Grid Down... Reality Bites......

I want to thank everyone who participated. Propagation conditions were not the best this morning and we had no luxury of getting on AR15.COM to gather any information.
The rules were not easy but let's face it, sh*t always hits the fan when you least expect it. Remember the last exercise when we passed traffic to and from Hawaii in a matter of minutes? We had more information available and we had access to this website as well. Time was chosen for the most favorable, long distance propagation conditions. It was fun but it never happens this way during emergencies.
The main purpose of this exercise was not to pass the massages but to face a reality about what happens when modern communications grid goes down.

Let me quote Prosise: " Listened for an hour at sunup on east coast on 17,20,40. Called a little on arfcom frequencies but never heard anything. Boy it sure sucked not having internet, phone, etc. Was hoping to touch base with someone who knew something. Was informative to me.. info is power. Looking forward to the results."

This is exactly what I was hoping to hear. Info is power. It seems like we always post several pages on ARFCOM to organize a simple HF net. It's very convenient and saves time. We may not have this convenience if a real Grid-Down emergency happens on a nation-wide scale.

Here are the results: We failed to contact the East Coast station and failed to pass the first message. As a result a reply message was not released. I did throw a few monkey wrenches into this by assuring that the East Coast guy will only call CQ on the lower bands and on SSB Voice only. It was supposed to be a mess in the beginning because all the Digital guys probably headed straight to Olivia, Microphone only guys to SSB Voice and I was tempted to participate and do everyone a "favor" by calling CQ at 40 WPM CW. Actually it was Piccolo who saw this happening long before the drill started..
The forward and reply messages had no meaning. It was just a short traffic to pass. I don't believe this exercise has ended in failure. We all learned that we need to organize better and practice before a real emergency happens. I my humble opinion (IMHO), we need to agree on where to head and what modes to use. Should we spend the whole day calling CQ or listening? Does in make more sense to do this several times a day, on top of an hour and on bands that we all agree on? What do you think?
Please voice your opinions.
How about we try another drill again but use a new format and comm. schedule??

Special thanks to both East (FN64GR) and West Coast (Elcope) stations. Also thanks to TNC who volunteered but was called to work at the last moment.
Elcope managed to contact several Arfcomers during the exercise: aa777888-2), KD0*** (Arfcom name not received), weaponeer1911, & dammac751 (FCC Callsign not received)
None had traffic to pass. Olivia 16/500 14.067.5 .
FN64GR could not contact any Arfcom stations but his task, timing and band limitations made it very difficult. I asked him to keep it this way.
I received several PM and text messages during the drill but stuck to the rules and only answered after the drill was over at 16:00 UTC. Sorry guys but rules are rules. Perhaps I made it too complicated but who said it was supposed to be easy?

I don't believe it was a failure either, in fact the strictness of your rules adds friction which you would experience in a grid down or other type of emergent situation.

I did monitor both voice and digital freqs since not everyone does all things and I suspected that you might throw such a wrench like ssb or digital only

Maybe set times for monitoring like ssb at the top of the hour until 15 min past, then digital until the bottom of the hour?

The conditions were crap but interesting, one of my QSO's was in NH, so damn near coast to coast, but any further south and I couldn't hear / copy anything east of MO.

First thing this morning I abandoned 80M because I was getting QRM, went to 40M until 8:30 until QRM forced me off to 20M, where I made QSO's listed above.

I feel another hour or two added to the exercise and the message would have made it.

you're right about us needing a sked and practice, practice, practice!  a successful exercise, if you ask me.  I missed it entirely due to not paying attention to UTC vs local.  (also that would have been a bit early for Saturday radio ops )

I went to the club station to use a better antenna, and heard nothing on 80/40/20.

This would have been an easy day if I could have been around for the entire EX period, or if FN had started to call at 1000 UTC (80M was totally fine then) or anytime before I had to leave at 1130 UTC (0730 local). Unfortunately I had to leave and it would seem we have very few arfhams in the Northeast.

Did you hear anything from me?

Also, I need Quebec.

In a real situation we ought to have a check-in schedule.

I recommend every 6 hours, 00Z, 0600Z, 1200Z and 1800Z.

UTC or East Coast time?

Thanks

Eastern time, I believe. This was the plan. Only FN64 and I knew about it. Obviously I did not want to post exact time but mentioned that Uncle East was on the air at about dawn time.

BTW, KD0*** was probably dammac751.

Check-in schedule sounds like a great idea. This would allow us to play on the radio and get other chores done.

I also recommend buying a cheap digital clock at Walmart, switch it to a 24 hr. format and set it to UTC time. Keeping a reference to UTC time only in the schedule will help tremendously.

Any comments?

