Ham Radio and Idaho Storms

November 17,2010

Ham Radio and Idaho Storms

It all started very early Tuesday Morning just after my

Husband and I retired for the evening, we were talking

and I started hearing loud noises. Then we quickly

realised that we were having an extreme wind storm.

The power then went out, I knew this becuase I had

our bedside lamp on and it went off, and so did our

night light in our bathroom.

Then the power was still out, so I turned my Ham

Radio on and started listening we had no television

channels becuase the power was still out always I

have my Yaesu FT-60 handheld radio on the

charger at night, but not that night. becuase I had just

finished charging the radio before retiring. So as soon

as I got up the next Morning and I had also took my

Extended battery off the charge too so now I had 2

batteries but thats not all I also have a large pkg of 16

AA alkaline batteries I also have a battery holder for my

radio too and this holder holds 6 Batteries which gives

enough batterys to fill 2 times my husband has an small

handheld that takes 2 batteries and I had enough for

him to change out 2 times and on top of that I had

enough rechargeable AA’s to do my radio 3 times and

still cover my husbands small hand held 2 more times

so as you can see I am quite prepared for any

emergency I do not consider it being over prepared,

becuase in our ham radio club we have several people

with an FT-60 and they can use all those batterys so

thats my reasoning for having a quantity as large as that

I would rather have more then I need then less then I

need and my second point you never know how long an

emergency will last case in point the Ice winter storms a

new years ago in in the State of Kanas I had a friend that

lived there and several places in the state was without

power another thing to think about how do you charge

batteries in an emergency think about buying an

enexpensive charger that could be charged in your car

we have two both are made by energizer and they each

charge 4 AA batterys at a time and if you are like my

family and have 2 radios if I use both chargers at the

same time we would have enough batteries to run both

our radios at the same time Now I want to talk about

Antenna’s here is what I use I have the rubber duck that

came with my radio and I also have another Antenna its

called a roll up J pole I love the roll up J pole for several

reasons first being an antenna that gets out very well

even for long distances here is how I use it First of all

when I am at home I use the roll up J pole as my main

antenna unless I am running around the house or am

going over to my craft studio which is out back of my

house in which case I am using my rubber duck antenna

I can listen to the radio over there pretty good but if I

want to transmitt I take the radio outside since my craft

studio is in a mobile home and in my house I use my roll

up J pole heres how well it works I have it hanging in

my living room up high on a wall my husband did that

and and the other end of the antenna is connected

where the rubber duck antenna connects on the radio

and my J pole has 2 ends and is a long antenna made up

of connectors on each end that can be connected to each

other from the middle and if you disconnect from the

middle you can now take the radio to the car and

connect to the car antenna this will give you good

reception there are some blind spots here where we

live we live in the mountains but when I use the radio it

seems to work pretty good oh by the way ladies this

radio will fit in your pockets of your coat or slacks or

even in a purse and so will the roll up J pole antenna ok

as usual I got off track from the meaning of this article

so if it made more experienced hams bored but I

wanted to help out newer hams or people whom are

interested in ham radio’s and have no idea how being

a ham can help in an emergency so now onto what happ

-ened in our state of Idaho earlier in this article I

mentioned the power outage as I said I turned my radio

on and started listening to reports from police Kamiah

Ambulance the power companys and Isp-Idaho state

patrol and the Idaho county sheriff and the Lewis

county sheriffs by the way big reminder Never and I

mean Never transmitt on Emergency frequentsies

always use the Ham bands but only if you have an Ham

radio lisence those are issued by the FCC Federal

communications Commission if you live in the USA

major fines could and will happen to you if you do

transmitt on Frequencys you are not arthurised to

transmitt on

I also keep my radio on scan when I am just

listening I like many of other ham radio friends do this

for an important reason so that if an emergency does

happen we will hear about if quick enough to get our

ARES Amatuer Radio Emergency Service group up and

running this is one of the reasons I became a ham radio

operator as the day proggressed we heard of road

closures due to power lines down trees down and by

early evening we were starting to see power lines back

up and electricity power running again and some of the

ham radio repeaters coming back online but that made

some of the damage starting to show up also one being

the lack of back up power many of the repeators were

down we have lack of cellphone service and lack of

regular phone service I found at least 6 frequencys

available to hams but for some ham radio people in our

area had no ham radio service becuase they lived in

outlineing areas I was able to hear several frequencys

open but some I can not get into some of them we are

are just too far away to be heard my FT-60 has 5 watt

