In a true emergency? Yes, HAM is the way to go and I need to get around to buying one of those super sketchy Baofengs. In theory you can configure them to use without a license (which is also on the todo list) but it is super easy to tick into the licensed use. How much people will care will mostly depend on whether your local HAM folk are narcs. But, regardless, all bets are off in a true emergency and Baofengs are dirt cheap.
But in a “the internet is out” situation? Or even a “please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion” for a wildfire or a bad hurricane? That is where meshtastic (et al) shine and it is well worth convincing friends to pick up a t-deck or whatever. Excellent for the “is it out for everyone or just me?” checks. Also useful for letting people know which field can see a cell tower a county or two over for emergency communication or to even coordinate whether you are all gonna head North or South to hang out for (hopefully just) a few days.
And anyone thinking of using any of that for stuff the government don’t want you to: You are an idiot and you need to learn about how insecure all of those are.
Yes. For true emergency/disaster relief, that is the baseline. I doubt most of the meshtastic repeaters will survive a real storm and you can bet people will be spamming/attacking longfast from the comfort of their homes a county or three over. And there is no good way to communicate proper regional channels ahead of time.
But not every internet outage is a disaster. I live in a region where it is not uncommon for construction crews to cut the fiber line and take out all traffic for the county… sometimes multiple times a month… And I can speak from experience that having a mesh network with locals is incredibly useful for “Yes, it is all of us. And Verizon/Tmobile/Spring is also out” as well as “If you go to the park on 5th and MLK you have line of sight to a working cell tower”. And even just “So… I got all of Frasier on my Plex if anyone wants to hang out for a few hours”.
If you whip out your emergency HAM radios (without a license) during that? You can bet ALL the narcs are gonna tattle on you because “you weren’t prepared”.
But even during the prelude to a disaster it can be an issue. We also have wildfires in the region and get a pretty big scare maybe once a decade. Last time we were in a state of “be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice” for the better part of a week. And just a bit of gossip that “today is going to be the day” was enough to trigger panic and clog up cell service faster than you can say “9-11”. We even got an emergency push telling us that there were no planned evacuation orders for the day and to go about normal activities.
If you are someone frantically trying to figure out where the school took your kids? Yeah, you have an emergency. If you are someone who doesn’t have a strong support network trying to figure out what is even going on? The narcs are gonna whinge at you. But, like I said, it is very useful to coordinate your evac with that support network. You can plan ahead of time to try to all get hotels/campsites in the town a few hours North. Then you drive through the hell of the evac until you get a few cell towers away, pull over, and use an app to book a hotel/campsite. But if all the people with families have to go South to pick up their kids from the school drop off site? You can only communicate when you are all an hour or three away from town and… ain’t nobody going back through that traffic snarl.
Hopefully it ends up being a false alarm and you come back a week or two later to some smoke damage (that everyone TOTALLY fixes…) and not much else. But it’s the difference between a week or two where you are able to hang out with your friends and have some degree of normalcy versus a week or two isolated and worried that you are going to lose everything.
And that is where mesh networks thrive. I am not talking about “I have a repeater in my garden” (which I should get on…). Stuff like the t-deck is what is actually useful. Plug it in, turn it on, and the pseudo-blackberries mesh with each other well enough for coordinating because enough people in town are doing the exact same thing.
One thing that people trying to make Meshtastic/Meshpro/whatever work might want to try:
odds are that your town/community have a social media system that is generally used to discuss events and the like (probably facebook, sometimes reddit). Make a post on there basically providing a link to a “getting started” guide and the credentials/key for the local mesh.
And, most importantly: Schedule an event (maybe every other month or once a quarter) where everyone with a device should turn theirs on and either be near a window or stand outside. That is a great way to rapidly detect all the temporary nodes that might only exist during a “not emergency” and for people to debug all the messes because meshtastic is a cluster.
Edit: My point wasn’t specifically about amateur radio (I’m also one) nor where I live, but about the old-as-the-internet habit of people scoffing about what is and isn’t legal without even knowing where the person they’re replying to lives.
On the radio front, numerous countries require licences to legally listen to public broadcast radio (Switzerland, Slovenia and Montenegro are examples). If your handy dandy Baofeng UV5 can pick up broadcast FM radio frequencies, in such countries it will fall under licencing requirements even if you never transmit.
