Amateur Radio for Survival?

Well, I just passed my Technician Class license exam tonight. I wanted to prepare a little bit more, but I found out the nearest testing group gives the exams on the third Thursday of each month and I didn't want to wait another whole month to take the test. I only got one wrong!

The VE's were so impressed, they asked me if I wanted to take the General Class exam the same day, but I declined because I think I really need to bone up on antenna theory and some of the other subjects that seem to come up in that question pool.

Anyway, I don't actually own a radio yet, and I don't even know any other operators. I'm going to go to the local club meeting (SJRA) next week, but I was wondering if any ETS members out there have any opinions on mobile/portable HA transceivers for wilderness use. I plan on using my radio (when I get it) mostly for vehicle mounted usage, so I'm not too concerned about a hand-held radio right now, but I'd be interested in opinions of hand-helds, as well. So far, the Yaesu 817 and 857 units look really nice, if a bit pricey.

Next week, I should get my call sign. It feels pretty cool to have a "real" radio license in addition to my GMRS license!

Also, are there are any reasons why a handheld amateur set would be a better choice for survival than a GMRS radio?

Hello and greetings.

the 817 you speek of only puts out max 5 watts and you need a general or extra class license to use HF. The 857 needs a big battery I think it draws 20 amps on transmit. Any how congrats on getting your license get a mobile radio. Go to eham.net and look at the reviews and find one that suits you you'll also need coax and antenna get a dual band rig.

73's
Lee
AC7KT

Well, I know I can't use the HF bands on those radios, but I figure I'm going to upgrade my license anyway, so I'm not limiting myself just to radios that operate only on the VHF and UHF bands.

Icom 706 series yeasu ft 897 also are good radios and do upgrade you get more bands to play with code is 5 wpm easy to do with practice.

Lee

I think the ability to jury-rig an antenna or repair a broken radio might have more value than the Ham license itself in some survival situations, especially an aircraft crash.

In many small aircraft crashes, the radio will remain serviceable although the antenna is destroyed; being able to rig an improvised antenna or replace a "rubber ducky" antenna with a larger one, could mean the difference between being found and remaining lost forever.

In fact, even the ability to trouble-shoot and operate a radio could be invaluable; I once read about a case where the pilot, despite a debilitating spinal injury, had to get up and show the passengers how to operate the aircraft radio.

Congratulations.

I only have HT's but want to add a mobile to the truck. I went with the HT's due to the volunteer groups I work with, but a mobile station has a ton of advantages. I have a 50w amp and antenna on the truck but still a mobile radio would be much better.

As to GMRS vs Ham...I think that is all dependent on your location and who is active or may be active in an emergency. I know my groups here have plans and contingencies for Ham bands but do not operate in GMRS frequencies. These are very local decisions so your best bet it working with your local RACES or ARES groups.

Have fun...it is a dying art.

Here's the link:

http://www.icomamerica.com/products/amateur/706mkiig/

This is, IMO, the radio to have now. It works as both a superb mobile and base. You get this, you will be busy for years. Handhelds are a compromise. Unless you run one of the low power portable HF rigs, I don't see much advantage in using a ham band handheld over FRS/GMRS, except your use will be a little more exclusive.

I was a ham a long time ago. I gave it up. I got disgusted with the politics and the hamhogs that thought they were the boss of the realm. Besides, I got my GRT and had a job and a business fixing and operating radio equipment for a living. What I discovered is that, until the govt comes up with a system that allows a person to carry a handheld device that they can use to signal distress and be located by, having remote communications capability is little more than a convenience. Of course, now that we have an EPIRB system on line, I guess that packing a handheld radio, vis a vis a PLB, is actually worthwhile.

If I were going to pack a radio with me for survival purposes other than that, I would take a 4 or 5 watt HF rig tuned to 7.15 Mhz capable of CW and a little pushbutton keyer. String up an antenna, and start keying. They will eventually hear you, and find you. Why they decided they had to go to UHF for EPIRB, I don't understand. We had no trouble targeting low power hf transmitters back in the early 80s when I was in the Navy from 3600 miles or more. We could DF them in less than 5 seconds after acquiring their signal, and fix them within a 2 mile radius with two other DF bearings from other platforms. If you know where to look frequency wise, you could go even quicker. We still have all that gear and technology sitting around, why they had to go to UHF beats me. I guess they had to justify their budget somehow.

