Pre internet and pre digital cell phone, it would have fascinated me.  Now it seems anachronistic, and I'm wondering what benefits the hobby has today.

If you normally live in a hurricane zone, there are clear benefits.  I don't.

This.

It's a hobby. Some of us enjoy it for what it is.  Just like some people enjoy working on cars, or fishing, or playing chess, playing an instrument, or.....

Ham radio has changed my life around, several times. It's not always about communications. It's also about friendship and fellowship. It's also about learning valuable skills. Believe it or not, many of us still use Morse Code and radio equipment with vacuum tubes.

Ham radio is like a fishing hobby. You can go to a grocery store, get some fish, cook it, eat it and forget it. A fisherman spends time to learn how to fish, where to fish, what fishing rod and bait to use. He spends hours doing what he loves to do - fishing. His reward is fresh fish and time well spent. He also gains experience and acquires proper fishing tools. Unlike people who buy fish at a store, he will always have fresh fish, even if the store closes it's doors.

Man I was in for the bacon..Total disappointment....

Why ride horses when there are cars?
Why shoot muzzleloaders or bows and arrows when there are modern rifles?
Why drive a '57 Chevy when today's cars get better mileage and are more reliable?

'Cuz it's fun and you meet nice people!

100% CW OP here, been pounding brass since '54.

Had an old fart in a buick run into me at a red stoplight a few years ago.

Had no cell signal.

Used my VHF ham rig to access a repeater and a friend  got the police dispatched
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Telecom switching systems have never been designed for 100% duty cycle, and in the cellular world things can get overly congested even faster.

When SHTF, your iphone will probably get a busy signal
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+1 to what Gyprat said,  I've made some great friends on the radio.

Third post was Excellent!

I'm living in hoaty toaty SE Connecticut. We are not hurting for infrustucture ... you would think.

A few nasty weather cells blew thru there recently knocking down a few trees & affecting the power grid. The result were grossly overloaded call centers and the police department putting out on the Fairfield Nextdoor local social media site that info. In spite that there are more ham clubs in this area than there are hams in many areas of the US. But, the hams were not involved in any way in spite that several are involved with Red Cross in a major way.

You would think that hams near the home of the ARRL (not so far away) would have done a better job in promoting a capability ... that they are completely unprepared for. Yet they are all about FD as a preppers prep. Sigh.

Well, if the test fee is only $15, I'm going to sponsor some troops to take the test if they can pass the practice ones, just in case.

Amateur radio still has its place in emergency situations, not just hurricane disaster zones.  Most recent example I can give took place an hour or so from me, the Joplin Missouri tornado.  Comms were wiped out and local ARES members were divided out among the search and rescue groups so the groups could maintain comms with the command post.  I wasn't there for this, was before I got licensed, but my elmer/local emergency management director told me all about it.

In South Carolina, all the big hospitals have ham antenna on top of them.  Basically covers the whole state.

What was learned during hurricane hugo was that - phone infrastructure can get damaged, and there needs to be someway to coordinate EMS and patient evacuation from the coast.  (I would hope that nowadays, that VOIP over buried cable via the web would be much more resistant to problems)

Our hospital has DSTAR capability also and the hospital bought us radios to participate.

HAM definitely has its uses.

As society modernizes at an increasingly fast pace, we find ourselves moving away from physical infrastructure regarding communications. These communications would be more vulnerable the more we increase our dependence on them. Many ppl in my area are moving away from landline phones due to increased cell coverage. I’m afraid this leap forward we have made will be too large of a gap to bridge if we did need to go backward(even temporary). A lot of ppl will be without basic communications. A lot of unhappy customers at best, the worst can be imagined.

We visited our local Red Cross to talk about installing a ham station and antennas at their location. What really surprised me was that they didn't even have a backup generator at the Red Cross building. They will basically rely on ham radios for communications until the cavalry arrives from FEMA.  
Unfortunately, even FEMA and National Guard were caught with their "pants down" a few times. Just ask @PlaneMaker about his trip to Puerto Rico to assist with communications after the hurricane. Ham radio simply works when everything else fails.

