 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, my name is Glenn Martinez of Olamana Gardens over in Waimanalo, where we specialize in doing the aquaponics. But today we have a special program for you. I just came back from Florida where I attended a 50th high school reunion with some reason for the trip, but also went to a ham fest there. And a ham fest of course resulted in a few new radios being added to the collection. But one of the things I really picked up on last weekend in Florida was that the sense of urgency with all the hurricanes. We just went through Houston, then we went through the Key West, Miami, the whole state of Florida got whacked. And now we have ham operators being sent over to San Juan, Puerto Rico. And the sense of urgency with that, the Virgin Islands and what we saw there that happened. The call for ham operators to come out and help back up has really been stress. And so this weekend, coming up this Saturday, we have a special event here in Hawaii. And I have a guest, a very special guest, Clem Jung and otherwise known as KH6HO. KH7HO. KH7HO. And he is the Pacific Aries Section Emergency Coordinator. So welcome aboard, sir. Thank you for inviting me here. Yeah. And maybe what I explained to the audience out there what Aries is. It's an amateur radio emergency service. It's sponsored by the American Radio Relay League for Immersive Communications. And I'm the Pacific Section Immersive Coordinator. So I work with all the amateur radios of hams in the state of Hawaii and the Pacific. And Guam and Northern Marianas. Wonderful. And by the way, as Natalie Cash and I were coming on our way down here driving down, listening to the public radio. And it was about storms and about FEMA. And they had the director of FEMA on. He's running 22 disasters right now. The ones I mentioned, Houston, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico and, you know, and, and the wildfires that are going on California. And also it was mentioned is the call for the ham operators. And which leads us to the expression ham radios save lives, you know. And where this comes down to, the ham radio people are being called in for, to help with the messaging. The cell phone towers are gone as you see in the pictures of all the fires in Puerto Rico and California. There's nothing. There is no infrastructure. And the expression is when, when there's nothing else, you know, when nothing else works, the ham radio guys are there. And so this coming Saturday is a real practice for that, right? Yes, it's the annual American Radio Relay League, A-R-R-L, what we call the simulated emergency test. It's annually done in October, not only the first Saturday in October, but here in Hawaii we're doing it on the third Saturday of October. And it's going to be a two-part exercise. The first part starts at 8 o'clock to 1 p.m. hoist under time. And that's when we'll be practicing passing a voice and digital message, FL-DG, through either VHF, UHF, or HF. And also there will be some selected sending digital messages through WindLink RMS Express, where there is Telnet, which is an internet, like sending an email through internet, or sending it through Windmoor, or 2-meter packet, or HF Pactor. Right. And so part two is going to be from 1 o'clock to about 1 o'clock p.m. Sunday, where we'll be using WindLink RMS Express to practice sending messages to our contact in California of Oregon and using HF, and basically what they're trying to do in Puerto Rico, sending messages to forward messages from people in impact, so-called impacted area, said we're okay, or where we are. And they're calling those health and wellness messages, right? Right, health and wellness messages to the American Red Cross. So we're using WindLink to practice part two of the exercise. When you say WindLink, I think one of the analogies I use is to say it's like sending a fax. But a fax, you need to have infrastructure. You need to have a telephone system or an internet to go. But with this, you use an HF radio or a VHF radio. Essentially, same thing. You're emailing, like emailing. And some people ask me, well, what's a big thing? And it becomes real obvious. If you have a list of 30 names that you want to put out there, it's a lot better to do it in writing than it is to try to spell that over the radio, right? Yes, it's sending out digitally. It's somehow a little bit private. And you can send it faster digitally versus sending it verbally. And you have to write every single item word for word. And it takes a real, a lot of time. So an amateur radio for MCOM is moving more toward or emergency communication is moving more toward digital communication. Yes, voice is still there because voice is the bottom where if you have no computers, no keyboard, whatever, you can still send messages through voice, which will take longer. But the preferred method is digital, which is faster, and you have a file of it, and you can print it out as well. So it's more accurate and quicker and faster, generally overall. Now, I attended a workshop over on the Poly Highway a couple of months ago where you were teaching FL Digi and how to use it with the simplest of radios and where you would hold it up, literally, you would tape record it and then play it into the microphone, and it would make scratchy noises, and it would come out the other side, it would come out written for the other person. Yeah, it's