Gyprat, I didn't think the rules were too limiting for the exercise. With my hindsight being nearly 20/40, I can see where sked times need to be agreed upon and added to the Arfcom frequency chart.  Operators will have to be familiar with band propagation during various times of the day along with direction of the band opening to help make the sked work. I would like to see more exercises in the future, it did make me think I need more antenna options to choose from.

Thanks Gyprat for putting this together.

Yes, I figured that out after the fact.

I agree.

When on the radio and deployments, I think in UTC.

An interesting thought to consider in light of Danpass' thread about amateur satellites, the message could have been passed by a Tech class operator from coast to coast with a Baofeng handheld and no relays.


Maybe it's time to learn new methods.

ETA: AMSAT coverage / range pic from Danpass.

In addition to that, I would assign a primary (and secondary) band for each check-in time.  Perhaps low bands at night and higher bands during the day.

And I would suggest everyone trying  SSB first, then digital, and finally CW at each check-in time.  Say 10 minutes for each mode (30 minutes total).  Then move to the secondary band.

For instance:  0000Z  (P) 20m   (S) 40m.  

At 0000Z, I would check 20m for SSB, digital, and CW.  If no contact, I would  move to 40m at 0030Z, and start over.

In other words, let's take some of the guesswork out of it. Simply jumping from  band to band, and  mode to mode, hoping to hear someone from Arfcom, is almost a waste of time.



One reason for assigning different  bands, is because some of us have limited capability. Not a chance in hell I'm going to make contact with someone on 80 meters, as I don't have an 80m antenna in my attic.  So I could wait for a check-in time that utilizes say, 20m.


Just thinking out loud, here.

I did a bit of listening but heard nothing between Saturday projects.  

Zulu is UTC. Every ham Shack should have at least one time piece set to UTC.
Establishing a call schedule sounds reasonable. Incorporating it into the next rev of the freq sheet sounds good, too.

Were there instructions for the originating station to stop trying with nothing heard prior to the end if exercise? I'm trying to understand the constraints and so wee can work toward success for the next go round.

As I was tuning up Arfcom 2m, I rolled through APRS and thought about calling CQ ARFCOM over the ISS digipeater, but didn't.  :)

After reading thru the comments I think we've all learned a few things..
I wish I had more time yesterday to put into it but I had to bail shortly before 1000 eastern.
I feel Gyprat is correct in saying everyone probably went to their usual and favorite mode..
In my case, all I have is an 80M dipole but I can push it to 40 without too much trouble.
I don't do digi & my CW sucks so SSB is where I'm at.
Agree we should go to a UTC time standard..
Agree that we should have a couple primary freqs for calling / emergency
Suggest SSB voice as the primary calling mode since everyone can do it.
Suggest a weekly "roll call" say on Sundays 1600Z 40M Pri.
As for me I need to get some higher band antennas in the air.

So there's my nickles worth..
73..FN

Gyprat and participants, thanks from an outside observer. I've got some valuable insights for future air-work.

Thanks to all who put this together and tried to make it happen.  I started first thing in the morning listening to all frequencies we had including digital.  However with the band conditions being terrible I did not even try calling CQ.  My interpretation of the exercise was that calling CQ would be limited to those with message traffic since others would not have anything to pass.  Not sure if that was the intent or not but that is how I played.

I agree with others that a standard time for working each set of frequencies both SSB and Digital would be very beneficial.  One thing that I am planning to do on my end it program the frequencies into my radio memory channels in one bank.  I found I was wasting considerable time dialing to or direct entering frequencies that I did not always remember and had to refer to my print out.  Maybe next time we get to try this band conditions will be a bit better.  Gyprat again thanks for putting this together.

Crnama, yep. People with no traffic keep quiet was my take as well since this was not intended to be a controlled net.

My take-aways:

Nothing wrong with the baseline scenario, except for the broken beam (IMHO).

Given the scenario parameters, the vast majority of the nation would be unaware of the power grid disaster in the Northeast until much later in the day, i.e. they'd need to get up, shower, dress, walk the dog and then get their morning dose of news first.

If the brothers had skeds setup in case of emergency the arfham community would be largely unecessary, although given the usual propagation conditions they would not have made contact until sometime after 1600UTC.

If this had been a real deal, FN would have contacted the first ham he could outside of the affected zone and got him to text/call/email his brother. He might have even set up a sked with his brother that way if he did not already have one in place.

We have far too few arfhams to really make this work, unless all of us responded to a digital call to arms--er--radios .

As a group we need a sked for such happenings in order to effectively respond to a digital call to radios. This could be added to the frequency list.

As a group we need to be better prepared equipment-wise. I'm not saying that everyone has to have a 100ft tall tower with a 2 element 80M beam on it, but there are far too many with fairly severe band restrictions. Buy a tuner. Put up a folded something or other for 40 and 80M.

