EMERGENCY C

Technology Special:

emergency communications

BY JOHN FERGUSON, * K3PFW

Is Technology Your Friendor Your Downfall?

There is no doubt that we have become a society addicted to technology and what it can do for us. OK, so the automotive era beats the horse and buggy era in terms of convenience, but it was simpler and cheaper when the motive power (horse) for your vehicle (buggy) refueled itself in the pasture, and its exhaust (manure) helped fertilize the grass it fed it. However inane the above argument is, I must admit, yes, I like the creature comforts, environmental conditioning, baggage capacity, towing ability, and speed of my Grand Cherokee. It is a convenience and fits the lifestyle in the society in which I reside and work.

However, not too far from my residence is an Amish community. The people there live an almost technology-free way of life, most of them happily and productively. And, interestingly enough, with less heart disease. They work their fields with horses, and their horse-drawn buggies are found hitched in front of some of the local markets. They do, however, adapt some “technology” to their way of life as it might be a required necessity. Technology is not really a necessity in some communities.

Licensed in the early ’60s, I was in the discussions that resulted from the introduction of SSB, referred to as “Scientific SetBack” by those of us who were accused of wallowing in AM, which in turn was referred to by the practitioners of SSB as “Ancient Modulation. ” This was when “real radios glowed on the dark!” Now we have not only a marketplace dominated by solid-state radios, but a veritable cornucopia of modulation techniques and modes to the point that, now, with FT8, we can complete a QSO and never, ever, really “hear” the other station with our ears. Time marches on.

Graduating with my bachelor’s degree in 1969, I was in the last class of what is now Millersville University that studied

* 20116 Donovans Rd., Georgetown, DE 19947 Email: <K3PFW@cq-amateur-radio.com> vacuum tubes. Yes, we were introduced to transistors, but in our lofty knowledge and experience as lab assistants, we tried to convince each other that they wouldn’t amount to much. Ah, the wonderful ingenuous minds of youth. About 13 months later, I was introducing second-year undergraduates to solid-state junction technology that was “going to revolutionize the electronics industry. ”

Change and progress are inevitable. Unfortunately, the technology that is developed is not always used appropriately. Man’s inhumanity to man, design flaws, greed and avarice can distort the good in an emerging technology. As we face a possible “Armageddon, ” we can certainly ask whether atomic energy is a blessing or a curse. But how many lives of American service men and women would have been lost if “we” hadn’t used “the bomb” to end World War II? On the other hand, engineering and equipment failures have resulted in disasters at the Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania) and Chernobyl (then-Soviet Ukraine) nuclear power plants. And was Mother Nature trying to tell us something with the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan?

No, I’m not some crazy modern Luddite trying to discredit technological progress. I like what I have in the support and service from the technology in my daily life: Car, cell phone, computer, internet, credit cards, television, and, yes, the fantastically flexible, frequency agile, conveniently portable, powerful, amateur radios with sensitivity and features that I could not even have dreamed of when I thought “the only real radios glow in the dark. ”

My area of interest in the hobby, as you might gather, is the public service aspect when applied to the disasters that tend to disrupt our modern way of life as power failures put us in the dark and Mother Nature disrupts our transportation. Here is where technology, appropriately applied, can make the process of supplying auxiliary communications reasonably easy. However, if we are to be the backup system,

dependability and reliability must be our primary design criteria, and unfortunately, across the country that ain’t necessarily so.

Hams are hams, and as such they tend to try things to see if they can get them to work. That is our nature, and that is what has pushed the technology of the hobby forward. We cannot but stand in awe of what Bob Bruninga, WB4APR (SK), did in the development of APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System). I had the privilege of being at an amateur radio conference sponsored by the Cooper Medical Center in New Jersey for his presentation of “Power for the Amateur. ” Wow, simple straightforward application of Ohm’s Law in solving practical power problems, and creative adaptation of common things for emergency power were among the items in his presentation.

Another growing application of technology being driven by hams is the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) <www.arednmesh.org>. This technology is deployed across the country by local groups serving a range of functions. Most notable is some of the coverage of the fires raging in California, and support to the Forest Service. A spinoff from this is that the Forest Service is beginning to see the value of amateur radio support, and that may have an impact on the rental fee discussions of mountaintop repeater locations.

One use of technology with which we are all familiar is the ubiquitous amateur radio repeater. They are strung across this country and around the world from 10 meters into the microwaves. I’m sure almost all of us have used one or more multiple times. Then there are the “linked repeater networks” through which you can talk across multiple machines over a wider area than a single, even well-sited one, can cover. Their popularity has created a mega industry of multiple manufacturers producing portable and mobile radios of all types, sizes, and complexity. The repeaters, the HTs and the mobile rigs have become the workhorses of disaster and emergency communication for the amateur community. This is where the questions of reliability and dependability are most often revisited.

I’ve had the privilege of working with the staff at the Sussex County Delaware Emergency Operations Center <https:// tinyurl.com/fytheum3>, starting a few years after the first dedicated center was built back in the ’80s. We are now going through our third major building and renovation phase. The Cold War Era was still very much alive when the first center was designed. It was literally built in a bunker, walls 2-feet thick, blast shields in front of doors, and no windows. The technology of the day. The communications center itself was enclosed in a Faraday cage, to prevent, they hoped, damage from an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) incident or something similar. That was the technology of the day.

The local ham club had tried for several years to be allowed to get radios inside, but was thwarted in its attempts. A major hurricane was coming up the coast and shelters were going to be opened. I was working with the ARRL Section Manager at the time trying to get hams organized for disaster service and had spoken with the county Emergency Operations Director suggesting that hams be out in the shelters, and a station be set up at the center. His reply was much the same as previous, “can’t be accommodated. ”

“Well, how about a demonstration?” I asked. “I’ll set up a station in the kitchen, and will talk to a couple of mobiles out in the county through our local repeater. ” The “station” was a mobile rig, power supply and a 5/8ths-wave magmount antenna on a filing cabinet. Why the kitchen? That’s where the coffee was. The demonstration worked. He was amazed and said OK to the hams in the shelters.

The hurricane hits, the hams are in the shelters, and there’s a question of when the people in the shelters will be allowed to leave. The County Administrator asked if there was any way he could address the populations in the shelters. Back then, since this was sort of a lastminute plan and operation, the hams were in the general population of the shelters. That is not generally the case today, when our operators usually are separated from the general population and behind locked doors! I informed the administrator that we could do that. I called the net, told them what was coming, and handed the microphone to him. (Note: do not hand a live mic to a politician to address his constituents and expect him to stay within the 10-minute ID rule!) The administrator’s only comment to the director when he finished was, “Figure out how these guys can be in here permanently. ” We were, and still are.

So, in this Technology Special, what is the value of the previous anecdote? Ham ingenuity and simple technology (mag-mount antenna) solved a problem that everyone had thought required a more complex solution. A permanent solution for antennas took a while and we did two more storms with the “magmount on the filing cabinet. ”

As always, my intent is to get you, the readers, to think and develop your own solutions to the issues that you run into. – 73, John, K3PFW

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