[mullen]

> But a Bao-feng handheld that costs around $40 or so can work the local repeaters on 2m or 70cm and is a fine way to get started, learn the lingo, etc.

Baofeng makes a $25 radio that works on 2m/70cm and with repeaters. If you live in a place where there are hurricanes/earthquakes, there is no excuse to not have one charged up and ready to go. Getting the basic ham radio license is easy.

[eternityforest]

How does ham compare to meshtastic in a real emergency? Meshtastic has the advantage that it's license free and you don't have to try to convince people to spend days studying for it.

I have a license and a baofeng, but I don't know much of anything practical about emergency communications.

[amingilani]

In an emergency you can make use of anything, including a radio without an amateur radio license. But it’s easier to use when you’ve had the practice and aren’t fumbling around learning about offsets and CTCSS tones. Or even better, when you have the repeaters preprogrammed into your radio.

Meshtastic is awesome, I have two T-echos. But it doesn’t compare to being able to whip out a handheld radio, tune into a nearby repeater and dial out with EchoLink to check in with my partner when I’m hiking.

[donw]

Pre-COVID, our office building in Tokyo organized a disaster-preparation day every year. This was run by the building management team, which politely informed every corporate tenant in the office section that, yes, they would be participating.

Sure, we all knew when the drill would be so we could adjust our schedules, but the actual alarms did sound, and the entire building evacuated, which included climbing down something like fifty flights of stairs with your emergency bag -- mandated by law in Japan -- in-hand, plus (optionally) using a fire extinguisher on a pretend fire after you got outside.

Sure, the extinguishers were just pressurized water, and you were spraying at a metal target, but you still had to pull the pin, squeeze, and aim, and they were at full pressure.

Was a good reminder that it's way better to have your first experience with stuff like a fire extinguisher happen under controlled conditions, as opposed to having to figure things out before your kitchen fire gets out-of-hand and burns down the house.

Same goes for radio, changing tires on a car with the provided jack, and so on.

Preparedness is 90% "knowing what to do" and 10% "having the right tools for the job".

[Dalewyn]

There's a galactic difference between just reading about it and actually experiencing it even just once.

Essentially the difference between being book smart vs. street wise.

[scottyah]

“We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” Reading about it generates expectations, and they can be deadly.

[eternityforest]

On average we fall to the level of our training, but then there's moment to moment variation because of "human error" which has little to do with lack of skill or training, and more to do with individual and situational factors.

Training is critical, but even then you can still fail, which is why layers of backups are great.

For a lot of us, skill might never be as reliable as other layers, but it's generally different from other layers making it less likely to fail at the same time because of the same cause.

Crew Resource Management has a lot of great insights.

[teraflop]

> In an emergency you can make use of anything, including a radio without an amateur radio license.

Just to clarify: the law in the US (47 CFR § 97.403) says that you can use amateur radio frequencies without a license, or unlicensed frequencies, for: "essential communication needs in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available". That's much narrower than just "in an emergency".

And if you try to use ham radio equipment without knowing what you're doing, there's a risk that you'll interfere with other amateur or non-amateur users who are coordinating their own emergency response.

[amingilani]

Thank you for the clarification. I wanted my explanation to be generic enough to apply to any jurisdiction. For example, I’m in Canada where the regulations are differently worded but have a similar effect.

[kstrauser]

It's vastly better, if only because there are more ham radio users geared up, charged, and ready to listen and reply. Meshtastic is super cool and I have nothing bad to say about it. If my life were on the line, I'd much rather have a cheap Baofeng.

[0xEF]

This is the correct answer. I have my license and help with Skywarn when I can in my area, also play around with meshtastic. The fact is that meshtastic is pretty cool, but the ham radio community has been around for a century, is far better organized and entrenched with various services, etc. There is far more trust and reliability there.

I look at it this way; meshtastic is for fun, but ham radio is for real work where results carry more weight.

[geerlingguy]

Meshtastic is also still very much "beta" quality. Unless you spend a bit of time working with it, messing with different radios and antennas, you can end up with a setup that can't get much range at all, negating one of the main features of the mesh.

Though just buying a Baofeng can lead to similar results, as it's not that amazing at reception. In my testing I've only been able to get a good signal within a few hundred meters, which might not be enough to hit an area repeater except in ideal conditions.

Either way, having the knowledge and practice going into an emergency is much more helpful than just the equipment!

[theshrike79]

Meshtastic has actual issues with bandwidth running out on the LoRa when there are too many people using it in a small area.

[zhengyi13]

https://bayme.sh is IIRC actively experimenting with moving from LongFast to MediumSlow specifically to try to address this.