Yeah, what he said.

There have been a couple of AARs on disaster response and the existing communications ability or lack thereof to deal with a sudden tsunami of users and/or damage to the infrastructure. One such report from the FCC was done looking at the response to Hurricane Michael in the Florida panhandle: FCC AAR on Michael One of the county EOCs there went offline and the SHARES HF program I'm part of managed to get info to and from them after their EOC had been damaged. When your Emergency Operations Center goes offline, the ability of first responders to dispatch critical help goes down with it.

I may have posted some others from FEMA about their review of the 2017 hurricane season that saw Harvey, Irma, and Maria in fairly close succession. Not a pretty picture. For Maria in particular, there were many areas that had no power or communications for months. Even the 911 center took over 2 months to get back in operation and another month before they could actually dispatch anyone. The VHF public safety repeaters were offline due to damage and the lack of power. Many, many local PD/FD/EMS folks were using ham radio simplex frequencies because there wasn't anything else to use. Even the Army sent a group to Vieques and they came under fire from suspected drug runners. They had no HF radio gear that could reach back to the HQ in San Juan to get help. They ended up finding a local ham to call for help.

One week ago, I was in Harlingen, Tx. A storm came up that started about 7pm and had heavy rain and lightning until well after midnight. The next morning, as we were rolling to our flight location, there were dozens of roads blocked by high water, thousands of people without power, and several cell towers were not working (probably due to the back-haul lines flooding as happened in Puerto Rico). There were hundreds of cars up to their windows in water, hundreds of homes and businesses flooded, even the FedEx terminal was surrounded by 2 feet of water. It rained roughly 13 inches in an 8 hour period. If somebody was in their house, their first indication of a problem might be either the power going out or water coming in from the doorway. By that time, their landline would be toast and their cell probably wouldn't reach the tower due to the intense rainfall. And oh by the way, your car is already flooded and even if it wasn't you couldn't go anywhere because the road was under 3 feet of water.

Speaking of Texas, twice now in the past 3 years I've had my ham radio with me and by listening to the Skywarn frequencies was able to not get in the path of a tornado. What I've noticed is that the Skywarn folks report a funnel cloud in a specific location and direction roughly 10 minutes before the radio and tv stations broadcast an alert (and cell alerts are slightly behind that). Ten minutes means the difference between taking shelter and getting killed. Can't make it any simpler than that.

One might be tempted to think that if one doesn't live in a hurricane-prone area, that there would be nothing to worry about communications-wise. That would be an error on your part, potentially a fatal one. When an earthquake hit here in Virginia in 2011, the entire cell network in the region went offline between 2 and 4 hours, depending on the carrier. Everybody and their dog was trying to call somebody simultaneously. The communications infrastructure is simply not set up to scale two orders of magnitude in the number of simultaneous users.

Ham radio has its uses beyond being a neat hobby. It can sometimes be the difference between life and death. (Another Puerto Rico story.)

ETA: The local city Emergency Management folks in Virginia seem totally convinced their fancy all-digital communication stuff they paid a pretty penny for will somehow magically survive the wind, loss of power, and flooding. Unfortunately, it is precisely when these fail, and they will, that they are needed the most. Everybody thinks the cell network, the land lines, and the internet are 3 seperate systems. They're not, they are interdependent. FirstNet? Uses the cell network. Backhaul lines are not required to have backup power like the cell towers are (8 hours). So, while you might be able to connect to a tower, it won't matter. VOIP? Nope, land lines and fiber get underwater pretty quickly during heavy rains.

Yep, followed your adventure in Puerto Rico closely.  And the Army does have HF equipment, it just doesn't use it.

The worst we're faced w/ where I live is tornadoes, which is not going to take out the cell network - a few towers, but the rest of the network will stay up.  Good tip on Skywarn, however.

My kid sits center seat in a HIMARS and was told how much an HF antenna cost when you break it off at the base. He told me there is a CW keyer in the truck and asking me questions last night about learning code.

