For the very resourceful

from today's peoplenomics.com

Phone Patch PrepDo list: Water, walking shoes, hiking supplies, and get to know a local ham radio operator with a big antenna and emergency power. And if you're a ham radio hobbyist, you might just for the exercise, hook up a phone patch in the next week on the statistically small chance the quake really happens so we can run phone patches out of wherever it hits.

For non-hams, a phone patch allows a high frequency long-distance radio to be connected to phone lines. So, in the event of a California quake, for example, a ham radio operator with a working HF mobile set up could contact a ham half way across the country, and they would be able to talk from his radio in the quake area to any telephone in the world. That makes ham radio work, even if all telephone lines are down.

Absent hams with HF radio, be looking for satellite dishes with VoIP capabilities, such as Direcway, HughesNet, and Wild Blue (which is our hot backup to our high speed terrestrial wireless net at the ranch). But for such folks, few are likely to have long duration UPS's, battery banks, or generators to give outbound calling capability. Even a ham with a small antenna on a 2-meter handheld radio can still get health and welfare messages to your relatives out over the ARRL's National Traffic System.

A quake disclaimer: While the odds of a quake happening about 12-days hence as predicted are low, the arrival of a hurricane or other natural disaster makes this information generally useful.

Field Day: The ARRL (the national ham radio organization) actually practices for disasters, and co-incidentally, this year's Field Day happens just ahead of the "perfect quake date" of June 28th. Field Day is the 24th and 25th - this weekend. The rules for hams are posted at the ARRL web site.

If I get some time away from projects around the ranch, I might get inspired to fire up as a Class E (home station, emergency power). The more challenging the operating conditions, the more points in the contest. So a ham running a 5-watt Morse Code setup on a battery can get a point multiplier of 5, while the same rig run off a generator or 110V from the wall, drops to a multiplier of 2.

Folks like me running high power don't get a multiplier, just a small bonus for emergency power. Bonus points for handling message traffic in the NTS.