No Cell Phone Service? Will CB radios Prove Better?
Many parks with remote areas require people to record their plans and timetable, so search and rescue will know where and when to start searching. The same is true for boaters and pilots. Telling someone where you are going is always a good idea. It can still leave you in trouble.
Depending on the timetable, an early accident could leave you waiting for days for rescue. Much better would be the ability to call for help at any time. Some areas are inimical to life. Many places have environmental extremes to beware of. A car failure in the desert could find you without shelter from temperature extremes and lacking adequate food or water. A small injury, a simple car problem, a failure of a shoe. Even such little problems may become life-threatening, when you are out of contact.
Radios have been part of science and exploring expeditions since they became available. But for your personal expedition closer to home, isn’t a cell phone enough?
A wildlife photographer needs to go where the wildlife are found. That is usually quite remote. Grant started by hiking alone with a big backpack to carry everything he needed. Then he met and married a hopeful writer. Instead of alone, they got a truck and set it up to be their base station and her writing studio. He would go out to take pictures and she would stay behind to write. They had their cell phones for staying in contact.
On the day he went out to look and wait for a picture and didn’t come back, she found that they were out of reach of cell phone towers and she couldn’t call him, he couldn’t call her and neither of them could call for help. After waiting what seemed to be forever, she drove the truck to town and get help. Her husband was located and rescued, but the new wife decided to make sure it would never happen again.
Other people who needed to wander the wilderness told her that they had been using radios before, and during the cell phone times. To protect her husband the writer researched radio and decided to allow her hubby out of her sight if were carrying a handheld CB radio.
A mobile CB in the truck completed that contact circuit. She also decided that they would often be out of effective CB radio range from population centers, so she got a license for a ‘Ham’ and installed a 10 meter transceiver in the truck as well.
CB radio gave them traffic and weather information while traveling. Road conditions were important to them as they were often going on very marginal roads. The CB also gave her the security of knowing her husband was only a click of the mike away. While he was away, the ‘ham’ radio kept her in touch with the neighboring towns. Now, she didn’t need to be anxious.
Cell phones were their plan for being in touch, but if there are no towers serving your cell phone carrier, then you are out of touch. For something to bet your life on out in the wild, and that is cost free, get a radio.
You can learn more about different models of 10 Meter Radios and handheld CB radio at 10 Meter Radios.
Why Radio Does Well With Crime
Before radio there was the telegraph. One of the very first telegraphs helped arrest a murderer. The great Western Railway in England pioneered the use of the telegraph to keep track of train movements. Of course, it used wires.
A man murdered his mistress and boarded a train to make his escape believing that by the time they caught up to the train he would be long gone. The authorities used the telegraph to send a message ahead and when the train arrived, the police were waiting for him.
He was arrested, tried, convicted and hanged for the crime. The use of the telegraph by law enforcement was now begun. This happened in 1839. But, all the crooks needed to do was cut the telegraph wires.
Alexander Graham Bell, designed a wireless system to send voice messages through a beam of light in 1880. To work, bright daylight was needed, since lasers were a long way in the future. The significance was not seen, and applications were extremely limited. That is why you likely have never heard of it.
Similarly, David Hughes, who invented the telegraph, sent and received radio waves, but what was happening was not clearly understood and his work was not looked at far almost 10 more years. Faraday and Maxwell predicted electromagnetic radiation, but it was 1888 before Hertz conducted experiments and sent and received electromagnetic radiation. He didn’t follow it up, not seeing the significance at the time.
Radio waves and sunlight are both in the electromagnetic radiation spectrum. But Hugh’s and Bell’s work needed to wait for someone else make it work in a practical manner. Radio seemed to be developed by several people at the same time, among them were Tesla, Bose, Braun, and Popov. The one we have all heard of is Marconi.
Near the end of the 19th century, Marconi built equipment guided by the experiments and descriptions of Tesla. He got patents. He was the first to put a radio apparatus on a ship, and communicated across the Atlantic Ocean. Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Braun who was also honored for his work in radio.
