this year their radio coverage to my city (dispatch is in the next city over) was broken for about a full day, requiring that they use cellphones. No one from our group was called in. The break was in a phone line linking the city repeater, it's fully possible to link repeaters directly and provide an all-radio link from dispatch to my city but they apparently forgot how to do this that day.
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Jul 8, 2013 08:47
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Vir posted:TCP Over the Air HAM emcomm here is random, it really depends on who's in charge of the emergency services offices at any given point in time. Sometimes the whole emergency operations office seems to operate on its own and the police/fire/etc don't want to play ball, sometimes they work together, I don't get it. If they like HAMs this year then HAMs get to play, otherwise they don't. We certainly do get a lot of people who want to help but really just get in the way. Either they can't operate their equipment, or don't have the parts, or just get confused and can't handle the task very well. What we're good for is not being responders or even often critical comms guys but we can be helpful. In a sizable situation there's not really any great order to things that I've seen that lasts long, so hams would be sent to ancillary positions: shelters, welfare stations, supply locations, etc. This is what the comms 'drills' with local events often end up being. We try and let the people who are running an event or have some function be able to do that without monitoring the radio or passing along unnecessary communications. Time and time again we prove that this doesn't work as well as people would imagine when you don't do it on a very regular basis, but we can figure it out and get by. Uncle Grandpa and his two meter are perhaps best left to delivering warm blankets to shelters and not somewhere where he'll get in trouble when his radio doesn't work or he hits the wrong button somehow. As a drill volunteer I always find that someone makes an assumption about what I know about the situation before we get out there, then is not able to provide that detail when the heat is on, so you end up winging it.
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Jul 8, 2013 23:28
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I got my technician license last year and didn't think to check the forums for other HAMs until just now. I have a Yaesu VX-5 and I usually just tune into local repeaters and listen in, though I do check on the 6m band sometimes. I haven't done much with it except check into a few IRLP nets late at night when I'm bored. People Stew fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2013 02:22
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I am just getting back into using my CB radio in my car for roadtrips. Its been a long while and I am trying to remember how to use my swr meter. I have a radioshack one whcih has range. function and mode. I know I set it to CAL under range, key in the mic, and set it to the calibration mark, but what do I set range and mode to?
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Jul 13, 2013 05:55
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drat, I hadn't gotten up early and listened to any nets in a long time. I got up today at 7am PST, tune into the local IRLP repeater, and immediately hear a guy talking about his cortisone shots. It really is all about ailments sometimes.
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Jul 13, 2013 15:17
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