We have a plan, but it's heavily seasoned with a concept borrowed from a local SAR group: "Semper Gumby", or always flexible.

I agree that the country is in trouble, and things could easily go sideways at any time.  One of our main natural disasters here, would be a major earthquake, which after the first Great Shakeout exercise a few years back, is actually well defined, and time spent preparing for this has us somewhat prepared for most anything but a direct nuke strike.   Firestorms, grid-down, national guard activations, you name it are likely after a major quake here.

We've always been campers and outdoor oriented, so the basic plan is for 'bug-in', to slip into camping mode, with some stealth as needed, including a radio watch to monitor local freqs, for a clue as to what may be coming our way, power generation will be limited to solar panels.  Really nowhere else for us to go right now, tho the location is really lousy, I'm pretty surrounded by 'entitlement' types.

I took CERT training with an adjacent city, Long Beach, they were very ham friendly, but focused away from my hometurf, nach. 

Later, CERT was offered in my local city, so my wife and I took the course together.  LA County fire hosted, and it was not so ham friendly (WE will do the comms, >YOU< won't be needing it).  Ok fine, reset my expectations with them.  Still the standardized CERT training was worthwhile.

I had hoped that inside intel would flow, but hasn't proved to be the case, really.  The local ARES group mission is evolving to support the hospitals in the region, and most sub regions have been grouped into a LA County-wide core, which seems to be centered in the opposit end of the county, about 70-90 miles from my home turf, again. 

So, none of the 'institutional' groups, in this area, seem to meet the needs I perceive for my family group.

With sons moved out this year, one married, one with long term girlfriend (very likely married soon, lol), things have gotten a bit easier, but at the same time more complicated.  Can't seem to get the concept of infrastructure free comms being essential to them, nothing ever 'breaks' here, so complacency is easy.  Also, we've started casting an eye toward possible relocation, Alpine Az, or further north? LOve mountains, not so much deserts, but fewer people in the deserts.  Lots of food potential in ocean coastal environments.  Planning has to focus on what/where we are, as well as where might end up, hoping we have enought time to get there.

Current goals for myself and wife, mine are to push us into more infrastructure free comms, I'm starting to slowly teach her how to use the spare HT (I have a couple of vx-6r's, they hear the entire local spectrum of interest, and don't drink too much power) to gather intel locally, and she is very slowly studying for her tech, right now using ham test online.  Aside from comms, working on improving cashflow.  I've also tried growing various veggies with mixed results, right now I've had success with several culinary herbs, so keep trying with the edibles.  It's a learning curve.  Livestock, not yet, location. 

Also in the queue I want to try to learn some primitive blacksmithing, there is a pretty good video from Hoods woods on knife making which would be a good starting point.   Also they haven a video on Bronze casting I don't yet have.

Good question, some great comments, I loved the intro picture, RadioRay, I might use it a a cover for the 'family disaster handbook', lol.  Keep the subject matter in the right mood, lol. 

Have a great day everyone

Underhill

After posting on another thread here, (re nets) got me to thinking about another experience, that while not first hand experienced, lends to this lowpower discussion.

I have participated on the insomniac for several years now, for the reasons mntioned on the other thread, it is hosted on a linked repeater network, and thru IRLP, so there are several hams from other countries, including japan.  Well after the March '11 quake and tsunami, for a couple weeks the japanese hams, if they got on, would give brief sit ops of what was happening in their country after the quake/tsunami to recover.

One of them came back a couple weeks later, with a concise description that I thought would be useful here on this thread.  This is a synopsis that I had shared with another net I participate in locally, called rescuenet, consisting of sar,first responders hams, and others interested in emergency response ( http://www.socalrescuenet.org )

"Since the quake/tsunami, at least one of them would come on and give a
brief synopsis of his local situation.  that night, Jxxxxx, Toshi, came
on and illuminated us on the situation, lack of any comms, power etc.
his closing statement sort of stuck with me, tho I know I have probably
paraphrased it wrong by this point, anyway:

"computers, the internet, cell, all these systems are wonderful and
young people are doing amazing things with them.

But..  Please encourage your children to pursue study of ham radio.
when something happens, they are all gone. nothing.  All you have left
is ham radio.

After the Tsunami, they were getting by with just handhelds, as even
power for HF was very hard to come by."

Long winded, and I apologise.  But the concern regarding having sufficient power to run your radios cannot be discounted, so small, light and simple is a good thing, when things go a bit wonky.  Don't really care what the choice of gear is, but knowing how to run it, and knowing how to power it seems like a really good idea.  Low as possible power draw is obviously a plus.

And in all things, ymmv

Underhill

My wife works retail and on saturday nights usually has me drop her off for her shift, which is usually an evening shift that gets off at midnight. While waiting, I usually check into a trivia net (called Insomniac net) on a linked repeater/irlp system, the Winsystem, to pass the time.  Mildly entertaining at times, and a way to verify the gear is working and I am familiar with it.

About a month ago, there was an emergency break call during the net, which immediately was taken, and essentially folded the net that night to handle the emergency.

The break was from the baldy ski hut host in the local mountains, which is run year round by the sierra club, and is located up a ways in the mountains 9000 ft in a designated wilderness area. It's rugged up there, and there was no cellular or phone access of course, but the hut 'host', who happened to be a ham, was able to raise the local repeater that the net was on with a handheld.  A missing hiker who was way overdue was the emergency, and local search and rescue was contacted, via ham radio.  Weak  battery, low signal, still trumped cell phones/ 911 service that night, for that emergency.  The angeles crest mountains are a rugged mountain range, people do get lost , and sometimes even die of exposure, or just stupid mistakes will take them out.

There really are areas, even in the overpopulated media congested region of so cal, that cell phones just don't work and ham radio is the only way to get help.  And that's when things are 'normal'.  This kind of thing happens fairly often in my experience.  Cell phones just don't work where I prefer to be, but I've always been able to find a signal on the ham band if needed. 

Just my experience, ymmv.

Underhill

Somewhere in the middle of the above aproaches is my current carry-about radio, which is an FT-817ND, along with a palm radio paddle.

Doesn't do as well as the smaller rigs on power consumption, of which I am very aware of, but does much better than my rig at home.

Also, it covers shortwave bands, as well as vhf/uhf bands for public service and ham chatter, for info gathering.  I know the KX1 will receive shortwave and ham ssb as well with the right option, tho not the vhf/uhf, but throwing in an ht still weighs in a bit less, if you want that.

Now if I can only keep track of the da's and dit's as they are streaming at me, I'd be sitting much happier :/ .

Would be nice to be able to run it all from a few AA batts for more than a few hours.

Underhill

Quote from: KC9TNH on October 03, 2012, 06:32:39 PM

Quote from: RadioRay on October 03, 2012, 03:40:00 PM
"Uuuuuh - no Doctor - that looks like your Rolex, not a cervex.  Were you wearing a wrist watch at the time of the last procedure and ae you CERTAIN that you were still wearing it after you finished?"
    ::)

>de RadioRay ..._ ._

Do not view this man's posts with a mouthful of coffee...
8)

Truer words have not been spoken ;)

Underhill

Just wanted to post a checkin, thanks for starting this forum, a useful mix.  I'm in the So Cal area, anyone down here?

Underhill