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Amateur radio club tests emergency communication
Chris Beattie/Staff Photo -- Shandon Bringhurst of Boy Scout Troop 1123 tries out an amateur radio Saturday evening during Field Day, an annual emergency test event for amateur radio operators around the country.
By Chris Beattie, cbeattie@starlocalnews.com
In the face of disaster, the public's best backup secret is stationed beneath towering antennas, always ready.
Phone lines and cables are shot, police are in the dark, but that uneasy silence never comes. Amateur radio operators -- hams -- are there.
"We're the support system in an emergency situation," said Lynda Tuma, member of McKinney Amateur Radio Club (MARC). "It's the ham radio operators who are really getting to the outside world when all other communications collapse."
This weekend, MARC again set up at Myers Park and Event Center in McKinney, and joined more than 35,000 amateur radio operators across the U.S. in testing their emergency communication capabilities.
"We have to always be sure our equipment is working," said Tuma, who joined MARC three months ago. "A silent radio isn't a radio we can trust on a bad day."
Recent bad days that called for ham assistance include the California wildfires, winter storms and the tornadoes that last summer ripped through Joplin, Mo. Hams provide backup communications for the American Red Cross, FEMA, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and even for the International Space Station, Tuma said.
"From the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to tornadoes in Missouri, ham radio provided the most reliable communication networks in the first critical hours of the events," said Allen Pitts of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the national association for amateur radio.
Through a network of hand-held radios and line-of-sight repeaters that relay messages through an area, and high-frequency rigs that bounce signals around the world, amateur radios remain crucial in a state of despair.
"The fastest way to turn a crisis into a total disaster is to lose communications," Pitts said. "Because ham radios are not dependent on the Internet, cell towers or other infrastructures, they work when nothing else is available. We need nothing between us but air."
Clark Hansen headed up this year's Field Day in McKinney, when he, Tuma and several of the other 156 MARC members used their equipment to communicate with other hams most of Saturday, on into Sunday afternoon.
A friend in radio broadcasting attracted Hansen to amateur radio frequencies while he was living in southern California. Just a few months after obtaining his amateur radio license and his own call sign, Hansen's house was a victim of the Northridge earthquake that shook Reseda, a Los Angles neighborhood, on Jan. 17, 1994.
With a moment magnitude of 6.7, and ground acceleration that was one of the highest-ever instrumentally recorded in a North American urban area, the earthquake was felt as far away as Las Vegas, Nev., nearly 300 miles from the epicenter, according to the Southern California Earthquake Data Center.
"Our house was literally demolished," Hansen recalled. "We had no running water, no power, no telephones for five or six days. The thing that saved us as far as being able to communicate was my little hand-held radio."
Hansen talked to other local amateur radio club members, and within 12 hours, a ham was with a Red Cross team spanning the neighborhoods to give people food, water and medical assistance. Police didn't show up for two days, Hansen said.
"It donned on me at that moment that amateur radio is a lot more than just playing with a radio and having fun with electronics," he said, admitting that's why he initially got licensed. "It's potentially a life-saving skill."
Though not every ham participates in Field Day, there are now more than 700,000 amateur radio licensees in the U.S., and more than 2.5 million in the world. Through the ARRL's Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) program, hams provide emergency communications for thousands of local and state emergency response agencies.
When a thunderstorm rolls through, the National Weather Service will activate ARES, and ham volunteers will act as spotters and relay back information about the storm's makeup and progression. Such information is often then broadcast to the public within 30 seconds.
"We're basically the eyes and ears on the ground," Hansen said.
With high-frequency rigs, operators have point-to-point communication with basically any operator around the world. Their frequencies bounce into the atmosphere and back down to earth, so even McKinney hams can talk directly to someone in Sweden or Australia, he said.
One doesn't need to be licensed to join MARC, and the club recently started a mentoring program to teach new members the ins and outs of amateur radio. Operators go by first names and call signs only, adding to the communication's efficiency.
Tuma's brief conversation with "George" on Saturday evening was one of more than 1,400 contacts MARC members made with other operators over the weekend. Using his line-of-sight radio, George told Tuma of hams' importance in the aftermath of Space Shuttle Columbia's disintegration over Dallas on Feb. 1, 2003.
On that day, police radios would not work, so they needed backup. Scattered around the area, beneath antennas, hams were ready.
Communication prevailed. And only once George confirmed Tuma's contact was there silence.
"Back to you, Lynda," he said, "N93S."
For more information about MARC, visit www.mckinneyarc.org.
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