Whatever Happened to Ham Radio?

[bitseeker]

LOL! Fortunately, it's just a composited pic (and not very well done).

[djacobow]

Funny thing... I've always been suspicious of the idea that amateur radio operators would be considered useful to public safety workers who already have their own sophisticated radio systems. But recently, I've been going to some emergency prep meetings in my city, and the firemen actually seem to like the ARES folks and find them useful.

When the fireman presses the PTT on his pre-programmed Motorola and nobody responds, he's done. He hasn't the time or the training to figure out that an antenna connection is lose or whatever else might have gone wrong.

The ARES guy, nerd that he is, knows his equipment, and when he hands a microphone over to a public safety person, it is going to work.

To my surprise, the fireman present at the meetings pointed to multiple situations where this has actually happened.

So... huh.

-- dave
WE6EE

The attached always makes me laugh about ARES.

[bitseeker]

That's an interesting aspect: keeping gear going during medium- to long-term emergencies.

[Richard Crowley]

Remember that municipal systems rarely (never?) connect any farther than their own jurisdiction. And that is the best case. In large-scale emergencies, long-distance communication is frequently knocked out and ham radio is the only means of communication beyond the affected area.

We hear frequent horror stories about different services (police, fire, medical) with different radio systems having no way to talk to each other in major incidents/emergencies. Ham radio is indispensable in both of these cases. But many municipalities are taking advantage of updating to new digital radio systems to integrate communication between all the services.

[Bud]

Police, firefighters, meds and such can talk to each other as much as they want, good for them . The problem is they have no means to UPDATE THE PUBLIC, this was what the Toronto incident demonstrated. Ham radio can bridge the gap and should be seriously considered.

[janoc]

Police, firefighters, meds and such can talk to each other as much as they want, good for them . The problem is they have no means to UPDATE THE PUBLIC, this was what the Toronto incident demonstrated. Ham radio can bridge the gap and should be seriously considered.

Well, but that assumes that their trunked base station(s) has not been knocked out too. Once that happens they are carrying only very crappy walkie-talkies that don't work for any significant distance (especially in built-up areas) and that often don't work at all once the infrastructure is out - the radios are not freely tunable, they expect some control signals to be in place, etc. In such situations even a basic supermarket walkie-talkie may do more service than their kit.

Also it is (unfortunately) still quite common in many places that the fire/meds/police radios are actually not interoperable and they aren't able to talk to each other directly without going through dispatch (which may not be available/in range/etc.). Or they have to carry/share multiple radios on the scene when e.g. the fire commander wants to talk to the paramedics or police.

And that assumes that the service in question even has radios in the first place - e.g. in my home country (Slovakia) the state has deemed acceptable that some services didn't have radios at all and were relying on cell phones instead. Which works great (and is much cheaper) when everything is hunky-dory but then the cellular network stopped working once (because of a technical fault, fortunately not because of a major catastrophe) and a person has died because they were unable to dispatch an ambulance. Suddenly they started to put the radios back in service in a hurry. I just hope that the idiot who has approved this insanity got fired but given the corruption levels I have my doubts ...

Informing the public is probably easier done using bullhorns/speakers/normal (emergency) radio channels - keep in mind that HAM radio is not generally interoperable with these service radios, so you would have to set up the HAM radio op with one of their radios to act as a relay. Also one HAM radio op can inform only so many people. Broadcasting the news on regular broadcast radio will reach much more people.

Furthermore, this also poses additional challenges because generally you do not want to make everything public by default but you need to control the flow of information - e.g. an unconfirmed report or a worried call from a police officer on site about a levee that looks in danger of breaching during a storm/hurricane (or a large fire/bomb/whatever) could unleash a widespread panic, making the bad situation much worse - even more so if the original call was unfounded and there was no real danger.

This is a complex problem that rarely gets solved by throwing more gear/money at it unless someone engages the brain too.

[Wolfgang]

In Germany, there was quite a debate about the usefulness of emergency communication based on ham radio.
IIRC, the latest state of affairs is that the government does NOT rely or plans to rely on ham radio based emergency communication.

I do know that emergency communcation (here: Notfunk) is seen by many ham club leaders as a means to make ham radio more popular and
visible regarding public attention, especially in an age where mobile phones are available for everyone and a lot of people ask themselves what
ham radio could be good for in the 21st century.

As an example, there was a short article in a lot of media describing a case where a disabled German ham operator fell out of his wheelchair and the only means
of communication left to him was his ham rig. He called for help, a south american ham responded, called another ham in germany, the found out his adress and put
the poor chap back in his wheelchair. Astonishingly, nobody in the ham community asked why he did not have his mobile phone or the red cross emergency wristband with him.

