I was sniffing around the various auction sites last week. We have acquired for our new VOAD adjacent disaster recovery radio club a 29' ex FEMA house trailer, converted to a command center. It is around 7000 pounds and is reported to tow poorly due to wind area, etc. This is really beyond the scope of the ancient small SUV (GMC Envoy) I have or many half ton 1500 class pickups. We also have a large office trailer with a 65' tower. The use case is our long annual list of mostly medical events and recovery deployments.

I did find a short bed, extended cab 3500 class pickup a few weeks back. The towing rating was in the 10,000 pound range and up. It had 260,000 miles and a fuel tank/pump/hose in the bed for our fleet of diesel tower trailers. It was a little rough, and I stopped bidding as it hit $11,000. A new one is like $46,000. A short bed is best as it could possibly fit in a residential garage.

By accident a TV news gathering van popped up. It was a stretch E-350, so a V10 engine and a tow rating in the 9000# class. It was not four wheel drive, but had a built in air tower and a single operating position in the back. Our deployment use cases normally involve a large tower, genset, and office with space for two persons. Our weather is often poor and snowy- hence the four wheel drive.

It was in Oklahoma, which was far away but promised minimal rust. I bid low and then a bit more and won it.

It is now in my driveway and we are studying the conversion steps needed. It runs fine and gets 12 MPG, so is not a daily driver. So far after a few days:

1. Needs new tires these are 12 years old
2. Needs an O2 sensor
3. There is no gas generator. Do we want a gas generator in the nice enclosure? Or a solar /battery system. I prefer a "light" vs "heavy" on deployment supply train.
4. It has an RV roof AC unit. Those draw a lot of power - 12,000 BTU, 15 Amps at 115V is common. We get a few hot days but it is often cold. Could this run on "vent" - or be replaced with an opening hatch. There is no cross ventilation in back.
5. There is a 42 foot air tower- a big one with 200# and 10 sq ft rating at 60 mph winds. It needs an air compressor for 20-35 PSI. How are the rubber seals after 15 years? The 2/7 GHz microwave dish is very cool looking. The control electronics are all missing.
6. There is just one operating position. And the middle of the van is dominated by three rows of 18 inch, 30 inch deep racks. You can put a lot of obsolete, power hungry gear in there. Why? We've done live sports YouTube uplinks. One laptop.
7. It has a ton of rooftop NMO radio antenna mounts.

2007 Ford E350 mobile command center van in Collinsville, OK | Item EG2280 sold | Purple Wave

The RWS project allows anyone using a radio and a computer to access the internet from anywhere if needed, either because of an emergency or if you simply go somewhere that doesn't have internet.

The current implementation of the server uses the VARA modem, which is free, though the uncapped speed version costs $70. (But, if you call CQ and a server with a licensed copy of VARA answers, there won't be any restrictions, and vice versa for any unlicensed server hosters)

The server has a lot of built-in commands which allow you to:

• View a website (either in plain text or raw HTML)
• Perform a quick search
• Get the weather forecast for a given city + state
• Download a given URL (download is encoded into base64 to allow download through text, instructions for how to decode are given alongside the download)
• Create and view posts and comments in our forum, hosted on the GitHub of the project
• Chat with a callsign, but chats are stored and sent over the internet (across servers) and history is saved
• Print server info, logs, and global active servers

I've read Part 97 of the FCC and I've made sure my server is fully legal.

My end goal for the project is to have hundreds of servers hosted around the world, which would allow coverage for almost everyone on Earth.

The server and instructions for how to host your own are listed at the GitHub:

https://github.com/Glitch31415/rws

To connect to a server, make sure you have VARA and VarAC installed. Once those are installed and working correctly, go to 14.110 MHz USB and call CQ. (Both 500 Hz and 2300 Hz bandwidths are supported.) Wait for at least 2 minutes. If a server has heard you, it will call back and try to connect with you. The list of commands and other instructions are sent once you're connected.

