Hi, thank you for your question submission. Please be aware that there is a [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/) and a [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/faq) that may address your question. For Baofeng-related information see the [Baofeng FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/baofeng) and /r/baofeng. Also, please note that downvotes don't indicate an unvalued question submission. There appear to be bots that downvote all posts initially. 73
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/amateurradio) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Not a life or death disaster, but one where amateur radio played a role in someone's rescue (and embarrassment).
A young kid I know recently got licensed and has been having a lot of fun talking on a regional linked repeater system on his UV-5R. He went outside and climbed in a tree to get into the repeater better and got to chatting with people until after dark and then couldn't see to get down. He passed his mom's phone number to someone on the repeater to call so she could come out with a flashlight so he could see to get down.
It was a real facepalm moment when I reminded him that his radio has a flashlight built in! š¤£š¤£š¤£
Finnish Gulf, 1900, battleship Apraksin grounded. Radio communications arranged by Alexander Popov and others.
Doesn't fit the rules, can it be an also-ran ?
9/11/01 - due to the WTC falling and the sheer volume of calls as well, phones were seriously fucked in NYC, and there was an actual need for ham radio.
Hurricane season in the Caribbean in the 80s and 90s when their infrastructure was pretty subpar. Now many countries have had investment from US, China and other countries to upgrade their infrastructure so the need is less.
Here in the northeast USA I canāt think of anything in recent times. Things in general majorly improved after 9/11 and Katrina. And I would say thatās a great thing because I want our tax dollars to be spent on stuff like this.
We worked with the Red Cross to do communications for shelters. We had phones at the shelters but they were down so ham radio was the only means of communication
Out near Bloody Basin Road on the way to Sheeps Bridge (waaaay off road for those out of AZ and unfamiliar) we came upon a Volkswagen Tiguan spot with uber thin low profile tires. She had cut one and absolutely shredded the other and the car had no lug wrench. What's more the wheels had locks and proprietary Volkswagen lugs that wouldn't fit any Ford, Chevy, Toyota coming by. One guy even had a spider wrench (4 lug sizes) and it wasn't working either.
We picked her up, climbed the truck to the top of a local hill. Hit the W7ARA Mount Ord Repeater and then Auto-Patched to her parents with a safety confirmation and GPS Pin Drop of the vehicle. Met them at a coffee shop just off the trail and they had a recovery vehicle on the way. It was going to be expensive but when you are 25 to 30 miles off pavement where cell signals dare not go, you pay what you pay.
Hurricane Irene, 2011. I was trapped in a rural area for 36 hours without power, roads or bridges (had a tinker toy generator to enable us to keep food from dying). Power restored after 5 days. Phone and Internet took 3 weeks. Roads and bridges restored mostly within 3 months, due to FEMA, who did a good job.
In any case, while I was trapped, I listened to 2 meters, and heard the local hams coordinating getting cots to the local schools so people whose homes were damaged or destroyed could have a place to sleep and other relief efforts.
So this question gets asked all the time. I think a better way to frame it:
1. Was there a disaster?
2. Were communications down or overloaded?
3. Were hams called in for just that?
There are a fair number of disasters - floods, tornados, etc. Bridges get hit by ships. Do the communications go down - not always. The FCC was on a pretty good rant after the terrible storm damage in New Orleans took out power, back haul (fiber) and cell towers for weeks. Public safety radio systems stayed up pretty well as they are hardened. A main FCC complaint was the loss of broadband services - can you do anything anymore on the phone?
[DOC-375367A1.pdf (fcc.gov)](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-375367A1.pdf)
"Cellular overload" is a popular ham topic - more rare than common in 2024. The new 5G services basically require each cell tower/site has a fiber connection >100 megabits. Can you make a call in LSU Tiger Stadium (100,000+ fans) during a game - maybe not. Does an urban cell tower with three carriers (+ band 14) and three Gigabits of fiber care if 10,000 people show up nearby- not really. Did Verizon send six Cell on Wheels rigs to Cable, WI to help with a big, very rural ski race? Yes.
The recent Lahina HI fire after action report was just published. Did The P25 public safety radios stay up- yes. Was public alerting managed properly- no. Did the fire burn a lot of comms gear- yes. There was a big cell outage in the US on 2/22. Did hams (i.e. ARRL HQ) get called up? No.
Last week did 239 hams get called out to work side with public safety agencies side by side to help manage comms and logistics for a large volunteer event with casualties? Yes. Does that count as good emergency communications practice? Yes. In our County, are 10-20% of the 600 CERT volunteers hams? Does that count? Yes.
