Let’s focus on what we can change.
The California wildfire has dominated the media for some time now. It seems these events happen monthly. We don’t want so many opportunities to learn, but as they occur we should examine them. Anyone even casually following the story knows, the breadth and depth of the damage cannot be overstated. As expected, there’s been much talk of failures in funding, leadership, and policy. For better or worse, we live in an environment where almost everything is appropriated to make a political point. In this regard, all sides of the argument have milked this issue sometimes to absurd levels. Parsing those topics is not within the scope of this blog.
Off Grid Ham is not per se a “survivalist website” but due to the nature of the topics covered here the boundary between off grid radio and survival topics is at times blurry. This is one of those times.
What is within the scope of this blog is an unspoken & unofficial goal to encourage self-reflection about how we can pull something positive out of tragedy that will improve our individual situations. None of us personally have any direct control over what happens in California, or for that matter in any disaster. But we can learn from these incidents and take action in our own lives, never forgetting that every trial endured by others is a chance to learn and hopefully mitigate the effects when and if we are tried ourselves.
Don’t wait until the disaster is in your face.
The worst time to build an ark is when the water is up to your knees. With that in mind, every off grid ham should have some predetermined plan for communications when disaster strikes. Do not wait until “it” happens. At that point you’ll be reactive not proactive. Being reactive means off-the-cuff, almost always poorly thought decisions. A few things to consider:
- With whom do you need to communicate, and where are they located?
- How long can you (or desire to) operate in disaster conditions?
- If you have to evacuate, what provisions have you made for communications while away from home?
These and other factors will control your off grid communications disaster plan. One mistake off grid hams often make is to over prepare, prepare for the wrong situations, or come up with solutions that have no corresponding problem. For example, you do not need a 100 watt solar panel and a 70 amp-hour battery to run a five watt QRP radio! Unless you need that much power for other things (and do you really “need” the other things?) your power production capacity should be proportional to the load.
The bottom line is to define your goals and have everything ready before a crisis arrives.
Data modes: Legitimate solution or trendy gimmick?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with using data modes in disaster conditions. But ask yourself: What are you accomplishing with data modes that cannot be done with analog voice or CW? If you have a clear answer to that question, then go ahead and implement data modes into your off grid communications plan. Data modes add a layer of complexity to communications in the form of extra hardware and software. This extra stuff needs to earn its keep. Running data just for the sake of running data is a poor plan. Data modes are the trendy hot thing in the ham radio world, but we are not here to be edgy and cool. Use data only if it serves a clear purpose and does not unnecessarily complicate your plan.
Test your plan. California wildfire
Please, please don’t become the ham radio version of a “tacticool” survivalist who plows a ton of money into gear and equipment, then stores it in the basement with no intention of doing anything with it until society collapses.
Every ham has seen them: They post photos of their cool radio gear on the internet and talk a big game, but never actually do anything. Get out at least a few times a year and practice operating in as close as you can get to the expected conditions you might face in a disaster situation. Field Day, contests, and nets are prime time to test out your plan, but you can operate any time. There is no need to wait for a special occasion.
As you stress-test your equipment and your operating plan, problems and weaknesses will reveal themselves. Certainly, do not be disappointed! This is exactly why it’s so important to do a practice run. Use the setback as a learning opportunity to fix what’s wrong so you’ll be ready when it really matters. California wildfire
The best disaster is the one you didn’t attend.
No matter how well you organized you may be, there may come a point during an incident when the only sensible option is to get out. Your plan should include what to do when the plan is no longer viable. Approach any emergency conditions with a clear head, and don’t feel like you must stick with your plan no matter what. Pride aggravates disasters, humility mitigates them. California wildfire
Along those lines, when public safety agencies tell you to get out, follow their instructions. Sticking around against professional advice is not going to improve your situation.