I think in a wide spread disaster, many hams would be impacted themselves and would not be in a position to provide any real assistance to local governments. There certainly is a need for hams to assist in an emergency, but the usual "self-deploying" untrained ham is more of nuisance than a help. The last thing a government agency wants is to allow some nitwit with a radio to make a bad situation worse.

Most agencies require that volunteers complete FEMA IS-100.C,  IS-700.b, IS-800.c, and IS-200.b as pre-requisite courses before being allowed to assist in any disaster scenario.  Older hams just don't want to do this training and are pissed when they turned away.

Times have changed. Owing a radio doesn't make you an effective emergency communicator anymore than your owning a guitar and being known as a great musician.

I think for hams to be relevant, they need to obtain the necessary training or just stay home and keep out of the way.

I don't disagree that some understanding of how hams' contributions fit in to the overall disaster response architecture would be good/necessary. Those 4 courses are snoozers and not all that useful other than familiarization of terms. I would argue that precisely NONE of that training is helpful to hams in the nuts-and-bolts of responding to a disaster. Further, I think it would be MORE helpful to have EM teams at the local, state, and FEMA level have mandatory training on what so-called "amateur" radio communications are, and what benefits they offer not just as a last resort but as a mainline utility for emergency managers.

The types of training that WOULD be relevant for hams involve:
- How to select the best mode for transmitting certain kinds of info (maps and photos aren't a good candidate for HF transmission, for example)
- How to quickly setup and configure a station for emergency ops (including ops without grid power)
- How to repair or construct a field expedient antenna (and how to get a station back on line in general)
- How to help keep responders from committing RF fratricide (This is a big deal and one that FEMA does execptionally poorly)
- How to program radios (both ham and first responders') to include the relevant ICS-205 frequencies (I had to do this for some folks in PR because there was nobody else that knew enough to do it.)
- How to adapt to changing propogation conditions
- Who to use as potential contact points both in, near, and far away from the disaster area (and knowing how to configure your station to communicate in those 3 radii).
- How to format an ICS-213 message and how to transmit it to who needs to receive it
- Pre-disaster planning to include participating in practice exercises, working with the EM teams you're likely to support, duty rosters/schedules, etc. The first time the EM teams see you shouldn't be the day of the disaster.
- How to support both EM and NGOs in responding to the disaster (This was another complete fail in PR. The "professional" communicators failed to provide support to who they were supposed to and the hams supported a hodge-podge of public and private agencies. Figure out who is supposed to be supporting whom BEFORE a crisis so everybody knows their role.)
- How to communicate with EM folks at the local, state, and Federal level and when to do which
- The PACE acronym and what it means
- Practice, practice, practice (Many of the digital mode programs change frequently. If the last time you used something was months or years ago, you're in trouble.)
- Keeping a station up-to-date (this includes not only radios but antennas, laptops, and software)
- Understanding of the different modalities of communications such as HF, UHF/VHF, LMR, VOIP, mesh networking, Satcom (phone, SBD, BGAN, VSAT), and know how to utilize the right tool for the job
- Checking your gear on a regular schedule (This is so important and is often forgotten. If you want something ready to go when you need it, you HAVE to exercise it regularly. Otherwise you show up for the party, your shit don't work, and you're totally worthless to the disaster response team.)

Also, what happened in PR was that there was a FEMA ICS-205 generated that had every conceivable frequency a responding group could possibly be using and their were hundreds of groups. So, 35 pages later, you have NO IDEA how to organize and communicate because you don't know which specific frequencies to use as the "command" channel, the "tactical/dispatch" channel, and the "information transmittal" channels. All that stuff should have been worked out beforehand and it wasn't.

IMHO, ESF-2 COM-Ls (and perhaps the initial assessment teams as well) need to integrate hams into their toolbag as a normal and necessary part of disaster response/recovery. That they do not is a failure on their part, not of hams.

there is more to comm after a disaster than govt comms.

I relayed health and welfare messages from hams in PR after the hurricane. I coppied the message, from people in PR made a phone call, introduced myself and relayed the message to the family member. Then got back on the radio and logged the message complete.