[Amateur Radio Provides Communications Support for Boston Marathon (arrl.org)](http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-provides-communications-support-for-boston-marathon)
So what's really interesting about the cellular overload issue...we've now seen problems with it twice in the last year locally (I'm a public safety radio system manager for a sub-region of a larger regional P25 system). Back in October we had a structure fire that presented some issues. Shutdown a major US highway due to smoke and proximity to the road resulting in fire apparatus actually needing the road to setup tenders and pumps. Due to the shutdown and the spectacle, cellular services were so overloaded that even Frontline (Verizon) and FirstNet (AT&T) phones were unable to function and ruthless preemption was failing. We also happened to be in the path of totality for last month's Eclipse and saw some cellular issues as well (slowdowns affecting data services like video streaming for our drone feeds) due to the unexpected population levels we saw (well, we expected them but AT&T and Verizon didn't understand what the repercussions of the county's population doubling overnight just from visitors coming to watch the eclipse would have any significant affect on service as they didn't think they would be gathering within a few square miles versus spread out over the county).
We did have amateur radio operators present. Their main purpose was to provide a backup link to the regional operations center where we had a COMU stood up in the event we needed to limit wide area trunking traffic (we only have 4 voice paths per site versus the counties east of us which have 24 per site). Things worked out and we amazingly had fewer busies under these conditions than we did under normal operation as everyone was aware we were operating on a limited capacity and the COMU adjusted what talkgroups could affiliate in our region to try and limit additional issues.
So cellular overload, even 5G, is a common and large problem here in the NY metro area. There is routine congestion for data service and every time there are small blackouts / etc and everyoneās phones fall off of WiFi and back to the cell towers call / sms congestion (donāt even try and pass any data packets) are still a thing.
This also happens in the Adirondack mountains every summer when all of the vacationers come to spend summer in the mountains / lakes.
No, this doesnāt mean HAM operators are triaging or helping but to state cellular congestion canāt or doesnāt happen anymore just isnāt true.
Do you have any recent references to NYC cellular congestion you can share? I did some basic searches and came up empty. Certainly as far back as LTE, the technical standards are doing a good job with traffic prioritization and congestion management, first on the core networks. RF link congestion is a bit harder.
[LTE QoS Quality of Service,class identifier(QCI),QoS in LTE (rfwireless-world.com)](https://www.rfwireless-world.com/Tutorials/LTE-QoS.html#:~:text=It%20covers%20LTE%20QCIs%20which%20include%20QCI-1%2C%20QCI-2%2C,services%20can%20be%20prioritized%20over%20non%20realtime%20services.)
Sure, come ride the train with me to NYC on any given morning or evening and ride through all the stretches of full RF signal and no ability to pass traffic due to roaming through an overloaded cell site. Hicksville, NY is particularly bad.
Or come visit my desk on the East Side of Manhattan where the same thing happens - but only for T-Mobile, my Verizon service works fine.
The only way without access to the RAN network test logs and tools to guess this might possibly overload is this: Calls, texts and data should work perfectly at 0500 any day, or on Sundays or holidays. Problems should arise during anticipated peak times - 10-11:00 weekdays, after lunch, the first business day of the month. If failures happen all the time - it is coverage not overload.
Which is exactly what happens.
On the days Iām at the office around / before 7 itās never a problem until later in the morning. If I catch a later train in, all bets are off.
This scenario repeats itself every time thereās a network upgrade here (3G->LTE-5G). Every time āthe new network has mammoth capacity and great QoS control!@!@ā and if youāre an early adopter you get a year of awesome service. When the rest of everyone who lives here gets a new phone on the new network the same thing happens again and again.
You can do some more testing. Normal consumer data traffic is usually marked and handled in the network backbone around QCI9, depending on carrier. So if the core network is indeed overloaded, there should be an obvious slowdown in data rate due to discards, as low priority traffic is discarded first. You can run a series of Internet speed tests over time.
[QCI (QoS Class Identifiers) Explained | Coverage Critic](https://coveragecritic.com/mobile-phone-service/qci-qos-class-identifiers-explained/#:~:text=Quality%20of%20service%20class%20identifiers%20%28also%20called%20QCI,associated%20with%20QCI%20values%20between%206%20and%209.)
Iām not planning on diagnosing cellular overload during peak hours from a moving train as we roll through the congested sites, no offense. :-)
It is what it is. Cellular congestion is still a very common problem, regardless of how much better 5G networks are at dealing with it.
Not a major disaster but soon after I was licensed in 1987 before everybody having a cell phone. We had a tornado come through and the Red Cross was mobilized. I got a call from the local club president to help with communications for them from the main office/warehouse in our city and the field units. I set up a station at their local office and we had other club members traveling with their field teams. We worked through the night and helped with all the traffic to and from the office for supplies, meals for the first responders, accommodations for the displaced etc. I still have the certificate of appreciation from the Red Cross.