Unattended HF digital modes are still the best way to get messages out. a) They are more likely to be received. b) One can leave the radio and PC running while they would otherwise gather dust, thereby allowing a periodic (even once a day) check of the buffer for messages. Calls for help should include skeds.

We need to define an 80M digi guard channel.

Indeed, I still think JT65 or JT9 with brevity codes is the way to go, 20M for daytime, 40M for nighttime. Wing Attack Plan R and all that. Although it is easy enough to send a few 13 character free text messages. Something like "PLS MON 7114" followed by "AT 18Z" should be clear enough.

You can easily run Fldigi and WSJT-X at the same time to monitor for both Olivia and JT65 messages. Using non-standard freq's for this, i.e. our digi guard channels, will keep the buffers nice and empty except for real messages. We could have daily or weekly test messages sent out by different arfhams on a rotating basis.

It would be nice if there was some way to automatically scan in Fldigi or WSJT-X, like 20M first 20 minutes of each our, 40M second 20 minutes and 80M third 20 minutes.

Concur with these points.

I like the schedule Kekoa talked about, 20m on the hour with calls at 10 min intervals on SSB,Olivia and CW then switch to 40m on the half hour.

I also like the idea of running JT65 on the Arf guard frequencies.  Using a short brevity code like "CHK ARFCOM" could act as a sort of pop flare to check other modes.

I also like the idea of regular check-ins but it needs to be a bit later for those of us on the left coast/AK/HI.  Since the 80m net on Tuesdays doesn't seem to be very consistent, I suggest we use that time for a rolling net starting on 20m and moving up.

Great ideas.
BTW, The broken beam was a hint telling that most likely he was going to use 80 and 40 meters. Most rotatable beam antennas cover 20-10m and 6m - 70 cm bands.
The west coast guy was asked to be on the air at least an hour later at 7:00 (Local time in Montana). Actually we agreed that he was going to be on the air at about 7:45 (Local, Montana time, 2 hours behind).
This was simply done to make it more realistic. ALL PARTICIPANTS assumed that their power, phones and Internet were down due to power outages nation-wide. I doubt anyone would take shower, eat breakfast before realizing that power is out. This was my thinking anyway. I can be wrong though.

I have learned an important lesson. I need to get everything set up and ready for digital modes and need to practice it more often. I have done it before and checked into the Digital Guard net several times Unfortunately I quickly lost in interest in digital modes. I've been a ham for 25+ years but never used Digi modes until about 2 years ago. Big Daddy got me motivated. SSB and CW are my favorite modes. CW is the best for DX-ing. This does not mean Digital modes should be abandoned in my shack. All I need is to connect a USB cable to the radio.
You made a great point. A system running one of the Digital modes can be left unattended and will store received messages in a buffer. I have never used any JT modes but know for sure that Fldigi running Olivia can do this. We all need to agree on which mode will be used. Using several digi modes may add some confusion. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Another question - I believe JT modes require time clocks on all station to be in sync (less than a second variation). Can this be done with grid being down? What if WWV stations are down? Not everyone has an ability to use GPS for time accuracy, assuming GPS satellites are functioning and the military has not disabled it for civilian use in some areas.

I would be a bit reluctant to leave my $10,000+ system running at all times, connected to the outside antenna. The beam is on a 75 ft tower. The tower is the highest object in at least a mile radius. I do have grounding and lightning arresters but get too paranoid to leave antennas plugged in when I'm not around.
Maybe I could use one of my FT-857D radios and use it with an attic antenna? Noise level will be high in the attic but digi modes should work. Having the antenna in the attic will greatly reduce a likelihood of a lightning damage.  Just thinking out loud................

Maybe we need to start a new thread or post some links to a tutorial on how to set up our radios and computers to work on digital modes or a digital mode we all decide to use. It's really not that complicated. You can do digital modes if you can figure out how to post on Arfcom.  


It looks like everyone agrees that we need to add a schedule to the Arfcom frequency list. This will assure that everyone heads to the same place.
I would do this but I don't have MS Office on my home computers and have no clue where to post it so everyone can access it. I'm an engineer but not an IT person.

aa777888-2 suggested that we use JT9 and JT65 with a short message attached. Perhaps we can come up with a short list of brevity codes.
I know that message buffering can be done in Fldigi, running Olivia. I believe it can also be done with HRD (what I'll be running).
How about we discuss this and come up with a single digital mode that everyone will use for emergency communications. Please post your opinions.


I also agree with FN64 about using SSB as a primary mode of communication. It's simple, quick and everyone with a radio can do this. The most important benefit is that it requires no computer.  Perhaps, like previously suggested, we can try SSB Voice first and head to Digital if no contact is made. Obviously Digital modes work better with low power and less than perfect antennas.
IMHO 10-15 minutes for SSB Voice and 20-30 minutes for Digital ( 2 way exchange) on top of an hour, every 6 hours may work well. We could also include a 15 minute window after that for CW.  Running CW has the same advantage as Digital when used with low TX power and poor efficiency antennas. I do realize that some guys don't use CW but we should not abandon it, in my opinion.
What do you guys think?