Ham Radio is the ultimate middle finger to censorship. In a society like ours is today, I would think that has some value.

Perhaps at one time.  Given that it's a government licensed activity, it seems clear it's easily censored, unlike, say, TOR.

With the launch of thousands of low earth satellites to provide high speed internet access worldwide in the next several years, the days of loss of communications due to a disaster will just be a memory.

Also, unless you are using spread spectrum burst transmissions,  the government can track you down.

Except, of course, the probable scenario of a solar storm causing all those satellites to go into safe mode. While the power grid is failing due to space weather, your fancy new internet mode will be non-existant. And, not just that mode, but a lot of other satcom modes along with GPS outages will make things quite "sucky".

OTOH, I have seen HF get blindsided by space weather. I was trying to do PSK when that big solar stom hit a couple of years ago. You could actually see the distortion on the waterfall. Suffice to say, QSOs were right out. Ham radio isn't a panacea anymore than any other communications mode is. But, it's definitely more resilient than most.

One cool aspect of amateur radio, is that there is no middle-man.  The signal travels directly from my radio, in my house (or where ever), to the receiving radio.  There is no infrastructure to deal with, or rely on. And, I don't have to pay a toll to use it........not that I saved any money by getting into amateur radio.  

I have to agree with a lot that K-9 Bob said.

Local agencies will not have anything to do with Amateur Radio Operators unless they have the ICS classes and can show that they will follow direction and not run off by self-deploying, and trying to act like they are in charge.

I know the classes are snoozers, but they do help to show what is needed to get the job done.

I spent 32 years in public safety and was a ham through all that.
There is a disdain for hams in the public safety realm in Idaho because they, (or at least a lot of them) tend to portray the know-it-all attitude which pisses off public safety managers, county emergency managers and Incident Commanders.

I have had administrators listen briefly to a know-it-all ham, then turn to me and say, "get that off my scene and I never want to hear about ham radio again".

I know this because more then once as an IC I had a ham who did not know me try to tell me how to run the IC and the incident amd that ham radio would work when public safety comms would not.
While I agree with that theory to a point, if your all on the same mountain top and power fails with no backup power available, your all toast.

Simplex only works to a point without mulitiple relay stations for distance coverage.

HF radio does help a lot but small public safety groups, for the most part have "zero knowledge and equipment" for those operations.

And dispatchers do not like HF, because of the noise.

Fortunately, in the last 10 years, our local SAR unit, which is affiliated with the law enforcement in the county has had around 10 members licensed who also understand the ICS system and understand the difference in the two areas of communications.

The local ham club has an MOU with the county now which states direct points and "how it's going to work."

They have a VHF/UHF ham radio in the mobile EOC, as well as an HF radio.

I guess my response to ham radio in emergencies as related to working with public safety would be;

- Take the IC classes, even if snoozers
- Do periodic training with written documentation showing what training was completed
- Offer assistance to the local agencies, but don't show up in your loud, gaudy, patch covered vests with HT's sticking out everywhere
- Be respectful of the emergency responders, they don't have time for know-it-all's, (know your stuff but don't push it unless asked)
- Join a SAR group, CERT team, or whatever is in your area and volunteer to be one of the comm team
- Have your gear in working and presentable condition instead of stuff only you know how to work.

Finally---Don't be "that guy" who gives the emergency response agencies a bad taste which leads to "remove that clown from my AO, Now!"

The Auxcom course is a decent course for integrating amateur radio into the public safety communications environment.  For disclosure I'm a COM-L and COM-T for a state incident management team and have been through Auxcom we are working to integrate those individuals into our statewide communications training program and exercises.

I'll agree with this as well.

The Texas State Guard actively recruits Hams in order to provide disaster communication.  They are an integral part of Texas' disaster response, and have dedicated communication trailers hauled to wherever they need to go.  They were a tremendous help during Harvey.

Minor hijack

What does the process look like to become certified as a COM-T and a COM-L?  Correspondence courses like the FEMA IS stuff or is it in-person?

