Be Prepared!

Communications is what we as hams do. In order to be of service, we must be prepared to communicate during many adverse and unexpected conditions.
Unexpected does not mean unplanned for. If we are able to plan and prepare for emergency contingencies, we will be far ahead. Many sources for lists of equipment exist.

We participate in Public Service Events (PSE) to practice our communication skills.

Recently I helped out with a couple of events in my area.

I ran net control and for one event wanted to introduce APRS to the served agency. To my surprise, they immediately asked for more tracking than I had with me! I had one of the club tracker units in a toolbox, and my own in a chest harness (which fit well enough on the dash of a minivan).

So I had a temporary external antenna, my laptop, my Icom 706 in a backpack, and TNC, IC-255A and cables for the APRS station. Oh and two 87 Ah gel cells... We were a little short handed for this event, so I found out the hard way how challenging being net control while installing APRS trackers, chasing down the event contact (who insisted on remaining outside because the weather was so nice), tracking vehicles and running the voice net.

Here is a photo of net control for the 2006 4H Walk-a-Thon:

Outside the window was a dual band (2m/70cm) mobile antenna mounted on a couple of temporary pieces of mast, inserted into a patio umbrella base, and inside a folding ladder. Inside I used the duplexer from my vehicle to split UHF for voice & VHF for the APRS station. Our club repeater on 147.00 has a UHF link to another repeater, and I was able to get in on this link, allowing the hams in the field to use the normal VHF repeater frequency.

The other event I also ran net control, but the served agency was doing such a small area event that we were able to use a 2m simplex frequency for communications. For this event I planned to be outside, so brought an EZ-up shelter, a folding table, lawn chair and again the Icom in a backpack and the 2 big batteries. I also hooked up a solar panel through a charge controller for power. For an antenna I brought out a 3 piece telescoping mast, nylon guys, screw in anchors and again the folding ladder for increased stability.