The aftermath. California wildfire
There are people in California who have lost everything. Many of them will never recover. Others may recover their physical losses but will carry emotional scars. There are dozens of studies confirming that those involved in natural disasters are at very high risk for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This applies to both victims and first responders. Hopefully you will never have a similar experience, but if you are, be on the watch for it in yourself and others. California wildfire
Every plan should be prepared with the hope it will never be used. But when and if the unthinkable happens, being prepared ahead of time greatly increases the chance of getting through it. In the case of the California wildfires, I’m not sure any plan can account for entire neighborhoods burning to the ground. At that point, the only sensible action is to run for your life! Yet, we should never convince ourselves that if no preparation is enough, then no preparation is necessary. There’s a lot of people in California wondering if they could or should have done anything different. They should not guilt-trip themselves because it’s unlikely they could have done anything to change the outcome. That does not negate the need to be prepared anyway.
Resources.
Here is a recent Off Grid Ham article that goes into more detail about preparedness.
Needed for reflection and preparation W2USN
I hope I gave you something useful to think about.
“we live in an environment where almost everything is appropriated to make a political point.”
You need government to protect you. You can’t do it yourself. I am researching basic math skills and it seems obvious that there is a correlation. If you can’t do 13×24 in your head, in 30 seconds, you are screwed.
Government does play a role. How much and when is for others to discuss. I’m just a radio guy.
I believe Ronald Reagan summed it up when he said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I”m from the Government and I’m here to help.”
Well said, Chris. The point about needing to test your plan is very important. How else are you ever going to know if things actually work the way you hope they will?
I agree with you completely about using the digital/data amateur radio modes. Yes, they’re nice, genuinely useful and all that, but they also add a great deal of complexity to an already complicated device, a radio transceiver. And chances are good that the person you’re trying to talk to doesn’t have the right equipment, software and training to use the mode you are. Even CW is problematic these days. Voice is going to be about the only way you’re going to be reliably get through.
It’s great to hear from you, Randy.
In general I think data modes are overrated. I’m not against them if they serve a genuine purpose, but it seems like data is used for emergencies “just because” or for no clear reason. Obviously, if one chooses to use data, then the station on the other end will need to be similarly equipped also, essentially doubling the complexity and points of potential failure.
Digital modes aren’t the problem per se. What is the problem is the overhead required to operate the mode. Thinking about VARA and the requirements, there’s a massive downside to making it a standard for EMCOM use.
For big organizations who have trailers and generators and big budgets, VARA is great. They aren’t worried about running a Win PC (or something capable of running WINE). Meanwhile, anyone who’s left with literally the shirt on their backs (and pants, hopefully) will only have what’s in their pants pockets. Almost nothing pocket sized will run VARA. But just about anything will run Rattlegram and quite well. If you’re trying to summon a helicopter are you going to bother trying to fish out your IC-7300, interface, laptop, and figure out how to connect your wire antenna? Or are you going to grab your HT and cell phone?
There’s a pretty will known saying in photography – The best camera is the one in your hand. People love to get caught up in specifications and hardware, and wishing instead of being happy with the shot they could get. Many great photographs were made specifically because of the shortcomings of the equipment.
Imagine that bug-out scenario with a small QRP rig with a loaded whip, cell phone and interface like the digirig or just a USB cable. Something that didn’t require much setup, and easily fit in a backpack. Never mind that iOS already has satellite comms and Starlink/TMO will open it up to anyone later this year, just sticking with amateur EMCOM. Sure, using a phone isn’t as slick as using a Windows PC, but it’s also easily deployed and literally handheld. The battery and OS are optimized for day-long use. Now imagine someone on the other side of the QSO, dealing with noise from their setup, while you continue to repeat and correct. Meanwhile that Rattlegram message has forward error correction built in. Can keep track of conversations, and has a UI that everyone is accustomed to.
Not saying that rattlegram is the answer, but having a closed source mode that the developer is openly hostile to porting over isn’t acceptable, no matter how good it is. Not only VARA, but also Winlink and the various digital voice modes that require hardware codecs. Luckily there are hams working on open systems like M17 (for both DV and data) that are beginning to show results. We need to encourage development of open systems if only because there’s no excuse for tying something important like EMCOM to one platform.