using acoustical coupling, FL Digi, using digital mode, MTC3-1KL, which is the Speed 1000L, is another way of sending digital messages, like an ICS, Incident Command System 213, which is a message form, and we can send that through HF, we can send it by VHF, UHF, by acoustical coupling without any other gear that's bottom line, simple, easy to use. Right. So that's one mode. Now, this is not just ham operator, ham operator. You've got the Department of Emergency Management, FEMA, all your organizations have agreed on the format to use, right, like doing those forms, those ISR forms, right? Well, we use the ICS 213, that's a form that FEMA and First Responder Emergency Management uses. It's a form that, if you want to be NIMS-compliant National Incident Management System, which the amateur radio who's involved in EMCOM are, you want to use the ICS form. Right. And to send messages from a survey agency, like maybe American Red Cross, to Department of Emergency Management, City County Honolulu, a while we will see when there's no cell phone, no internet, no landline phone, no electricity, everything will fail. Amateur radio students can pass the message for it. Now, when I was in Florida and I talked to some of the volunteers that had gone to San Juan, Puerto Rico, or gone down to Key West, or some of them just down to Miami, which wasn't that hard hit, but all those people that were going to those shelters and we were getting calls asking if people were there. And one of the things I was very surprised at, it's one-way traffic. Like you cannot call down to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and say, I'm looking for my mom, I'm looking for my grandparents. But on the other hand, if the grandparents are in a shelter, they can go up to the ham operator and say, I need to tell my son or my daughter I'm okay, you know, et cetera. So the messages were all outgoing in that situation. Right. Normally in the first 72 hours, it's all emergency traffic, not health and welfare, but emergency traffic to life-saving. Right. And then normally after 72 hours, then we go to health and welfare. And normally we send messages outbound, not inbound. It's easier to send messages outbouncing, they're safe. They can send it to American Red Cross through the health and safety, and that's what they're doing for Puerto Rico. So people that want to track their loved ones, their family or friends in Puerto Rico to go to the Red Cross health and safety safe website, and you can look up for the names and there will be messages there. And that's what the amateur radio operators are doing. And so part two of our exercise for the simulated emergency test here in Hawaii on October 21st this coming Saturday is to simulate that. So that people from the mainland may have tourist members here, visitors' family, and also family members living in Hawaii can find out if, once they get the message outgoing, that they can find out. So it's easier to send out a message outgoing on amateur radio than to send them health and welfare. I'm looking for my family member at blah, blah, blah, whatever. It's harder to find, there's no manpower or resource to look for the people. So the other way around, outbounding is the best way to do it. And by the way, when I was in Florida and I went to the Ham Fest, I got me a new hat. This way, yeah, so now I know who I am when I look in America. And on it, one of the things I like is when all else fails, amateur radio, you know, when it's all down. But the other pins, these are not fishing lures. They might look like that. But one is Aries, you know, and here with EARC, Emergency Amateur Radio, you know, club that we belong to, which is active. You have the Skyworn Spotter, which I took a class that you recommended. Natalie and I both became certified Skyworn Spotters doing that. And the other one is the RACES, which is downtown at the City Hall Building. And can you tell us what RACES are? RACES is a sponsored by FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. It's a Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service. And what it is, the Serve Agency is an Emergency Management Agency where Department of Emergency Management, City County Honolulu, or with the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, formerly known as State Suit of Defense. I belong to both. I'm a State RACES with Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. I'm also a DEM RACES with the Department of Emergency Management, City County Honolulu. I'm also the State Skyworn Ham Coordinator, so you have a Skyworn pin there. Yeah, and so I work very closely with the Skyworn staff that I have, all volunteers that help to activate the Skyworn Amateur VHF, UHF, and HF Net with the National Weather Service, CLEM. We need to activate the Skyworn Net because we have a tropical cyclone activity. We need to know more what's happening out in the field. Round truth from amateur radio operators out there. Now, a lot of people, when we say HF and VHF and UHF, they don't understand what we're talking about. And I think one of the ways to think about it is, VHF is pretty much a line of sight if you, you know, it's normally 20, 25 miles. If you can see them, you can talk to them. Very high frequency. Very high frequency. Then UHF is ultra high frequency. Great for downtown area, bouncing around buildings in very congested areas, right? Or in buildings as