7 ms·

Ham radio (or amateur radio) operators have historically filled this role - providing essential communications in the event of a disaster. I wonder whether thi

Ham radio (or amateur radio) operators have historically filled this role - providing essential communications in the event of a disaster. I wonder whether this project (if it's successful) would indicate that their numbers have declined past an inflection point, where their presence and availability is no longer assumed.

vvanders 7y ago
I think that depends a lot on the area and local clubs, some are better than others. While this looks interesting I'm curious if they've done the numbers for Lora throughput. It's very, very low(which is also what makes it able to punch through everything). Honestly I'm surprised they're not going for a p2p directional wifi. You've got a lot more hardware to choose from(pretty much all WISP hardware) and it has much better throughput with the benefit of dedicated links. Anything that's omnidirectional is going to have to deal with collisions which is not an easy thing to do.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Using LoRa and going omni-directional lets you get away with less upfront setup and a sparser node coverage. Point to point requires some knowledge of node locations for bringing more areas online.
smkellat 7y ago
There really is not a decline in numbers, though. This seems more an attempt to make a single widget to replace needing hams. Communications in disasters is not so much a function of having the best power toys but rather the best operational doctrine. Hams have the operational doctrine and also the flexibility in terms of tools to use. If the message doesn’t get through on one frequency band, change bands. If your transmitter modulation isn’t working, switch modes all the way downward to continuous wave Morse Code if you have to. The sun has been on a multi-week streak without sunspots so High Frequency communication will take operator skill to get messages through.
missosoup 7y ago
This won't replace HAM radio in a disaster scenario. This might provide a long-distance digital comms capability post-disaster. Even then, LoRa throughput is so low that I don't see how it would be useful unless an entire region goes full zombie apocalypse and this network replaces... I don't know, messenger pigeons? In a long range configuration, LoRa has a theoretical max throughput of about 140bps (bits) and that's assuming only one device is transmitting and no packet loss. LoRa is built for low power, long range, low throughput sensor networks. It's not really suitable for a chatty mesh network. To get an idea of the intended use for it, take a look at LoRaWAN limits: * An average of 30 seconds uplink time on air, per day, per device. * At most 10 downlink messages per day, including the ACKs for confirmed uplinks. * A good goal is to keep the application payload under 12 bytes, and the interval between messages at least several minutes.
- sitkack 7y ago
  A messenger pigeon could at least cary 1TB of micro sd card data. LoRa is like less than the symbol rate of honey bees.
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes going down the highway.” -Andrew Tanenbaum ... or a carrier pidgeon with an SD card, it would seem :-)
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    SD cards are tiny. Probably 20 or 30TB.
    - blotter_paper 7y ago
      This seems to check out. Given 1TB micro SD cards, a card weight of 2.55 grams each, a carrier pigeon being able to hold 75 grams, and the unrealistic but good enough assumption of no further weight being carried (e.g. tape or something else to keep everything from falling off the pigeon), we get 75 / 2.55 = 29.4117647059 (or 29 even taking the floor, since it doesn't make much sense for a pigeon to carry a partial card). All these numbers are from google summaries, without further source checking.
tlrobinson 7y ago
I think it’s more of a result of the recent availability of inexpensive low power (relatively) long range radios that operate on the ISM bands, i.e. LoRa. APRS is probably the closest thing to this in ham radio, but it typically requires multi-watt VHF radios.
wglb 7y ago
I don’t think numbers are declining. In related news, see https://www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/NewsID/18899 https://www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/NewsID/18899
themodelplumber 7y ago
All it takes is a couple of lowly hams with mobile radios to cover a huge area...in practice during recent emergencies here in rural norcal, ham radio was really useful, for updates on general news, determining the status of communities around the county, passing messages, and fire spotting. Some of those guys driving up to hilltops were putting their lives at risk so the rest of us could benefit. We practice every week, so everybody who is an active ham knows the local frequency and they know that there will be updates every hour on the hour. On top of that, the local WIN System repeater (Western Intertie Network, check their website) was up on backup power, meaning I could have used my walkie-talkie-type radio to get help from distant places like Ireland or Hawaii, if it would have been useful. To say nothing of the amateur radio satellites and HF operation. One of our local nets during the emergency was a tech-talk net, with about 41 check-ins, all but one on emergency power, when the usual is about 7-12 people. The time was used to discuss lessons learned and one ham is an expert with generators and warned everybody: Change the oil every few days if you are running 24/7. A lot of people were surprised to hear that. And many of them only had one generator to burn through. To give another example of the usefulness: Imagine, your power goes out, and a day passes without anything exciting happening, so you take a nap, forgetting that the reason the power is out is actually high fire risk. In a few minutes you wake to a phone call. Your ham radio friend tells you he just heard on the radio a wildfire started a few miles north of your community. This is not on Facebook, it's not anything your neighbors know about. So you have no idea what to do but fortunately they keep calling with updates from the radio. Eventually they call and give you the all clear and let you know your evacuation warning was lifted, so you don't have to take whatever you can and leave town with your family, spending money and using every last nerve you have just to figure out the next 24 hours. This is just one specific example that happened here. Everybody else would have warning via text if they were lucky (had battery, tower connection, and proper system configuration), and final warning via a sheriff's vehicle siren if that didn't get through to them. In this case the person receiving calls never got a single text message.