A ham license is about $35 for the license fee, about $20 for the book, and about $10 for the coffee to keep you going while you read the book.

If you want to buy your own radio, a basic 2M mobile rig is about $170 or so. Figure about $30 or so for magnet-mount antenna. Or, you could build your own yagi antenna from some PVC, some cable, and a metal tape-measure -- figure $20 or so. A VHF SWR meter will be about $40. Throw in a marine deep-cycle battery or two, a battery charger, and some miscellaneous hardware, and you are set.

Okay, so it isn't hideous, then.

The exam fee is currently $14. If you studied enough, you could take all 4 tests at once for that amount. I've given tests where people have passed 3 out of 4. You can also study on-line and take practice tests for free.

Sounds good. I'm making a mental note of that. Something to look into come summertime.

-- Craig

Question for Malpaso or other VE -

Is my understanding correct...that actual license exam questions for each class are taken verbatim from their respective [current] published question-pools?

The code element I'm not concerned with; thanks to Uncle Sam 40 years ago, can still copy 35 WPM (I find it's like riding a bicycle...).

Thanks.

That is correct. So, for the Tech test, it is possible to memorize all the questions and answers. However, you can't memorize A,B, C or D, because the answers are never in the same order. There's no way to memorize for the Extra test, the question pool is enormous.

Good to see someone else who likes CW. They keep saying it's dying. Of course they say the bands are dead in the sunspot cycle too. Funny, neither seemed true last weekend in the CQWWCW contest!

I think that as others have pointed out, there are lots of other options other than going to a public shelter vs. "heading for the hills". Sheltering in place, going to friends or family outside the disaster area, etc, are all great options, and ones that most non-preparededness types would use.

Here's another reason to avoid having to go to a shelter for all you altruistic folks. By *not* going to the shelter, you are helping those who have no other resources other than a shelter. If you and your family don't go to the shelter, the shelter has one less person or family to have to deal with. That means that their limited supply of water, food, blankets, space, etc. can stretch a little further for the people who are there and have nothing else.

-Kuovonne

I keep meaning to look into this. Is it still possible to DIY a decent system? How does one get started, got any noob links?

www.arrl.org
www.eham.net

For most scenarios I'd prefer to shelter in place. I'd only move to a different place if I thought I'd be better off there, which I think implies a rather local disaster. In that case I'd try to travel far enough to reach "normal" civilisation, and then check into a hotel or something. I'd rather spend several days doing that, sleeping rough meanwhile, than be a burden on the red cross centres.

This kind of question is really hard to answer in abstract. The weather might make a difference. So might the amount of warning I got, or the nature of the emergency, or what I thought everyone else was likely to do, or what the authorities are telling us to do.