Tag Archives: comm

Election EVE

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Election EVE

OK folks things seem to be heating up. First Wal-Mart pulled ALL of the guns and ammo from their displays  last week “in case there were rioting going on” then Friday they put most of them back on display except in the worst areas.  Friday a friend in Madison WI reported that the stores downtown were boarding up their windows getting ready for the election riots.  Getting similar reports from other places around the country.  Many police departments have cancelled days off, vacations ect for one to two weeks surrounding the elections.  And then there is this head line–New York City luxury buildings hire armed guards for possible Election Day unrest. Them that can afford that would do well to have that in place all over.  In my area listening to the police calls  there are more and more calls stacked up WAITING for an officer to become available and often when they get dispatched the call is ended with the dispatcher saying “I will send back up as soon as I can”.  Folks that is very concerning to many of us as it shows how over loaded the system is getting.  It IS bad now and I believe that it will get much worse regardless of who ‘wins’ Tuesday. It will be bad at least till spring.

But what are the rest of us going to do?

Top up your vehicle this morning on the way to work OR tonight on the way to get stuff.

It is NOT too late to organize with those who live near you.  You can still go to the big box stores and buy stuff. Get last minute stuff as if it were going to blizzard for the next 1 – 6 months. While you are there get a couple of CB radios antennas, AND cigarette lighter plug in so you can power the CB in your vehicles.  Also get a few of those blister pack FRS/GMRS radios AND if they have them a mobile radio to go with them. IF they have scanner radios get one of those too. Do you have a good AM/FM radio or 2. Gathering information will be vital in the coming months. Charge and check ALL of your communications devices. Make sure they are all programmed correctly and that everyone knows how to use them. Finalize your communications plan. What if the net goes down? Do NOT depend on only your cell phones nor just one or 2 social media sites to communicate with friends / family.

Review your bug out plan and fine tune it. Where are you going? How are you getting there-transportation- AND routes?

 

Security issues- when things are going on in your area you will need at least one person on FIRE watch 24/7.  They can also monitor the radios.  Should things locally continue down hill you will have to set up stronger security arrangements  3 or more people to do this. One person to stay at the Comms center / command post and the other 2 to patrol or stand guard.  What does that look like for you?  Could need 12 people for this. Which leads to how do you / they get sleep, eat and take care of other bodily functions?  How does the rest of what you have to get done, get done? What is everyone’s work load?

 

Please let us know about things in your areas and ideas to address your concerns. Reply below.

Join us at https://mewe.com/group/5ad01347afa4753cdb674252 copy and paste in your browser

side note… I thought that I was watching an episode of TWD, turns out it was the evening news…..

 

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/prepping-count-down/

 

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/re-hydration-drink/

 

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/journaling/

 

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/medications-to-stockpile/

 

Hurricane COMMs plus

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Hurricane COMMs plus

Unless you are totally Narcisstic and sociopathic, communication in an emergency should be high on your list of skills and equipment to be developed by you and your family / group.

Have you ever played \telephone\ ? Often by the end of the transfer of the message no one recognizes it as the same as at the beginning. Typed OR recorded messages tend to convey meaning consistently. This is one of the reasons HAMs are shifting in a lot of cases to digital radio so that you can in effect send E-mail via radio instead of internet only.

However voice communications is still easy for dialog.

As long as the grid is at least mostly up [or at least spotty] ZELLO seems to be a great system to use so that people at least get the same message even if you don’t get it at the same time as the person next door. Better or at least as good as text.

Zello and texting does NOT replace HAM radios for reliability.

There are links at the bottom for more communications ect.

Zello tops US app store as the walkie-talkie for hurricane volunteers
•by Mike Butcher,
With Hurricane Irma hitting Florida’s southern islands as a category four storm, and more than 6.3 million being told to evacuate Florida, being able to stay in contact with the outside world is a high priority. As a result, smartphone apps which can help coordinate rescues and responses have become crucial to efforts.

The main one that’s being talked about — and downloaded at a prodigious rate — is Zello, a walkie-talkie app which was originally launched in Russia in 2007 under the name LoudTalks (but since moved to Austin, Texas in 2011) and now boasts 100 million users around the world. After being featured in a Houston Chronicle story about the “Cajun Navy” of volunteers who have been using the app to coordinate their efforts in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the app hit the top of the US app store.

Zello appears to have added six million new registered users since Monday, the company’s CEO, Bill Moore, told BuzzFeed News, and is now the top free app on the iOS App Store. “With the crush of new users and emergency situations, most of the Zello team is working long days either maintaining capacity or helping with customer support,” he said.

However, the huge interest in Zello saw the company admitting it has had to add servers to keep it up.
Now, with Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida, interest in Zello is being boosted yet again.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/zello-tops-us-app-store-123738499.html

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http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/comms-part-1/

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/convalescent-care/

and some books that explore the topics in more depth
http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/ready-or-not-things-will-happen/ This is book 1 the quick start guide to preparedness.

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/ready-or-not-fun-things-will-happen/ This is book 2 about traveling and evacuation planning.

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/hurricane-season-2

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/eclipse-aar This one will give you an interesting look at travel snarl ups when it not an emergency.

www.castlesandcruises.com has some interesting info for your consideration during this season.

COMMs part 1

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Both landlines and cell towers have limited battery back up, some have generators. At any rate they will function for a while during a power outage. So having a plain land line phone for at least ONE of your house phones is a great idea. So is having a car charger or other way to keep your cell phone working from your end.

All of the following come in hand held [walkie-talkies or handi-talkies ] vehicle mounted and home / base stations. The difference in configuration has nothing to do with the frequencies that they work on.

FRS / GRMS are ok for very close range. They are no more ‘secure’ than any other radio except for the very limited range. These would do well for a highly populated / dense area such as New Your City.

HAM radio is a great idea too. Talking around the block or around the world! They can be very expensive or really economical depending on what bells and whistles you want. With a license you can work on low power, 1/2 watt units clear up to 1,500 watts on the same frequencies. There is one multiband radio that I would like to have a couple of. It is man-packable, has an internal battery or can hook up to any 12 volt power source, the antenna can be rolled on to a spool, it works on 160 meter band all the way down to 70CM. This is an extremely wide range for a single radio. With this radio you can talk clearly around the world. I have heard folks talking from Scotland to New Zealand. The maximum wattage that it has to transmit on is 5 [five] watts. Each of the [3] levels of license for HAMs are cheap – So for easily less than $100.00 you could have all 3 levels  of licenses. Google ‘HAM radio club’ to find a group near you to help you get licensed and set up with a radio to start out.

Not everyone in a given area of operation or group needs a HAM radio. In fact it is a good idea to NOT have everyone in a group area on HAM radio. One of the problems with everyone working on the same radio frequencies is confusion. Think of it as the old ‘party lines’ back in the days when the phone systems had a group of people on the same phone line. If 10 people had to share the same phone, you can imagine if they ALL talked at the same time. Now, hold that thought and think of the party game called ‘telephone’ where you have a simple message written down on a piece of paper. You whisper that message to the first person who then tells it to the next and on down the line until they get to the last person who tells the group what he got told. You will not recognize it.

Another issue is that in any group there are a bunch of conversations going on that are not ‘private’ but at the same time does not pertain to everybody….. sort of like when you are on a yahoo group site. The nice thing about cross talking or party lines is that if you have something to add you can jump in and say whatever.