Anyways, get the Icom radio, believe me it is a cheap price to pay for all that capability, and enjoy. Maybe someday when I am sitting around and have absolutely nothing to do, I might get back into radio as a hobby.

BTW, if you really want to do the amateur radio thing right, you will try and build your own radio(s) from scratch. That is what the license was all about when it was started. Somehow this became an industry, and it really took a lot of the challenge and satisfaction out of it. Now most hams are just glorified operators, not real technicians. So sad.

Congrats, and welcome to Amateur Radio - My user name here is my old call sign - currently KG2V

You should have taken the test - hey, doesn't cost anything, and you would have learned what the General test is like

Rig for the car/truck. All depends on your budget. I've never really been thrilled with the "all in one, DC to daylight" HF/VHF rigs. Some (706MkIIG) are quite nice in HF (and I understand the new Icom is even better - doesn't replace the 706, but). The thing is, they are all pretty poor on VHF/UHF and may require you to change things like Mic gain setiings when moving from HF to VHF/UHF

I don't have HF in the truck, but have a kit with HF in it. My AEC in Queens ARES has HF in the truck, but still has seperate VHF/UHF

Living in NYC (a VERY VERY intermod prone area) I'm not even thrilled with most dual band Mobile rigs. My truck currently has a Kenwood G707, but my old truck had a pair of GE Rangr 110 watt commercial rigs, and I'm looking for a UHF Orion to go with my VHF, and then the new truck will have commercial rigs too.

I'll give you 2 hints that one of my elmers gave me, when I was looking for my first rig (I wanted an HT first)

1)The broader the recieve bands, the more likely it is to be plagued by intermod
2)(and this has more to do with non HF rigs) Don't sweat your first rig too much. You will go through them like you would not believe. Once you get into the hobby, you will find out what YOU like, and change to meet it. I didn't believe it - in 4 years, I've had 2 HF rigs (love my current one, the first wasn't bad, but a MP1000MKV blows away a Icom-718) and I have 16 or 17 (yes you read that right) UHF/VHF rigs - all but 2 single band commercial rigs

Lets see if I can break that down
4 rigs in the house - 6m, 2m, 70cm, 2m for APRS
2 rigs in main jump kit 2m and 70 cm
2 rigs in backup jump kit
1 rig in APRS tracker box
2 spare rigs (one going to replace another - but not done yet. The other is going to go in a portable packet station)
1 rig in the truck
1 waiting for it's twin to go in the truck
3 hts

And I'm looking to BUY at least 1 more Mobile, and maybe 2 more HTs!!

I'm telling you - they are like rabbits - particularly if you get into serious disaster comms - I have a full spare go kit as a loner, and things like packet stations, where many people share the rig with their voice rig, I keep a whole spare station!! (Yes folks, rig, antenna, TNC, computer, cables, power supply, all mounted in a box - just grab it and go. (and yes, I have battery BOXES to power a BUNCH of setups - Eight 7Ah batteries, and 2 100+Ah batteries - all on float chargers, all the time

Yep, on my last assignment, we put together a portable E-trailer, complete with 4 UHF/VHF cross band repeaters, programmable HF multiband stuff for FEMA and DOD, a Wireless Lan interconnect node, and a fiberoptic splicing station. Of course, the UHF/VHF stuff was business band, but we also had some ham repeater freqs in there as back up/experimenting (one of our techs was licensed). We had a 50 foot crankup tower with a couple of trapped off slopers and some vertical helical whips, and the usual microwave directional platters for the Wireless stuff. Everything was bundled up in diamond plate aluminum, with full slide out trays and throughwall connectors using RG-214 for the lower freq stuff and RG-6 for the Wireless Lan stuff. We had a few toolboxes with the guying system and the leveling pads and the firefighting and survival stuff. We could deploy just about anywhere in our operating area, which was more than 250 square miles. We could transpond the local emergency services so everyone could talk to each other. It was a pretty nice set up. Had about 60 hours of battery backup on board, and two 850 watt generators with about 10 gallons of gas along, so we could run for quite a while. The marine charger we put in that rig was pretty darned nifty, too.

