I have recently become more aware of and generally interested in electronics and amateur radio, and it got me thinking. What advantage, if any, would there be to having amateur radio experience, over a simple disaster crank radio/flashlight, in the event of a major natural disaster or some other emergency that leads to a longer delay in power being restored? For the sake of argument, let’s assume you have a generator or battery bank to supply your own electricity.
Huge advantages. So much so that multiple government agencies will actively rely on amateur operators to get status reports and communications in and out of disaster zones. There are organizations dedicated to training and indexing operators too, both independent and government run.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communications
http://www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-emergency-communication
For personal communications it’s not that great of course, but you can become an invaluable asset to your nearby community by having a radio during a disaster.
Typical mobile amateur radio kits can be operated on tens of watts at most, and will effectively run indefinitely from small solar panels or an idling car. And you can reach out quite far just by tossing an aerial wire up in a tree anywhere.
If you’re interested in getting into amateur radio I highly recommend it. It’s super fun to chase signals and see what parts of the world you can talk to. Definitely worth getting licensed as it’s not a terribly expensive hobby to get into either (although the cost ceiling can be… very high haha).
You don’t need a license to listen, only transmit, so if you don’t want to committ you can grab a cheap radio and some wire for a poor man’s listening station.
Very cool! I had no idea this was a thing! Very up my alley - I’m going to dig in some more, thanks for sharing