Here comes Starlink!

I’ve been reading a number of reports from the areas affected by the two major hurricanes (Helene and Milton). The North Carolina experience is particularly interesting because people have experienced the loss of communication and electrical service for several weeks. I can imagine this same thing happening in other parts of the country, including my area.

There are two important technology disruptions showing up in North Carolina: satellite-based internet (Starlink) and mobile-phone-to-satellite (SMS) text messaging. Starlink is having a significant impact during this incident, while mobile phone satellite messaging is still emerging. Steve N8GNJ has some worthy thoughts on these topics in Zero Retires 173. Although I have served in many ARES/RACES deployments over the years, I don’t consider myself an expert in this area. I’d appreciate comments from Emcomm folks who have spent more time thinking about this.

Types of Emergency Communication

Most relevant emergency comms lump into 1) short-range comms (< 5 miles) between family, friends, and neighbors. 2) medium-range comms (50 miles) to obtain information and resources. 3) long-range comms (beyond 50 miles) to connect with distant family, friends, and resources.

1. Short-Range Comms: This is the type of communication that is well served by mobile phones, except when the mobile networks are down. This is happening a lot in North Carolina. Lightly licensed VHF/UHF radios such as FRS and GMRS can be used to replace your mobile phone. Think: wanting to call your neighbor 3 miles away to see if they are OK or can provide something you need. (I have a few FRS/GMRS radios in my stash to share with neighbors. See TIDRadio TD-H3) VHF/UHF ham radio is, of course, even better for this, except the parties involved need to be licensed. (OK, you can operate unlicensed in a true emergency, but that has other issues. See The Talisman Radio.)
2. Medium-Range Comms: This is a great fit for VHF/UHF ham radio using repeaters or highly-capable base stations. GMRS repeaters can also serve this need. These communications will typically be about situational awareness and resource availability in the surrounding area. For example, someone on the local ham repeater may know whether the highway is open to the place you want to drive.
3. Long-Range Comms: Historically, this has been done by HF ham radio and a lot of emergency traffic is still handled this way. The shift that is happening is that setting up a Starlink earth station feeding a local WiFi network can help a lot of people in a very effective manner.  Compare passing a formal piece of health-and-welfare traffic via ham radio to letting a non-licensed person simply get Wi-Fi access to their email or text messaging app. Hams are doing this, but many unlicensed techie folks have set up these systems and freely shared them with the public.

Mobile Satellite Messaging

Various providers now offer a basic text messaging capability using smartphones talking to satellites. Today, this capability is often limited to emergencies (“SOS”), and it is relatively slow. With time, this capability will certainly improve and basic satellite texting will be ubiquitous on smartphones. This will be great for checking in with distant friends and families, but it may not be that useful for Short Range and Medium Range comms. Someday, it might include voice comms, but in the near term, it is probably just text-based.

Evan K2EJT provides some useful tips based on his experience here in this video. However, he doesn’t address the Starlink capability.

Summary

While much of the public appreciates the usefulness of ham radio during emergencies, I am already hearing questions like “Doesn’t Starlink cover this need?” My view is that Starlink (and similar commercial sats) is very useful and will play an important emcomm role, but it does not cover all of the communication needs during incidents such as hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires, earthquakes, etc. Emcomm folks (ARES and RACES) will need to adapt their approach to take this into account.

Those are my thoughts. What do you think?

73 Bob K0NR

The post The Future of Emcomm appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Hello and welcome to Episode #557 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts were invited to partner with the guys over at Live Free and Ham for a collaboration episode. It's mostly a fluff piece about Linux in the Ham Shack but we all had a good time and we hope you have as much fun listening. Thanks for being a part of the show and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Before the HF maritime CW bands were closed back in the ‘90s, I spent many enjoyable hours listening to ships and maritime coastal stations all over the world while they exchanged CW messages or sent position and weather reports using the old AMVER system. It was a constant delight to hear various ship Radio Officers (ROs) using their keyers, bugs and good old hand keys to demonstrate their unique fists to the world, especially when using the latter two! Fists ranged from simply superb to downright awful, making one wonder if the ship’s oiler had been enlisted to send the nightly traffic! It was particularly interesting to plot their positions, as many of the vessels eventually showed up in the Port of Vancouver, an easy drive to where I was living at the time.

At 41,000 tons and 225m, she's a big ship, earlier named the ICARUS

The AGIOS GEORGIOS S nears Kakinada, India, in the Bay of Bengal

MOL CHARISMA - 21,000 tons and 316m long

Registered in the Bahamas, the MOL CHARISMA was in the Aleutian Island chain near Dutch Harbor, Alaska, bound for Prince Rupert, BC.

 

The MAHO CORAL - 127m

The ORIENT CHALLENGE - 183m

About to enter BC's Gulf Islands enroute Vancouver

CMA CGM MAUI, a true leviathan - 154,000 tons 366m length

 

Yannis P - 81,000 tons, 274m

 

Dream location!

The 'lakers' were very reliable QSLers

Laker STEWART J CORT

Last evening we were treated to a nice light show courtesy of the active sun.  

Yours truely

In a previous post, I mentioned I had purchased a Zachtek WSPR desktop transmitter. I found a great site one can use to go over the data collected regarding your WSPR transmissions. The site is called Grafana  GUI and can be accessed at the WSPR live site. The Grafana dashboard gives you information on solar weather from 5 minutes to 1 year.   Station-specific information such as antenna radiation pattern, spot data per band and time, map of where your signal is heard and finally it can be used for receiving and transmitting signals. I use the TX  data as I do not yet have a stand-alone WSPR receiver. There is a ton of information you can gather, my advice is to visit the site and look around. I ran my WSPR transmitter for almost 24 hours and below I  have included the Kp index for that time period as well as the antenna radiation pattern of my Hustler 4BTV. 

Click on all pictures to enlarge. 

For our local 2m net, the Net Control Station asks a Question of the Night to stimulate some discussion. Recently, the question was:

Do you have any interest in CW. If yes, Do you currently operate CW or do you plan to learn? If you have no interest in CW, what other modes besides voice do you operate on or would like to?

I am not a huge CW fan, but I do use it from time to time, especially when it comes to squeezing out difficult contacts on VHF or UHF. However, this question had me thinking about the various modes I have operated, so I made a list:

SSB - quite often on HF, VHF, UHF
CW  - not nearly as often but on HF, VHF, UHF
FM/PM - lots of VHF activity here, 2m FM is the Utility Mode
AM  - a few times, just to check it out
RTTY - I used to do this often but my interest has faded
PSK31 - I used to do this often but my interest has faded
FT8 - this one has taken over my digital operating
FT4 - a faster alternative to FT8, often better to use
Q65 - I just started using this for weak-signal VHF/UHF
MSK144 - for meteor scatter, but I haven't done that for a while
AX.25 - VHF packet radio, including APRS
DMR - the most common digital mode in Colorado
D-STAR - I used D-STAR when it first came out but lost interest
C4FM - Yaesu Fusion, I've used it a few times

Each one of these modes has a story behind it…often I was just looking for something new to try. (If you find yourself getting bored with ham radio, it might be time to try a new mode.)

This list also reminds me that I need to get back to chasing grids on the 2-meter band, using CW, SSB, FT8, MSK144, and Q65. I have a new tower up that I’ve not taken full advantage of for VHF/UHF.

That’s my list of modes used, what does your list look like?

73 Bob K0NR

The post Which Modes Have You Operated? appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.