So, in my view, telling the wrong stories to support a good cause is not a smart thing to do. If ham clubs would be serious, a well-organized integration of ham radio
emergency communication with all the other emergency services (red cross, THW, military, police, ...) is a must. Unfortunately (please prove me wrong) I dont see this happening on a broader scale.

[james_s]

I think it probably depends on the specific circumstances, and the people involved. I've heard of cases where it seemed the ARES guys were just kind of in the way and not very useful. I suppose in other circumstances they could be really helpful, it just depends. For widespread distribution of information, it's hard to beat old fashioned broadcast radio, even if the local stations get knocked off the air, powerful stations elsewhere can be received hundreds of miles away.

The fact that a simple power outage could knock out cellular service after just a few hours strikes me as a serious issue though. Landline phones would operate for quite a long time without grid power so if we are going to depend on cellular phones it seems reasonable to require at least a subset of the towers to be capable of operating a week or more on standby power sources.

[bd139]

ARES forget it IMHO.

For me there’s another emergency situation that is a better service to the end users. Amateur radio will still be viable if government pull the plug on mainstream comms because is vast and difficult to jam. This does happen and has actually happened to a lot of us in the UK before such as in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7/2005 bombings. Stuck in London, all mobile phone service was switched off and land lives went down in some parts of the city too. Only thing that will remain is red line communications between government HQ and various agencies around the U.K. who are on private circuits.

Look at turkey’s attempted coup for another example of this as a control method. Media blackout.

In such situations like these, news and internal information can be relayed easily over security borders.

[PhilipPeake]

I am not a huge fan of the emergency communications for a couple of reason.

It is pushed by many as being the lever to keep the amateur frequencies intact.
Its not a particularly valid argument now that the government has their own (superior, at least in their minds) solutions.
Seems like a good reason to actually relinquish those frequencies if that is the best argument you can come up with.

Secondly, almost all of the emcom activity that I see is based upon VHF (because they insist on using email and need the bandwidth) and the use of repeaters. If power outages take down the "professional" systems, and cell towers, it will certainly take down the repeaters.

Play the game if you want, but don't overestimate/overstate its importance.

G8FVM/K7UF

[janoc]

Look at turkey’s attempted coup for another example of this as a control method. Media blackout.

In such situations like these, news and internal information can be relayed easily over security borders.

In situations like those if the state wants to actually control the information flow, the HAMs are historically the first target - ban on transmitting, confiscations of gear, etc. Keep in mind that the government knows where every single us lives and keeps our gear (it is part of the licensing requirements). So if you are hoping of using a HAM radio as a way of subverting a government going rogue or some sort of tyranny, keep dreaming.

Just look at how restricted any radio operation was in the former communist countries - at first banned outright, later on only well checked "reliable" people were able to obtain a license. And the bands were constantly monitored so heavens help you if you tried to talk about something deemed "sensitive" or "improper" on air.

In Germany, there was quite a debate about the usefulness of emergency communication based on ham radio.
IIRC, the latest state of affairs is that the government does NOT rely or plans to rely on ham radio based emergency communication.

 

That's totally missing the point. No government can/will rely on  HAM radio operators in disaster situations, that would be insane. HAMs are there to supplement the official capacity before something more permanent/"official" can be established when possible, not to replace any kind of official capacity.

Also keep in mind that in Europe it is quite rare to have catastrophes that would cut communications or access to a large area at once, simply due to the geography. OTOH, it is enough to have a major flooding or e.g. a snow calamity - during the catastrophic floods in Czech republic in 2002 HAM operators were often the only way to contact the authorities for many villages where normal phone networks were disrupted/destroyed and roads were impassable in many places. This is fairly well documented.

Anyhow, this is not really specific to amateur radio users, anyone with a radio (even a CB) could be useful like this. In fact, it is often even your legal duty and you could be prosecuted for nor providing help if you refuse without a good reason (e.g. endangering yourself) in such situations. Only HAMs tend to be better equipped, trained and organized than a random person with a CB walkie talkie. And HAMs have emergency communications explicitly in their "job specifications" (legal frameworks, including from ITU). Even if the HAM isn't in the disaster zone themselves, there still needs to be someone to receive the calls from the affected area elsewhere in the world (e.g. the hurricane or earthquake hits) for this to work.

Some stats:
ARES:
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/ARES/ARES%202017%20Report.pdf

German emergency comms (mentions e.g. the Nepal earthquake where HAMs in Europe were able to maintain contact and speed up the emergency response)
http://notfunk-deutschland.de/html/news.html

Belgian organization, mentions e.g. 9/11 traffic, the recent Italian earthquake, etc.
https://www.uba.be/fr/radioamateurisme/aide-en-cas-durgence

So denigrating this only because you have either never encountered something like it or you don't understand how the service works is just ignorance, IMO.

