I have recently become more aware of and generally interested in electronics and amateur radio, and it got me thinking. What advantage, if any, would there be to having amateur radio experience, over a simple disaster crank radio/flashlight, in the event of a major natural disaster or some other emergency that leads to a longer delay in power being restored? For the sake of argument, let’s assume you have a generator or battery bank to supply your own electricity.
It’s been a while, but I always had good luck with a half-wave dipole. It takes some effort to put one up, but it isn’t that hard or expensive. At the time, I was also able to get some ancient used gear for a couple hundred that could handle all the HF bands.
I’ve been thinking about getting back into that, with natural disasters becoming more frequent and severe.
Getting into HF doesn’t have to be that costly. Lots of hams have gotten started on HF with used gear that works just fine … after a century of hamming, there’s a lot of gear out there. And you can inexpensively make your own antennas that -can- perform nearly as well as those big expensive Yagis on a tower.
Do it! It’s great fun. Dipoles work well. I’ve found verticals to be even easier to set up, and perform good enough for POTA