HRWB058-Portable Repeaters for Emergency Situations

Ham Radio Workbench Podcast

This week we are joined by Rob KA2PBT and Evan KD2IZW to talk about building creative solutions to post emergency or disaster communications problems. Rob is engaged with his local high-school and has been working with youth to engage them in hands-on engineering and problem-solving using amateur radio. Evan is a former student who lead a team to design and build a balloon launched cross-band repeater for search and rescue purposes. He presented this project at the 2017 Dayton Youth Forum. He shares with us the components utilized in the repeater and the processes that he went through to design and build a solution. Rob continues to work with students today and he shares with us the most recent project-a portable solar-powered digipeater meant to handle text-based traffic in remote disaster areas with no infrastructure. Along the way, Rob also shares some of his tips on how to get youth interested in amateur radio.

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Echolink SVXLink - https://www.svxlink.org/

Power Wheels Racing Series - http://www.powerracingseries.org/

Arduino Mega - https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-mega-2560-rev3

IKEA Ekby Shelf Bracket Indoor Antenna Mount - https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10136135/

MultiRX on GitHub - https://github.com/pabutusa/multirx

ICECast Streaming Media Server - http://icecast.org/

Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network - https://www.arednmesh.org/

2017 Dayton Youth Forum Balloon Based Repeater for Emergency Applications - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4eaChIjk8E

2018 Dayton Youth Forum Data Network for Emergency Communications - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHHmJ4FJBHM

818 VHF / UHF Radio Modules - www.dorji.com/docs/data/DRA818V.pdf

Arduino Due - https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-due

Balloon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004I45LX0

First Science and Technology Programs - https://www.firstinspires.org/

Emergency Antenna Platform System (pole climbing robot) - http://wc2fd.com/index.php?title=Emergency_Antenna_Platform_System

Raspberry Pi TNC - https://tnc-x.com/TNCPi.htm

Plans for projects (721st Mechanized Contest Battalion) - http://wc2fd.com/