Recently I have started thinking about my personal Emergency Communication skills and came up with a few notes:

Disclaimer: I am not interested in Emergency Communication as DARC or other larger groups are doing it. I don’t want to build large emegency stations, boxes, trucks, antennas nor do I want to set any guidlines DIN and specify and PL connector that is right or wrong for emergency communication. I let this open for the appropriate groups and clubs to do what ever they find useful.

My Approach: What can I do for my personal Emergency Communication if it is really needed (hopefully never happens)!

1. Have a set of gear ready to use if you need to!
2. Is it charged and has spare batterys?
3. Are you firm to operate it under stress?
4. Do you know proper frequencies to use?
5. Does it operate on non hamradio bands?

Lets focus on the points 3 – 5 !

3. Are you firm to operate you HT or mobile or HF radio under stress?

That is really easy to solve and it is fun too! Just use your gear and make sure you use it on a regular base. Just having the newest and greatest HT does not help if you can not operate it! Play with it, make QSOs with it … it is fun. My little one not even 4 years old knows how to operate the small PMR radio on the picture!

4. Do you know proper frequencies to use?

CoA- international Emergency Frequency:
Region 1 Region 2 Region 3
3.760 kHz [LSB] 3.750 or 3.895 kHz [LSB] 3.600 kHz [LSB] 7.110 kHz [LSB]  7.060, 7.240 oder 7.290 kHz [LSB] 7.110 kHz [LSB]
14.300 kHz [USB]  18.160 kHz [USB]  21.360 kHz [USB]
Germany (DL)    3.643 kHz [LSB]  145,500 MHz [FM]  433,500 MHz [FM]

Maybe a good time to save these into your memorys!

5. Does your gear operate on non hamradio bands?

I think this is the biggest point I want to make on emergency communications. Not everyone I want or need to communicate with is a hamradio operator!

Maybe some familiy member has only a PMR or Freenet radio, or even CB? On my HT I usually have all important repeater frequencies in the memorys 1 – 50 or so. Unfortunatly repeaters might go down in a real emergency situation! I saved the 16 PMR446 channels from 71 to 86 corrosponding to the original channels 1 – 16. I also saved the 6 Freenet channels from 91 to 96.

Here are the frequency tabels (source Wikipedia)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMR446

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet_(Funkanwendung)

CB Radio can be a good source as well:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB-Funk  

More on these topics soon:

A final note at the end in German:

Das Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz gibt eine sehr gute Notfall Broschüre heraus die als PDF heruntergeladen werden kann.

Hier sind gute Empfehlungen und Checklisten zu finden.

Vorsorge für den Katastrophenfall

73

Helmut