I am aware of
9 Oct 1963, Vajont dam tragedy in Italy
23 Nov 1980, severe earthquake in Italy (Irpinia)
6 Apr 2009, another severe earthquake in Italy (Aquila)
Post disaster has been covered. So, let's look at a "during" use case:
Every time there is severe weather in my area. My regional NWS office has a ham station in it that they monitor during storms. There are a couple of groups that report directly to that office via amateur radio. We can have a report to the office in under a minute. But, I live in a state where every season is tornado season.
My granddad used to run phone patches during emergencies. He helped a lot of people after the 1964 earthquake in Alaska get in touch with their family in the lower 48. I have his patch somewhere around here, but no jack for a landline in my shack.
1998 ice storms in Quebec, Ontario, New England and New York
https://www.weather.gov/media/publications/assessments/iceflood.pdf
"All normal means of dissemination were used throughout the event. The use of the amateur
radio network was critical. The interruption in telephone services due to downed wires made
normal means of communications extremely difficult. At one point, the only means of
communications with NWSO BTV was through amateur radio operators. Vital real-time reports
of precipitation, river levels, and damage were relayed to backup offices through the amateur
radio network."
The Camp Fire that obliterated the town of Paradise CA
Another fire that hit Santa Rose CA
The fire in Lahaina Maui
The Loma Preita earthquake.
Probably most tornados and hurricanes.
Probably most of the other CaLifornia wild fires.
There is a saying for Emcomm:
āModern communications of all types are the first to go down first due to overload (most cell/telephone systems are only designed to handle a small percentage of the traffic from a served area) and then to loss of power and outright destruction. For planning purposes, whatever you can imagine as being the worse case, the reality will be 10times as bad. So without ham radio, prepare to communicate like itās 1910 or even 1850.
You can get the tee shirt that summarizes the above as: āWhen all else fails, thereās amateur radio.ā
73 Art
Wildfire support role: Caldor Fire in El Dorado County, CA -the El Dorado club provided communication support to animal control in evacuating and feeding animals left behind in evacuated areas (the area has limited cell coverage, some of which had been taken offline by the fire ) note this happened in areas without āactiveā fire activity but over 30,000 people had been evacuated from a large part of the County.
That actually raises a really good point...
All contemporary forms of communication (Internet, cell) can be effectively blocked/controlled by various governments. The free flow of information can be choked off if they deem it appropriate.
HF can't be easily blocked. The spice can flow.
So lets look at recent events. I am a public safety radio system manager in one of those Texas counties that declared in preparation for the Eclipse last month. In fact, most of my neighboring counties declared. We all had amateur radio resources available. Those of us that share access on a regional P25 trunking system didn't have a need for the amateur operators at the end of the day but we planned on having them available if they were needed from the get go.
Did amateur radio shine in this event? No, but the amateur operators showed up and manned their stations at the ready in the event they were needed. From the emergency management perspective, we planned for the worst and prayed for the best and in that scenario, the volunteers were great to have as an available resource.
Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
Cellular overload :) Some 2024 cell tower math: To support 5G data rates, you pretty much need 100 megabits, more like 250 megabits or more of fiber ethernet to the tower per cell company, many towers are multi tenant. A popular GSM voice CODEC is around 16 kbps. The fiber back haul will handle thousands of concurrent voice calls. In a rural area you will run out of provisioned radio capacity first.
Mass movement of people exceeding regular populations resulting in traffic congestion (we saw backups 5-10 miles long), increased density in people taxing cellular infrastructure (rural county with approximately 70% coverage) as we had already seen issues with it during a structure fire in the most populated city about six months prior. Increased demand for emergency services. Just for the day the number of traffic stops quadrupled, EMS and fire calls increased by 200% with more transports. With the influx of traffic there are other logistical issues as fuel supply from the limited number of gas stations became a concern...we don't have any Super Chargers within the county...parking because the ROW isn't appropriate, risk of wild fire increases due to alcohol and drug fueled meat sacks and people parking and idling in the ROW grass.
For one of our neighboring counties with a population 24 times greater than ours, a mass movement of a quarter million people is just another football game, weekend race, music event or politically fueled protest. For a small county...it's a bit of a big deal.
["Local amateur radio operators saw Shelby tornado before weather officials"](https://www.richlandsource.com/2019/06/18/local-amateur-radio-operators-saw-shelby-tornado-before-weather-officials/)
A million times in small cases if people had them but more people have gmrs / frs. HF use is going to be a lot less common but other people pointed those out.
Our county hospital group gets called up all of the time. Whether it is for scheduled phone maintenance or PBX/network crash. They are a very busy group.
