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Comment by dingnuts | Hacker News Reader

that situation has had me thinking about getting an amateur radio license again. In a disaster like what happened to Western NC, which encompasses a much greater area than just Asheville, I wouldn't want to rely on anything based on the Internet. You want something with a long wavelength and low power. But it's so inaccessible, and I'm not sure if it's for good reason or not.

Connectivity was knocked out from Black Mountain all the way to the Tennessee and Georgia borders. I'd be surprised if many people even have shitty 3G back yet. What I know is remaining in touch with people who live there has been hard.

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You can listen without a license. I was able to hear everything on a $15 handheld and it was immensely helpful.

In an emergency you are allowed to transmit without a license. There were plenty of unlicensed calls going to the Mt. Mitchell repeater.

All that being said, I am definitely getting my license once this is over.

> You can listen without a license

You can also talk without a license, who's going to stop you? Especially in an emergency situation.

I don’t know anything about this topic, so forgive me if I’m wrong.

Would there be any risks associated with increased “free for all” amounts of radio traffic going around during a natural disaster like this? Couldn’t specific channels become cluttered to the point where signal is too disrupted to read, or is that not quite how it works?

I think there are thousands of frequencies. Traffic can split up into those.

What I want is for every smartphone to have an FM radio built in. There are FM radio IC chips available, and apparently some Android phones have them. It seems like a reasonable thing to require smartphones to have them for emergencies. I had to run my car in the beginning, burning precious gas just to hear on the radio what the hell was actually happening.

It might be selection bias, but my impression was that it is very hard to find a phone without this feature (going back to the Windows Phone and semi-smart feature phone era as well). The usual downside is that they do not spring to life unless a wired headphone is connected, because the cable is used as the antenna.

> unless a wired headphone is connected

aren't wired headphones increasingly unsupported in newer phones?

Yes, that is becoming a huge issue for me.

Indeed, most phones have the hardware already, but the radio isn't surfaced in the software.

Ah, yeah. I was wondering how it could work without an antenna. I guess an FM antenna needs to be larger than the 5G antenna built into phones too.

I owned a series of Moto Gs that could, but with the removal of headphone jacks I am not sure how much reception you could expect. I did manage to pick up FM stations without anything plugged in but only pretty close to a transmitter.

Some phones even used to have TV tuners in them, though I don't think any of them were sold in the US.

Back in Venezuela there we're at least 2 models of the Telepatria, A phone with TV Capabilities, if I recall correctly, both models being basically modified ZTE designs

The original model did come with an external anthena, and the latest model is from 2015, no anthena needed

Plain old AM/FM radios are cheap and super efficient. Everyone should have one! I have a portable radio that I use regularly and its AA batteries often last a few years!

CB is roughly 11m wavelength and doesn’t require a ton of power, and doesn’t require any licensing.

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