Just goes to show what you can do with an open budget code. It hasn't been deployed in the 3 years since we built it. Nice to know it's there. I was thinking about asking the boss if I could take it with me to elk camp last fall, but I figured he would probably object. Oh well, back to my frs portables.

Congratulations!

And I'll second the idea to look at the eham.net reviews. Some good information there.

To me, the perfect radio for emergency use is the Elecraft KX1. It is the size of a paperback novel, and can run nearly 5W of CW on HF.

In the middle of the woods, a VHF HT will not get out very much. Maybe two miles in a vally, or maybe 10-20 miles on a mountaintop (assuming that you are able enough to reach the top). And hopefully, another person will be listening. Read up on the "wilderness protocol." Note that I am NOT an expert on this, as I live in an area completely devoid of mountains. I find that a VHF HT on 2M will hit the local repeater for about 10-15 miles, but going HT to HT will get about 2 miles.

If you get on HF, you have the potential to send a signal 1000 miles or more. Of course, you cannot do this with just a tech. You will need to upgrade to general.

Just my $0.02.

KG4ZUD

Sounds like a nice trailer - thing is, my budget is limited to what I can personally afford!!

One good thing - when people find out you are serious about Distater comms as an amateur - "stuff" finds it's way to you - it may not be the latest, but 1-2 generation old stuff gets handed to you, with a gruff "here, I was going to toss this out - you want it?". You smile, say "thank you", and press it into service. One of the guys on my Emmcom team now has 10 full up portable packet stations he put togeter - radios, laptops (old ones) TNCs etc

And we're doing this without being a 501c3, which would open more doors

I'll start with Congrats!! My call is KC8BEW

The thing I look for is how easy is it to program and/or operate with no instructions. What I do is go to a store or a friend?s house that may have the radio(s) I am looking at. Then I actually try it out. No manual or instructions beforehand. If I find it fairly easy to use without reading the manual then I will look into what more it can do (bells & whistles). For HT?s, I try setting it up to work on a repeater or be able to change the offset or tones. If I can?t do that I pass on it. For mobiles or desk units I look for the ease of going through the menus, location of the dials, etc.

I figure that if I cannot program an HT (Handi Talkie) without the manual then it will not do me any good in the field. I don?t have the room or weight to carry a manual for this simple, IMO, task. With a desk or mobile unit you can have that manual available. My elmer was given a radio that he threw in a drawer because he couldn?t change the freq. without the manual.

My 1st radio was a Radio Shack HTX-202. It is a brick! I dropped it on its head, which broke the antenna, and only replaced the antenna to make it work again (normal BNC connector). I can take it off the desk and have no problem taking it to the field. I am able to use it in total darkness. I use it for APRS now.

My EDC is an Alinco 596T dual band. Vehicle has a Kenwood 241A. Packet is a Yaesu 1500 mobile.


That is where ham radio comes in. The radio and antenna theory you have to learn will help in that situation.

My pockets are empty now. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Nice trailer benjammin <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I 3rd the Eham.net too!

Yes, it was truly an exercise in "How much money can we really spend and still be practical?"

It was all federal government funded, so nice to know where your tax dollars are going, eh?

When it is for pay, I don't mind seeing how big, how powerful, or how automated I can get a system.

When it is out of my pocket, I try to find what is the minimum that will reliably work. That's why I like those low power HF CW rigs and a spool of 22 gauge wire. You can string up an antenna if you know a little about what you are doing, and away you go.

As I said before, one big problem I have with the new superradios is you can't hardly even service them. To me, Ham radio is supposed to be all about getting your hands dirty. Even in the best shops you will ever see, if the controller or VCO circuit gives out, the tech will just pull the board, send it back to the factory to be fixed, and get a new one in to be recalibrated using a PC and some proprietary software. Not much of a technician anymore. About the only place where technician still means much is in the antenna side of things. Even that is relegated more to the mechanics of the thing, such as putting ends on coax, bolting the antenna clamp to the structure, wire-tying off the cables, etc. Except for the low power HF stuff, no one really "builds" anything anymore.

