ham/field radio skills ever save your life or lots of trouble? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / rf-microwave

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 03:58:20 pm
content: I know its not a military base, but has anyone here ever been in a situation where unconventional radio (i.e. not cell phones) and possibly even radio operator skills/radio repair skills helped you out in a big way?anyone have the epic radio equivalent of this mechanical feat?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Leray

author: m3vuv
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2019, 02:55:46 am
content: once had a vhf ex taxi radio reprogramed for 2 meter band on my motorbike,was on my way to a court apperance at the magistrates about 20 miles away,the bike broke down about halfway there,i had no tools on me and no phone signal,used the radio to chat to a friend via lincoln city repater,he brought me some tools out,repaired the bike and got to court with about 10 mins to spare,the radio saved my bacon that day,paul m3vuv.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2019, 03:08:48 am
content: almost smokey and the bandit

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2019, 04:54:00 am
content: Radioed in that a fellow competitor had capsized while racing. We were about 3 or 4 miles off shore. It is not every day you see a yacht turn turtle.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2019, 07:40:48 am
content: Not my story, but I read on a Romanian electronics forum how a user, a former convicted to forced labor in a political concentration camp, managed to make an AM radio receiver from some wire and other scrap materials found on the working site. That happened long before the fall of the Berlin wall, and long before Internet was a thing, during the Ceausescu regime.Many decades later he started this website dedicated to vintage radio:http://www.proradioantic.ro/IIRChttps://www.elforum.info/profile/175977-ferivisky/His story published in a Romanian journal:https://www.jurnalbihorean.ro/actualitate/2017/10/04/a-prins-vocea-moscovei-in-lagar-cu-radioul-construit-de-el.bihoreanEnglish version (Google translated)https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jurnalbihorean.ro%2Factualitate%2F2017%2F10%2F04%2Fa-prins-vocea-moscovei-in-lagar-cu-radioul-construit-de-el.bihorean

author: tkamiya
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2019, 02:24:55 am
content: An only skill that routinely come in handy is use of PROPER phonetic alphabets. When I call in for emergency services, it helps to know Z is Zulu, not zebra. It tends to confuse non-professionals though, unless I use Z for Zulu. Then again, I was asked "B for what?" at one time....

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2021, 06:42:00 pm
content: The movie Dawns Early Light came to mind with recent events, I wonder if the teleco's and media companies keep censoring will the president have a dedicated HAM band one day lolThat movie has to be the best instance of radio being useful with the old crap that most of us have (or terminator 3).

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2021, 11:34:43 pm
content: Got accident victims EMS help twice with a two meter handheld, one had a severe neck injury, in the middle of nowhere. In the days pre-cellular. Bag phones were around, but a then college student could barely afford a 2 meter handheld. Thanks Dad for the HTX-202. Also reported one car fire while listening to local repeater, and assisted local township FD in obtaining phone line reconnection after a tornado. They called Ma Bell many, many times, on a cellular to no avail. One call on a two meter direct patch to the adjacent counties' 911 Center caught the attention of the 911 equipment tech who made things happen fast, and service was restored quickly.Back then a rep from one of the local ham clubs was always in the 911 center as well. Duty rotated amongst the local clubs/Skywarn and was taken seriously. Good thing the local repeaters had a free phone patch into various local agencies.A new dual band handheld proved very useful during the initial COVID mess as I am a designated employee at a local institution. Funny how many designated employees at various empty places quickly picked a local repeater and had a morning / evening roll call of sorts. Nothing serious came out of that, but it sure was nice to know I was not totally alone. We have a local warehouse for a big vendor of radios. Nice dual band rigs of Japanese origin were suddenly available at what had to be just their cost, with careful parking lot pickup. Thanks for the inexpensive Yaesu, DX Engineering. It helped with Morale big time. I felt a lot more comfortable knowing I had a backup to cellular when working in the concrete canyons of campus. The audio quality blows the Baofeng out of the water.That was "back in the day" , late 1990s, except for the COVID part.A few years ago the Feds supplied a grant and the local rural FD got digital radios, enhanced phone lines, much better coverage, centralized dispatch, and backups. I doubt they would ever need me again, but they know where I am.Steve

author: mathsquid
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 02:59:10 am
content: Last year, I believe during the early part of the pandemic, there was a weird internet outage in my area. All the broadband carriers were down and no service on any of the cellular carriers. A bunch of neighbors were outside asking each other if they had any service. It was kind of spooky. I got on the repeater, and learned that the outage was affecting several surrounding towns/counties. After an hour or so, service returned in a patchwork, and we all kept each other updated on who had service. It was a strange experience overall.The following day I heard third-hand that the culprit was a major fiber-optic cable failure that took out internet in much of this part of Georgia. I'm not sure I believe that--isn't the internet supposed to be more redundant--but I never heard any other explanation.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 03:00:32 am
content: nah those happen alot, I had no internet like 3 days because of a fiber break. its less reliable then 15 years ago I think. It seems more interconnected now so you can imagine the failure tree.

