ham radio emergency nets

Actual ham radio emergency nets in north Carolina flooding area. Cellphone service is kaput there.
https://www.broadcastify.com/webPlayer/43107
The guys are providing a valuable service on the w4htp repeater.

I'm thinking some very dedicated folks worked hard in less than optimal conditions to get the repeater back up and running. It takes a lot of work and money to keep them operating.
Just a reminder, support your local repeaters, you never know when it may become crucial.

For our non ham friends, something as cheap as a baofeng radio with an antenna upgrade would be useful to listen to local repeaters. You'd need to learn the repeater frequencies in your area and put those in the radio's memory bank.

Our local club owns at least 10 repeaters that we're able to link for coverage all over East Texas, half of Arkansas and well into Louisiana. My wife and I are charter members and helped to form the club around 1993.

If I've motivated you to purchase a cheap ht such as a baofeng for monitoring local traffic, I'd suggest a slimjim antenna to go with it. You can hang them most every where. I don't know what connectors they have, so you'd need to research that part. One thing you need to know is that vhf/uhf repeaters are vertically polarized, and orienting your antenna horizontally will result in a tremendous reduction in signal strength.

https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads...ry.931357/
Here's a thread about k2dmg running the net near Ashville.

That link goes to QRZ, but not to a specific thread. I didn't see anything about North Carolina in thread titles.

OK, I finally found the thread, titled "K2DMG is the Hero Ham of the Century" under the heading of "Ham Radio Discussions".

We were out in NC this past July and visited boyhood friends in Asheville and in the area.

Places we stayed/visited/ate no longer exist…..what you see on the news is 1/30th as to how bad it actually is

Anyhoo

Was texting with a couple friends as we all have I Phones running IOS 18 and have texting capabilities with other devices running IOS 18. Pictures we’re not transmitted

This makes ham radios obsolete since you have range and instant messaging

Musk has initiated cell phone call direct to satellite phone calls and T Mobile should get that this year…..

Musk’s starlink satellites are a game changer, you can get a small dish, plug it into 12v power and get WiFi phone calls & connecting to the outside world

I’ve got 2 Yaesu radios & am staring at the handheld one now….need to dust them off

Our local club owns at least 10 repeaters that we're able to link for coverage all over East Texas, half of Arkansas and well into Louisiana. My wife and I are charter members and helped to form the club around 1993.

How far into Louisiana?

Primarily northwest. There are repeaters in Shreveport that will let us talk about a 50 mile radius.