How many people know how to build a tube amp circuit for something above 2 Mhz?

Hi amper,
Congratulations on your new ham ticket! While it has been over 15 years ago that I got my first ham ticket--it is pretty exciting to get that first ticket!!!
I live in Arizona and around here there are many mountain top repeaters that have very wide coverage, so 2meters especially has real advantage in a survival situation. I can remember being up by the Mogollon rim (north central AZ) and talking on an handitalkie with 2 watts over 100 miles back down into Phoenix while out camping some years ago.
You will need to learn what your area has available in repeaters, but a nice HT would be a good starting place, and by all means get plugged into a local ham group--they will help you alot.
Ford
KG7IW

Congrats Amper! Welcome to Amateur Radio! My callsign is W5ALN and I've got the ICOM V-8000 2 meter in my truck and have the ICOM T-90 (2M, 70cm, 6m) for a handheld. I love my V-8000 - simple, rugged, and powerful. I wish I had bought the ICOM V-8 HT instead of the T-90. It's great having the ability to scan all frequencies (except cellular) but it's tiny and the antenna connector (SMA not BNC) is too fragile. Definitely get a mobile radio first. Lots of new hams get an HT for their first radio but get discouraged quickly by the lack of range.

Regarding GMRS vs. Amateur - I believe that you're more likely to have someone hear you on Amateur frequencies than on GMRS. Not to bash GMRS, I know that there are some serious users out there, but 99% of GMRS radios purchased get used once and then sit in the drawer for the rest of eternity. Nobody monitors the GMRS frequencies like amateurs tend to monitor the amateur freqs. Also, it's easier to cobble up a better antenna for a ham HT than a GMRS. Google "roll up j pole" to find plans for a cheap, very effective, and easily-packed auxiliary antenna. Wad it up and throw it in a pocket. Toss it up into a tree for better range than a rubber duckie!

73s

Contgratulations on getting your ticket. Here are some thoughts that I came up with, although somewhat disorganized

Things to consider when buying your first rig:

• What is your budget?
  
• What is your intended use? (casual QSOs from home, mobile work, hiking, ARES/RACES response, etc.)
  
• I don't know what your situation is, but if you drive a vehicle at all, I would recommend a mobile rig as your first radio. HTs may be more appropriate if you take mass transit, or are not old enough to drive.
  
• In most areas of the country, 2m is still the most-used band, so make sure the radio you buy has solid 2m capabilities.
  
  
• If you already have a GMRS HT (I do also), keep it as another tool in the toolbox. GMRS' shared channels with FRS are something to keep in mind.
  
  
• Unless you plan on upgrading to General class or higher in the near future, save yourself the expense of purchasing any HF-capable radios, at least to start.
  
  
• Finally, Ed Harris, KE4SKY of Virginia RACES has some thoughts on radios for emergency communications. This doesn't mean calling for help in the wilderness, but replacing a commercial system when it's down or overloaded. e.g.: there is a hurricane and it takes out the county's only tower holding all the police/fire/EMS repeaters.
  Best Radio for Emergency Communications
  
  

Thanks for all the responses and congrats! The FCC posted my call sign today, KC2OOS, and tonight I attended my first club meeting at the South Jersey Radio Association, which happens to be the oldest continuously operating radio club in the country (so they claim).

Here's my thoughts for where I'm going in the ham community...

I'd like to be involved with the local emergency comms group. At the meeting tonight, I made contact with the local coordinator for my township. My family has a long history of service in the emergency services. My grandfather was a Battalion Chief in the NYFD, my grandmother (and other family members) served in their local ambulance corps, my father was an ER physician, and my mother is an RN with her county's health department.

It's about time for me to replace my car, so I've been thinking of something with some off-road capability. My ideal would be a long-wheelbase Jeep CJ or Wrangler that I want to fill full of electronics and comm gear. The ultimate to me looks like the impending Icom IC-7000 (you can watch TV on it, too!), which should fit in the Tuffy Products overhead console (same dimensions as the IC-706MkIIG, which according to http://www.commtechreview.net/jeep/tuffy1.htm fits nicely). I'm planning on having an HF/VHF/UHF unit along with a CB, scanner, GPS, and one or two in-car computers, assuming I can fit it all somehow. I want to route all the audio outputs to a halfway decent car stereo, nothing eardrum-shattering. If you follow that link above and check out their whole rig, you'll have an idea of what I'm thinking.

