American Red Cross Asks for Ham Radio Operators for Puerto Rico Relief Effort
arrl.org
arrl.org
The secret sauce in HF is that unlike the web, conditions matter to the operator. Things like sunspot activity, the position of the day/night line, if you are near water etc. can greatly affect your ability to successfully communicate.
DXpeditions, which are trips HAMs take with their gear to try to hit very distant stations are often based in island locations because HF tends to propagate significantly better with the antenna is near water as opposed to irregular ground.
I would just say to all of you who are into tech as I imagine HN readers to be, to give HAM a try. A lot of us are old and HAM sites regularly feature a list of "silent keys" because so many of the hardcore operators are dying off. Yes it's a bit antiquated but the younger generation will be able to marry all the amazing things you've invented to HAM to serve populations where the new tech either hasn't gone or gets knocked out as in the current crisis. For so many of you engineers it will be easy, like dusting off your first Circuits text. Yes, the regs are a drag to learn but I bet the average HN reader has done things that are way more challenging.
Have fun!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_ham_radio
> I don’t think that you can argue with this. Let’s avoid confusion by using “amateur radio” when writing about our hobby/service. I’d even urge the ARRL to rethink their use of “Amateur Radio.” Sometimes, it may be OK to use “ham radio,” but it’s just not correct to use “HAM radio” or just “HAM.”
Types of Propagation
●Ionospheric waves (sky waves): Main portion of the radiation that leaves the antenna at angles above the horizon
●Tropospheric waves: Radiation kept close to the earth’s surface due to bending in the lower atmosphere (higher HF or lower VHF)
●Ground waves (surface waves): Radiation directly affected by the earth’s surface
- Earth-guided surface wave
- Vertically polarized and absorbtion increases with freq
- **Travels much further over water than over land**
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- Water bodies help HF propagation.
- HAMs doing DX will generally prefer more unusual to less unusual locations, and island station is definitely more unusual.
Anyone with an EE background should be able to study up on https://hamstudy.org/ for a few hours a night for a week and pass without trouble.
Loraham.org does seem a cool use to tinker with.
But now that we're chatting and you obviously do know your stuff, any pointers for actually putting it to use?
Try to borrow someone's Icom or Kenwood or Yaesu, listen to the local action, and jump on . Hamming should be fun and it is with a friendlier rig. Try not to let the plastic fantastic turn you off from hamming.
The other and perhaps more modern approach is that hams are prolific content producers. Almost any topic will have loads of good YouTube coverage. Since many hams build there stuff there are a lot of really good answers to questions out there.
Finally, if you have an HT go online and look up local repeaters and program your radio accordingly. Commuting is a good time to hear vhf/uhf folks. When the time is right call CQ and try a contact. It gets easier the more you do it.
1. Find a local repeater and jump in! Before long you'll hear a topic you know about and can contribute to the discussion. I learned about #4 and #5 below like this.
2. Most areas have some kind of daily chat net organized at scheduled times, which is a great time to check in.
3. Keep your radio with you tuned to 146.520 and turned on when you're driving around. Many hams monitor this frequency. Listen in and periodically transmit your call sign and ask for another station to come back. It's exciting to make your first contact without a repeater.
4. Give yourself a reason to use the radio. Look for activities you might enjoy. I got into SOTA. It's an activity where you climb onto nearby mountains and make contacts to score points. If you tune into 146.520 on weekends in the mountains you're likely to hear and participate in some activity there.
5. Consider blending ham with other hobbies, such as radio controlled aircraft or modifying routers to do long range broadband communications.
6. Learn how to use your radio as a scanner. Then learn how to scan the repeater tone frequency so you can chat back when you do find an active repeater. This is a good emergency skill if you're traveling and don't know the repeater frequencies where you're at. (It's important to know the ham frequency ranges on 2m when you do this because there are active and forbidden frequencies right at the edges of what is legal for Hams.)
I've always been fascinated, but it's not clear -- I believe there's some kind of license required (to be a good citizen), but I've never been sure how to go about getting that.
http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed
Find a club : http://www.arrl.org/find-a-club
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Now I can pick up local signals and listen/decode them and get a sense of what the spectrum (in my case between about 60MHz and 2.1GHz for the range of my receiver) is used for.
Running the software on Linux is super simple, a graphical receiver programme such as gqrx is quite nice to play with, and versions exist in most distros package managers.
