Monthly Archives: October 2017

The Road Home book review.

As I said in a previous blog post, I’m kicking myself for not having spent more learning about Emcomm, and have gotten some books to help me learn. Again I’m starting small and simple, at the personal level and moving up to larger.

The second book I read, was also by Andrew Baze. This one is called The Road Home. This is a teen / young adult novel on the basics of prepping, with a heavy focus on Ham Radio. While I agreed with some of the stuff covered, I didn’t agree with all of the ways the characters were portrayed.

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Personal Emergency Communications book review.

After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the ARRL asked for volunteers. They were relaying the request from the American Red Cross. I wanted to volunteer, but I lacked all the requirements. I never used WinLink and I haven’t done much HF work. In fact the only HF work I’ve done was at Field Day 2 years ago. Though I am familiar with the National Traffic System and have even successfully sent traffic to the West coast, and got a response back through NTS. But my experience wasn’t good enough, so I thought I’d fix that.

TL;DR: Read Personal Emergency Communications (links below the fold), by Andrew Baze. It was good book.

Pros: It was well thought out, and taught me a few things I didn’t previously know. It also gave me some ideas of where to fix my own emergency planning, outside of communications and introduced me to things I didn’t have in the last power outage I went through.

Cons: It is a little dated, and I would really like to see an update to some sections. Such as eXRS and scanners.

The information is still great. It gets someone thinking about comms and how they matter. A lot of what is discussed here, could easily be carried over in to non-emergency situations and improve company communications during cyber incidents. Especially focusing the items in the first section of the book, such as knowing who to call, and having a calling clock as to when to call them.

Read below for a more in-depth review

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