HAM radio for emergency use?

Better than nothing at all, but no guarantees: you need reception and someone listening. Relying on getting up on a ridge if you are in trouble is a weak premise. I wonder how a kite and antenna would do? I once set up a long wire CB antenna with poles on the beach and had no problem talking 35 miles with a hand-held.

Cool toy in general. I wonder how the cellular service is out there?

I’ve been out in the middle of death valley before on Rover Club off road trips and had no problems hitting one of the repeaters on the rim with my UV-5R HT with a diamond SRJ77CA antenna. Most of the members of our club as well as a lot of others that I have traveled with have moved from FRS/CB to HAM due to better signal quality and ease of communication from vehicle to vehicle.

Having a HAM licence is never a bad thing. Program in the usual HAM calling frequencies and all of the local repeaters, makes it easier down the road. In the event of an emergency I would also program in the frequencies that the NPS uses in the area you will be.

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?aid=4513

I usually bring my radio along for giggles on trips. I was hitting a repeater from the summit of Langley last October and managed to talk to my father in law back home near Pasadena.

The Technician license allows you to broadcast on UHF frequencies. The next level up General license allows you to transmit on the HF bands. With the HF bands you aren’t limited to line of sight transmissions. The downside is that HF transceivers are either heavy or low power or both! The HF bands are also dependent on ionosphere conditions and local terrain. Backpacking HAM radio is still an uncommon combination! For emergency purposes a Satellite phone appears to be the best choice in most situations. There are several articles on BPL about sat phones.

The Technician license allows you to broadcast on UHF & VHF frequencies.

Tech Class Licence Band Plan

I agree – anything HF where you can get some real distance via propagation would be really limited due to:

• the much bigger antennas needed for the longer wavelengths of the hf signals and
• the size and weight of the HF portables + batteries needed to run them.

The only HF rig that I know of that is even remotely portable is the Yaesu FT-817 and that weighs in at 2 lbs with no antenna, and only puts out 5 watts.

Carrying a hand held VHF is certainly less expensive than other options, however it’s usefulness would depend a lot on the terrain and if there are repeaters you can reach. I have never been able to justify bringing mine. Although a homemade 2m j pole antenna out of wire, ladder line etc is pretty light.

If you would consider a “General” license there are more options. Take a look at the rigs people use with the Adventure Radio Society. Some of them happily go backpacking just so they can operate remotely. It is a little bit like participants in this forum who really go outside so that they can take pictures. Instead, these folks get excited by heading outside, setting up their radios, and talking to the world. These are often pretty tiny radios and just some wire+cord for the antenna.

Setting all of this up while injured/sick could be a challenge.

-Peter

Have you considered the Delorme In Reach?

I am not affiliated with this company other than being a customer of their product and service only.

I just got back from thru-hiking Death Valley with a friend 10 days ago and used the SOS feature due to my hiking partner not showing up at a meeting point on the route.  With this experience I found the two way satellite communication to became an invaluable tool that helped myself and Death Valley SAR in the decisions and planning of the events.  What transpired was, after my hiking partner didn’t show and became an hour late to the meeting point, I began to back track to find him. After two hours of actively looking and it now being 2:00 PM, I decided to activate the SOS feature on the unit. My decision to do this at that time was based on knowing Tom is now three hours late, it takes time to get a SAR team called up, briefed on the situation, travel time to the location and I was hopeful they could start the search before nightfall.

With the two way communication I was able to give them a detailed brief of the situation including;

Where he was last seen, name age & physical description, hiking experience level, gear and food carried, possible medical problems and meds, phone numbers to family members,  GPS and triangulated physical description of my location, GPS location of the food/water cache and destination of the days hike,  and my experience level and understanding of the situation (I’m a Wilderness EMT, Vol.Wilderness Ranger for Los Padres NF and retired Fire Fighter with 34 years service).  Being that I had the tracking feature active during this hike, the SAR team was given my exact route hiked for the day by Delorme.  I am very happy with how the communication between myself-Delorme and SAR was shared, with the SAR guys telling me they were very impressed with all of it.

The end result was that my partner pulled a bone head move, deviated from the hike plan and hiked around me at a lower elevation, then continued to the cache site, got a cell signal and called me, wondering where I was.   I brought him up to speed on the afternoons events, the SAR was concluded and we finished hiking thru Death Valley three days later.  For me, I hike solo 99% of the time, I think it will be 100% from here on out.

A excellent Sangean 200x (5.0oz) AM/FM radio that gets weather reports. Not to much WI-FI in the mountains. $30.00 PayPal CONUS Only shipping included.

Jay Wilkerson creachen7@gmail.com

thanks all for the responses.  I ended up getting a spot device and will be bringing our Baofeng UV-3Rs along just for point-to-point comms when we split up.  I’ll be getting my tech license later on this week.

Terry, that’s great information.  If your hiking partner also had a Delorme Inreach, would you have been able to communicate with him directly via text?

EDIT:

It looks like the answer is yes.  I just looked it up on Delorme’s site.

My follow up question for Terry is, what subscription plan do you have?

Mike, I have the recreation plan that allows for unlimited tracking and 40 text messages per month, which is more than enough for me at this point. SOS is unlimited and free so those text don’t count against your 40 text per month the way I understand it.  And yes, you can text directly to another Delorme unit, all you need is their unit’s ID to make it work.  One of the nice features is, I have my unit set up with my wife’s email address installed and we can email directly back and forth, as well as anyone else I choose. I can also post directly to Facebook, which I use for an online hiking journal.  Because I hike solo almost all the time and do 35-40 mile workout hikes quite often, I use the tracking on every hike with the idea that, if I’m injured to the point of not being able to activate the SOS feature, I can be “seen” not moving and hopefully get the attention of my wife as she checks in on me, or if I’m late getting home from a workout.

If you’d like to see what the tracking feature does, private message me and I’ll send you the link to my tracks.

Terry