HF the last resort?

[KC9Q]

I thought Public Safety was in favor of VHF/UHF/800 MHz and higher, but look at this:

Intrado inks deal for 'Apocalypse-proof' HF offering | Intrado content from Urgent Communications

 

[camaro1]

"The beauty of HF is that you need a radio on this end and a radio on the other end, and that's it — there's no intervening infrastructure … and you can talk pretty much to whoever you need to talk to,"

"HF technology operates on frequencies that have remarkable propagation characteristics" 3-30mhz

so what will they do when the skips not rollin in??

 

[W5LZ]

This is just an attempt by one company to use marine radio frequencies on a 'secondary basis'. There's absolutely nothing new in this at all, in fact, it's almost ancient technology. If you go to one or two of the other sites they have you will see that the information offered is also far from being accurate (think you've heard some weird ideas about antennas, go read some of this stuff).
Their 'workstations' do appear to be quite nice though.
- 'Doc

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

Up here we have annual drills once a year or so involving emergency services and amateur radio.AFAIK they still happen. The only repeaters allowed to be used are those with emergency power back up and sometimes those are taken off line or disallowed as well. Often comms are VHF/UHF simplex from local points like police stations or hospitals fire stations etc. and these are fed to an HF station with good simplex coverage and forwarded to the major centers via HF usually on 40m. The Red Cross Center in Halifax operates an HF station and an HF station is always available from the RCMP Telecoms Center or from their mobile command center. Traffic is sent from or too these centers via HF and that HF station is fed from several local VHF/UHF simplex stations. For regional disaster comms HF is a mainstay.

 

[RatsoW8]

so what will they do when the skips not rollin in??

You should do a little more reading about HF propagation. There are frequencies that don't behave like 27mhz for long distance comms.

 

[Lil'Yeshua]

emergency last resort communications

I thought Public Safety was in favor of VHF/UHF/800 MHz and higher, but look at this:

Intrado inks deal for 'Apocalypse-proof' HF offering | Intrado content from Urgent Communications

I can see where Spectrum Enforcement will be cracking down on individuals that run illegal power and have misaligned radios. That what I see as a result of this.
op:

 

[camaro1]

You should do a little more reading about HF propagation. There are frequencies that don't behave like 27mhz for long distance comms.

i do realize that, the article was quoted 3-30mhz

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

i do realize that, the article was quoted 3-30mhz

You can conduct regional comms out to a few hundred miles easily pretty much any time of the day around 7 MHz. Night time use you can use 3.5 MHz and extend that out to a thousand miles easily. that's the beauty of having a wide range of frequencies available to use. You just pick a band that has the propagation characteristics that you need when you need it. It is EXTREMELY rare that you will have no HF radio service into/out of a local/regional area. Pretty much something will work.