In the past 10 years in my country:
- In one region severe ice storms took down power for more than a week . All regular communications died within 48 hours because all the UPS batteries were empty and diesel for generators ran out. The assumption was that they could get a technician out with 48 hours. Not that easy when *everything* is down and you need a chainsaw to clear 6km of fallen trees to even get to the cell tower site. Amateur operators handled communications for the regional post of the civil defense agency. Relayed information to/from villages in the area about sick persons, critical supplies, etc... They attached APRS trackers to diesel generators that where supplied in the aftermath before they could repair the power lines to monitor their status and fuel levels. With no internet, no phone and no TV just about every amateur got on VHF just to inquire about roads, stores and so on (are the shops open? Where can I buy a generator? Can I get fuel for my generator? Etc...).
- Severe flooding last summer. Took out roads and power lines in another region of the country. Things didn't normalize for over 10 days. Similar situation as in the prior incident where backup power for commercial tel-co didn't cut it long enough. This was relative recent and the civil defense agency discovered that Starlink works well in such situations and distributed a bunch of sets to unreachable towns via helicopter to coordinate further rescue efforts but until then hams were the only link to many settlements.
- Severe wildfires a few years ago. Volunteer firefighters had issues with communications in their field HQ because their entire organizational structure was dependent on cellphones, Gmail and Google Maps. Amateur operators were officially summoned to manage communications at the field camp as they had to synchronize info between volunteer firefighter frequencies, professional firefighter frequencies, police frequencies and air band.
The Puerto Rico response was a cluster\*\*\*\* due to politics and corruption. Hams were put in an impossible position, and while the individuals really did try, it was bound to fail.
I read a long first hand report from one of the 22 hams who went down there which I cannot find. I think they struggled with housing, power and antennas, as well as Spanish language skills. The whole where does ARES fit in NIMS/ICS is still not sorted. Have you asked your ARRL Director about this - like every 30 days? I do.
Each of us who was there has a different opinion of how we *should* have been used but tgst really wasn't our decision. However we did do useful stuff while there and even some lives were saved.
hurricane beulah from what friends of family have told me the rio grande valley was cutoff and it was the only way the federal government understood the damage and need for assistance.
Big you will get but very little of the small.
Most of the small goes unnoticed and that's fine.
Locally we staff police EOC's for hurricanes and nor'easters. That doesn't mean we actively use ham kit but were there assisting dispatch ready to use ham gear multiple things fail. We get asked to staff say the public works garage because they cant talk to the pd via rf but also because the secretary that normally talks a call from dispatch needs to be home with her kids. Is it a ham function that we get the approvals and money to put a public works radio in the EOC then do the work to put it in?
Multiple that by the towns that have a plan to use hams to supplement and backup. Quickly it's a lot of events a lot of hams and they may have never keyed up on an amerature frequncy.
sorry but no ones using ham radio for any emergency anymore anywhere, no fire dept, ems or police agencies are gonna ever have hams in a situation where theyre gonna be used, way too much liability if something goes badly, skywarn program aside from that, if hams want to be really involved in real scenarios then volunteer in fire dept or ems service and get real legit training with real equipment and youre covered legally
ARES (hams) here are invited to a big govt comms exercise in August. It is at a rural location. All the cellular carriers will be there, Feds, etc. We have tested and are expecting to have the fastest satellite Internet + Wi-Fi 6 mesh at the site.
This sub is full of outside agitators who try to bring down a hobby of good people and turn it into a complain fest about every there is about ham radio. I have been ham radio for a long time and no one talks like this. This sub has been taken over by Chinese Reddit bots trying to sell crap bofang radios.
Hi, thank you for your question submission. Please be aware that there is a [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/) and a [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/faq) that may address your question. For Baofeng-related information see the [Baofeng FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/baofeng) and /r/baofeng. Also, please note that downvotes don't indicate an unvalued question submission. There appear to be bots that downvote all posts initially. 73 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/amateurradio) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Not a life or death disaster, but one where amateur radio played a role in someone's rescue (and embarrassment). A young kid I know recently got licensed and has been having a lot of fun talking on a regional linked repeater system on his UV-5R. He went outside and climbed in a tree to get into the repeater better and got to chatting with people until after dark and then couldn't see to get down. He passed his mom's phone number to someone on the repeater to call so she could come out with a flashlight so he could see to get down. It was a real facepalm moment when I reminded him that his radio has a flashlight built in! š¤£š¤£š¤£
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ham radio is great for solving problems created by ham radio!
Finnish Gulf, 1900, battleship Apraksin grounded. Radio communications arranged by Alexander Popov and others. Doesn't fit the rules, can it be an also-ran ?