If I'm running on backup battery power, I wouldn't want to leave my radio on 24/7.  And my main computer would be useless.  I do have a laptop, but no way to charge the battery if the main power is out.  Only turning on the rig once every 6 hours to check for messages, would extend the operating time greatly.

Yeah, I know.....I should get a generator, solar power/charger, etc.  Actually, I don't even have a battery backup right now, so I'm way behind.

WSJT-X is the program of choice for the JT modes. It will happily log all JT messages all day, just like Fldigi and Olivia.

Indeed, you can run both WSJT-X and Fldigi at the same time and monitor for both Olivia and JT modes simultaneously. This provides a high degree of flexibility for the SHTF stations that would be calling.


Very true. However for SHTF this is unlikely to be a problem. Where TEOTWAWKI all bets are off. I suggest we eat this elephant one bite at a time and concentrate on SHTF type scenarios where there is a rest of the world to still up and operating.


This is the exact reason (not leaving on or powering up your $10K uber-station) why the JT modes are probably the best way. Other than having to run a laptop, the power and antenna required to make these Weak Signal modes work is minimal. People regularly contact a fair portion of the world on 10W with these modes. With 20 or 50W communications is almost assured. It is also substantially less band/propagation sensitive.

So in a SHTF scenario, where the rest of the arfham world can keep their rigs up, running and monitoring, this will give the best chance for the station(s) in the SHTF affected area to get on the air with minimal infrastructure and get a message or messages out that would help guide further communications.


I'd suggest something like 20/40/80 meters, 20 minutes each, first 10 minutes digi, second 10 minutes phone. This give plenty of time for mode switching and calls.

However, unless someone can come up with a scanning solution, the digi monitoring approach will require leaving up one band for large parts of the 24 hours cycle, e.g. 20M in the day and 40M at night, etc.

I Really like the feedback.  I am reluctant to think that in the event of a grid down that I would be able to run more than 100w..  I just don't think my setup would allow anything more.   In the event that I had to hit the road I would be running something homebrew at 100w max..    

As for the satellites I just don't think you would have the data to track.  No cellular, internet, etc would rule them out..    

It looks like comms would keep returning to HF, and if the grid is struggling  the HF bands will be busy . freq's will be first come first serve.  So primary, secondary freq's would need to be set with at least 4 more as backups.  

A schedule for bands is a great Idea..  

We need to keep going on this and get some more ideas to think about.    

Prosise

IMHO, hopefully we all learned something new during the last drill.

Anyone interested in doing another drill? I think this time we will be better organized and more efficient. We definitely need to add a schedule to the existing Frequency List. This way a new drill won't require

participants to spend the whole day searching Arfcom frequencies.

I will start another thread it there is enough interest. We will discuss all the details there.  Please reply if you are interested and don't hesitate to include any constructive criticism. You won't

hurt my feelings.

I'll be glad to give it a shot.

Sure

Yes.  Hopefully I can play this time.

Would like to participate.

I'm in.. Even though I didn't get to talk with any arfcommers I learned a bit.
Say when..
FN

I'm in to.

Actually we should have this kind on exercise at least twice a year.

I'm in.

Sounds good.  I also like the fact that you threw in curveball issues.  We wouldn't learn anything if it was easy.  

Prosise

I'd like to try it again.

yup

I'm in. 3rd times the charm! To date I've been on ships during the drills. Maybe I'll get to stay home and participate next time. Sorry I had to bail, a last minute business trip got sprung on me Friday afternoon. I tried to put it off 'til Saturday but it was not in the cards.

The last drill emphasizes what I always say about HF comms:

Propagation is a Harsh Mistress©

Concur with Elcope and others, satellite is a good tool for our toolbox. A sked is a good thing, we'll be busy during a disaster just like we are in normal times, and lets us manage our battery use for emergency power sources.

I've just started tinkering with packet radio, and we certainly have a good number of members with digital capability.

The holidays are coming up which should free up some time for a lot of us.

Yes, please.  I missed the last one due to busy work schedule.  

Count me in.

I'm in!

I'm in as well.  I was listening and periodically throwing out  ARFcom CQs on 20 meters
but couldn't pull anything discernible out of the muck. I'd love another chance.

Hopefully, I can try this go round.

Ok. Just give me some time. I got too much going on. It's not radio related.

We're missing a digital guard freq on 80M and a 60M channel altogether.

I'll add them to the freq sheet if we can get a consensus.

Suggestions:

3583.5 + 1500 for 80M digi.

60M Channel 2; 5346.5 KHz (USB on 60M)