I sat down with my wife yesterday evening and asked her if she had specific areas of concern if there were ever an extended crisis. I’m talking no power, no stores, nothing but what you have stocked up on, and the skills you have learned. She gave me a lot of great insights into the things she, as a woman, considers important, and I will be addressing them in future posts. Of the things she mentioned, she never said anything about communication, but I know from previous conversations how important it is to her to remain in contact with friends.
Why is it so important
Most of us men can go months without talking to our friends, and when we finally do, we are able to pick up where we left off with ease. Women are typically more social than we are, and I think that fact is often overlooked in our preparedness plans. If my wife goes a while without talking to a friend, she starts to wonder if the friendship is still healthy, or might begin to worry about them. That is why I suggested to my wife that she learn to use our radio in order to talk to her friends if cell phones are not an option. By doing so, she will be able to contact her friends, as long as they also have a radio.
In our world, I think we take the distance between us and friends or family for granted. My Mother in law lives about 30 minutes away, but that is if we are driving. If there is ever a reason we couldn’t travel by car, that would be a much harder trip to take. I would imagine that it would take at least two days to get my whole family that far on foot. With a radio at both sites, and a plan to be available at certain times, staying in contact would be a breeze.
The solution
If you’re on the fence about getting into ham radio, or even getting some good GMRS equipment, now is the time. You have to learn how to use it before you need it. There is a lot to know. It does not work like a phone where you can simply key in a frequency and start talking to your friend. However, once you learn how to operate a radio, you will see how truly useful it is. There are networks of people over the whole country that you can join, and if you get a good contact plan set up, you will not have to worry about staying in touch anymore.
We do sell some starter radios that we can pre-program to reach all of the networks in your area as well as some simple frequencies to talk radio to radio. There are certain tones your radio has to be programmed with in order to activate the repeaters, and each repeater has its own required tones. Click here to learn more about our radios, and, as always, check out our contact us page for more information.