Further to all of the above, I looked at the RSGB site about UK licensing, and they have example exams for all license levels. The first exam I looked at I self-scored at about 85% without even doing any reading at all - though I have some basic knowledge of electronics (and a tiny bit about radio) already. In the UK there is also OFCOM which manages the local legalities of radio reception and transmission.
1. Technician: Access to frequencies that let you contact people in your city.
2. General: Access to frequencies that bounce off the ionosphere and let you contact people all around the world.
3. Amateur extra: Access to more frequencies yet, but none of these frequencies give you abilities past what General can do (worldwide contacts).
I recommend going straight to general. It strikes a good test-difficulty to privileges-granted ratio.
The easiest way to study is to just memorize the answers to all the questions. Yes, that's right: the licensing test question bank is published and it's not hard to memorize the entire thing. This site has flashcards and practice exams: https://hamstudy.org/ If you practice for 15 to 30 minutes a day, you can be ready for your general test in less than a week.
Once you're ready, find a testing site in your area and go: http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-sessi...
Then buy (maybe even build) a radio and have fun!
What can do you once you have your license? Off the top of my head:
- Talk with people in distant countries.
- Build radios and test them out.
- Build antennas and test them out.
- Make contacts through satellites that have ham radio repeaters.
- Join an emergency communications org like ARES (http://www.arrl.org/ares).
- Talk with people in different countries using digital modes (like a very early chat room i guess?)
- Make your friends get licenses and use it for comms when backpacking, rafting, whatever.
- Make contacts by bouncing signals off the moon (ok this one is hard).
It's such a fun subject and as you say, lots of aspects to it that would interest most people with a technical bent.
73
edit: I'm also a bit surprised they're requiring a General Class license. That cuts out a huge number of potential volunteers. Are they really using the other frequencies that opens up enough that it's a requirement? Possibly that is a reasonable requirement, but I've helped with disaster recovery simulations, etc. and my Technican Class license was just fine.
EDIT: actually read the fine article, HF voice being one of the requirements. I assume they also want more than the tiny bit of HF that Technician licensees get to use. " Sorry, 10m isn't open, so I can't transmit, and I'm not allowed to use 40m."
Most hams I know have their General even if they don't use HF regularly.
I suspect the general class requirement is just to cut down the applicants to a pool of more dedicated people. A very real problem with disaster volunteers, if I might be a little harsh especially from the amateur radio side, is "fair-weather responders" who will go through all the training and then not actually deploy. I've also personally found that people with higher class licenses are more likely to be into digital modes which is what they're mostly looking for, but that's getting less true as the equipment gets cheaper (to be honest I've never even seen a packet TNC in person).
I happen to be both an ARC disaster worker and amateur radio operator, but I speak for myself.
ARC does not conduct background checks on shelter clients and to do so would almost certainly be found to be against the principle of neutrality, however, shelter clients are asked if they are required to register their location with the government (often because they are registered sex criminals) and there are procedures in place if so (although this is not an easy problem and has caused difficulty in the past).
http://www.arrl.org/news/revised-fcc-form-605-will-ask-appli...
The most famous felony-ham-license battle I can think of is the Kevin Mitnick incident from the turn of the century... the FCC lost and ended up renewing his license after all.
I vaguely remember some 80s guys getting felony convictions for interfering with police radios and then losing their ham radio license.
Of course the future does not necessarily rely on past events and policies.
ARC is American Red Cross.
The ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League) is the main club of amateur radio operators in the USA. There are lots of facets to amateur radio, not just emergency response. There are contests where people try to make many radio contacts (or long distance contacts, or contacts using a certain range of frequencies, etc.), people that just like to chat (known as rag chewing), and serious researchers that develop new modes of wireless communication that may even make it to commercial products. ARRL supports all licensed amateur radio operators in the USA.
MOU is a memorandum of understanding, basically a business agreement.
TNC is a terminal node controller, it's the box that interfaces your digital object (computer or phone) with your analog radio. Many new/expensive radios have built in digital capabilities, but most radios need an audio input.
No chance such a person might be trying to help others as a sort of payback to society for his past transgressions, I guess. Or might have such a record because some girl at his school had a morning-after regret and now he has a record that prevents him from doing almost anything else with his time other than volunteer.
Communications isn't an all hands on deck problem in the same sense that providing resources and shelter is. Ham nets and repeaters can get traffic jams very easily in a situation like this, so it's better to send a dozen experts than 100 beginners.
I am unable to find it, so I'm not sure if it is true any longer, or if it was ever true.