I need testers and server hosters to properly see if the server will work correctly in the real world! If you aren't using your radio at the moment, and if you have a computer connected to the radio, you can get the server running in 10 minutes and just let it sit in the background, waiting for a connection, with no further hassle needed.

If you want an external helper for dealing with the downloads and base64, KC3VPB has created a helper that can decode base64 automatically and save it to a file. https://github.com/Caleb-J773/rws-tools-release/releases

For more info or if you need help, email me: [jpradiophone@gmail.com](mailto:jpradiophone@gmail.com)

Discord invite link: https://discord.gg/muYEBCjqsM

Does anyone have any EmComm related stories after Helene? Gotta be something from somebody somewhere.

I have been attending a lot of FEMA calls lately. They talk about recovery and resiliency and whole community. One thing they point to regularly- ESF-2. If you look at North Carolina this week, people need cell service. But that also includes banking services - ATMs for money, and credit card services for buying groceries and gas.

Right now, there are back-haul problems and loss of grid power. Taking an isolated, flood ravaged community bank, if a group of vetted volunteers came in and helped with cell (i.e. Cradlepoint) beam antennas or Starlink, + generators, the bank could be brought online. We would be hams, and trained on basic technology and basic banking regulations.

But we are just providing (WAN) connectivity /Internet, and not in the banking systems business. If we meet ahead of time in person, the bank can see who they are dealing with. Banks are required by regulations to be open for business hours cash access so have an incentive to get back in business.

Telecoms Sans Frontiers is a similar group that parachutes in with satellite gear. This is "not ham radio" but helps with community recovery.

I am currently brainstorming ideas for a method of communicating with family that is approximately 100 miles away and keeping it off-grid. NVIS was my first thought, but I'd like to look at other options as well. We live in a rural area (as well as the family we wish to be able to communicate with) with only 2 towns of any size between us (<40,000 population each). There is no linked repeater network (I don't want to rely on repeaters anyway just in case). I was thinking about Meshtastic, but I don't know much about it. I've got 2 Heltec units ordered for testing purposes for other projects, so I'll know more about that when they get here and I can play with them.

I'm talking about primary comms with a grandmother, so the simpler the process, the better. Does anyone have any ideas?

In about 2 years, we hope to move onto the property with this family. Lots of acreage with extended family living on it. At that point I plan to put together a radio network for us to communicate, so this initial brainstorming I'm doing is not going to be a permanent situation.

Currently working on setting up FM P2P for Winlink from the field to our county EOC. We have all of the software and connections figured out but now it’s time for real time testing.

What I’m trying to determine is what a good antenna would be to achieve this from the field.

Open to suggestions and what others are using before committing to a new antenna. The EOC operates on a Diamond X300 if that helps.

Thanks in advance, 73

It looks like a lot of water/flood damage and many (>100,000) displaced persons. In the range of 1250 Starlink dishes are on the way or on site already. (1000 donated, 250 purchased). The US FCC pointed out the loss of (essential) broadband Internet services was a major issue after big storms like IDA in 2021.

https://yen.com.gh/people/257445-elon-musk-announces-free-starlink-internet-support-brazil-severe-flooding/

Rick K1CE did a good job here. The topic is timely. There is also an “Event Action Plan” I am starting to see. 

What seems to be a best practice is to find out who is doing the master (usually Government) EAP/IAP and send them the Volunteer Event (i.e. rented radio type and channels, site /key phone #s, Zello etc.) and or Ham Radio 205 (and other forms) to be added to the main listings if they so choose. 

 What seems IMHO to not be best practice is each city/agency under Unified Command to have their own IAP/EAP for the same incident. 

 Also, hams should not presume to issue government radio talk groups.  That is clearly a government job unless you are directly assigned to the role.   

 One thing that does come up all the time- at a given event/incident, who coordinates Wi-Fi channel usage.  This is potentially simplified if we are on Ham channels 😊 Video, minus the ever present incidental music, seems a safe traffic type for ARDEN. 