Another crime, in 1910, saw a murderer and his mistress fleeing by ship across the ocean. The Captain of the ship was suspicious, because the woman seemed to be disguised as a boy. He used the wireless to contact Scotland Yard and learned of the murder. A police officer boarded a faster ship and beat the fugitives to their destination. The murderer was arrested without setting foot on shore.
The arrest of another murderer with the help of a telegraph, this time wireless fixed radio in the imagination of the public. By this time, people were able to buy and assemble crystal radios that would receive radio signals and it became popular.
After the Second World War The US FCC designated frequencies for the use of the public, while others were reserved for the use of the government, emergency services, commercial broadcasting, and the military. A band for short range use was created. This band became the CB radio band.
You can learn more about different models of 10 Meter Radios and handheld CB radio at 10 Meter Radios.
Do You Know Who Invented Radio?
Marconi had studied the research of Hertz, and reproduced his work and that of others. He traveled to England in his 20′s and demonstrated sending messages without wires. His shows were well received, including by the Royal Institution.
The New York Herald asked him to use his technology to get them the results of the America’s Cup Yacht Race in 1899. He installed his wireless rig on a ship for the first time in history. The report of the race was sent from the SS St Paul over 66 miles to Marconi’s land based station. The Herald had its scoop.
With transmission over water proven possible, a race began to send a signal across the Atlantic Ocean. Marconi supposedly succeeded in 1901 when he sent a message, (a Morse code S), from England to Newfoundland in Canada. Nikola Tesla reacted by saying that the equipment used by Marconi had bee patented many years before.
Tesla began in the US by working for Thomas Edison. He quit because of a money dispute and went on to develop alternating current, in competition with Edison’s direct current electrical system. Eventually, Tesla’s system was the one used and still is. Tesla was responsible for many discoveries.
In 1893 Tesla showed a machine that transmitted and received radio. This was 11 years before Marconi patented his version. Because of this, Marconi patents were turned down at first in the US. In 1904, he was suddenly granted the patents that had been denied. There exists a suspicion that this happened because Edison, who hated Tesla, influenced the patent office to go against Tesla.
The Nobel Prize was given to Marconi in 1909 and the king of Italy gave him a title as a reward. At this time Tesla tried to sue for stealing his patent, but failed for lack of money.
In 1943, after the death of both Tesla and Marconi, The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Marconi had indeed stolen the patents and declared that Tesla invented radio. It was not until 1943, after Tesla’s death that the Supreme Court overturned the earlier patents and declared Tesla the true inventor of radio.
Despite this late decision, there is little doubt that Marconi took an almost working theory and made it happen. He sent the first wireless message from a ship at sea, sent the first communication across the ocean and demonstrated to the world that radio was here and worked.
You can learn more about different models of 10 Meter Radios and handheld CB radio at 10 Meter Radios.
I Have a Cellphone. Why Do I Need Radio?
In a recreational park, in a National Forest, in remote Arkansas, in June of 2010, a devastating flash flood covered the site with 23 feet of fast flowing water in a space of little more than 3 hours. In the search for survivors, the rescuers erected temporary cell phone towers to stay in touch with search teams.
The coverage proved to be inadequate. Amateur radio operators joined the effort and helped coordinate the search and evacuate the victims when they were found. Still, the death toll rose to 19.
Also in June, a severe storm struck Ohio, knocking out power and telephone systems. Radio amateurs again provided communication assistance to emergency crews, some staying on the air for many hours.
The above examples are not exceptional. Operators of CB and ham radios have frequently supplied urgently needed assistance in emergency situations. They are most useful because they don’t rely on towers, wires, and work from battery power.
The United States is able to call upon the services of a network of amateur radio operators with up to 650,000 members. Around the world there are another 2 million. Teams fighting fires in California, rescuing tornado victims in Oregon and assisting with the aftermath of storms in Michigan have relied heavily on the reliability of amateur radio and its operators, who offer their services free of charge.
