emergency communications for amber alerts

[kc0val]

on thursday march 24th a girl was taken from her home at 815p.m. in CedarRapids,Iowa.A known registered sex offender took jetseta gage age 10,to a abandoned housetrailer located in Kalona,Iowa.The police found the guy responsible and the body of the young girl the next day.It took police three hours to post an amber alert.In CedarRapids the amber alert failed to work on the highways .could such a tragety could of been prevented? could the reaction time of police with the help of hams in the area if they knew of the alert could of saved lil jetseta's life? to follow this story goto www.kcrg.com

[N5PVL]

If you are serious about using Amateur Radio resources to spread Amber alerts to specific locations much faster than traditional methods make possible, read and understand this article (http://www.uspacket.org/l_ecom01.htm) which explains how this can be achieved right now, using inexpensive and easy to use equipment.

The system described has many uses beyond Amber alerts, but is partcularly good for these because it is so much faster than the methods currently in use. ( Fax, phone calls, etc.. )

It is one of many ways to handle Amber alerts. - I mention this one because of it is fast and not overly complicated or expensive. It's use for this purpose will reflect favorably upon the Amateur Radio community.

Further details about using this system can be found in this tutorial (http://www.uspacket.org/radiomirror/rm_setup.htm), which gives step-by-step instructions on getting set up and on the air.

Charles Brabham, #N5PVL

Director: USPacket (http://www.uspacket.org)
Admin: USPacket Digital Forum (http://www.uspacket.org/smf/index.php?board=1.0)
Admin: HamBlog.Com (http://www.hamblog.com)
Weblog: N5PVL's #Blog (http://www.hamblog.com/blog_n5pvl.php)

[K0RGR]

There is an impressive set of repeaters in the Cedar Rapids area. Do you think it might have been helpful if the amber alert had been broadcast on those? How about on all of the repeaters along I-380 and I-80?

There have been efforts to do Amber Alerts on ham repeaters, and some repeater controllers have provisions for similar kinds of announcments.

The system Charles proposes could be useful for spreading alerts beyond the local range that could be easily covered by VHF, but I think we'd probably lean more toward traditional packet radio on VHF around here, because Minnesota has a re-established statewide packet network now, and a rapidly growing one, too.

What's needed is a way of receiving and reading text-based alert messages over the air.

[N1MLF]

I'm all in favor of the amateur community helping the Amber Alert program in any way they can. There is a "ticker" available for web sites that will show any or all alerts depending how it's set up go to: http://codeamber.org/ for more.
Here in Maine the packet nets are few & far between but we do have an excellent linked 2-meter linked repeater system hosted by Dave KQ1L and the Yankee Amateur Radio Club http://home.maine.rr.com/goulds/yankee.html

It covers a wide swath from NH to Canada.
From what I understand many states also have rather extensive linked systems.

*IF* QRZ and other popular ham sites had these tickers at the tops of their pages it wouldn't take too long for the word to be put out to countless mobile operators to be the extra 'eyes' in the field. IMHO it would double the lookout efforts of LEO's & others involved in the search.

[N5PVL]

We are not limited to voice only, on our repeater systems. - You can use those same voice repeaters to move digital information at 2400 baud with the setup described here. (http://www.uspacket.org/mixmode.htm)

Not hard to set up, free software, uses the soundcard instead of a TNC - and if you want to, you can use the same software to gateway to/from the local Packet net.

This is the 'mixed-mode' operation we hear so much about. On HF it is not allowed, but on VHF/UHF it is perfectly legal.

The advantage with digital on text messages should be obvious... Faster, more accurate and so more reliable than phonetics, etc..

Not dissing the guys who do it with voice - Just saying there is another way for those who want to try something different.

This is not the same system I was describing earlier, by the way. It's different, but just as good in its own way.

K0RGR: #That was a VHF/UHF system I was talking about earlier. #The HF version is still on the drawing board, there's no software yet.

Charles Brabham, #N5PVL

Director: USPacket (http://www.uspacket.org)
Admin: USPacket Digital Forum (http://www.uspacket.org/smf/index.php?board=1.0)
Admin: HamBlog.Com (http://www.hamblog.com)
Weblog: N5PVL's #Blog (http://www.hamblog.com/blog_n5pvl.php)

[K0RGR]

K1RFD, who wrote Echolink, has another free tool called Echostation, which can be used as an announcement system for repeaters, or, as a repeater controller. It also has a text-to-voice module. So, if we had a central server in our area using Radio Mirror to distribute files containing regional alerts, individuals could be receiving those files to PC's running Echostation, set to translate those files into voice announcments every XX minutes on their local repeaters. It sounds like a plan!