Budget is always an issue, of course (and that IC-7000 is rumored to come out at somewhere around $1500), but I make an OK living. Needless to say, because of the expense involved, I won't be building it all at once. I'll also be doing all the installation myself.

But, first things first--I don't even have the Jeep, yet. Realistically, I'll probably start with a decent multi-band HT, for now. Of course, I'll have to upgrade my license to transmit HF.

For HF emergency comms I'm pretty interested in the PSK31 mode. That's an ultra low speed digital mode (31 bits/sec) that uses even less bandwidth than CW. The speed was chosen to be just fast enough to keep up with moderately fast typing (40 wpm or so). The low bit rate means you can have text chat conversations with about 1/100th the power needed for voice conversations. So that 5 watt FT817 on PSK31 is like 500 watts voice. For emergency comms, text is if anything better than voice, since you can send stuff like GPS coordinates and it's all logged directly to the other person's computer.

I've thought for a while that someone should make an all-in-one PSK31 transceiver (maybe single band 20 meter) the size of an FT817, with a keyboard and display and all the modulation stuff all in the same waterproof box. It would be a no-operation-cost backup or substitute for a satellite phone, capable of communicating from the remotest areas as long as you could set up a reasonable antenna. The only drawback would be the text-only nature, but us computer users have gotten used to that.

Hey amper,
That sounds like a great plan, plus a lot of fun (shh, dont tell anyone)! That IC-7000 really looks VERY cool! Do you know when it is planned to be released? I might have to see about getting one.
Ford

I've seen estimates for the release of the IC-7000 anywhere from next month through the end of 2005, and I think I even saw one that said 2006. If it doesn't look like it will be coming out in a reasonable amount of time (and it still has to pass the FCC certs), I'll probably end up getting a cheaper radio. The main candidates right now are the Yaesu FT-8900R, FT-857D, and FT-897D, plus the Icom IC-706MKIIG. The 897 and 857 may have problems fitting into the space I have in mind.

As far as a scanner goes, I'm thinking the Yaesu V-5000. It's a bit big for the space I want to put it in, but it looks like it has all the features I want. I may want to save the space and try to find a smaller unit. For a CB, I'm thinking the Cobra 75 WX ST, because I don't need another radio bay for it--everything is contained in the handset.

Today, I picked up my first amateur radio, an Icom IC-W32A handheld 2m/70cm radio. It fit my requirements of working on at least the 2m and 70cm bands, plus NWS RX and capability of running on AA batteries. Icom also has the IC-T7H model, but the W32A can also operate as a cross-band repeater. I'm also thinking about replacing my Motorola TalkAbout 6250 GMRS radios with the Icom IC-F21GM.

I have the T7H, and have some friends with the W32a - they are both nice radios - the main advantages of the T7H is a MUCH longer battery life, due to only having to run 1 VFO, and price

At the time I bought it, the W32 was discontinued (they put it back in production) and I could not afford the W32 from the few dealers that still had them. Wish I had bought the W32

What's the point of the two vfo's? I'm trying to figure out how the crossband repeater works. It listens on two separate input channels (2m and 440) and sends on two separate output channels (440 and 2m)? So someone with a 2m HT can talk to someone else with a 440 ht, but two 2m users can't talk to each other?

Is it really that useful? Would you set it up on a hilltop (tall building etc.) to provide repeater coverage to some local area or what? How would you power it, and how would you keep it secure? Actually I guess just putting it inside a car (roof mount antenna) would be a big help in letting HT users talk to each other. But I think a traditional repeater, or crossband mobile rig, makes more sense than an HT for this purpose.

yeah, you can cross band repeat, but I find the biggest advantage of 2 VFOs is to listen to 2 conversations at once - not scanning, but actually HEAR. Comes in useful sometimes - I have my go boxes setup that when I hook up headphones, I get one rig in the left ear, the other in the right

Amper & others:

Let's let the dust, and mud, settle over this last little interlude of mother nature, and tell us how amateur radio did, or could have, helped?

