It would probably take an EMP detonation to take down all internet and cell phones. If that's the case, unless your radio equipment is in a Faraday cage it will be fried as well and useless.Hacking is a much more likely cause than EMP. It happens nearly daily on a corporate or local basis. A foreign entity that wants to put us in our place may have means, motive and opportunity. The technology is there.
What remains as the best radio methodolgy to communicate with distant parties? Anyrhing aside from Simplex?
What remains as the best radio methodolgy to communicate with distant parties? Anyrhing aside from Simplex?
However maybe we should consider how we would fair at home for 7 – 10 days without commercial power or natural gas.Rare October snowstorm brought down tons of trees and many of us were without power for 7 to 10 days.
Now that many of us are aware that it is possible if not likely that the internet can be taken down nationwide by any number of bad actors, and cell service may be similarly impacted...
What remains as the best radio methodolgy to communicate with distant parties? Anyrhing aside from Simplex?
What remains as the best radio methodolgy to communicate with distant parties? Anyrhing aside from Simplex?
As usual ....
HF frequencies for long-haul communications (yes, its "simplex")
VHF/UHF for local communications (simplex, too)
CW, SSB or even digital (at low rates) is useful on HF, especially during the rising solar cycle we are now in.
Brian - K6BRN
What remains as the best radio methodolgy to communicate with distant parties? Anyrhing aside from Simplex?
As usual .... HF frequencies for long-haul communications (yes, its "simplex"). VHF/UHF for local communications (simplex, too). CW, SSB or even digital (at low rates) is useful on HF, especially during the rising solar cycle we are now in. Brian - K6BRN
Don't forget grid-independent repeaters. My club has two repeaters that are 100% solar powered. They will be up even if the electrical grid goes down.
All disasters are local. So, what would your communications needs be beyond your immediate neighborhood/community?
What remains as the best radio methodolgy to communicate with distant parties? Anyrhing aside from Simplex?
As usual .... HF frequencies for long-haul communications (yes, its "simplex"). VHF/UHF for local communications (simplex, too). CW, SSB or even digital (at low rates) is useful on HF, especially during the rising solar cycle we are now in. Brian - K6BRN
Don't forget grid-independent repeaters. My club has two repeaters that are 100% solar powered. They will be up even if the electrical grid goes down.QuoteAll disasters are local. So, what would your communications needs be beyond your immediate neighborhood/community?
You guys have definitely lead sheltered lives. Many emergencies are not local at all - at least not in the sense that a handful of solar powered repeaters will cover them and their comms needs. HF has routinely closed the gap when that happens. Just off of the top of my head.... in the USA alone ...
1. 1965 and 2003 East Coast blackouts
2. 2011 Hurricane Irene, which took down much of the East Coast infrastructure for up to two weeks
3. 2017 Puerto Rico in which Hurricane Irma and Maria simply blew away much of the electrical and comms infrastructure on the island. ARRL was shipping emergency kits out to PR and quite a bit of health and welfare traffic over HF between mainland and PR families happened..
The list simply goes on.
And if you'd like the best option - try a modern satellite phone that supports data as well as voice (Thruaya, Inmarsat, Iridium, etc.).
VHF/UHF repeaters can help - but during weather disasters on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts they are often down, so point-to-point picks up the slack in many cases.
For local disasters, like the 1992 L.A. riots, VHF/UHF repeaters - especially those that interconnect with the phone system via patches, can be very useful. I used one during that emergency to jump around overloaded/collapsed phone networks and into a working one to contact my XYL on her cellphone. She and her staff then moved out of the direct path of rioters, just in time.
Glad to hear you've never been involved in a broad area emergency, or just a local area one requiring a phone patch. It's no fun at all worrying about loved ones in the path of destruction or trying to contact relatives outside (or inside) the weather area via HF and friendly hams just to say you're "OK" and to see if they are, too. I'm happy my own personal experience has never gone beyond that point.
Brian - K6BRN
Maybe the better question to ask is “How prepared are we / you for a major regional power outage?” This is more likely given the age and condition of or power grid. It happens all the time due to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, and ice storms (Texas 2021). Then there was the east coast black out in 2003 that affected both eastern Canada and the entire northeastern US.