Assuming it is illegal, I wonder how mad the FCC would be - if one followed the rules and it was a real emergency?
Like you, I searched for the letter of the law and wasn't actually able to find it. It may have been ARRL's site or a forum affiliated with them? It was something I noticed while learning and taking the practice exams.
[0]: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=6db0db07e83c404462...
T2C09 (D) Are amateur station control operators ever permitted to operate outside the frequency privileges of their license class? A. No B. Yes, but only when part of a FEMA emergency plan C. Yes, but only when part of a RACES emergency plan D. Yes, but only if necessary in situations involving the immediate safety of human life or protection of property
On an unrelated note, I'm actually not entirely sure if the FCC rules even apply to Puerto Rico, being a territory... Do you know?
For example it is illegal to break into someone home, but if that home is on fire and you break in to save a resident you have a Criminal Defense of Necessity for breaking in...
Like Wise if you are in an area with no communication and you "illegal" transmit a radio signal for the purpose of obtaining necessary assistance you would have a Criminal Defense of Necessity for breaking the FCC regulations
(that is, where someone has violated the law with some mitigating circumstance)
How would that aspect be addressed?
Or cases where charges are filed as a formality and end quickly?
There seems a strong possibility that the Supreme Court only hears a small number of odious claims of the defense.
Probably a lot, but the availability of prosecutorial discretion is a very different thing than the availability of a legal defense.
While the defense is enshrined in statute in many states or firmly established in state case law, that's not true in the federal system, where it may exist based on inherited common law, but is neither established in federal statute nor firmly attested in the case law.
I suspect that this operation will be using phone and digital modes. CW and 10m are rather small, but interesting and valuable, niches. For this case, CW will be slow and 10m will be unreliable.
Generally, it is easier to join the party by learning to pass the General exam, than waiting for a 10m opening or learning telegraph code :)
It's going to be slow. In the domestic US, within three days after a disaster, the Interstates usually have been cleared and trucks are bringing in supplies. Fairly quickly, the big-box retailers like Wal-Mart will be back up and restocked with necessities. Puerto Rico isn't going to be like that. They need what amounts to a military invasion. The military brings its own infrastructure and can cold-start on bare ground if they have to.
Another big problem - the money system is down. No credit card processing. Few ATMs working, and those are mostly out of cash by now. This is the downside of the cashless economy.
Bulldozers and front end loaders will deal with that, but not instantly.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/puerto-rico-port-reopens-but-re...
The further from San Juan, the worse it gets.
So I stick to 40m CW. People just want a QSO or two and then go back to playing with their oscilloscopes and soldering irons. It’s too hard to rag chew on CW.
Unfortunately the bar to get a General license is much higher than Technician, even without the Morse Code. There are a ton of regulations and rules you need to be familiar with that are often not related to E&M. This unfortunately kept me from ever upgrading and being of use in large scale disasters like this. I can understand to an extent why the licensing is still required; otherwise you will have these spectra flooded with people probably using them for commercial purposes with no regulation to cut them off.
Basic ham communications are still absolutely critical in major disasters. A few others have touched on this, but bandwidth and throughout for communication is increased with the advent of digital interfaces to the radios to the point that you can essentially establish a data connection over the air. Godspeed to those who make the trek.
I suspect you are underestimating your abilities and/or overestimating the difficulty of the test. The test is very structured and you can take advantage of that.
If you are good on the E&M stuff, you can blow a lot of the regulation questions. The tests consist of questions drawn from 10 categories. Here's the breakdown for Technician (T), General (G), and Extra (E):
T G G E
6 5 5 6 Commission's Rules
3 5 5 5 Operating Procedures
3 3 3 3 Radio Wave Propagation
2 5 5 5 Amateur Radio Practices
4 3 3 4 Electrical Principles
4 3 2 6 Circuit Components
4 3 3 8 Practical Circuits
4 2 3 4 Signals and Emissions
2 4 4 8 Antennas and Feed Lines
3 2 2 1 Electrical and RF Safety
For Technician and General you have to get 26 out of 35 to pass. For Extra it is 37 out of 50.
So, for general, you get to blow 9 questions. Even if you miss everything in the rules questions, that's only 5 out of your budget of 9.