I'm not throwing darts -- I just heard that the 'call in' radio stations were the best source of info.

Ham radio unlike call-in shows lets you get info out of a region when the phone lines are down. But I think digital modes are the best for this purpose.

I expect that you will see, over the next few weeks, just how important amateur radio is for emergency communications. Call-in radio shows are not set up to provide accurate and precise information. There are established networks of amateur radio operators (SKYWARN, RACES, ARES, Hurricane Watch Net, etc...go look 'em up) that have established relationships with governmental and non-governmental emergency service and disaster relief agencies.

As for the cross-band repeater capability of the IC-W32A, it doesn't look like it's limited to 2m/70cm operation. Either side of the IC-W32A can be set for VHF or UHF operation. So you could conceivably use it to relay 2m/2m or 70cm/70cm as well. I think you can even use it to link two other repeaters, as each side of the radio can operate as a repeater client. It's a pretty complex beast, and I'm still clawing my way through the manual.

Unfortunately, Icom doesn't offer a better battery pack than a NiCd. The AA pack *is* a 4 AA, unlike the only equivalent Yaesu (VX7R), which only takes a 2xAA pack. With 4 AA's, you can transmit at 1.5W, and NiMH or Lithium AA's should last quite a long time in this radio. I understand that there are third-party NiMH battery packs available.

As a side question, can anybody recommend a better antenna for this radio?

No - it's CROSS BAND repeater - it can NOT receive and transmit on the same band at the same time - to do that requires a farily sharp diplexer (aka "Cans") - it can be setup with both VFOs on one band, but the RX on one drops when the other is TX

There are aftermarket battery packs that are better than the stock pack, and I forget which Comet Antenna I have (the one about 19" long) - works great

That said, I've relegated almost all my "Ham" gear to backup status, and use almost all commercial gear

Amateur radios response thus far.

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/08/29/2/?nc=1

The PSK-31 mode sounds interesting. My guess is that you will be using a pda device connected to your HT to have a truely portable solution rather than an all in one device. I read that what is needed is a pda with a dsp sound card and sound input, something not yet being manufactured.

Ah, my mistake. I'm just a lowly, newly-minted Tech, after all.

Thanks for the correction.

I think the Strongarm/Xscale-powered pda's have enough compute power to do psk31 without a dedicated dsp. Question is how many of them give you a clean path to the a/d converters in both directions. Lots of them have clean headphone output (so you can listen to music) but only have built-in microphones (for voice input) with no place to plug in an external audio source. I do think PSK31 should be built into radios, especially those radios that already have DSP's. Maybe VOIP programs will create some demand for pda's to accept headset mics. Finally, PSK31 (to me) is more interesting on hf than vhf, because hf's long range capability makes it useful for remote areas. For situations like Katrina, where a few dozen miles is enough range, higher speed VHF packet and digipeaters are likely to be much more useful than PSK31.

Seriously guys, what is the learning curve like on this? there are only so many hours.

Learning curve? Oh ham radio? I've seen a neophite pass the test in less than 8 hrs of studying, and I've seen it take a lot more. A "typical" set of classes would be something like 3 hrs, once per week, for 2 months or so. If you are a good study on your own, by the book "Now your talking" - read it, and you should pass

From THERE, it's a lifetime - huge hobby - what is the learning time on say, a computer

There was an interesting article on how new communications technologies are taking disaster comms out of the hands of hams - it's actually a good thing! (and that is speaking as an ARES EC)

I see our job as to provide communications to our served agenices - be it by ham radio, or better yet, phone, internet, fax, or whatever works, including taking a note and running down the hall

it's about communications, not ham radio (IMHO)

As to the learning curve, well, I can say that I personally think that the Element 2 (Technician) examination could definitely stand to be a lot tougher than it is. I've been thinking about amateur radio for a long time, but a couple of weeks ago I got an itch to really go for it. I had never studied anything about the topic before I discovered some of the practice tests online.