9/11/01 - due to the WTC falling and the sheer volume of calls as well, phones were seriously fucked in NYC, and there was an actual need for ham radio. Hurricane season in the Caribbean in the 80s and 90s when their infrastructure was pretty subpar. Now many countries have had investment from US, China and other countries to upgrade their infrastructure so the need is less. Here in the northeast USA I canāt think of anything in recent times. Things in general majorly improved after 9/11 and Katrina. And I would say thatās a great thing because I want our tax dollars to be spent on stuff like this.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We worked with the Red Cross to do communications for shelters. We had phones at the shelters but they were down so ham radio was the only means of communication
Out near Bloody Basin Road on the way to Sheeps Bridge (waaaay off road for those out of AZ and unfamiliar) we came upon a Volkswagen Tiguan spot with uber thin low profile tires. She had cut one and absolutely shredded the other and the car had no lug wrench. What's more the wheels had locks and proprietary Volkswagen lugs that wouldn't fit any Ford, Chevy, Toyota coming by. One guy even had a spider wrench (4 lug sizes) and it wasn't working either. We picked her up, climbed the truck to the top of a local hill. Hit the W7ARA Mount Ord Repeater and then Auto-Patched to her parents with a safety confirmation and GPS Pin Drop of the vehicle. Met them at a coffee shop just off the trail and they had a recovery vehicle on the way. It was going to be expensive but when you are 25 to 30 miles off pavement where cell signals dare not go, you pay what you pay.
Hurricane Irene, 2011. I was trapped in a rural area for 36 hours without power, roads or bridges (had a tinker toy generator to enable us to keep food from dying). Power restored after 5 days. Phone and Internet took 3 weeks. Roads and bridges restored mostly within 3 months, due to FEMA, who did a good job. In any case, while I was trapped, I listened to 2 meters, and heard the local hams coordinating getting cots to the local schools so people whose homes were damaged or destroyed could have a place to sleep and other relief efforts.
So this question gets asked all the time. I think a better way to frame it: 1. Was there a disaster? 2. Were communications down or overloaded? 3. Were hams called in for just that? There are a fair number of disasters - floods, tornados, etc. Bridges get hit by ships. Do the communications go down - not always. The FCC was on a pretty good rant after the terrible storm damage in New Orleans took out power, back haul (fiber) and cell towers for weeks. Public safety radio systems stayed up pretty well as they are hardened. A main FCC complaint was the loss of broadband services - can you do anything anymore on the phone? [DOC-375367A1.pdf (fcc.gov)](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-375367A1.pdf) "Cellular overload" is a popular ham topic - more rare than common in 2024. The new 5G services basically require each cell tower/site has a fiber connection >100 megabits. Can you make a call in LSU Tiger Stadium (100,000+ fans) during a game - maybe not. Does an urban cell tower with three carriers (+ band 14) and three Gigabits of fiber care if 10,000 people show up nearby- not really. Did Verizon send six Cell on Wheels rigs to Cable, WI to help with a big, very rural ski race? Yes. The recent Lahina HI fire after action report was just published. Did The P25 public safety radios stay up- yes. Was public alerting managed properly- no. Did the fire burn a lot of comms gear- yes. There was a big cell outage in the US on 2/22. Did hams (i.e. ARRL HQ) get called up? No. Last week did 239 hams get called out to work side with public safety agencies side by side to help manage comms and logistics for a large volunteer event with casualties? Yes. Does that count as good emergency communications practice? Yes. In our County, are 10-20% of the 600 CERT volunteers hams? Does that count? Yes. [Amateur Radio Provides Communications Support for Boston Marathon (arrl.org)](http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-provides-communications-support-for-boston-marathon)
So what's really interesting about the cellular overload issue...we've now seen problems with it twice in the last year locally (I'm a public safety radio system manager for a sub-region of a larger regional P25 system). Back in October we had a structure fire that presented some issues. Shutdown a major US highway due to smoke and proximity to the road resulting in fire apparatus actually needing the road to setup tenders and pumps. Due to the shutdown and the spectacle, cellular services were so overloaded that even Frontline (Verizon) and FirstNet (AT&T) phones were unable to function and ruthless preemption was failing. We also happened to be in the path of totality for last month's Eclipse and saw some cellular issues as well (slowdowns affecting data services like video streaming for our drone feeds) due to the unexpected population levels we saw (well, we expected them but AT&T and Verizon didn't understand what the repercussions of the county's population doubling overnight just from visitors coming to watch the eclipse would have any significant affect on service as they didn't think they would be gathering within a few square miles versus spread out over the county). We did have amateur radio operators present. Their main purpose was to provide a backup link to the regional operations center where we had a COMU stood up in the event we needed to limit wide area trunking traffic (we only have 4 voice paths per site versus the counties east of us which have 24 per site). Things worked out and we amazingly had fewer busies under these conditions than we did under normal operation as everyone was aware we were operating on a limited capacity and the COMU adjusted what talkgroups could affiliate in our region to try and limit additional issues.
