5 ms·

Couldn't a satellite phone be more valuable in an emergency?

• smegger001 5y ago
  if you know the number of the person you are trying to contact, and they have service still. and you have to pay for service which you won't need most of the time. CB lets you talk to anyone else with a CB within range of your signal without needing to know their number first. Odds are in a emergency you wont know the phone number of every first responder within 3-20 miles of you (depending on terrain weather antenna and transmitter power) but you can communicate with them over cb radio
• wrycoder 5y ago
  If the satellites are still working.
• sliken 5y ago
  Sort of. Who are you going to call? Generally the most valuable people to talk to are the local resources. Sat phones are generally pretty expensive, and don't help anyone but the caller and the callee. Ham radio on the other hand can talk to local folks, and ham radio operators are trained on efficient communications between groups of people. The local ham likely knows the state of the weather, rescue efforts, when the next water/food/medical deliveries are, etc. Often emergency services lean pretty hard on the local hams when their infrastructure (that often depends on grid power, cell phones, or generators). Sure sat phones can be nice, but dialing 911 and getting emergency services to a particular address depends on the service being up, spare resources available, and not getting a busy signal. Generally during disasters sat phones with the expense and inability to call anyone local is not particularly useful.
  • sitzkrieg 5y ago
    its also worth pointing out a ham radio license is not needed to transmit in an emergency so all the more reason to throw the cheap ht in tackle box
    • Johnny555 5y ago
      If you're just going to throw it in a box and get it out in case of emergency, you may as well not bother getting it in the first place. Get your amateur license (studying for the test will help you with the basic theory and operations of the radio), but more importantly, join your local ham club, or at least participate in their monthly nets -- but it's better to join them in emergency drills and other activities. This will give you experience on how to operate your radios under real world conditions. Modern radios have so many features that it's easy to inadvertently turn on some setting that makes it unusable, especially if you're the "throw it in a box and get it out if I need it" type of user who doesn't understand all the features on the radio. If you do that today you can search the web or go to a local club meeting for help. If you do it in a disaster, you may not be able to use your radio when you need it most. The same holds true for all of your “I only need it in case of disaster” supplies. I’ve had a small tent in my earthquake kit for over a decade. Last year I figured I’d put it up to make sure it was still usable and discovered that I didn’t have the tent poles so it was pretty much useless.
    • KirillPanov 5y ago
      If you wait until an emergency to learn how to use it, it isn't going to be very useful.
    • iamhamm 5y ago
      In the US? If so, which Part 97 rule says you don’t need to be licensed to transmit during an emergency?
      • cweagans 5y ago
        § 97.403
        • iamhamm 5y ago
          That doesn’t say you can be unlicensed. It’s emergency use of an “amateur station” without restriction of method (eg using voice in the digital bands or operating outside of licensed level). The “amateur station” is defined as “apparatus of amateur service” which is defined in 97.3 as “carried out by amateurs, that is, duly authorized persons interested in radio technique…”. The “duly authorized” part would be the licensed component.