My first attempt at a practice test resulted in a passing grade. As I kept taking practice exams, I began to learn a lot more about radio topics. Now, I have a pretty good background in math and science, plus I've studied a bit about electronics due to my interest in guitar amplifiers and recording, but I've never studied anything specifically related to radio.

After a couple of days playing with practice tests online, I went to a local bookstore and picked up a copy of the ARRL "Now You're Talking" book to help me brush up on radio-specific topic areas where my knowledge base was weak. Approximately two days later, I found out that the local VE group was giving exams that evening. I passed the Element 2 with only one question wrong (and I know which one--it was about repeater offsets and I guessed at it).

I would think that anyone with a good grounding in math and science, plus a basic knowledge of electronics would be able to pass Element 2 as easily as I did, if not easier. My opinion is that the Technician exam places too much emphasis on basic technical knowledge that no one should have graduated high school without, and not enough emphasis on rules, regulations, and operational procedure and etiquette. Judging from what I've seen so far of the Element 3 question pool (General class license), it looks like there's a lot of emphasis on regulations and statistics that can be easily looked up but are difficult to remember, but a little diligence will go a long way here toward entraining your memory for the test.

The biggest stumbling block for most people will probably be the Element 1 exam, which is the 5wpm International Morse Code test. People have told me that since I'm a musician, I will find it much easier than most people, but I'm stil having a lot of trouble learning the alphabet. Then again, I've only been studying Morse code for a week or so. You need Element 1 for a General or Extra license, currently. The FCC has issued a proposal to eliminate this requirement, and it will probably pass into effect soon. There is much debate in the ham community as to whether or not this is a good thing.

Anyway, even the Technician privledges provide wide latitude for operation. Full access is granted to all bands above 30MHz, which includes what are probably the most popular frequencies (70cm UHF, 2m VHF, 6m HF). Those three bands alone will go a long way in a localized emergency situation. 2 Meter range can get out to 100 miles on a good day with a powerful station, or so they say.

Today I added a Diamond RHF40 antenna to my Icom IC-W32A. I was able to easily hit my local club's repeater from 10 miles away transmitting at 5 watts from inside my car. Try *that* with a Motorola Talkabout on GMRS. Even without the new antenna, and operating on AA batteries (1.5W), I was able to be understood through that repeater from over 9 miles away on relatively flat ground.

I disagree that Element 2 should be more difficult. It is the entrance exam and to make it MORE difficult is only asking for even fewer people to try. That's part of the reason the Element 1 (morse code exam) may be eliminated, IMO. I won't be surprised if Element 1 exam is moved to the the Extra class (Element 4) license.

There is a learning curve, less for a technician license and more for a higher class, of course. If you are motivated, you can do it all for free by downloading the exam questions, downloading a morse code application to practice, and checking out books at your local library. I challenge everyone to at least get a technician license with a learning curve of probably a few hours.

Practice exams are free online too. I don't have the url's right on hand.

Do I need to take a Ham radio exam to use it? Is there any radio that I can use for emergency which has powerful broadcast range over 4miles & I don't need a license to carry it.

You dont need a license to cary it or receive on it. You also don't need a license to transmit in an emergency situation. You only need a license for non-emergency transmissions.

Brian, while your response is technically correct, I think it is hardly the most responsible way to approach the problem. One should never rely on untested equipment in an emergency. In the case of radio communications, it is a simple process to obtain a small amount of knowledge. Your response could encourage people to purchase amateur radio gear without obtaining the knowledge to use it effectively.

But to cover a 4-mile range does not require a particularly powerful, or even license-required radio. CB radio, legally limited to 4 watts transmit power, does not require licensing. GMRS radios, which are approved up to 5 watts for handheld transceivers, require only a license fee rather than a test.

In an emergency, especially one such as Hurricane Katrina, where there is widespread infrastructure damage, radio communications may be the only available means of long-distance communications, and the available bandwidth will be heavily taxed. A little knowledge goes a long way in helping get a message out to the right people at the right time.

Brian merely stated the facts. He didn't encourage them to do that.

where can I study to get license to use these amatuer radio? Is it expensive to get license? Is it available in Canada? I am living in Canada

Picard, try here: http://www.rac.ca/ That's Radio Amateurs of Canada, sort of the Canadian version of the ARRL.