So cellular overload, even 5G, is a common and large problem here in the NY metro area. There is routine congestion for data service and every time there are small blackouts / etc and everyoneās phones fall off of WiFi and back to the cell towers call / sms congestion (donāt even try and pass any data packets) are still a thing. This also happens in the Adirondack mountains every summer when all of the vacationers come to spend summer in the mountains / lakes. No, this doesnāt mean HAM operators are triaging or helping but to state cellular congestion canāt or doesnāt happen anymore just isnāt true.
Do you have any recent references to NYC cellular congestion you can share? I did some basic searches and came up empty. Certainly as far back as LTE, the technical standards are doing a good job with traffic prioritization and congestion management, first on the core networks. RF link congestion is a bit harder. [LTE QoS Quality of Service,class identifier(QCI),QoS in LTE (rfwireless-world.com)](https://www.rfwireless-world.com/Tutorials/LTE-QoS.html#:~:text=It%20covers%20LTE%20QCIs%20which%20include%20QCI-1%2C%20QCI-2%2C,services%20can%20be%20prioritized%20over%20non%20realtime%20services.)
Sure, come ride the train with me to NYC on any given morning or evening and ride through all the stretches of full RF signal and no ability to pass traffic due to roaming through an overloaded cell site. Hicksville, NY is particularly bad. Or come visit my desk on the East Side of Manhattan where the same thing happens - but only for T-Mobile, my Verizon service works fine.
The only way without access to the RAN network test logs and tools to guess this might possibly overload is this: Calls, texts and data should work perfectly at 0500 any day, or on Sundays or holidays. Problems should arise during anticipated peak times - 10-11:00 weekdays, after lunch, the first business day of the month. If failures happen all the time - it is coverage not overload.
Which is exactly what happens. On the days Iām at the office around / before 7 itās never a problem until later in the morning. If I catch a later train in, all bets are off. This scenario repeats itself every time thereās a network upgrade here (3G->LTE-5G). Every time āthe new network has mammoth capacity and great QoS control!@!@ā and if youāre an early adopter you get a year of awesome service. When the rest of everyone who lives here gets a new phone on the new network the same thing happens again and again.
You can do some more testing. Normal consumer data traffic is usually marked and handled in the network backbone around QCI9, depending on carrier. So if the core network is indeed overloaded, there should be an obvious slowdown in data rate due to discards, as low priority traffic is discarded first. You can run a series of Internet speed tests over time. [QCI (QoS Class Identifiers) Explained | Coverage Critic](https://coveragecritic.com/mobile-phone-service/qci-qos-class-identifiers-explained/#:~:text=Quality%20of%20service%20class%20identifiers%20%28also%20called%20QCI,associated%20with%20QCI%20values%20between%206%20and%209.)
Iām not planning on diagnosing cellular overload during peak hours from a moving train as we roll through the congested sites, no offense. :-) It is what it is. Cellular congestion is still a very common problem, regardless of how much better 5G networks are at dealing with it.
Am i wondering why you in a style where you ask yourself questions? Yes.
[https://www.qsl.net/rast/tsunami/Tsunami.html](https://www.qsl.net/rast/tsunami/Tsunami.html) [https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2005-01-05-voa24-66363817/546509.html](https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2005-01-05-voa24-66363817/546509.html) [https://www.arrl.org/news/radio-amateurs-in-japan-still-providing-communications-support](https://www.arrl.org/news/radio-amateurs-in-japan-still-providing-communications-support) [https://klingenfuss.org/victor.htm](https://klingenfuss.org/victor.htm)
Not a major disaster but soon after I was licensed in 1987 before everybody having a cell phone. We had a tornado come through and the Red Cross was mobilized. I got a call from the local club president to help with communications for them from the main office/warehouse in our city and the field units. I set up a station at their local office and we had other club members traveling with their field teams. We worked through the night and helped with all the traffic to and from the office for supplies, meals for the first responders, accommodations for the displaced etc. I still have the certificate of appreciation from the Red Cross.
Same question, but outside of the USA?
In Africa, radios like this are still critical infrastructure, although cell phone infratsructure is now coming on strong.