These events result in disruption of internet, cell, cable, fuel, and transportation. Granted some of these have backup systems, but they only work for so long.
Yes, we Ham’s probably will be able to communicate, we are for the most part a creative lot. However maybe we should consider how we would fair at home for 7 – 10 days without commercial power or natural gas.
Again, why would an individual need to communicate outside your community. Reality is that you would communicate with your community disaster agencies. They would communicate with other agencies outside your community.
Second reason is the distant part of 'distant parties'. What is distant? Across the state, several states, coast to coast? I slam the west coast and all points west of the Rocky Mountains, but if you are in the plains states,,, I talk right over your head literally. And no LEGAL amount of power is gonna change that. So if your distant party is in that skip zone from you,,,, forget it. Not going to happen, at least not with any regularity and possibly not at all.
So, IF you can get the other party or parties to even get a ham license and operate the radio. Then you need to sit down and look carefully at the propagation maps and see if there is a band and an antenna design that will get you there consistently. Then you need to figure out if you AND them can and will install an antenna of that design in your yard and not get the zoning inspector crawled up your butt.
Persistant, repetitive attacks would screw things up for weeks or months. The most vulnerable areas are not cut cables, but via the BGP and DNS gateways. Many books on this topic.
The connected Internet / Web or whatever you want to call it is NOT that way. There are frankly too many cables to cut and even if they were cut, they can be spliced in a reasonable amount of time. The destruction of a large number of large transmission transformers is not as simple to fix. And a cyber attack, unlinking the connected internet by it's very nature limits the amount of time an outage can occur. Router and firewall configurations are backed up and ready to be restored to the equipment quickly if a router is compromised and would return to service as soon as the configuration was restored. So even a full outage of ALL of the connected Internet couldn't last more than a few days if caused by a cyber attack.
Persistant, repetitive attacks would screw things up for weeks or months. The most vulnerable areas are not cut cables, but via the BGP and DNS gateways. Many books on this topic.
Oh, so you read some books on hacking the Internet and figure that no one that actually takes care of the DNS and routing tables ever has and they would just reload the same code with the same holes in it that they had before so the tables can be screwed with and the DNS records modified again.Yes, I read. Do you? Here is some well known reality: Hackers and attackers are quicker than defenses and fixers. Especially if there is a gang of national or ideological sponsors behind them.
As far as NVIS vs sloper vs beams.... yeah I know. And I am not brute forcing anything. 100 watts is all I got and really don't need it for the most part.
...look me up on QRZ. It's 240 foot tall,, doubt you have one bigger than that, and I can't at will go grab the mike and talk to a specific state with consistency outside of what normal propagation will allow. I slam the west coast and all points west of the Rocky Mountains, but if you are in the plains states,,, I talk right over your head literally. And no LEGAL amount of power is gonna change that.With that degree of bloviating perhaps I misinterpreted your meaning.
To the statement of 'trained' ham radio operators.. Figured you were talking about family members that were some distance away.I never inferred propagation would ever approach perfection.
If you are talking about contacting EMA's and other ARES types, you may well have someone there but propagation is still your enemy depending on where they are.
Lastly, if you believe that your HOA or zoning inspector is NOT gonna come fine you for standing up an antenna in a restricted area because there is a disaster taking place, your nuts. They may wait until after the fact, but they will come see you all the same. And as mentioned before on this very forum by myself and others, the government officials are moving away from reliance on ham radio. That includes allowing someone to violate zoning and deed restrictions or HOA rules. You're obviously thinking they care that you are in your mind providing a valuable service. They are NOT gonna see it that way. It's the government, they don't operate on logic or reason,,, only on what will get them through the next popularity contest (election).That is certainly the pessimist's view. But having been in local government for 40 years with a half dozen local and county agencies, I can attest that the great majority of agencies will totally ignore, write off, and forget any petty "violations" of that nature during and after a SHTF situation that causes that degree of communication outage.
At least use a NVIS antenna if you MUST transmit!Our EmComm group will.