[janoc]

Secondly, almost all of the emcom activity that I see is based upon VHF (because they insist on using email and need the bandwidth) and the use of repeaters. If power outages take down the "professional" systems, and cell towers, it will certainly take down the repeaters.

HF is not practical for such local use, both because of the size of the gear and the way HF propagates. So local networks will invariably be VHF/UHF based. I don't know about your ARES guys but I believe in many places there are various coordinators that have spare repeater/generator and all the required accessories prepared in storage. In the worst case setting up an emergency repeater is a matter of putting up a portable radio with a car battery - many radios can do a simple cross-band (e.g. 2m - 70cm) repeater out of the box. Or you go "old school" and build a net to relay the messages, with an actual human being there. Getting the "official" infrastructure up and running will definitely take a lot longer than this.

Anyhow, again, that's not the point really - the idea is to have someone on the ground should something happen before the emergency responders manage to get to you and take over. Even if that means being able to call for help on your CB across the street.

Play the game if you want, but don't overestimate/overstate its importance.

G8FVM/K7UF

By all means. OTOH, saying it is not useful and implying that these are just some busybodies who want to feel important is also doing a huge disservice to it.

[james_s]

In situations like those if the state wants to actually control the information flow, the HAMs are historically the first target - ban on transmitting, confiscations of gear, etc. Keep in mind that the government knows where every single us lives and keeps our gear (it is part of the licensing requirements). So if you are hoping of using a HAM radio as a way of subverting a government going rogue or some sort of tyranny, keep dreaming.

That's actually a pretty compelling argument *against* getting licensed if that is a situation one wishes to be prepared for. I hold a technician class ham license, but one of the things I was not too crazy about is the ease at which anyone who learns my callsign can look up exactly who I am and where I live, thus I do not share my callsign over any other medium. I also decided that once I was licensed I had better behave myself, so no more pirate FM broadcasting or other fun stuff we did as kids.

[Wolfgang]

I think I just stated facts.

The German government did not state if they like or dislike ARES, they just decided not to use it, for whatever reason.

And, when you see how official emergency communication is organized for fire brigades, medical aid, catastrophy relief, THW, air traffic, ... its clear that radio amateurs
would need some integration effort and training to fit in there. Some have (at least those that are also members of the organization mentioned above), but
a lot of them dont. When I took my license, it was an absolutely minor issue hardly covered at all.

So, if you promote ARES on a broader scale, things cannot stay as they are. This means a better education of the average radio amateur to make sense.

[AF6LJ]

In situations like those if the state wants to actually control the information flow, the HAMs are historically the first target - ban on transmitting, confiscations of gear, etc. Keep in mind that the government knows where every single us lives and keeps our gear (it is part of the licensing requirements). So if you are hoping of using a HAM radio as a way of subverting a government going rogue or some sort of tyranny, keep dreaming.

That's actually a pretty compelling argument *against* getting licensed if that is a situation one wishes to be prepared for. I hold a technician class ham license, but one of the things I was not too crazy about is the ease at which anyone who learns my callsign can look up exactly who I am and where I live, thus I do not share my callsign over any other medium. I also decided that once I was licensed I had better behave myself, so no more pirate FM broadcasting or other fun stuff we did as kids.

Seriously; that is not a big deal, the same information can be had elsewhere n the net. No amateur license necessary. An individual's name and address are the easiest things to obtain.

One will note I have a PO Box the reason for that dates well before my earning (ha ha) my Extra ticket.
The Post Office folk here are not capable of delivering a letter to the right address... At least by having a PO Box that limits what can happen to my mail...

[james_s]

It's not that hard to obtain that information if you know who the person is, but in many cases you don't. I have not gone to any great lengths to hide my personal identity here because it's not *that* big of a deal but to find it with certainty I suspect would take some effort. Someone could look up a callsign and in many cases find the person's real address with trivial ease. A P.O. box helps tremendously with that but I suspect those are in the minority. I don't go too far out of my way to hide, but I try not to be the low hanging fruit.

[djacobow]

My point about ARES utility was that some public service workers in my area told me stories where it was useful. So I don't have to debate it; I know it to be so. (Unless they were lying, I suppose.) Now, how useful or important, that's another question.

Interestingly, our local ARES group's charter is to provide emcomm services to all organs of local government. Now, I'm not sure it matters in a short-term emergency if the city council can talk to the zoning board, but I guess in a longer-term situation it might. Then again, it's hard for me to imagine a long-term situation that needs such comms unless things have really, really gone off the rails.

[AF6LJ]

Out here our ARES group trains for a role as passing logistics traffic for hospitals and other public agencies. This is good since it doesn't compromise patient information and frees up personnel for more critical tasks. We also have other amateur groups that aid with animal rescue during wild fires and the like.