well, yeah. How about the HF? When does the HF come on board? HF is for more long distance, middle distance to long distance. Like from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Florida. To Florida, to the mainland. And also for de-exing, what we call for talking to other countries. Amateur radio is a hobby which encompasses a wide area. Immersive communication is one of them. The other one is de-exing, where people want to talk around the world. And there's contesting. There's also satellite. Talking with the satellite, there's earth to moon to earth bounce. There's... Digital is right there. Earth to moon bounce. Let's say, I can see the moon and I shoot my radio up and hit the moon, who can I talk to? Somebody that on the other end might be doing the same thing. Anybody else that can see the moon, right? Yeah. So I read just about a week ago that a long distance record had been set, something like 12,800 miles. Somebody in Australia talked to somebody else that could see the moon. And it mounted from one half of the earth to the other half of the earth. Bounced it off the moon. Kind of like playing pool. A ricochet shot. Yeah. You need a lot of power and a lot of antennas. I mentioned this. We were going to do this this Saturday. And the person I was talking to said, so you all get together and do this once a year. No. This is like the grand finale. This is like the total enactment and everybody gets involved, right? Well, it's one of several exercise, communication exercise that we get involved with. We normally use the set as for tsunami. Right. And so this year, we're going with the great allusion tsunami, which is a 9.2, that's a scenario, 9.2. This is like the 100 year versus it gets a thousand years. Or 10,000 year event. Worst case scenario. Worst case scenario. And we'll cause destructive from an earthquake from the allusion and we'll cause a lot of flooding and destruction in the state of Hawaii. Right. And if you look at your great tsunami evacuation map in the yellow pages of the telephone book or go to the state or the Department of Emergency Management website, you'll show where the evacuation area. So it will go further inland and impact, I think the number was about 300,000 people on a waffle alone along the coastal community. All YGT we wiped out. Where I live in the Channel Lake Kailua, for example, Kailua will be wiped out in Channel Lake. 80%, I would say 70% of Channel Lake will be wiped out. Yeah. Lanikai will be wiped out. The marine base will be wiped out. So an off Kailua town will be wiped out. Right. Not sure. Haleva, Wailua. Downtown Honolulu will be wiped out with a great allusion scenario. Well, we're going to talk about that in just a moment. We're going to take a short little break here and we'll be right back with you. Stay tuned to us. Okay. Thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. Guys, don't forget to check me out right here. The Prince of Investings. I'm your host, Prince Dax. Each and every Tuesday at 11 a.m. Hawaii time. I'm going to be right here. Stop by here from some of the best investment minds across the globe. And real estate, finances, stocks, hedge funds, managers, all that great stuff. Thank you. Hi. I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and every Monday at one o'clock I present Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manila, where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully you can join me one o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manila. Aloha. Glenn Martinez here of Allamontic Gardens Over in Waimanalo with my special guest, Clem Jung, KH7-HO and he's here talking to us. He's the Pacific Area Section Emergency Coordinator and he's going to be running we're doing a big exercise on Saturday. It's statewide and what all agencies are going to be involved in this? Well, the Department of Emergency Management will open up their Emergency Operating Center for this exercise. Just for amateur rate of communication. So is the state Emergency Operating Center in Diamondhead. We have a communication center and we'll be using that. We'll be simulating Kauai and Maui Emergency Operating Centers Big Island we're not quite sure. They'll be running their own exercise as well but whether it be tied in with the state EOC we're not sure at this time. But it's statewide exercise and like I said the scenario is a tsunami. Great pollution tsunami. Which brings up the point we just did one a couple of months ago in June I believe it was where there's any sense this is like doing a fire drill. Right. Right. And that we need to practice the way we fight. And we see California is dealing with about 5 or 6,000 homes and businesses lost. Major problem. Right. Disaster. And you're talking about 300,000 people being involved. Right. If we hit by a tsunami. Great pollution tsunami. Great pollution tsunami. So that would be it. Now when that happens you'll be all be going simplex because you're assuming all the this exercise we're using simplex radio to radio communication on VHF on the on the out in the field and then we have what you call hub centers run by areas district emergency coordinators there's three of them on Oahu as an example and they in turn receive the damage situation reports damage reports any request for assistance and they in turn will forward that information to the county EOC in this case Oahu EOC is a tactical call sign