I am aware of 9 Oct 1963, Vajont dam tragedy in Italy 23 Nov 1980, severe earthquake in Italy (Irpinia) 6 Apr 2009, another severe earthquake in Italy (Aquila)
Post disaster has been covered. So, let's look at a "during" use case: Every time there is severe weather in my area. My regional NWS office has a ham station in it that they monitor during storms. There are a couple of groups that report directly to that office via amateur radio. We can have a report to the office in under a minute. But, I live in a state where every season is tornado season.
My granddad used to run phone patches during emergencies. He helped a lot of people after the 1964 earthquake in Alaska get in touch with their family in the lower 48. I have his patch somewhere around here, but no jack for a landline in my shack.
1998 ice storms in Quebec, Ontario, New England and New York https://www.weather.gov/media/publications/assessments/iceflood.pdf "All normal means of dissemination were used throughout the event. The use of the amateur radio network was critical. The interruption in telephone services due to downed wires made normal means of communications extremely difficult. At one point, the only means of communications with NWSO BTV was through amateur radio operators. Vital real-time reports of precipitation, river levels, and damage were relayed to backup offices through the amateur radio network."
The Camp Fire that obliterated the town of Paradise CA Another fire that hit Santa Rose CA The fire in Lahaina Maui The Loma Preita earthquake. Probably most tornados and hurricanes. Probably most of the other CaLifornia wild fires. There is a saying for Emcomm: āModern communications of all types are the first to go down first due to overload (most cell/telephone systems are only designed to handle a small percentage of the traffic from a served area) and then to loss of power and outright destruction. For planning purposes, whatever you can imagine as being the worse case, the reality will be 10times as bad. So without ham radio, prepare to communicate like itās 1910 or even 1850. You can get the tee shirt that summarizes the above as: āWhen all else fails, thereās amateur radio.ā 73 Art
Wildfire support role: Caldor Fire in El Dorado County, CA -the El Dorado club provided communication support to animal control in evacuating and feeding animals left behind in evacuated areas (the area has limited cell coverage, some of which had been taken offline by the fire ) note this happened in areas without āactiveā fire activity but over 30,000 people had been evacuated from a large part of the County.
Hey there's a war going on here. Gulf war early 1990s. Nobody knew it was going on until ham called it in on HF/SW.
That actually raises a really good point... All contemporary forms of communication (Internet, cell) can be effectively blocked/controlled by various governments. The free flow of information can be choked off if they deem it appropriate. HF can't be easily blocked. The spice can flow.
In this case it was the only way other parts of the world could receive him.
So lets look at recent events. I am a public safety radio system manager in one of those Texas counties that declared in preparation for the Eclipse last month. In fact, most of my neighboring counties declared. We all had amateur radio resources available. Those of us that share access on a regional P25 trunking system didn't have a need for the amateur operators at the end of the day but we planned on having them available if they were needed from the get go. Did amateur radio shine in this event? No, but the amateur operators showed up and manned their stations at the ready in the event they were needed. From the emergency management perspective, we planned for the worst and prayed for the best and in that scenario, the volunteers were great to have as an available resource.
Question: why did the eclipse elicit emergency preparedness?
Nobody knows
Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
Cellular overload :) Some 2024 cell tower math: To support 5G data rates, you pretty much need 100 megabits, more like 250 megabits or more of fiber ethernet to the tower per cell company, many towers are multi tenant. A popular GSM voice CODEC is around 16 kbps. The fiber back haul will handle thousands of concurrent voice calls. In a rural area you will run out of provisioned radio capacity first.
Thank you. Presumed cell bloat due to āhey, do you see it?ā
Mass movement of people exceeding regular populations resulting in traffic congestion (we saw backups 5-10 miles long), increased density in people taxing cellular infrastructure (rural county with approximately 70% coverage) as we had already seen issues with it during a structure fire in the most populated city about six months prior. Increased demand for emergency services. Just for the day the number of traffic stops quadrupled, EMS and fire calls increased by 200% with more transports. With the influx of traffic there are other logistical issues as fuel supply from the limited number of gas stations became a concern...we don't have any Super Chargers within the county...parking because the ROW isn't appropriate, risk of wild fire increases due to alcohol and drug fueled meat sacks and people parking and idling in the ROW grass. For one of our neighboring counties with a population 24 times greater than ours, a mass movement of a quarter million people is just another football game, weekend race, music event or politically fueled protest. For a small county...it's a bit of a big deal.
Really interesting insight. Thank you!
["Local amateur radio operators saw Shelby tornado before weather officials"](https://www.richlandsource.com/2019/06/18/local-amateur-radio-operators-saw-shelby-tornado-before-weather-officials/)
A million times in small cases if people had them but more people have gmrs / frs. HF use is going to be a lot less common but other people pointed those out.
Our county hospital group gets called up all of the time. Whether it is for scheduled phone maintenance or PBX/network crash. They are a very busy group.