author: TheMG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 05:08:41 pm
content: Not particularly that exciting, but I did once phone a tow truck for a fellow ham who's car broke down in an area without cell coverage, he got a hold of me through one of our 2m repeaters. Around here you drive just 5 minutes out of town and you've got no cell service for almost an hour at the next town.Quote from: mathsquid on January 15, 2021, 02:59:10 amTelco infrastructure is often not as redundant as one would expect. Often they'll have redundant fibers within the same cable, but not physically separate cables as is the case where I live, there is only a single fiber cable servicing the entire region. Outages have occurred several times over the last few years.Even in the case where redundant routes are possible, sometimes they are not setup to automatically fail-over to the other route, service has to be re-routed manually. Other times even with automatic fail-over in place, things don't always work according to plan.In an ideal world, yes, every telco service should have physical path redundancy with seamless automatic fail-over, etc, but unfortunately our world is far from ideal and there's a lot of decisions motivated by money to keep infrastructure costs down.

author: Melt-O-Tronic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 06:13:35 pm
content: In 2006 (IIRC), a private sailing vessel was sinking in the South Pacific. They were able to make contact, via ham radio, with an operator in Florida who coordinated a rescue. It made national news. Not long after, at a public event, I had some kids from the Civil Air Patrol visiting my station and talking to people on my radio. One of those contacts was the Florida operator who told them the story and how he was able to assist. It was awesome!In 2012 while driving cross-country, I listened live to a similar rescue where a sailboat had grounded on an uninhabited coral reef in the Pacific. Their rescue was also coordinated by a ham radio operator on the mainland.When I lived in Connecticut, members of my ham radio club were assisting the Red Cross in a Saturday drill, simulating an apartment fire. Midway through the exercise, there was a REAL apartment fire a few miles away. The teams immediately deployed and found that there was little or no cell phone coverage in that spot and the Red Cross simplex radios didn't work. The ham radio operators became the primary means of communication (thanks to access to repeaters) for the real incident.Also around that time, a very expensive house burned to the ground in front of firefighters because the one truck that arrived was unable to call for help either on their radios or cell phones. After that, the ham radio club was invited to assist in a large scale exercise in that same neighborhood. Ham radio worked; fire radios didn't. The exercise was a success and everyone learned the value and resilience that amateur radio brings.I've used ham radio several times, as a Motorcycle Marshal supporting charity bicycle rides, to call for assistance in hilly terrain when bicyclists had mechanical problems. Even though I'm in Texas now, there are a lot of areas where terrain makes cell service unpredictable.

author: Teledog
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 04:27:09 am
content: Years ago, friends were nailed in an avalanche. (Wedge Mountain, by Whistler)Had my 2M HT, local repeaters were noisy with "field day emergency practice".Called in a mayday & the air went silent...Went OOB to a local taxi co. & they connected me to the RCMP.They flew in a chopper, friend was transported to local hospital, then chopper/medivac to Vancouver General & lived.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 05:40:24 am
content: A good friend of mine lives on a boat here in Friday Harbor, WA, and he often has his scanner on. One of the channels he monitors is the "Family Radio Service" (low-power channels on 462-467 MHz). One day he heard a call for help from a climber on Mt. Baker (about 60 miles to the east). His partner had fallen into a crevasse and was severely injured. Apparently nobody else heard the distress call. My friend contacted emergency services and was able to play back the radio transmission, which had enough detail that a rescue copter was able to locate the climbers and make the rescue. Everyone involved felt that had my friend not heard the call, one or perhaps both climbers would have died on the mountain.Me, perhaps not quite life and death, but when sailing between the U,S west coast and Hawaii, I have on a couple of occasions used my marine SSB to help coordinate assistance for other boats in distress. I also have used VHF, satphone, sat-email, and SSB PACTOR email to assist in safety-of-life communications. I'm definitely more active in this than most, because I have made close to a dozen Hawaii and back passage, acting as communications vessel (and racing myself) during "Pacific Cup" sailboat races.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2021, 06:32:15 pm
content: OOB to the local Taxi, on Field Day? Wow!God Bless You for your skills and patience!Steve