This one is for the entire American EmComm community.

Suppose something disasterous happened without warning, help came from everywhere else in the country. They could be Red Cross, CERT, Americorps, whoever. People with hands-on experience using a great deal of radios. What radio would the vast majority of them likely be skilled in using?

What I'm getting at is that i'd like to have radios that are well known and easy for practically anyone to use and understand.

Anything come to mind? The Kenwood TM-V71A is a good example, but is a bit costly and has been discontinued. The Alinco DR-135 is a bit more like what i'm looking for, but is also discontinued, replaced by the DR-138.

Any other ideas for a 'universal' emcomm radio?

Amateur radio operators have supported public safety agencies for over 100 years and in a variety of circumstances. From planned events to natural disasters, hams can be found volunteering across the country aiding rural communities and cities alike. Please comment below with how you support this mission.

I go to a lot of large event (NIMS Type 3) meetings and what I'm hearing about is a list of software tools to facilitate emergency communications. I heard a term on a FEMA call recently from a vendor "dirty Internet" - so the idea that Public Safety wants a "closed user group" for some kinds of collaborations.

Here are some possible categories:

1. Alerting. This is the idea you send a "blast" via email, SMS, phone calls etc. to: 1. Your people (i.e. callouts) 2. The public or event participants. Marathons (i.e. Boston) may use this for severe weather status.

Home - Everbridge A monthly fee is charged, you add users and can send various alerts. Note that SMS (text messaging) uses spare slots on (prioritized) voice cell networks so tends to work under cell network congestion.

2. Collaboration. You meet and chat and work together. Ones I've heard of:

What is HSIN? | Homeland Security (dhs.gov) Homeland Security Information Network - for sensitive but unclassified information. Adobe Connect in a secure cloud. Looks like Zoom. Hams use it (we've uploaded/streamed live video) as can vendors, etc. The idea is Govt folks have accounts day to day and can spin up others for a race or fire. Then it goes away. We are invited for the Twin Cities Marathon and we even discussed using it for Field Day. It also stores documents.

Bridge4PS. Mobile app. Seems the same idea as HSIN- government users control it, invite VOADS as collaborators.

Jitsi Meet - it is free and has a minimum requirement for a download client - i.e. none

Whatsapp seems to be in common nonprofit event use.

The Cajun Navy likes Zello, our MS Society also uses it for races.

The Cajun Navy uses Glympse for geographic information- i.e. who is where.

Google Docs is good for document management i.e. the ICS 205

3. EOC /Crisis Management.

WebEOC seems to be the leader. Basics of WEBEOC - Center for Domestic Preparedness (dhs.gov)

4. Service desk/ticketing - the CISA folks are all over this. There is the concept of the Service Desk. (Came from ITIL(r) way back when). You take help desk, trouble tickets and new service requests into one central place.

https://osticket.com/ This is free and has a paid cloud offer we tried out- it is good.

5. Family reunification missing persons

We've written a package (trivnetdb) non crypto for our ad hoc mesh networks to do dashboards, missing persons, chat but have not packaged it on like github or created an open source project.

6. Medical management / Physician Order Entry/medical records etc.

The biggest one is probably EPIC - common in hospitals.

A mobile /cloud app called RaceSafe - Your Smart Solution for Event Medical Care (iracesafe.com) is in common use for marathons.

• Most of these packages (and the Internet lately) encrypt traffic in flight (and or at rest) so work poorly on Part 97 mesh networks. We solved this here by having a Part 15 mesh network + Starlink and our own home made software for Part 97 networks.

There seems to be a new movement in Amateur Radio as of about 3 years ago to be purposeful and intentional and actually USE Ham Radio. This is opposite of the old guard who turned into a bunch of bald, overweight salty old hams racking up co-morbidity factors like they were in a competition with each other and just want to use the radio to talk to random men from exotic places and argue with locals about bunions and burritos.

