Grid Down Before Field Day
The past couple of years, my daughter, KC8GRS and myself, WB8ERJ have been doing Field Day from my home. We operate Field Day using the special event callsign N8A. Since my Amateur Radio station is off-grid, I am always ready for 1E operation, which is a home station with emergency power. Interestingly enough, two weeks before Field Day, two tornadoes went through our area and came within earshot of the home QTH. The neighbors heard the “freight train” twice! Silly me, I slept through both of them until the power line got ripped off the side of the house. Yeah that woke me up. Turns out the big Maple tree out by the road fell over and took out the power lines.
When it comes to Field Day, our primary concern is communication which is good, but in a real grid down situation there are several other life needs. I believe that we hams need to consider these as well. So here are a few things I will share from my pre-Field Day power outage.
As it turned out, I had no grid power for 4 days. Fortunately I have been through this several times. Each time I use it as a learning experience so I can go through a power outage better than before. Having my own well that requires electricity, the first thing I do is draw drinking water from the holding tank until there is no pressure left. Doing this simple thing gave me more than enough drinking and cooking water for the outage. I also collect rain water for watering my garden. Since I had no water pressure, I used this for flushing the toilet. In addition to my amateur radio station being off grid, I also have another solar panel system that powers a 12 volt backup sump pump and my refrigerator. This was a game changer, as the 12 volt sump pump ran the first night of the outage, and probably kept my basement from flooding, which is often a concern here in Ohio. With the fridge on this system as well also kept the food in the fridge from spoiling.
EMCOMM With Winlink
One thing I participate in is WinLink Wednesday. As it happens, Wednesday came and I still had no power. No problem – my station is off grid, so it was Winlink Wednesday as usual! And just for fun (OK I was bored…) I sent out a few additional emails to a couple of non-ham friends to demonstrate Amateur Radio’s off-grid capabilities.