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  ...you have no idea what to do... This highlights a critical element of emergency notifications and response: you have to have a plan for how to deal with warnings and alerts. If you don't, then the alert is worthless. It may even be worse than useless by throwing an otherwise orderly and predictable population into a panic. How you respond to an emergency, in general, is to reduce risks and consequences. This may mean moving out of the area, but more generally, it means moving out of immediate harm's way. In the event of an earthquake, that can simply be to more out of range of falling debris, or into a solidly-constructed building. For a tsunami, gaining elevation on a secure base (terrain, a very solidly-constructed building). And, of course, responding to changing circumstances and conditions as appropriate. For widespread disasters -- hurricane and wildfires -- exiting the region or moving to a location that's unlikely to be overwhelmed by the forces at play, is helpful. For high wind, rain, cold, heat, etc., the challenges often play out over a longer period of time. Disaster response as with security risks should revolve around threat models. What are the foreseeable threats, what are their specific mechanisms of action (e.g., fire, smoke, heat, wind, flood, ground movement), what's the effected range, and how can the hazards be reduced, mitigated, or countered? Then there are the long-term survival needs: water, food, shelter, transport, injury and health treatment. Ultimately, rebuilding or relocation. In one of the biggest disasters of all time, the Bianqao hydroelectric dam collapse following the intersection of a tropical storm and a cold-weather front, about 30,000 deaths were the immediate result of flooding. Another 150,000 or more resulted over the ensuing days and weeks from disease and starvation given both the disruption to ordinary life and the inability to move rescue, recovery, and relief personnel and supplies into the affected area. None of which has an immediate relation to the ham vs. mesh-network radio debate, but calls into consideration that each are only a small part of an overall disaster response plan.
sigmaprimus 7y ago
Numbers have dropped a substantial amount in recent years but there are new people getting certified all the time. The cost of hardware keeps going down too. As a HAM its bad for me to get down in these guys for making an effort to produce a product for disaster readiness but...I think the common place FRS radio sets available in every big box store for less than 30 dollars are a more practical tool that everyone should own. CQ CQ CQ VE7 xray mike lima!!!
- themodelplumber 7y ago
  VE7XLM de KM6NHH. Good point on the FRS. I'm helping coordinate a local neighborhood FRS net here and we are looking at setting up a wider-area GMRS repeater as well; we just had the hilltop location offered by another ham and ran some tests. BTW my recent emergency experience is documented here: http://www.friendlyskies.net/fmk/index.php?tpl=PSPS-Ham-Radio-Notes.html http://www.friendlyskies.net/fmk/index.php?tpl=PSPS-Ham-Radi...
  - sigmaprimus 7y ago
    I happy to see you got a chance to put your tools/experience to good use helping people. It's horrible what is going on down there with the fires and power situation. I decided to get my license as something to do with my Father, a local club(Delta Amateur Radio Society) was offering a ten week course. I was very surprised at how technical the course and subsequent exam was, I have since moved out to a farm and have not set up my station yet but am currently on a LTE internet connection with a solar backup. After reading your blog on the fires I think that may have been just the nudge I needed to get back into it. VE7XML qsl KM6NHH(I messed up my cs in my earlier post!) Ps just looked up your call sign, its interesting that in the US your licenses expire after 10 years, here in Canada its a lifetime license.
    - taborj 7y ago
      > in the US your licenses expire after 10 years Yeah, but we don't have to re-test, and it can all be renewed online for free.
JeremyChase 7y ago
Be assured that the Amateur Radio community is quite active; especially regarding emergency communication and disaster preparedness. Personally, I am active with the Connecticut Amateur Radio Emergency Services(CT-ARES), which is a local organization part of the larger national ARES organization(http://www.arrl.org/ares http://www.arrl.org/ares). Both of these offer training and procedures for facilitating communication during emergencies. CT-ARES works with the state of CT, in particular the Red Cross and many local town governments. My activities include participating in regular 'nets' (http://www.ctares.org/networks.php http://www.ctares.org/networks.php) which are station tests which serve to prove that my radios work in various failure scenarios. Other members are even more active and practice their communication skills by offering supplemental communication for various events like marathons, fairs, etc. It comes down to this; you don't know something works unless you regularly use it. de K2CHA PS: One should also test their backups by actually restoring from them...
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  Thanks for the assurance! My grandfather was a lifelong ham (KJ6NK) and I have many fond memories of sitting with him in his radio room while he participated in various nets or picked up QSOs.

