I have recently become more aware of and generally interested in electronics and amateur radio, and it got me thinking. What advantage, if any, would there be to having amateur radio experience, over a simple disaster crank radio/flashlight, in the event of a major natural disaster or some other emergency that leads to a longer delay in power being restored? For the sake of argument, let’s assume you have a generator or battery bank to supply your own electricity.
This. But I will say that during Hurricane Ian, direct hit, my 2m/70cm radio was very useful. Local group is extremely active. Messages to family/friends were passed on until someone with a phone would make a call for them, passing traffic. Hearing the updates of power, gas and aid in what areas was a huge help that news stations just couldn’t give at the speed it was given over radio. Radio operators were stationed in hospitals as backups for first responders and in shelters.
On a day to day basis? Not very useful unless you go HF. Then it’s expensive, even with “cheap” equipment. You don’t have to buy a $5k Kenwood but you’ll still be spending a lot.
TH-9800 and a X50 antenna 25ft in the air gets me 20 miles+ crystal clear. Florida, very flat. ~$300 not including coax cost. A $30 baofang and a slim Jim jpole thrown over a tree branch is enough to hit my local repeater though.
On a fun note that same baofang radio I’ve used for listening to ISS broadcasting to a elementary school and Russian SSTV, decoded with Robot36 on android, pictures from ISS.
It’s been a while, but I always had good luck with a half-wave dipole. It takes some effort to put one up, but it isn’t that hard or expensive. At the time, I was also able to get some ancient used gear for a couple hundred that could handle all the HF bands.
I’ve been thinking about getting back into that, with natural disasters becoming more frequent and severe.
Getting into HF doesn’t have to be that costly. Lots of hams have gotten started on HF with used gear that works just fine … after a century of hamming, there’s a lot of gear out there. And you can inexpensively make your own antennas that -can- perform nearly as well as those big expensive Yagis on a tower.
Do it! It’s great fun. Dipoles work well. I’ve found verticals to be even easier to set up, and perform good enough for POTA
I didn’t mean to imply one was better than the other, just that someone interested in getting into it should know it’s not all the same.
I actually prefer VHF/UHF, there’s just something about the mobility of it that I like so much more. But I live in an area where storms or tornadoes are the main threat, not hurricanes. If we have a disaster, we just need to coordinate, or maybe ask for help from the next town.
If something widespread hits us, I know guys who often get up at 3am because some HF band is supposed to be open. I’ll let them handle that.
I didn’t take it as one better than the other. I have my general license but could never afford the equipment…I’ve only messed with them during field days on other people’s equipment.
Are you able to go to a park outside the city and operate? With low noise, you’d be surprised how far you can go with QRP. There are plenty of inexpensive ($100-150) rigs that can do that. Paired with a bit of rope, wire, and coax, you can rig up a cheap antenna pretty easy 👍
Have you heard of the truSDX? It’ll do 5 to 8 watts ish, depending on the band and how you power it.
I bought a big group buy kit and have some left over, if you want one for the cost of the parts plus shipping I can send you one, just DM me. It came to like $50 per unit. In fact if anyone reading this wants in on that just message me, I have a few that I really don’t need to keep holding on to 👍
Edit: additionally, if you want more power, you can try buying something broken and learn to fix it. That’s what I did for my first linear amplifier, an SB 200. Then later I bought a Kenwood TS-530, broken, no transmit. Paid $200 I think? Turns out the switches were just dirty 🤷♂️
The amplifier needed more work though. Probably came out a little behind on that, after upgrading some parts too. But now it’s mine, and I’m never getting rid of it.