maxium one of the areas I can get into is in the latah

pullman countys Idaho we just found out late last night

that an trailer park in orifino Idaho about 1 and a half

hours us was almost wiped out there used to be 40

mobilehomes there and I found out that there was an

shelter set up at an local school and then this morning

we found out an ham radio friend whom worked in a

county building in orifino lost office due to damage and

we were not without some damage of our own we had

an covered patio on my craft studio which is an Mobile

home and it was tied down with at least 6 hurricane

clips but its gone and daves ham radio antenna was

damaged some of his wires were broken loose so some

of the nets he likes to check in on he cant at least for the

next couple of days until he has time to fix it and we

will have another set of storms coming through this

weekend with more high winds more snow in the

Mountains they say the snow level will come down as

far as 800 foot in some areas Love the snow dont like

the high winds in our area some winds were clocked in

our area at 67 miles an hour and some other winds in

other areas were clocked at 57 miles an hour well I

gotta go I and Dave WB6DHW will be talking ham radio

this thursday night on our Ham radio show at this link

h ttp://www.blogtalkradio/News-Free-Koosia-ID the

show airs at 9pm Pacific,10pm Mountain,11pm

Central,12am Eastern time

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Newsfreepress's Blog

Ham Radio and Idaho Storms

November 17,2010

Ham Radio and Idaho Storms

It all started very early Tuesday Morning just after my

Husband and I retired for the evening, we were talking

and I started hearing loud noises. Then we quickly

realised that we were having an extreme wind storm.

The power then went out, I knew this becuase I had

our bedside lamp on and it went off, and so did our

night light in our bathroom.

Then the power was still out, so I turned my Ham

Radio on and started listening we had no television

channels becuase the power was still out always I

have my Yaesu FT-60 handheld radio on the

charger at night, but not that night. becuase I had just

finished charging the radio before retiring. So as soon

as I got up the next Morning and I had also took my

Extended battery off the charge too so now I had 2

batteries but thats not all I also have a large pkg of 16

AA alkaline batteries I also have a battery holder for my

radio too and this holder holds 6 Batteries which gives

enough batterys to fill 2 times my husband has an small

handheld that takes 2 batteries and I had enough for

him to change out 2 times and on top of that I had

enough rechargeable AA’s to do my radio 3 times and

still cover my husbands small hand held 2 more times

so as you can see I am quite prepared for any

emergency I do not consider it being over prepared,

becuase in our ham radio club we have several people

with an FT-60 and they can use all those batterys so

thats my reasoning for having a quantity as large as that

I would rather have more then I need then less then I

need and my second point you never know how long an

emergency will last case in point the Ice winter storms a

new years ago in in the State of Kanas I had a friend that

lived there and several places in the state was without

power another thing to think about how do you charge

batteries in an emergency think about buying an

enexpensive charger that could be charged in your car

we have two both are made by energizer and they each

charge 4 AA batterys at a time and if you are like my

family and have 2 radios if I use both chargers at the

same time we would have enough batteries to run both

our radios at the same time Now I want to talk about

Antenna’s here is what I use I have the rubber duck that

came with my radio and I also have another Antenna its

called a roll up J pole I love the roll up J pole for several

reasons first being an antenna that gets out very well

even for long distances here is how I use it First of all

when I am at home I use the roll up J pole as my main

antenna unless I am running around the house or am

going over to my craft studio which is out back of my

house in which case I am using my rubber duck antenna

I can listen to the radio over there pretty good but if I

want to transmitt I take the radio outside since my craft

studio is in a mobile home and in my house I use my roll

up J pole heres how well it works I have it hanging in

my living room up high on a wall my husband did that

and and the other end of the antenna is connected

where the rubber duck antenna connects on the radio

and my J pole has 2 ends and is a long antenna made up

of connectors on each end that can be connected to each

other from the middle and if you disconnect from the

middle you can now take the radio to the car and

connect to the car antenna this will give you good

reception there are some blind spots here where we

live we live in the mountains but when I use the radio it

seems to work pretty good oh by the way ladies this

radio will fit in your pockets of your coat or slacks or

even in a purse and so will the roll up J pole antenna ok

as usual I got off track from the meaning of this article

so if it made more experienced hams bored but I

wanted to help out newer hams or people whom are

interested in ham radio’s and have no idea how being

a ham can help in an emergency so now onto what happ

-ened in our state of Idaho earlier in this article I

mentioned the power outage as I said I turned my radio

on and started listening to reports from police Kamiah

Ambulance the power companys and Isp-Idaho state

h ttp://www.blogtalkradio/News-Free-Koosia-ID the