Furthermore, the questions in the pool for each category are further divided into several groups. You get exactly one question from each group. The 5 groups in the rules category on the General exam are:
• General Class control operator frequency privileges; primary and secondary allocations
• Antenna structure limitations; good engineering and good amateur practice; beacon operation; prohibited transmissions; retransmitting radio signals
• Transmitter power regulations; data emission standards
• Volunteer Examiners and Volunteer Examiner Coordinators; temporary identification
• Control categories; repeater regulations; harmful interference; third party rules; ITU regions; automatically controlled digital station
You can almost certainly pick one or two of those groups and learn enough to answer the questions for those groups without much trouble. For example if you can just memorize the lower and upper frequencies of the major HF bands you'll known enough to answer the majority of questions in the "General Class control operator frequency privileges; primary and secondary allocations" group.
If you haven't actually given General a try, I'd recommend going to hamexam.org and/or hamstudy.org, and doing some practice tests. You can also review the entire question pool. I bet you'll find that in a weekend or two of practice in your spare time you'll find you are passing with reasonable frequency, and with a little more time you'll get to the point where you pass enough to be confident in taking the actual test.
If you make an account at those sites they will keep track of stats, and at least one of them, I believe, will give you stats by category and group so you can figure out what areas to concentrate on.
I would certainly not be comfortable with actually operating a HF rig without doing some prep work, but it seems to me that an active ham would have a reasonable chance of squeezing by the General test if they gave it a chance.
Hard to say how much of the island they are covering, they are there.
- ~80% of transmission lines are down
- >90% of distribution lines are down
- Fuel for their generation plants is desperately needed and needs to be shipped in on a regular basis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_Electric_Power_Aut...)
Basically, from an electrical-grid-restoration perspective ("Blackstart"), its a nightmare.
https://twitter.com/NOAASatellites/status/912342036975669254...
I took a month leave of absence from a programmer position at Merrill Lynch when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the U.S. I signed up for a disaster response role in the American Red Cross, who dispatched me relatively quickly to a major shelter in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Gandhi said, "You have to be the change you wish to see in the world.". This could not be more true than as a volunteer. A mass response to a disaster of Puerto Rican proportions will be loosely coordinated. Supply chains will operate far from optimal. Volunteers who recognize an inefficiency will either do nothing about it or assume the leadership role required to reduce the inefficiency. A volunteer experience like this is largely what you make of it. Unlike other entrepreneurial endeavors, the ARC gives you the resources to do something great.
Like I said if posting a link here is bad form tell me and I'll take it down lickety split. Only want to share something I found very useful.
The DoD is not a disaster relief organization, so that's a pretty low bar.
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red...
Haiti was not well handled by the big boys...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/americas/united-nat...
(It goes without saying that this is my own humble opinion, of course.)
I don't know about you, but that screams fraud to me.
1. http://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red...
It takes about 2-3 hours of studying and you can pretty much keep it for life. KK4PPF. QSL?
He demoed the process to me last time I saw him (back in New Zealand). It was amazing to see the speed with which the he (and the other operators) could relay messages around the world.
He wrote a bit about his many adventures on his blog (http://www.zl2al.com/). I guess there may even be other HAM operators on here that knew him.
These days I find high speed telegraphy pretty relaxing and meditative, and I have a few ongoing RF projects that keep me going even when everything else seems trend-driven and silly.
And let's face it, radio wave propagation still feels magical. I could go on and on. Glad to see some PR even though it's for a sad reason.
WT1J
So it seems a bit pointless if all I can do is operate some VHF band equipment with an indoor antenna, or maybe sticking a short-ish antenna out of the window, with a range of maybe of few tens of km's?
What am I missing? If there are city-dwelling hams out there, what do they do?
One thing you need to do is to check out if you have roof access and rights to put something on it. Depending on the situation you have with your flat, you could already have all that's needed to be able to put antennas on the roof! For instance, in my country (Poland), being an owner of a flat gives you rights to access the roof and put some small stuff on it.
If you happen to be renting, or otherwise can't use the roof, then you still probably can put a smaller antenna on your window or balcony.
The general principle is this: the higher you can put your antennas, the better.
> Push the button for instant, radio-style talk on any Wi-Fi or data plan.
> Access public and private channels.
> Choose button for push-to-talk.
> [...] available for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows PC and Windows Phone 8
...
> Connects to existing LMR radio systems
> All Radio Technologies
> Interconnect conventional and trunked analog FM, ETSI DMR, ETSI TETRA, MotoTRBO, APCO P25 FDMA, and NXDN.