In April, an rescue in the Pacific Ocean hit the news. A ham radio operator who lived in Flagler Beach, Florida, intercepted a distress call from a small sailing vessel 3,300 miles away in the Pacific Ocean. One of the crew members had received a head injury, was unconscious and bleeding badly. The operator on the boat was calling for emergency medical help.
Maintaining the contact with the boat, the operator in Florida phoned the Coast Guard Station in Alameda, California, and connected the radio through the phone. A Coast Guard flight surgeon spoke to the vessel, to advise on appropriate first aid.
Other hams were able to hear this and relayed news to the family of the injured sailor, and also assisted with the coordination of the rescue. Florida’s Bill K14MMZ, was joined by hams in Texas, California, Minnesota, and Hawaii, and the radio operator of a container ship, MV Cap Palmerston.
A parachute drop near the vessel with an inflatable boat allowed the injured person to be transferred to the container ship, which diverted from its destination in Mexico to go towards San Diego. Nearer to land , rescue helicopters moved the victim from the ship to hospital. He recovered.
This rescue could not have taken place using cell phones. There is still an important place in our world for CB and ham radio.
You can learn more about different models of 10 Meter Radios and handheld CB radio at 10 Meter Radios.
Another Name for Radio: Electromagnetic Radiation
In 1865, James Clark Maxwell, a Scottish Physicist postulated the existence of electromagnetic radiation, expanding on research done by Faraday. Heinrich Hertz confirmed Maxwell’s theories. No one then could envision the incredible number of applications that would be developed or discovered. Our radiation saturated world, with radio, television, x-rays, microwave communication and remote controls is the result with more and more coming all the time.
Often, explanations of radio and other electromagnetic frequencies are referred to as wavelengths in meters. Switching from frequency to wavelength without explaining the connection is confusing.
Let’s simplify it. Light travels at about 3 times ten to the 8th power meters per second or 300,000,000 meters per second. (186,000 miles per hour).
Frequency is the number of waves in a second. The speed of light is the frequency times the wavelength. The frequency is the speed of light divided by the wavelength, and the wavelength is the speed of light divided by the frequency.
Radio is defined as having frequencies below 300 Gigahertz, or 300 billion cycles per second. This is the very lowest end of the electromagnetic spectrum. An alternate, but connected limit is a wavelength longer than one millimeter, (1/1000 of a meter). In the radio spectrum are several bands of wavelengths.
The lowest frequencies have wavelengths longer than 100,000 km, (3 Hz), and so far we don’t use them.
The ELF (Extremely , and the SLF, (Super Low Frequencies), are used to send signals underwater, communicating with deep submarine vehicles. (3 Hz to 3,000 Hz)
VLF, (Very Low Frequency), (3,000 to 30,000 Hz), are easier to use, but only covers to a depth of about 130 feet. Used underwater and inside mines, for heart monitors, and underground beacons.
Low frequency is between 30 KHz and 300 KHz. Here we find the commercial band AM radio, navigation frequencies, and time signals.
Medium wave is next. From 300 KHz to 3,000 KHz, (3MHz).
The 7th band contains the CB and amateur wavebands, 27Mhz or 11 meter for CB radio and wavelengths up to 100 meters for ‘Hams’. In this band are also some of the frequencies used by emergency services.
The VHF (Very High Frequency) band for TV and FM broadcasts comes next.
UHF (Ultra High Frequency) has more TV, mobile phones, wireless networks for computers, Bluetooth and GPS. Microwave ovens use this frequency range.
EHF, 30 to 300 GHz, (Extremely High Frequency), is used by microwave radio relay towers, and radio astronomers.
The last radio band, between 300 GHz and 3 TeraHertz, is still being investigated for uses. It extends up to the lowest range for infrared light.
Now you know where your CB radio falls in the electromagnetic spectrum.
You can learn more about different models of 10 Meter Radios and handheld CB radio at 10 Meter Radios.