vvanders 7y ago

I think that depends a lot on the area and local clubs, some are better than others. While this looks interesting I'm curious if they've done the numbers for Lora throughput. It's very, very low(which is also what makes it able to punch through everything). Honestly I'm surprised they're not going for a p2p directional wifi. You've got a lot more hardware to choose from(pretty much all WISP hardware) and it has much better throughput with the benefit of dedicated links. Anything that's omnidirectional is going to have to deal with collisions which is not an easy thing to do.

rtkwe 7y ago
Using LoRa and going omni-directional lets you get away with less upfront setup and a sparser node coverage. Point to point requires some knowledge of node locations for bringing more areas online.

smkellat 7y ago

There really is not a decline in numbers, though. This seems more an attempt to make a single widget to replace needing hams. Communications in disasters is not so much a function of having the best power toys but rather the best operational doctrine. Hams have the operational doctrine and also the flexibility in terms of tools to use. If the message doesn’t get through on one frequency band, change bands. If your transmitter modulation isn’t working, switch modes all the way downward to continuous wave Morse Code if you have to. The sun has been on a multi-week streak without sunspots so High Frequency communication will take operator skill to get messages through.

missosoup 7y ago

This won't replace HAM radio in a disaster scenario. This might provide a long-distance digital comms capability post-disaster. Even then, LoRa throughput is so low that I don't see how it would be useful unless an entire region goes full zombie apocalypse and this network replaces... I don't know, messenger pigeons? In a long range configuration, LoRa has a theoretical max throughput of about 140bps (bits) and that's assuming only one device is transmitting and no packet loss. LoRa is built for low power, long range, low throughput sensor networks. It's not really suitable for a chatty mesh network. To get an idea of the intended use for it, take a look at LoRaWAN limits: * An average of 30 seconds uplink time on air, per day, per device. * At most 10 downlink messages per day, including the ACKs for confirmed uplinks. * A good goal is to keep the application payload under 12 bytes, and the interval between messages at least several minutes.

sitkack 7y ago
A messenger pigeon could at least cary 1TB of micro sd card data. LoRa is like less than the symbol rate of honey bees.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes going down the highway.” -Andrew Tanenbaum ... or a carrier pidgeon with an SD card, it would seem :-)
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  SD cards are tiny. Probably 20 or 30TB.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    This seems to check out. Given 1TB micro SD cards, a card weight of 2.55 grams each, a carrier pigeon being able to hold 75 grams, and the unrealistic but good enough assumption of no further weight being carried (e.g. tape or something else to keep everything from falling off the pigeon), we get 75 / 2.55 = 29.4117647059 (or 29 even taking the floor, since it doesn't make much sense for a pigeon to carry a partial card). All these numbers are from google summaries, without further source checking.

tlrobinson 7y ago

I think it’s more of a result of the recent availability of inexpensive low power (relatively) long range radios that operate on the ISM bands, i.e. LoRa. APRS is probably the closest thing to this in ham radio, but it typically requires multi-watt VHF radios.

wglb 7y ago

I don’t think numbers are declining. In related news, see https://www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/NewsID/18899 https://www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/NewsID/18899

themodelplumber 7y ago

All it takes is a couple of lowly hams with mobile radios to cover a huge area...in practice during recent emergencies here in rural norcal, ham radio was really useful, for updates on general news, determining the status of communities around the county, passing messages, and fire spotting. Some of those guys driving up to hilltops were putting their lives at risk so the rest of us could benefit. We practice every week, so everybody who is an active ham knows the local frequency and they know that there will be updates every hour on the hour. On top of that, the local WIN System repeater (Western Intertie Network, check their website) was up on backup power, meaning I could have used my walkie-talkie-type radio to get help from distant places like Ireland or Hawaii, if it would have been useful. To say nothing of the amateur radio satellites and HF operation. One of our local nets during the emergency was a tech-talk net, with about 41 check-ins, all but one on emergency power, when the usual is about 7-12 people. The time was used to discuss lessons learned and one ham is an expert with generators and warned everybody: Change the oil every few days if you are running 24/7. A lot of people were surprised to hear that. And many of them only had one generator to burn through. To give another example of the usefulness: Imagine, your power goes out, and a day passes without anything exciting happening, so you take a nap, forgetting that the reason the power is out is actually high fire risk. In a few minutes you wake to a phone call. Your ham radio friend tells you he just heard on the radio a wildfire started a few miles north of your community. This is not on Facebook, it's not anything your neighbors know about. So you have no idea what to do but fortunately they keep calling with updates from the radio. Eventually they call and give you the all clear and let you know your evacuation warning was lifted, so you don't have to take whatever you can and leave town with your family, spending money and using every last nerve you have just to figure out the next 24 hours. This is just one specific example that happened here. Everybody else would have warning via text if they were lucky (had battery, tower connection, and proper system configuration), and final warning via a sheriff's vehicle siren if that didn't get through to them. In this case the person receiving calls never got a single text message.