If you are familiar with Josh Nass and the Ham Radio Crash Course, you likely know how he has a consortium of operators that make up the occasional "Ham Nation." It's kind of his circle of Amateur Radio Influences. And it's a good group. I like Josh but I'm more aligned with other operators that are of this new movement towards DOING something with Ham Radio - being intentional with it. POTA is a great start. But I like the concepts of the Tech Prepper too. The planning and "No Random Contacts" mentality.

If you were to form a collection or coalition of Ham Radio Operators that are using Social Media to promote the active use of Amateur Radio who would you add to it?

• The Tech Prepper
• Civil Sentinel
• KC8OWL
• Red Summit RF
• Comms Ready
• The RF Resistance
• Off Grid Pete
• OH8STN

Who am I missing? Add yours below?

One evening youre sitting at home on the sofa; Funyons crumbs all over your shirt watching the latest Youtube upload from flannel daddy.

Suddenly, the power goes out. Crap! Did you forget to pay the bill again? Your grab your phone to check. Its got power, but cellular connection and internet are out. You look out the window, no other home has any lights on. Streets lights are out.

Luckily, you have a few amateur radio's on the desk. You've also prepared by having a small 200 watt solar panel, charger, and 12v car battery ready/charged. You have radios that span all HF/VHF/UHF bands.

You want to figure out whats going on. How widespread is this outage?

Which radio do you go to first? Which frequency do you use?

Rumor has it the ARRL Board is working on a re-vamp of ARES(r). That was years ago, it is time to move on this. There is a lot of pressure to revisit an historical society tasking- nope. If I had a vote, here is how it should go:

ARES(r) 2.0 Suggestions (11/21 -updated 12/23).

Mission: To provide state of the art volunteer emergency communications and related expertise and services to government agencies, events, NGOs and the general public.

The NIMS/ICS Service Branch was reorganized in 2023. The increasing role of information technology and systems in emergency communications has resulted in the COML now reporting to a new leader, Information and Communications Technology Branch Director. To stay relevant, and follow FCC Part 97, we need to broaden our scope beyond just land mobile or HF radio.

Divisions:

1. Government. Trained, vetted individuals to meet demanding government volunteer requirements, such as AUXC. Key roles- clubs and trained individuals provide trusted field observers, ground truth, paperwork support and situational awareness.
   

CERT is great model. A bit of a background check, basic first aid, light search and rescue, EMS procedures. Take care of your home, your neighbors. Offload the small, easy stuff from EMS. Report to public safety as ordered.

1. Events. Outdoor sporting events depend on dedicated, trusted volunteers to enhance participant and spectator safety- and may need higher level volunteer leadership in roles like the new ICT-BD. So you show up, wear their shirts, follow their procedures, help with medical and family reunification. Providing real time situational awareness for leadership is a demanding and important role.

2. VOAD and NGO support. Volunteers helping volunteers partnering to deliver critical recovery support to those in need. So we are a group like Team Rubicon- but for family reunification, missing persons, coordination. Technical, comms paperwork problems and dashboards- solved.

3. Innovation Lab. Uniting builders and makers to develop technical solutions to meet current and emerging challenges. Emergency communications is all about better data and better decisions lately. Real time situational awareness and alerting are a thing.

​

Anyone here involved with REACT? I hear that the organization is now mostly composed of hams. www.ReactINTL.org

https://youtu.be/l5wU5LzX8tQ

Website is here https://www.thetechprepper.com/emcomm-tools

Is anyone here following this project with interest? Looks neat to me, but I don't know anything...

Apple spending $450 million with Globalstar, others for satellite texting (cnbc.com)

It feels like old school EmComm is on the way out. But there is vast, meaningful work for us if we pivot toward more direct, disaster recovery work - coordinating and participating in light search and rescue, minor first aid, triage, etc. One of our favorite missions is building a database + radio mesh network and offering family reunification at events which can be used after disasters as well. If you have in a major US city say 20 spare ambulances, who will provide/coordinate first aid and triage to 2000 victims?

