Do you have a link that describes the equipment, for those of us who don't yet understand what a long wire antenna is?
Having been in the WNC hurricane area, I have a newfound interest in this stuff.
Having been in the WNC hurricane area, I have a newfound interest in this stuff.
Here's a typical modern portable ham radio.[1] (Not a recommendation, just an example) This one does both HF and VHF, so you can reach both SHARES and locals. Here are some simple wire antenna kits.[2] If you have both of those items, and some kind of power (a car battery), you can contact various US emergency services, radio hams, preppers, and whatnot, even if infrastructure is down for hundreds of miles around. A small solar panel to charge the thing would be a good idea. All this is probably about US$1500.
Any isolated town should have something like that, and some people who know how to use it. Town halls, volunteer fire departments, sheriff's offices, etc. are good locations to keep it.
Preppers seem to be more into VHF handhelds such as the Baofeng UV-5R. That's about US$80. Less range, can't reach SHARES, but can reach a few miles, depending on terrain. Useful if you're two miles from the main road.
Here's a prepper view.[3] He uses a Slinky as an antenna.
Once you have the ability to communicate at all, the problem is finding someone useful to talk to in an emergency. There's no addressing, just frequencies. On HF there's so much range that most of the people you can reach are not in a position to do much. The whole point of SHARES is that there are a few frequencies where someone is regularly listening. During a disaster, they're probably dealing with bigger problems than yours, so calling up Homeland Security HQ as an individual may not be helpful for anything not immediately life-threatening.
If you're near a coast, you can usually reach the Coast Guard on a marine VHF channel. They're a first responder set up to take radio calls.[4] If the emergency requires a boat, call them. Marine Channel 16 VHF-FM (156.8 MHz). The Coast Guard gets involved with major floods, they maintain good communications with other emergency services, and they know almost everybody with a boat.
[1] https://www.icomamerica.com/lineup/products/IC-705
[2] https://www.dxengineering.com/search/part-type/wire-antennas
https://www.aa5tb.com/dipole.html
Picking that length of wire results in the lowest impedance (kind of analogous to friction) at the radio for pushing signal out to the antenna, but various lengths work with more or less efficiency, and you don't have to send the signal from the middle either if you have appropriate inductors and capacitors to adjust the impedance (it's just the simplest way).
As with most things on the internet these days, it seems the best content is in the form of YouTube videos, so amusingly, this is the best written information I came across after some quick searching:
You'd have a length of coax cable going to the centre point of the antenna, so pair of 15m wires extending from each side.
Getting your amateur radio license covers this in more detail.
Dave Casler has a bunch of useful videos on things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18-6sJHk9hU
(I know you know this, but just adding in. Ham is fun! I like doing park & camping deployments)
https://qrper.com/2024/10/helene-aftermath-update-power-to-t...