I got started learning about and experimenting with two-way radios in 2014 when I got my amateur radio license. My family had annual camping trips in the same location every year, way out in the mountains where the nearest town was a 1 hour drive away, the closest spot to get cell phone service was a 30 minute drive from camp, and there was a payphone about a 15 minute drive away.
One year, a forest fire burned through the area and took down the payphone lines, which never got replaced. Then another year, the cell phone service switching from analog to digital meant the spot we used to be able to drive to for cell phone service no longer had any connectivity. This left me wondering how my family would be able to reach out for help in the event of an emergency. I started asking around in a Jeep forum I was in, and the answer was resounding: amateur (ham) radio.
I got my license and got a couple radios and I was now able to make contacts in the nearby towns and would be able to reach out for help if we had an emergency, but next came the challenging part: getting the family involved. Even with the significant benefits gained from getting the license and being able to use the equipment, most of my family was not interested in studying for the test and getting their own licenses, and I couldn’t blame them for that. Ham radio can get very technical and pretty science-y, and most people are not interested in going that in-depth for something they may not ever need to use.
And that’s fine.
But I still needed a way to get my family involved with a means of backup communication that worked better than the little bubble-pack radios from the big box stores, and that is how I got to where I am today. Common-use licenses that don’t require any testing, and rugged, high quality equipment that I can program to match our needs.