Alright... I have to ask, since we are talking about trying to talk half way across the planet here...
So yes, sometimes communicating half way around the planet is what is needed at the time.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/dod-disa-discloses-data-breach/
QuoteSo yes, sometimes communicating half way around the planet is what is needed at the time.
So the next time we have an ice storm, the roads blocked by fallen trees, and the power out for several days, I'll just fire up the HF rig and ask some random ham in Poland or New Zealand to send supplies.
Or maybe I should get on HF and "pass traffic" to Verizon (via Poland or New Zealand) to ask them to fix the internet so that I can call the power company to complain about the outage, and then order some bread, milk and toilet paper to be delivered via Instacart ?
.... or maybe it would make more sense to be prepared to be self-sufficient for long enough?
So the next time we have an ice storm, the roads blocked by fallen trees, and the power out for several days, I'll just fire up the HF rig and ask some random ham in Poland or New Zealand to send supplies. .... or maybe it would make more sense to be prepared to be self-sufficient for long enough?
Alright... I have to ask, since we are talking about trying to talk half way across the planet here...
Then why do stations in hard hit islands and small countries communicate outside their area?
Maybe pass news and disaster information outside the effected area.
Maybe to try to set up links with outside agencies to help provide supplies needed locally in the disaster area.
See the problem is most people in the USA seem to think EVERYONE has access to an infrastructure similar to that of large US cities. Rural areas in the US and many small countries do not. So they use ANY means to try to achieve some level of communication to get the help and supplies needed. Supplies may include equipment to get their broken infrastructure repaired so more conventional communications can be restored. And one of those means is to use HR.
So yes, sometimes communicating half way around the planet is what is needed at the time.
The statement of getting information to other unaffected area's.... he SPECIFICALLY stated this is a country wide Internet outage. No place he mentioned in the US would be unaffected.
Lets see what happens after the Russian sanctions are enforced (if they enforce them).
The statement of getting information to other unaffected area's.... he SPECIFICALLY stated this is a country wide Internet outage. No place he mentioned in the US would be unaffected.
As I stated before, in this thread, there is too much redundant infrastructure for the entire US internet to be down all at once. My comment was based on a question posed in a different part of the thread. The answer was geared to that question which I quoted.
My area is served by 1 fiber optic cable and extremely aged twisted pair. Cut the fiber optic cable and we have no communications without RF. Unless; you can find someone remotely with an old phone modem and who knows how to use it, without the benefit of communications. And I am in the US. Look it up if you don't believe me.
At least we will be getting solar electric farm in our county soon. At least during the day, we will have power locally if the grid goes down. Don't know how much storage capacity they will have, so I limited my comment to when there is sun light even if filtered by clouds. Again a comment based on other comments in this thread.
Hacking is a much more likely cause than EMP. It happens nearly daily on a corporate or local basis. A foreign entity that wants to put us in our place may have means, motive and opportunity. The technology is there.
And with that situation you WILL have stuff to communicate. I can see large chunks of the country being down for some reason or another. We saw that with the bombing of the AT&T facility last year. We saw it gain on Superbowl Sunday in Ohio and other states with some outage that took down phones, Internet and cable TV for a large number of folks. With a situation like that communications outside the effected area will be important. And we SHOULD be ready to provide assistance if something like that happens.
In a FULL emergency you can expect...
Land line phones will be down.
Cell phones will be down.
The internet will be down.
You will have no power.
So what are you planning to do? I would start with power! How much do you need? How long do you need it?
-Mike.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
Maybe someone should go read this and get some better understanding of the mechanics of an EMP befoer cramming all their radios in a ammo box or similar act to deal with the possibility of an EMP.
Short version is HF radios that have large wire antenna's attached will suffer the greatest damage. But simple surge suppressors will do a lot to protect that gear. A radio on a shelf being effected by an EMP would require a distance to the point of the blast close enough that the radio being damaged is probably the least of your worries.
What remains as the best radio methodolgy to communicate with distant parties? Anyrhing aside from Simplex?
Boefungs don’t like EMP.