On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 00:12:21 GMT, "mad amoeba" wrote:

I was affected by the recent blackout in North East. That got me thinking of
how would
one communicate during such an event. Electricity including phones were
out.
Cellular phones didn't work either. So the only way of receiving informaiton
was by radio.
My old Sony wm-gx670 did quite nicely. But what if I would need to
communicate with
my relatives or even cops to let them know of an emmergency. If
telephone/cellular/internet
are not available what are my other options? Let's say people I want to
communicate with
are more than several miles away in an urban area. That makes CB radio
useless--right? So
then as far as I understand using ham radio is my only option. With that you
can either get in
touch with your relatives directly, provided they have ham radio as well, or
you can call
some person in an area without blackout and tell them to call
police/ambulance etc if that's
what you need.

Not knowing much myself about scanners/shortwaves/hams myself I want to ask
you guys
with more experience if the below piece of equipment is what I need.

As far as I understand this is an handheld ham radio which also functions as
a scanner and
can also receive on a shortwave band. So it will allow me to communicate
with people
far away even in urban setting, it is portable and it will also allow me to
monitor news as
well as police/firefighters etc. Am I right?

Yaesu VX-2R
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/ht/0176.html

the price is kind of steep but for all-in-one product I would be willing to
pay it.

Find the local ham club and discuss what you are looking for with one
of them. In my area, you could listen to emergency services.
However, non of them have gone to trunked systems. During
catastrophic events such as hurricanes and ice storms, we provide
interagency communications where there is no common frequency. For
example, we have ridden with the National Guard picking up people
stranded in homes when those people called 911.

Since normal protocol for us it to establish a presence at the
Emergency Communications Center at the request of the County Emergency
Manager, a ham could call for help if needed. Several repeaters in
the area have battery/generator backup, so loss of power is not an
immediate matter for concern. I've seen us without power to the
repeaters for up to two weeks and we kept them going.

So, if you were in my area I'd say to go for it. However, ham radio
is not government sponsored. All of those repeaters are installed,
maintained, and supported by the hams who use them. Therefore,
conditions vary a lot from area to area. For example, my home town
has one repeater and it's at a hams home, maintained by him, and has
no back up power supply. There are three hams that live in the area.
He and his wife are two of them. The radio that you are looking at is
way underpowered for simplex communications between two units. I'd
look at a used two meter mobile and keep my scanner. You can pick up
an older used two meter mobile for less than $100.

I have a lot of advice and opinions, but I'd rather defer to the local
hams in your area who know the specifics of their systems. Give them
a call. Most all hams love to help someone get into the hobby.