dredmorbius 7y ago
...you have no idea what to do... This highlights a critical element of emergency notifications and response: you have to have a plan for how to deal with warnings and alerts. If you don't, then the alert is worthless. It may even be worse than useless by throwing an otherwise orderly and predictable population into a panic. How you respond to an emergency, in general, is to reduce risks and consequences. This may mean moving out of the area, but more generally, it means moving out of immediate harm's way. In the event of an earthquake, that can simply be to more out of range of falling debris, or into a solidly-constructed building. For a tsunami, gaining elevation on a secure base (terrain, a very solidly-constructed building). And, of course, responding to changing circumstances and conditions as appropriate. For widespread disasters -- hurricane and wildfires -- exiting the region or moving to a location that's unlikely to be overwhelmed by the forces at play, is helpful. For high wind, rain, cold, heat, etc., the challenges often play out over a longer period of time. Disaster response as with security risks should revolve around threat models. What are the foreseeable threats, what are their specific mechanisms of action (e.g., fire, smoke, heat, wind, flood, ground movement), what's the effected range, and how can the hazards be reduced, mitigated, or countered? Then there are the long-term survival needs: water, food, shelter, transport, injury and health treatment. Ultimately, rebuilding or relocation. In one of the biggest disasters of all time, the Bianqao hydroelectric dam collapse following the intersection of a tropical storm and a cold-weather front, about 30,000 deaths were the immediate result of flooding. Another 150,000 or more resulted over the ensuing days and weeks from disease and starvation given both the disruption to ordinary life and the inability to move rescue, recovery, and relief personnel and supplies into the affected area. None of which has an immediate relation to the ham vs. mesh-network radio debate, but calls into consideration that each are only a small part of an overall disaster response plan.

sigmaprimus 7y ago

Numbers have dropped a substantial amount in recent years but there are new people getting certified all the time. The cost of hardware keeps going down too. As a HAM its bad for me to get down in these guys for making an effort to produce a product for disaster readiness but...I think the common place FRS radio sets available in every big box store for less than 30 dollars are a more practical tool that everyone should own. CQ CQ CQ VE7 xray mike lima!!!

themodelplumber 7y ago
VE7XLM de KM6NHH. Good point on the FRS. I'm helping coordinate a local neighborhood FRS net here and we are looking at setting up a wider-area GMRS repeater as well; we just had the hilltop location offered by another ham and ran some tests. BTW my recent emergency experience is documented here: http://www.friendlyskies.net/fmk/index.php?tpl=PSPS-Ham-Radio-Notes.html http://www.friendlyskies.net/fmk/index.php?tpl=PSPS-Ham-Radi...
- sigmaprimus 7y ago
  I happy to see you got a chance to put your tools/experience to good use helping people. It's horrible what is going on down there with the fires and power situation. I decided to get my license as something to do with my Father, a local club(Delta Amateur Radio Society) was offering a ten week course. I was very surprised at how technical the course and subsequent exam was, I have since moved out to a farm and have not set up my station yet but am currently on a LTE internet connection with a solar backup. After reading your blog on the fires I think that may have been just the nudge I needed to get back into it. VE7XML qsl KM6NHH(I messed up my cs in my earlier post!) Ps just looked up your call sign, its interesting that in the US your licenses expire after 10 years, here in Canada its a lifetime license.
  - taborj 7y ago
    > in the US your licenses expire after 10 years Yeah, but we don't have to re-test, and it can all be renewed online for free.

JeremyChase 7y ago

Be assured that the Amateur Radio community is quite active; especially regarding emergency communication and disaster preparedness. Personally, I am active with the Connecticut Amateur Radio Emergency Services(CT-ARES), which is a local organization part of the larger national ARES organization(http://www.arrl.org/ares http://www.arrl.org/ares). Both of these offer training and procedures for facilitating communication during emergencies. CT-ARES works with the state of CT, in particular the Red Cross and many local town governments. My activities include participating in regular 'nets' (http://www.ctares.org/networks.php http://www.ctares.org/networks.php) which are station tests which serve to prove that my radios work in various failure scenarios. Other members are even more active and practice their communication skills by offering supplemental communication for various events like marathons, fairs, etc. It comes down to this; you don't know something works unless you regularly use it. de K2CHA PS: One should also test their backups by actually restoring from them...

TimTheTinker 7y ago
Thanks for the assurance! My grandfather was a lifelong ham (KJ6NK) and I have many fond memories of sitting with him in his radio room while he participated in various nets or picked up QSOs.