Hello there, wow you cover a lot of ground and I thank you for the time and effort you put into your reply.
This article was not intended to focus on data modes and I won’t get into the minutiae of them here, you do bring up many valid points. One matter you allude to was included in the original draft of this post but was later edited out for space was the lack widespread adoption of data modes for EMCOMM. While I do not have firm numbers to back it up, I’m confident that outside of large government and private organizations, very little EMCOMM traffic is via data. When SHTF, no one is going to fool around setting up computers and take extra steps just to send out a signal and hope someone else also went through the hassle of having the proper equipment to receive it.
I’ll admit I’m pretty retrograde when it comes to my own personal EMCOMM plans. I run conventional analog voice and CW. Less complexity, less power draw, less points of failure, less stuff to transport, more likelihood that someone will copy my signal. I’m not dissing those who use data modes, nor whould I discourage it. If that’s what works for them, then go for it.
After nearly 30 years in public safety, and now about 8 in amateur radio, I often shake my head at the unnecessary complexity of emergency communications plans and equipment. When bad things happen and we need to fall back on true “backup” or “emergency” comms systems, it’s not realistic to think we can duplicate the level of detail and bandwidth used in “normal” every day communications. Even with digital modes we aren’t going to be sending multi-megabyte forms and files back and forth! Simple information passed with accuracy, purpose, and brevity will rule the day regardless of agency or service. I often want to ask some of the people who develop “emergency” comm plans to actually show me what they put on paper can truly be done… on a normal day, let alone in a disaster. Sometimes the power requirements alone are absurd.
It also doesn’t matter that you have multi-million dollar vehicles/equipment if you don’t have anyone to operate and maintain it all. I’ve seen “credentialed” public safety comms personnel baffled as to why a mobile radio system wasn’t working after testing “everything”… only to use their own antenna analyzer to find a corroded antenna connection. The recently departed, but long serving, director of the local health conglomerate’s “Center for Emergency Preparedness” is a ham… who didn’t know his/her call sign, didn’t know when his/her license expired, and believed as long as he/she was “around” the emergency communications center that anyone could run the ham radio gear. My state, Maine, has an interesting pattern of training up multitudes more “mobile command center” Leaders than Technicians (the folks who are actually tasked with keeping everything running). This is often government’s biggest problem… far too many Chiefs and not enough well trained workers.
Hams often don’t fare any better. Far too many with a chest or folder full of emergency communicator “credentials” could not, with “the plan” and equipment in hand, actually assemble everything into a working station… for voice/SSB, let alone a digital mode. Throw the inevitable “Murphy’s Law” into the mix and they would be dead in the water.
As I began to explore HF radio, with an eye toward these very situations – emergencies and REGIONAL communication, the challenges of QRP operating as well as both understanding & using NVIS propagation have proven to be very valuable. Some local “elmers” often scoff at my interest in QRP/NVIS offering supportive comments like, “life’s too short for QRP”, or, “no one is going to be on 80m during the day”. My nearly universal response are questions like, “will you need to contact Russia or New Zealand in an emergency”, or, “will your entire station fit in a small backpack”, or, “how long can you run your 100w rig off a small battery and a little solar”?
What really drove all this home for me, aside from articles on offgridham, were narratives by Thomas Witherspoon, K4SWL, on his website qrper.com. Even before storms last year hit his part of North Carolina extremely hard, that site contained very informative articles about QRP operation. In a number of them he left home for an activation with everything BUT an antenna. His self imposed challenge was to build an antenna on site with only what he could acquire during the trip. I now look at many stores and products in a whole new light.
A BIG thank you to Chris and this website for pointing me in the right direction early on! Keep up the great work!!!
Hi Dave, thank you for your comments. I personally have never been involved with any organized response group, but many of my readers are and they all tell a similar story.
It seems the quality and effectiveness of these groups varies considerably depending on the leadership, funding, volunteer recruitment, and political support. Some are very well trained and experienced while others are little more than social clubs.
I appreciate your support and hope you’ll stop by again soon.