In any emergency situation, we need to ask ourselves a number of
 questions before we start.

 1. What equipment is available?
 2. What is the situation?
 3. What will work?
 4. What do I know?

 I will cover all of these questions, in this article.  The last
 question, "What do you know?", asks it all: What do you know about the
 situation, where you will be operating from, where do you need to
 communicate to, what type of radio equipment is available, and what
 will work in this situation?

 In the best of emergency service worlds, we would not have to think of
 these questions, at least not consciously.  We would grab our GO-KITS,
 pack up the car/van/truck, and we go.  We would know that we have,
 either as a group or as individuals, everything we will need to make
 communications possible.  This is the way a well-organized emergency
 communications team should function.  Getting to this point is a task
 that never ends.  We need to test ourselves and our equipment in every
 situation we can in order to be ready for the unknown.

 How many of you have tested out your equipment in different types of
 situations? Not many, I would assume.  I have more experience in this
 area than most people I know and I don't have nearly enough.  I am
 always looking for new situations to test out my ideas, equipment, and
 beliefs.  The biggest problem is that I usually don't have enough
 equipment or helpers.  How many of you own two or more HT's on the
 same band or HF rigs? Not many of us do-we can't afford it and, even
 if we do, who among us have enough helpers with ham licenses
 available?

 I have communication experience during outside walk-a-thons or
 bike-tours.  What motivated me to write this article was the fact that
 I also have experience in assisting communications in and around large
 buildings with operators who are not hams.

 What do you do if you need to provide communications but the people
 who have volunteered are not ham radio operators? This was the
 situation I faced at my church where the older boys were helping out
 during Vacation Bible School.  They needed walkie-talkies (WTs) so
 they could keep in touch while looking for any stray children.  Ham
 radio was out since none of these boys had ham licenses.  What did I
 have that would help here? Sometimes we need to think outside the
 bounds of amateur radio in order to get the job done.  If we can not
 have an amateur radio control operator at every location, we will have
 to use non-ham legal communication means to get to those locations.
 What non-ham equipment is available?

 For me, there were two old CB WTs and a mobile unit.  I quickly made a
 mount for a mobile antenna and found batteries for the WTs and mobile
 rig.  Both WTs had external 12 gel cell batteries since that was all I
 had at the time.  The boys had a good time and the equipment worked,
 except that the antennas were too long.  They had a base station in
 the church and two roaming stations to patrol the grounds.  The other
 disadvantage was that all three boys wanted to be roaming around.  I
 picked up four newer CB WTs but these also had the long antennas, so I
 designed and tested a replacement semi-flexible antenna which ended up
 having about a half mile range over hilly suburban terrain.  The idea
 was to limit their range so they wouldn't interfere with anyone else
 but they would hear each other.

 These limited antennas worked very well around the church except for
 the case where one unit was in the sound booth, the highest location
 in the church, and another was in the basement.  Once I told the boys
 to use horizontal antennas and tilt the WTs horizontally, even this
 communications path was easy.

 I could have used 10 meter HTs if I had had them, but I'm sure I
 wouldn't have been able to get four of them for $200.  And on top of
 that, I would still have the problem of getting people with ham
 licenses to operate them or be with them as control operators.

 What else is available? Well, the new FRS (Family Radio Service) HTs
 are now coming down in price as well.  I picked up a pair of 14
 channel, 23-tone FRS radios for under $100.  These are very similar to
 our 450 MHz HTs since they are in the 462/464 MHz band of the General
 Mobile Radio Service (GMRS).  The GMRS requires a license from the FCC
 but the FRS does not.  The FRS radios are only allowed up to 500 mW of
 output power and you may not modify the radio or the antenna in any
 way.  With CB radios, we are allowed to modify or use different
 antennas if we want.  So, if you plan to use FRS radios, make sure
 they can do the job BEFORE the day arrives when they're needed.  This
 is good advice for any event and any equipment.

 I have used the FRS radios in the same church during a construction
 project.  There were two people coordinating tours of the construction
 and, rather than give them the CBs with the long antennas (I was
 specifically asked, "Do you have anything that doesn't have such big
 antennas?"), I let them use the FRS radios.  For the short distances
 and relatively equal height of the two positions, these worked very
 well.

 These then are two, less expensive, alternatives to our ham equipment
 for doing the same type of job our 10 meter and 450 MHz radios can do.
 A club could easily afford four of each type if you find them on sale.
 These could be given to special needful non-hams during an event.  I
 would not do this as a rule, but in special situations this might be a
 very good alternative.  We've been asked by people we were shadowing
 (walking/being with in case they needed to communicate) if they could
 use the radio without our people.  I must say that I have mixed
 feelings about this.  In one situation where the non-ham radios ran
 out of power, we provided shadows for key people.  When we were asked
 by these people if they could use the HTs to talk to each other
 directly, rather than by passing the information to us to relay, I
 said no.  We were later complimented on our abilities and
 professionalism.  Their event staff even said that my decision was the
 better one since the net communications turned out to be even better
 than their direct communications had been.  So, handing out FRS radios
 to these people would not have shown them the true ability and
 advantages of net communications.

 In very special cases, it might be good to have the ability and
 alternative of ahnding out FRS or CB walkie-talkies available.  If we
 don't have the ability, we cannot provide the alternative.  If we
 don't think outside the amateur radio boundary, we might not be able
 to solve a communications problem or provide for a need.

 I hope this has broadened your perspective on possible situations and
 equipment we use.  There is no law that says that hams can not use CBs
 or FRS radios and, when on sale, these are much less expensive than
 our equipment.  We can give advice even if we can't loan out the ham
 radios, and we can loan out CBs and FRS radios.

 Some training is needed in the use of the equipment and on how to form
 a serviceable net for communications for non-hams and hams alike.  No
 one will grasp this in one easy lesson, so don't get frustrated.  Just
 keep reminding them when they make mistakes or help them when things
 don't work (horizontal antennas for up/down communications).  When we
 have enough hams and equipment, we can show the organizations we help
 the advantages of a well-functioning communications net.

 73 de KE3FL
 Philip Karras
 Assistant EC Carroll County MD
 OES, ORS, and VE