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2021, 10:38:19 pm
content: 2m saved me from getting involved in people who are deranged in person.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2021, 04:31:02 am
content: It seems that since the capital protoriot (not sure if I want to call it a riot unless I see lots of flames, if this is due to lack of flammable materials in DC or lighters on the participants is unknown) there is a big interest in getting compromising information on angry demonstrators/rioters/criminals/whateverdefinitionhaveyou. With this sort of increased interest in vigilante activity its why I was concerned about court orders not being required for a station inspection. Both sides of the political party seem interested in espionage based on reading some reddit threads. I base this concern solely on the fact that this kind of thing is non traditional and may lead to a situation being handled improperly or more improperly then usual by whatever parties involved.But this thread is still nice because I suppose it can include military war stories from vietnam or something. I am a little worried this thread could get some posts related to espionage/'informant' type behavior which could easily start a flame war related to current events and not defunct regimes that are difficult to argue about. The ethics of HAM radio seem a little dicey right now. Granted I am biased in thinking of things like 'north korean escape plans' being a positive thing welcome in the thread, despite being politically related... perhaps the international community weighs favorably on these type of activities.Perhaps we should stay away from interpersonal conflict and try to have a theme of increased technical abilities and unique equipment being vital to the scenario (not scanner listening for general crime), or odd things that our technical abilities and increased knowledge allowed us to do.

author: TheNewLab
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2021, 06:37:58 am
content: I like your thinking. Never thought about this.With the HAM etiquette of being considerate, might also create a more reasonable dialogue. What I have seemed active Hammers (hmm not the right word..) People find they build good friendships around the world and beyond your regional area.I bought a Ham radio, portable..uh wide-band for listening. Real reason I bought because I had noise in some power lines and did not have an AM radio nor a portable FM radio. not even my phone. Thought if I was to spend a little money for something I would never use, I spent for to do Serious DXing.for me, I worked for one, and sucked for the HAM part. Cannot find signal from the Pacific coast, and what HAM radio guides all seem to list east of the Sierras, or require some high antenna. I live in an apartment.HAM radios have a long history of being communications first responders, and have saved plenty of lives in the past..cell towers do, and will go down in a disaster, Many of what we think are landlines are really VOIP, even landlines have been damagedI guess, I am kinda of making a plug for getting into the hobby. It seems to align well with one's interests in electronics

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2021, 07:20:46 am
content: generally anyone can make use of things up to the VHF range, mostly from a EMC complaince standpoint. I think where you start to specialize is transmit-antennas.However, this is only true for lower frequencies. At high frequencies the antenna can be used to transmit and receive pretty equally well at modest sizes that do not take up the lab. I would say above VHF.. the antennas are dual purpose always, there there are some clear 'reciever' winners like pcb spiral antenna or other stuff that stacks away very nicely in a filing cabinet even, but generally its the same.Long wire antennas and loop transmit antennas are the only real thing you can't really use in a normal lab easily. Obviously demodulators are less useful too for circuit development, but with the power of SDR you kinda almost get it for free for modest uses. I would say in general a SDR and some copper tube can turn a normal lab with a focus on circuit development of all kinds into a transmit station. Wideband stuff is more useful for development because you are usually sweeping stuff.I would say that getting close to ham is only a question of how much storage space you have available because the structures just do not store well.Active loops are almost a freebee when it compares to test equipment costs.

author: Dataforensics
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2021, 09:37:22 am
content: Big personally.Having an Amateur Radio license since I was 17 and taking home built radio equipment to the interview helped me get my dream job that lasted 34 years.

author: CaptDon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2021, 02:47:23 pm
content: Been licensed since 1973 and I think one thing people missed here in 'saved your life perhaps' was that us old dinosaurs had to know morse code. I countless military situations morse code was blinked with the eyes or tapped on a wall. If your A.M. or F.M. modulator fails you can always key the microphone in C.W. code fashion and maybe an old dinosaur will be there to help you after reading your message. Anything which can be switched on and off can be used to send code and perhaps request help. Think also about the trapped miners!!! I was never sad I had to learn code to get a license, only sad they took the requirement away!!! It is a skill that could save your life and no one is too stupid to learn it, only too lazy!!!!