Civil unrest has always been a concern for me in my emergency/risk management and law enforcement career. As Dom N5TCB mentioned, it can spring up out of nowhere and then blow up out of control.
On the ham side of the house, I think an important discussion (politics aside) as this topic is often overlooked. The role of ham would be to provide situational awareness if you are in an area with civil unrest but would be no different than any other all-hazards approach such as storm spotting.
An area of concern that I have, and I saw this in the Austin riots during the defund movement, is that many of these more organized groups carry Baofeng radios to communicate. I’m sure they have no disregard for frequencies and could potentially interfere with ham radio operations.
This is where having the ability to switch to HF may be important or even utilizing less used 6m and 1.25m bands.
Matt West
KI5DKH
My repeaters have a protocol of patching all of them together with a DTMF command. This allows anyone using any of my following 10, 6, 220, 440, 900, or 1.2 ghz repeaters to function all as one. Raspberry pi’s are amazing little things.
Tommy, WD5EMS
XS Max
Hey Tommy,
The name here is John - KD5ZEW - what hardware are you using with your RPi for repeaters?
-John
I have to agree with John. I don’t see how the concerns Matt raises are NOT Ares related, or are we just weather responders?
Mark - K5HFH
How do hams handle the situation in big cities where rioting is a norm?
Robb
Hi John,
Here is a PDF presentation to my multi repeater set up using Allstar. In the event of internet failure, because all the repeaters are located at the same location, they just tie together without the need of internet connection. Credit to Tom Apel, K5TRA for designing and building the repeater controller and providing me the detailed organization of literature for its operation and design. He’s amazing at building radio repeater equipment!
This is the set up at the St Davids Surgical Hospital containing the multiple repeater.
73,
Tommy, WD5EMS
XS Max
(attachments)
WD5EMS CONTROLLER and LINKER.PDF (3.07 MB)
Hi All,
Right now I am just a lurker. My HF equipment is very limited right now. I do see that changing. I am using Allstar and Echolink and some 2m/440 .
In my opinion, having read these, the only places where the discussion has elements of politics in it is where there are mentions of specific problems or issues, places, groups or protests. I think if we avoid mentioning these specifics we will avoid irritating each other. The protests I see as most violent or threatening, dangerous or disruptive, are likely different than others see that way. They are all situations that might require emergency communications of some sort. Consequently my suggestion is that the discussion avoid mention of specific protests.
Louis WØIT