Tag: communications plan

  • Human Relay Networks: Moving Traffic Across Town on Simplex

    When the repeater goes down, your club becomes the repeater. How to set up and run a simplex human relay network before you need one.

  • Why Ham Radio Matters: A Hobby, a Lifeline, and a Century of Proof

    Why ham radio still matters: the hobby, what it does for you, your family, and your town, and a century of times it kept people alive when everything else failed.

  • Why HF Radio Matters Most When the Grid Goes Down

    Why HF radio is critical when the grid goes down: NVIS keeps you connected to your region, and HF DX lets you poll other states and continents for news.

  • Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alerts: How They Work, and Ham Radio’s Role

    EAS and WEA are not the same system, and understanding both tells you exactly where ham radio actually fits in.

  • Setting Up a Neighborhood Radio Watch Program

    Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness guide. Your own household’s comms plan only covers your own household. A neighborhood radio watch extends that same resilience to the people physically closest to you, which is exactly who you will actually be relying on and helping during a genuinely local emergency. Start With Who You Already…

  • Building an EmComm Go-Kit Inventory You’ll Actually Update

    Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness guide. Every go-kit inventory starts out accurate the day you build it and slowly drifts out of date as batteries get swapped, gear gets borrowed, and expiration dates quietly pass. The fix is not a better one-time inventory. It is a system low-friction enough that you actually keep…

  • Your Comms Plan for Every Disaster Scenario

    Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness pillar I have written about a lot of individual disaster scenarios on this site, and I kept hearing the same thing: people wanted one place to find all of it instead of hunting through a dozen separate posts. So here it is. Every scenario-specific comms plan I have…

  • What Is ATAK (CivTAK)? Tactical Mapping and Team Awareness Explained for Hams

    Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness guide. If you’ve spent any time in EmComm, SAR, or preparedness circles lately, you’ve probably seen the acronym ATAK thrown around next to phrases like “situational awareness” and “common operating picture.” It sounds military because it is military, but the civilian version has quietly become one of the…

  • Backup Power for the Shack: Generators, Solar, and Batteries for Extended Outages

    Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness guide. I’ve written plenty about LiFePO4 batteries and solar charging for field kits, but there’s a bigger question I haven’t tackled directly: what actually keeps the shack itself running when the grid is down for days instead of hours. Batteries alone won’t carry a base station forever, so…

  • MURS vs GMRS vs FRS: Which One (or Combination) Actually Fits Your Family

    I write a lot about GMRS and FRS on this site, but MURS almost never comes up, and that’s a gap. It’s the license-free service most people have never heard of, and for certain family and neighborhood comms setups it’s worth understanding alongside the two everyone already knows. The Quick Version FRS is license-free, low…

  • Building a PACE Communications Plan for Grid-Down Scenarios

    How to build a PACE (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) radio communications plan combining GMRS, ham radio, and non-radio backups.

  • NBEMS and Practice Nets: Building Digital Mode Muscle Memory

    Knowing how to run a digital mode and knowing how to pass real emergency traffic on one are two different skills. NBEMS exists to bridge that gap, and the practice nets built around it are how you actually build the muscle memory before you need it for something that matters. What NBEMS actually is NBEMS,…

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