Perhaps you should consider carrier pigeons?

Indeed! They worked on the battlefields of WW I a century ago, so why not now? You could also consider heliographs; they brought Geronimo to his knees in the late 19th century. They did require land based stations, but those are easy to establish.

I have three carrier pigeons already ....and they're OK I suppose. They really can stuff into very small cages, but they don't mention the smell of their poo.

I mean you just can't stuff the cage in the top of your backpack, even if the 'stuff' doesn't fall out (or get flicked out by the stupid birds...god knows they like doing that) the smell is horrible. It gets into absolutely everything!

I know, I know, I've tried starving them a bit, and that does work on short outings, but they'll eventually need to be fed and you risk weakening them so much they won't make the homing flight.

My real issue with them is that I can't get a return message. Stupid, stupid birds.

Heliographs are a possibility, but if I'm injured at the base of the mountain it really sucks to have to crawl up the mountain to use the heliograph. I simply won't do that again.
I won't.


Great suggestions guys. I'm leaning towards an inreach se as it is only $11 per month coupled with a http://www.qrpkits.com/survivor.html

I have no affiliation with either of the above.


-Ontario

Let the sun's rays do the walking! During the Geronimo campaign, the main station was in the center of the Ft. Bowie (AZ) parade ground. Messages were flashed to the summit of Bowie Peak, immediately south, and then relayed to other summits in the network (like present day Heliograph Peak). Labor intensive, but it worked.

Signal mirrors are still a very effective signaling device - light, cheap, and easy (during daylight hours, anyway).

I tried looking into a landline for my mother but had no idea how to go about it anymore.

Chaos -- I just noticed the Yaesu VX-8DR. Didn't know there was a 50MHz ham band. What kind of distance can you get in low VHF?

With a handheld pushing 5W? Antenna height buys you the most, followed by antenna gain, followed last by output power. With flat terrain I'm guessing you'd be lucky to get more than 10 miles without a significant antenna.

We had a tired carrier pigeon show up in our barn a number of years back. We figured it out by the band on its leg, called a phone number from its web site and they sent a local carrier pigeon breeder to pick it up, nurse it back to health, and make sure it got back to its owner.

I was more than impressed with the whole thing and especially their desire to take care of that tired little bird.

From my own experience amateur radio is the route to go. While I'm not a ham, my father spent lots of time working with local ham clubs that provided communications during simulated emergencies. Hams I know around here do the same thing.

I would suppose that these communications focused on urgent communications.

My experience has been that once the emergency and urgent message traffic have been sent on, your local hams will work your lower-priority messages with a smile.

my only experience with a sat phone was on a wilderness canoe trip.a buddy rented one from our outfitter and to save the battery for a real emergency we just made one call home halfway thru the trip.in order to get enough clear sky for the thing to work we had to stand on the boulders by the rivers edge.just 10 feet back in a tree covered campsite it did not get thru.