Disaster radio

It’s very important to maintain communication with your family or friends during a disaster as it is your only way of knowing what’s happening and what to do next in an emergency situation. That’s why survival radios are a top necessity when building your emergency survival kit. You may be wondering why we should bother using a radio when we have easier ways of communicating nowadays by using our cell phones, laptops, etc; here’s why: Cell phone communications has a lot of vulnerabilities like being dependent on cell sites which could be affected in disasters like floods and earth quakes, low battery life, etc. which makes it a poor choice for communication solutions or long-term emergencies.

A disaster is chaos, by definition. Disasters result in confusion and misdirection. Many people want to help, but unfortunately, often add to the turmoil. The biggest hurdle in a disaster is communication. Everything from interpersonal interactions to professional rescuer communications breaks down during a disaster. The key to getting through and recovering from a disaster is to get these communications back on track.

When a disaster strikes, whether a large-scale, multi-area disaster or a small, single building disaster, communication breakdown can mean added chaos. The stress of the situation can strain even person-to-person contact and render normal means of communication useless. Phone lines, radio and cellular towers, and electricity may all be knocked out during a disaster, further crippling communications. This leads to a need for a different form of communication.

Most of us are reliant on our cell phones, land line phones, VOIP phones or internet for all of our communication. Most cell phone towers are already over subscribed. The companies count on the fact that everyone won’t be on the phone at the same time.

If there’s a local disaster or emergency the towers and phone lines, in those areas are JAMMED up tight. Can you imagine how it would be after a major disaster? Even if the cellular network is still up, it make take hours of constant trying to get calls in our out.
Another consideration to keep in mind, if the area you are in goes “Grid Down”, most phone companies only have enough generator fuel for 2 or 3 days.
You can’t count on publicly provided communications, which means you need to provide your own method of communication, and start practice using them now!

The Family Radio Service Emergency radio (FRS) is an improved walkie-talkie radio system authorized in the United States since 1996. This personal radio service uses channelized frequencies around 462 and 467 MHz in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band. FRS uses frequency modulation (FM) instead of amplitude modulation (AM). Since the UHF band has different radio propagation characteristics, short-range use of FRS may be more predictable than the more powerful license-free radios operating in the HF CB band.

Worldwide, a number of similar personal radio services exist; these share the characteristics of low power, operation in the UHF (or upper VHF) band using FM, and simplified or no end-user licenses. Exact frequency allocations differ, so equipment legal to operate in one country may cause unacceptable interference in another.

PMR446 licence free radios offer an effective and low-cost communication solution providing general-purpose radio communications over a range of up to 3 to 10 km. There is no need for a licence and no previous knowledge or experience of radio equipment is necessary. Most PMR446 radios have only a few buttons and are therefore very easy to use. Some PMR446 transceivers are small enough to fit comfortably into a trouser pocket or a handbag. 
I use much radio com this days on trips since it's much better then a phone to keep contact whit your friends when you are travelling around or are in a shopping mall or in a airport and so on.

The radios we use are PRM 446 radios that have a range from 1 to 10 km. This radios are small and light and they are cheep so everyone can have one so it's easier to keep in contact or give messages.

And since this radios are so cheep is it no crises if someone loose one or something like that.

They are also very easy to carry whit you since they are so small that you can have them in a pocket or have them hanging around your neck, or where you want to have it. They way about the same as your phone.

Just a little advise don't go for the cheapest radios you find since they are not good. They have bad range and really bad speakers. Buy some in the mid range they are often good and have good sound in the speaker.

They usually selling this radios in sets whit 2 radios and a charger in the box. So it depends on how many you need to buy radios for.

A good alternative to a FRS 462 or PMR 446 radio Is a dual band radio that cover the frequency Range between:

• VHF : 136-174 MHz (TX/RX)
• UHF: 400-479.995 MHz (TX/RX)

Whit this you can prog in the different channels from the different counters if you travel to. The range of this radios are a little better then you get on the PMR446 radios but so long you don't use a repeater will the range be between 1 to 10 km it depends on where you are and if it's in a open field or in a pace whit many buildings.

Anyway most of our activity will be on the UHF band since there is most of the frequency's we going to use.

Under here you see a frequency list over most of the channels that we can have in the radio, there is also some channels that will not be used by us but it can be good to have in case we need them or just to monitor them for info.

We will look at the list and take out the channels that is of interest for us when that time comes, and set up a list that is more for our use and what we need. Since it's different bands that are in use in different countries we need to look in to that, and prog the radio after that. The same whit the CTCSS this is something that will be a standard for all users so it's easy to change from the different countries whit out to much hassle.

For the one of you that wonder what CTCSS is, here is some info I find on Wikipedia:

In telecommunications, Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS is a circuit that is used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio communications channel. It is sometimes called tone squelch. Where more than one user group is on the same channel (called co-channel users), CTCSS mutes the other users if they are using a different CTCSS tone or no CTCSS.

Receivers equipped with a CTCSS circuit usually have a switch that selects normal mode or CTCSS mode. When enabled, the CTCSS radio circuit, instead of unmuting the receive audio for any signal, causes the two-way radio receiver's audio to open only in the presence of the normal RF signal AND the correct sub-audible audio tone (sub-audible meaning that the receiver circuitry can detect it, but is not apparent to the users in the audio output). A carrier squelch or noise squelch receiver not configured with CTCSS will receive any signal. A receiver with CTCSS circuitry (and with it enabled) locks out all signals except ones encoded with the correct tone. CTCSS can be regarded as a form of in-band signalling.: You find the rest of the artikle here