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September is National Preparedness Month, which is a good time to look at your personal, family, and community resilience levels. For 2025, the National Preparedness Month theme is “Preparedness Starts at Home.”
Amateur radio is a valuable resource for communication and community service before and during times of crisis, and can be a significant factor in your home’s level of preparedness.
Read MoreIn one California county, radios are becoming more and more of a safety net.
In Sonoma County, California, floods, wildfires and earthquakes are among the best reasons for becoming a radio operator. With that in mind, the county's Department of Emergency Management has entered the second year of a three-year program that includes helping more Sonoma Springs area residents to get licensed and get on the air. The initiative has been funded through a $70,000 federal grant.
Emergency management officials are now preparing for training sessions in October that will prepare area residents for an exam leading toward a license to use handheld radios, especially at times when cellular telephone networks fail. The radios are part of General Mobile Radio Services, or GMRS, a licensed service operating between 462 MHz and 467 MHz. The county is coordinating with amateur radio operators in the North Bay Communications Cooperative and its Auxiliary Communications System. The goal is to coordinate frequencies so that the GMRS users can work seamlessly within the broader emergency communications system.
“No matter what happens, you have something that will work.”
The focus is on residents in the community of Sonoma Springs, which is classified as an evacuation zone when there are wildfires, but participants who live outside the area are also welcome to enrol.
The county's program can supply as many as 175 of the radios to participants who successfully complete the program.
Australia, where, for a few hours, one radio operator is returning ham radio to the former home of the first lady of radio in the state of Victoria.
Elizabeth Hutchings, VK3HM, had the distinction of being the first YL licensed as an amateur radio operator in the state of Victoria, Australia. Radio apparently was in the family's genes -- in the 1920s, her son Alan held the callsign VK3HL and her daughter, Marjorie, was licensed as VK3HQ.
Some 100 years later, on the Callawadda land where the family's old radio shack still stands, Geoff Smart, VK3GCM, is putting amateur radio back into action. He chose this property, known as Bryn Avon, as his QTH for the Australian Ladies Amateur Radio Association's annual competition. Geoff knew Bryn Avon from commercial consultancy work he had done, but he only learned of its connection to ham radio after reading an article by ALARA historian Jennifer Wardrop VK3WQ.
Read MoreThe ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast is a fortnightly amateur/ham radio podcast covering news and technical features from the US, UK and around the world.
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