@Travis

How does one go about getting those FEMA creds?  Also - how do they know you have them?  Do they issue a card or put your name in a database or what?

Go here

Need to get a FEMA ID number first.  You can print a certificate when you’re done, otherwise you can look up your courses completed using your ID.

The courses are in person courses.  Their is a nationwide database that individuals can choose to be entered into after the courses that is available at the various levels to call for the resources.  The initial courses get you a trainee status then a taskbook is completed to show actual competence in the skills and the skills have to be reporven on a 3-5 year cycle depending on the state.

The ICS100, 200, 700, and 800 are available on line.  COM-L (Communications Unit Leader), COM-T, Communications Technician, and AUXCOM (Auxiliary Communications) are put on through DHS normally at the state level information is available here http://www.npstc.org/commUnitTraining.jsp

Thanks Travis.

SDR is what you want. instantly made most older gear obsolete.

When your Anything internet cellular quits, what you gonna do?? Smoke signals don't help much.

Here, our ARES group actually got it added to the building code. They don't build a new school w/o amateur radio capabilities since the schools are used as hurricane shelters. It's a first-class citizen, too. Maintained on generator circuits. All of our area hospitals are also equipped and treated the same. I went through several exercises to ensure the hospital setups were all working as expected.

Grab another cell phone out of the closet, climb up on the roof, and hit the cell tower 3 blocks away instead of the one two blocks away.  IP was intended to survive nuclear conflict, it's pretty stable as long as you're not on one end of the cable.

Yeah, that didn't really work out so well for me. I HAD two phones and it helped not one iota.

Just sayin'  

Hurricane?  Sure.  Cell network might go down.  It didn't during Harvey.  Tornado?  It'll take out a few towers at most.

Houston has the advantage of the (relatively) recent experience of hurricane Ike, where cellular coverage did go down and stayed down for days or weeks afterwards.

As a result (and as a pilot program for FirstNet) in partnership with AT&T cellular infrastructure in the Houston area was strengthened considerably.

Not so for much of the rest of the country.  North Carolina, etc all had significant cellular issues during their hurricane(s) last year.

ETA:  There will come a day when cellular (or it's future equivalent) is extremely robust.  But...  we're still a ways off from that.

As has been pointed out, it depends on what the threats are and where you live.  Where FW_wife & I live, we're just not concerned about hurricanes.  If you're on the Gulf Coast, you're intensely concerned about hurricanes about right now.  If you're in a hurricane zone, then you'll have a far greater interest in Ham radio than elsewhere.

Does Ham radio have a digital mode w/ more bandwidth than an Iridium phone?

Nah.  I think it's mostly a hobby.

I do believe that, on this forum, you will find more interest in emergency, and commando communication, than many other forums.  But for the rest of the ham community I really think it is mainly a fun hobby.

This map, from this site shows the distribution of amateur radio licenses throughout the US.  I suspect the number of hams in any one area, will likely correlate to the population density.

Yes and no. My Iridium phone has a 2400baud "burst mode" but only for very short transmissions and the duty cycle is low. There are some ham digital modes that can do better than that. I would say neither is really all that great for sending data, especially large data files, images, and the like. There are things like a BGAN terminal that are much, much better at digital/internet type things but are MUCH more expensive.

If I lived in the DFW area, I'd be concerned about tornadoes (having had to deal with 2 very nearby in the last 2 years when I was visiting). Other than that, a regional power grid failure would be bad since the cell towers only have 8 hours of backup power by regulation but that doesn't extend to the backhaul or fiber lines. So, an extended power outage would render the cell network (and FirstNet since it's cell based) inert. Ditto with the internet in that region. The likelihood of that isn't nearly as high as a tornado happening, though.

Both in Virginia (where my house is) and in Corpus Christi (where I'm detailed right now), hurricanes are the predominant risk to comms.

We were just recently without power for almost a week east of Dallas.  I didn't really do a lot of transmitting but there was useful info on the skywarn repeater as far as roads that were blocked off and what not.  I'm currently trying to get in contact with the local Skywarn folks but haven't had much luck.