They probably need some batteries, turbines, and solar cell chargers to get WiFi online?
https://store.advancedsheltersystemsinc.com/?___store=shelte...
https://store.advancedsheltersystemsinc.com/responsepod/vip/...
http://www.techradar.com/news/this-phone-needs-no-battery
> [...] “We’ve built what we believe is the first functioning cellphone that consumes almost zero power,” said Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the UW and co-author on a paper describing the technology.
> Instead, the phone pulls power from its environment - either from ambient radio signals harvested by an antenna, or ambient light collected by a solar cell the size of a grain of rice. The device consumes just 3.5 microwatts of power during use.
> [...] “And if every house has a Wi-Fi router in it, you could get battery-free cellphone coverage everywhere."
(Also trending on HackerNews right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15350799 )
If you just want to get the license as quickly/easily as possible, get a copy of the book (hell, the question pools are probably even online, I'm sure) and spend a weekend memorizing the answers before you go take the test.
If you want to actually understand the material (which I highly recommend), then spend the extra time to research the questions and answers.
I don't think it's ever been easier to get a ham radio license.
The exam structure is quite conductive to just memorizing the answers [4], but it is really better if you try to have some understanding so I recommend the books.
You can take practice exams, or drill with flash cards, or review the entire question pools at hamexam.org or hamstudy.org. Make accounts at those sites and they will keep stats on how you do for each subsection of the test questions so you can figure out your strengths and weaknesses.
There are mobile apps for iOS and Android that provide functionality similar to hamexam.org and hamstudy.org.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/ARRL-Ham-Radio-License-Manual/dp/1625...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/General-Class-License-Manual-Spiral/d...
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Extra-Class-License-Manual-Spiral/dp/...
[3] See this comment for some more on the exam structure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15353793
The first test is not hard... a couple of 9 year old kids passed it after studying a little.
For actual knowledge that you might find useful and interesting but don't have to really memorize, ARRL books.
They do almost nothing to help those affected by natural disasters. All they do is setup shelters and feed people in those shelters. They do not help rebuild.
They do an exceptionally poor job at this. Everyone knows about Katrina. In Houston this year, food sat on loading docks downtown while people starved in local shelters. The American Red Cross ran the main shelter so poorly that the city had to build an entirely new shelter and move everyone there...in the middle of a hurricane.
They don’t need your donations. They have a deal with the federal government where they get reimbursed for whatever they spend during a national disaster. The local American Red Cross chapters do this. The national organization does not provide the resources for this.
If you donate to the American Red Cross, you’re throwing your money away. The money won’t go to the local chapters. It won’t go to rebuild. It won’t go to the victims of the natural disaster. Do not donate to the American Red Cross.
As it is, I think some folks may take offense with you telling them how to spend their money. I, for one, read it as you trying to tell me what I can or cannot do.
Edited to add: I see your dead reply. The difference between my suggestions and your post is that you demand, as opposed to ask. You may notice that I'm making a point of not saying you should do something, but that pointing out that you can choose to do something.
It's received much more gracefully and people are much more open to the ideas when they are asked, instead of when they are instructed. But, it's entirely up to you how you take it and what you decide to do with it.
I've spent years learning to say could instead of should. It has helped me immensely.
To be clear, this article is about the American Red Cross (which is not to say that other branches and other NGOs aren't as bad), but if you want to know what your donation is going to support... good luck!
People, as a general rule, don't like being told what to do. They respond much better when being asked politely. We didn't develop politeness for no reason, after all. We have all sorts of negative phrases for demanding people.
As I support the idea of making people aware of the problems with the American Red Cross, it stands to reason that I'd like to not sour them on the process of learning about the reasons for the complaints.
It has been very, very socially helpful to learn to not say should and to substitute could. Relatedly, I also try to say I can relate, and not to say I understand. Just a couple of small things completely change how people respond to me.
You could try it in your everyday speech and see if you notice a difference?
I cringe when ever I see People posting links to donate to the Red Cross.
You are so wrong about the American Red Cross. The ARC is an non-profit organization supported by a movement of volunteers from all walks of life. It gives resources to volunteers willing to help those in need. Thank god it exists.
I'm not going to convince you by arguing on HN but would gladly talk, or at least chat online, about it with you.
I took a month leave of absence from a programmer position at Merrill Lynch when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the U.S.. I signed up for a disaster response role in the American Red Cross, who dispatched me relatively quickly to a major shelter in Alexandria, Louisiana.
I can confidently tell you and anyone reading this that great good came of what was donated, at least to the population served within the jurisdiction I was stationed.