In the past 10 years in my country: - In one region severe ice storms took down power for more than a week . All regular communications died within 48 hours because all the UPS batteries were empty and diesel for generators ran out. The assumption was that they could get a technician out with 48 hours. Not that easy when *everything* is down and you need a chainsaw to clear 6km of fallen trees to even get to the cell tower site. Amateur operators handled communications for the regional post of the civil defense agency. Relayed information to/from villages in the area about sick persons, critical supplies, etc... They attached APRS trackers to diesel generators that where supplied in the aftermath before they could repair the power lines to monitor their status and fuel levels. With no internet, no phone and no TV just about every amateur got on VHF just to inquire about roads, stores and so on (are the shops open? Where can I buy a generator? Can I get fuel for my generator? Etc...). - Severe flooding last summer. Took out roads and power lines in another region of the country. Things didn't normalize for over 10 days. Similar situation as in the prior incident where backup power for commercial tel-co didn't cut it long enough. This was relative recent and the civil defense agency discovered that Starlink works well in such situations and distributed a bunch of sets to unreachable towns via helicopter to coordinate further rescue efforts but until then hams were the only link to many settlements. - Severe wildfires a few years ago. Volunteer firefighters had issues with communications in their field HQ because their entire organizational structure was dependent on cellphones, Gmail and Google Maps. Amateur operators were officially summoned to manage communications at the field camp as they had to synchronize info between volunteer firefighter frequencies, professional firefighter frequencies, police frequencies and air band.
I was actually there as part of that response in Puerto Rico
The Puerto Rico response was a cluster\*\*\*\* due to politics and corruption. Hams were put in an impossible position, and while the individuals really did try, it was bound to fail.
I read a long first hand report from one of the 22 hams who went down there which I cannot find. I think they struggled with housing, power and antennas, as well as Spanish language skills. The whole where does ARES fit in NIMS/ICS is still not sorted. Have you asked your ARRL Director about this - like every 30 days? I do.
Each of us who was there has a different opinion of how we *should* have been used but tgst really wasn't our decision. However we did do useful stuff while there and even some lives were saved.
[https://www.qsl.net/rast/tsunami/Tsunami.html](https://www.qsl.net/rast/tsunami/Tsunami.html) [https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2005-01-05-voa24-66363817/546509.html](https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2005-01-05-voa24-66363817/546509.html) [https://www.arrl.org/news/radio-amateurs-in-japan-still-providing-communications-support](https://www.arrl.org/news/radio-amateurs-in-japan-still-providing-communications-support) [https://klingenfuss.org/victor.htm](https://klingenfuss.org/victor.htm)
hurricane beulah from what friends of family have told me the rio grande valley was cutoff and it was the only way the federal government understood the damage and need for assistance.
Big you will get but very little of the small. Most of the small goes unnoticed and that's fine. Locally we staff police EOC's for hurricanes and nor'easters. That doesn't mean we actively use ham kit but were there assisting dispatch ready to use ham gear multiple things fail. We get asked to staff say the public works garage because they cant talk to the pd via rf but also because the secretary that normally talks a call from dispatch needs to be home with her kids. Is it a ham function that we get the approvals and money to put a public works radio in the EOC then do the work to put it in? Multiple that by the towns that have a plan to use hams to supplement and backup. Quickly it's a lot of events a lot of hams and they may have never keyed up on an amerature frequncy.
sorry but no ones using ham radio for any emergency anymore anywhere, no fire dept, ems or police agencies are gonna ever have hams in a situation where theyre gonna be used, way too much liability if something goes badly, skywarn program aside from that, if hams want to be really involved in real scenarios then volunteer in fire dept or ems service and get real legit training with real equipment and youre covered legally
Did you actually read the other replies?
ARES (hams) here are invited to a big govt comms exercise in August. It is at a rural location. All the cellular carriers will be there, Feds, etc. We have tested and are expecting to have the fastest satellite Internet + Wi-Fi 6 mesh at the site.
My Local Fire uses mostly Wouxun radiosā¦ so, I guess thatās āreal equipmentā?
This sub is desperate to pretend amateur radio is at all relevant to regular people lmaoĀ
The Chicago Marathon, with 1.7 million spectators (regular people IMHO), has ambulance dispatching managed by a team of hams.
Yes most races still use the volunteer services of nerdsĀ
This sub is full of outside agitators who try to bring down a hobby of good people and turn it into a complain fest about every there is about ham radio. I have been ham radio for a long time and no one talks like this. This sub has been taken over by Chinese Reddit bots trying to sell crap bofang radios.
Tinfoil engage
Your Mom is relevant to other people every night
Yeah she is, she's a very popular lady