[james_s]

If we get to that long term situation I doubt anyone is going to care if people using radio gear are licensed or part of an organization. If things get that bad the FCC is probably not going to have much to do anyway.

[AF6LJ]

If we get to that long term situation I doubt anyone is going to care if people using radio gear are licensed or part of an organization. If things get that bad the FCC is probably not going to have much to do anyway.

As far as amateur radio goes there is no FCC.
They just fined someone and he gave them the middle finger and is still on the air.

[james_s]

That's surprising. I was under the impression that in the unlikely event they do target someone for misbehaving they come down pretty hard. Maybe they're too busy going after nudity or cursing on TV.

[LukeW]

SDR, FPGA, microcontrollers, and even surface mount are sometimes viewed as suspicious newfangled magic.

Look at any amateur radio meetup or organisation and it's almost entirely 60yo white dudes. It has the lowest diversity of pretty much any social institution anywhere, in terms of age, gender or whatever.

The single biggest thing that "happened" to amateur radio, basically, is the Internet.

Young(er) people interested in radio today are typically not interested in "chewing the rag" as their motivation - we have constant access to Twitter, forums, and other Internet services that perform that function.

The main areas of interest, which need to realistically be the focus areas if the hobby is going to evolve instead of going the way of the apatosaurus, are machine-to-machine communications which aren't oriented around the idea of a person talking on the end of the link.

Machines that talk to machines, telemetry, wireless sensor networks, IoT, OSI-model networks generally, software-defined radio, microcontrollers and programmable logic, open-source instruments and tools built around these modern technologies, radar, radio astronomy, satellite communications and remote sensing are probably some of the core areas that people are interested in with regards to RF today.

The concept of a "shack" or station where a human operator sits and keeps all their gear is anachronistic, too.

Emergency communications? Government can communicate with the public via SMS, TV, broadcast radio, etc.
For very fast, agile updates of what's happening in the world, check Twitter.

If all cellphone and internet services are completely knocked out by some catastrophic event, what would that event look like?
And what role, realistically, would ARES play?

Maybe modern EMCOM needs to take a different approach - IP networks, Wi-Fi WANs and femtocells that can rapidly be deployed to restore connectivity that the general public is familiar with, using the devices that they already have.

[bd139]

Some good points there.

However it misses three things. The social, skill and competitive aspects. It isn’t just about technology but how it manifests itself in human hands. Sometimes people do things the old and hard way because it’s more fun. Hence the ridiculously large CW following.

Voice modes are only as dead as they are because HF propagation is crap at the moment so people are playing digimodes due to the better efficiency.

Shacks are however portable now. Mine is

[Kalvin]

The best radio is what is available and what works when you need it. There have been some storms here in Finland which have caused blackouts for the mobile and rescue radio networks as the base stations were running out of batteries. Ham radio can be kept operational quite long time even with a car battery and/or emergency generator until one runs out out gas. If someone happens to need emergency help during blackout, the ham radio can be used for relaying the distress call. For non-emergency situations one can use the ham radio for asking for more gas or food supplies.

[janoc]

I think I just stated facts.

The German government did not state if they like or dislike ARES, they just decided not to use it, for whatever reason.

And, when you see how official emergency communication is organized for fire brigades, medical aid, catastrophy relief, THW, air traffic, ... its clear that radio amateurs
would need some integration effort and training to fit in there. Some have (at least those that are also members of the organization mentioned above), but
a lot of them dont. When I took my license, it was an absolutely minor issue hardly covered at all.

So, if you promote ARES on a broader scale, things cannot stay as they are. This means a better education of the average radio amateur to make sense.

I think we agree here, my point was not to promote ARES or to make a big deal out of it, just to point out that it does exist and it is actually useful.

That a government doesn't want to formally work with the HAMs is another issue and debate and not really indicative of anything. It is kinda like volunteer firefighters or Red Cross volunteers - the state at best gives them some funding or some gear for their activities but that's that, no official planning is done around these groups because they may or may not be available in a crisis situation (being volunteer and all). But that doesn't mean they don't play an important role whenever something happens.

I don't think anyone is advocating equipping e.g. firefighters or paramedics with HAM radio stations so that they can talk to ARES operators or train staff (or HAMs) for this - even though it couldn't hurt and similar things have been done on a volunteer basis already.

E.g. it is common for paramedics/firefighters to monitor the designated emergency frequencies on both HF/CB and sometimes UHF/VHF because a lot of truckers carry these radios. Before cellphones were widespread it was literally saving lives by getting the help to a road  accident faster. Even today it is not pointless because there are a lot of even major roads with terrible cell coverage (just made a trip across Austria, Germany and France yesterday - my phone was struggling to get a signal for a large part of the trip outside of major cities). A radio call could get out but a 3G phone would be dead as a brick there.