In a true emergency? Yes, HAM is the way to go and I need to get around to buying one of those super sketchy Baofengs. In theory you can configure them to use without a license (which is also on the todo list) but it is super easy to tick into the licensed use. How much people will care will mostly depend on whether your local HAM folk are narcs. But, regardless, all bets are off in a true emergency and Baofengs are dirt cheap.
But in a “the internet is out” situation? Or even a “please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion” for a wildfire or a bad hurricane? That is where meshtastic (et al) shine and it is well worth convincing friends to pick up a t-deck or whatever. Excellent for the “is it out for everyone or just me?” checks. Also useful for letting people know which field can see a cell tower a county or two over for emergency communication or to even coordinate whether you are all gonna head North or South to hang out for (hopefully just) a few days.
And anyone thinking of using any of that for stuff the government don’t want you to: You are an idiot and you need to learn about how insecure all of those are.
No wonder they’re insecure with you calling them idiots all the time.
🫣
Ham radio played a massive role while the Internet was out following hurricane Helene. https://youtu.be/w8hSHq8dGsA
Yes. For true emergency/disaster relief, that is the baseline. I doubt most of the meshtastic repeaters will survive a real storm and you can bet people will be spamming/attacking longfast from the comfort of their homes a county or three over. And there is no good way to communicate proper regional channels ahead of time.
But not every internet outage is a disaster. I live in a region where it is not uncommon for construction crews to cut the fiber line and take out all traffic for the county… sometimes multiple times a month… And I can speak from experience that having a mesh network with locals is incredibly useful for “Yes, it is all of us. And Verizon/Tmobile/Spring is also out” as well as “If you go to the park on 5th and MLK you have line of sight to a working cell tower”. And even just “So… I got all of Frasier on my Plex if anyone wants to hang out for a few hours”.
If you whip out your emergency HAM radios (without a license) during that? You can bet ALL the narcs are gonna tattle on you because “you weren’t prepared”.
But even during the prelude to a disaster it can be an issue. We also have wildfires in the region and get a pretty big scare maybe once a decade. Last time we were in a state of “be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice” for the better part of a week. And just a bit of gossip that “today is going to be the day” was enough to trigger panic and clog up cell service faster than you can say “9-11”. We even got an emergency push telling us that there were no planned evacuation orders for the day and to go about normal activities.
If you are someone frantically trying to figure out where the school took your kids? Yeah, you have an emergency. If you are someone who doesn’t have a strong support network trying to figure out what is even going on? The narcs are gonna whinge at you. But, like I said, it is very useful to coordinate your evac with that support network. You can plan ahead of time to try to all get hotels/campsites in the town a few hours North. Then you drive through the hell of the evac until you get a few cell towers away, pull over, and use an app to book a hotel/campsite. But if all the people with families have to go South to pick up their kids from the school drop off site? You can only communicate when you are all an hour or three away from town and… ain’t nobody going back through that traffic snarl.
Hopefully it ends up being a false alarm and you come back a week or two later to some smoke damage (that everyone TOTALLY fixes…) and not much else. But it’s the difference between a week or two where you are able to hang out with your friends and have some degree of normalcy versus a week or two isolated and worried that you are going to lose everything.
And that is where mesh networks thrive. I am not talking about “I have a repeater in my garden” (which I should get on…). Stuff like the t-deck is what is actually useful. Plug it in, turn it on, and the pseudo-blackberries mesh with each other well enough for coordinating because enough people in town are doing the exact same thing.
One thing that people trying to make Meshtastic/Meshpro/whatever work might want to try:
odds are that your town/community have a social media system that is generally used to discuss events and the like (probably facebook, sometimes reddit). Make a post on there basically providing a link to a “getting started” guide and the credentials/key for the local mesh.
And, most importantly: Schedule an event (maybe every other month or once a quarter) where everyone with a device should turn theirs on and either be near a window or stand outside. That is a great way to rapidly detect all the temporary nodes that might only exist during a “not emergency” and for people to debug all the messes because meshtastic is a cluster.
You just can’t legally transmit without a license. You can own a ham radio and listen all you want.
Perhaps where you live.
Internet 101: Laws aren’t the same everywhere.
Edit: My point wasn’t specifically about amateur radio (I’m also one) nor where I live, but about the old-as-the-internet habit of people scoffing about what is and isn’t legal without even knowing where the person they’re replying to lives.
On the radio front, numerous countries require licences to legally listen to public broadcast radio (Switzerland, Slovenia and Montenegro are examples). If your handy dandy Baofeng UV5 can pick up broadcast FM radio frequencies, in such countries it will fall under licencing requirements even if you never transmit.
yes they are