I’m looking at getting into some Emcomm. The department of health I work for has its own radios for Emcomm, Icoms I think. But I wanted to get a all around decent radio for my personal Emcomm. I like the idea of HF/UHF/VHF all in one. I guess the only thing I’m unsure of is the low power of the FT 818. Thoughts?

I don’t want to spend more than a grand. So the price is attractive.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325106789585?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=FOpcUCi6TZG&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=rrNZretsTfy&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Would something like that work, assuming the battery for the tool was 12v, for use in a go-box? Maybe if only as back up to a SLA or LiFePo?

(Obviously this is only applicable to Bosch for this adapter. I'm sure DeWalt, Ryobi, etc have similar adapters but then you'd have to make sure you did get into 18/20v tools/batteries)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/communication-gaps-under-scrutiny-in-astroworld-ems-response/ar-AAQyY2C

I am not sure there is an official after-action report yet. One of our event EMS leaders brought this up. At our events, a volunteer medical team + hams handle most "green" medical cases. "Yellow" and "red" cases go to 911 per direction from EMS. And our EMS linkage is very centralized, scalable and by the book- NIMS. It will be fascinated to read the facts and figures.

Big sports events are a little off from my reading of classic NIMS lingo- the Medical Unit in NIMS takes care of the first responders (internal). In a Marathon, Medical is a primary operations role, facing participants and spectators. Best practice is to defer to Public Safety on Mass Casualty planning, and Incident Command. Events take care of the minor scrapes and bruises to avoid overloading hospitals/EMS.

Is there any appetite for offering to help law enforcement keep an eye on critical infrastructure? Back after the 9/11 attacks, the US Coast Guard Auxiliary had unarmed volunteers watching ports and waterfront facilities on their own boats under US Coast Guard orders. It was called Operation Noble Eagle. https://www.mycg.uscg.mil/News/Article/2759948/the-long-blue-line-20-years-after-911a-day-that-changed-the-coast-guard-forever/#:~:text=On%20September%2014th%2C%20Operation%20Noble%20Eagle%20deployed%20even,and%20port%20security%20operation%20since%20World%20War%20II.

The idea might be we would be allowed to monitor shopping malls and report suspicious activity - a bit of warning might be helpful to get 911 resources there quickly and possibly get some arrests. A ham license would be your credential. Watching a place vs casing a place (known criminal tactic) can be similar so there would have to be an advance arrangement. Non Part 97 gear would have to be used.

The idea is now the gangs have the element of surprise and access to secure communications as was seen in the George Floyd + Capitol riots. Human Intelligence is an excellent counter to this. It could be semi covert or noisy- terrorists and criminals generally hate hard targets.

This could also be done via CERT- who have been given some training in anti-terror awareness.

Drawbacks include liability, the possibility of injury/death and reprisals. Someone could ask- could bad guys get ham licenses- yes. But then you know their name and address. So maybe no ham plates. But there are those who are itching to get the "the call" from law enforcement. And possibly (re)build some trust.

OK,

IF, and I know there's lots and lots of multi-band, dual-band and alternative ways to do this, but IF I was going to carry one rugged HT in my bug out bag, (Motorola XTS 5000 FPP model, which i am familiar with and have used at work), would one recommend a VHF or UHF for emcomm?

This is more a hypothetical if I absolutely want that radio, and just wondering about the benefits of VHF vs UHF? For reference i live in the Twin Cities, MN metro region.

I do have a Technician license and a GMRS license.

Thanks!

Has anyone worked with VOAD in a communications or other role? It all looks well organized. Something new for a lot of us- it can be a longer term (30 days) post-disaster tasking, so mucking out basements, sheltering, family re-unification. Not the traditional race to the scene with a go-kit model. A graphical/map website called Crisis Cleanup seems to be in common use. I saw a demo- a damaged home icon is shown - a group can sign up to put up a tarp or chain-saw a fallen tree.