for the Department of Emergency Management and Emergency Management the city county Honolulu will forward any request for assistance any summary of damages in a SITREP to the state EOC so all disaster are local at the county level and any request for assistance will go from the county up to the state and real world to the state to FEMA at that level excuse me so we practice at the local level All this meets FEMA standards then what we're trying to do is especially on the ICS-213 and we'll be setting that by voice but carefully method is FL Digi and also can do it through Windlink right and I've been participating in the weekly exercises on the FL Digi you've been doing special nets with the DMR and then every Sunday we have who's the gentleman that does Sunday evenings yeah that's Kevin Bogan AE6QO he runs the month the Sunday weekly 7 p.m. net the Pacific sectionaries net and he talks about emergency communication what to do what not to do how to conduct yourself on the radio radio procedures it's not a chat time is it no it's not a social chat right no CB Radios yeah we don't use CB Radios yeah so it's all strictly business but I enjoyed it because each week he seems to do a different theme one week it's weather and weather spotting and the reports he would use associated with that also he he stresses that when you're talking to keep it right to the point you know in other words quickly say what you gotta say pass it on free up the airwaves yeah emergency communication MCOM is we need to get the critical elements of essential information out as soon as possible with less words it's like writing a telegram with the essential words in there and every word can cost a dollar so you keep it short and simple you want to keep the frequencies and the repeaters if they're still operating clear for emergency traffic because only one person gets to talk at a time at a time right yeah there you go it's short and simple right and one of the big advantages of course is if one person's talking like giving out information many many thousands can hear it all at the same time so you could so like in California you could broadcast out to evacuate orders etc you know or they can go out and tell the emergency crest of the hill change of plans yeah we don't really broadcast but we make the announcement so that amateur radio hears the word they can pass it on to their service we need to evacuate as an example evacuate now whatever the message is passed on well we got a little show and tell here today one went to show down in California I got a new plaque here you can mount these on your truck on your car on your house or wherever it's called Alfa Hotel 6 Victor Foxtrot on it and then this is a DMR radio digital mobile radio yeah it's a commercial radio by Motorola mm-hmm and it's been set to function in the amateur radio UHF and ultra high frequency band right and you and several other people here sponsored privately repeater stations right invitation only we have put up our own funds to set up digital mobile radio repeaters throughout the state of Hawaii mm-hmm and because we're involved in MCOM and working with service agencies like the Hawaii emergency management agency department of emergency management city county Honolulu Skywan health com mm-hmm we're all involved with MCOM emergency communication that we're very serious about this that if you're interested and you belong to want to serve guided the right way to use the system help you if you have any problems and we talk among ourselves as MCOM again it's not a chat station it's not a chat it's a practice all business kind of thing but remarkably clear yes it's all digital very clear very very clear and instead of dialing in frequencies you have preset channels that you've programmed into the radio we have zones and channels so like I notice when you program my DMR radio you can go to Oahu and be a Oahu only or you can go to the whole state of Hawaii etc so when you do it you're choosing how large of a group you want to talk to right and if we're over in Kailua and it's just a Kailua incident we don't need to share it with everybody else we would just do the Kailua group we can do a talk group that only the Kailua people can talk so the good thing about digital mobile radio is very efficient two different channels the very efficient versus analog which is more wide band and not as efficient as digital right now this little radio depends on having repeaters antennas to be able to do it but the beautiful thing is only 5 Watt and but if it hits the antenna then you can talk to other people if we jump over here this is an HF radio here and this one I picked up at the trade show used one I got real lucky in Melbourne 857 D digital and what it does you can talk to the world from here to California to Asia on HF because it goes up it hits the ionosphere and it bounces down all around and so you're a totally different thing and something that came a big interest in my trip to Florida I had in my little high school reunion I got one day off to go to this Hamfest and boy are they stress in this this little box here what it does is a battery booster turns out all of these radios expect if you use them in a car that the car will be running then you get 13.8 volts out of your car your alternator going but when you turn the car off you start running your battery down right so one of the things you have to do on this radio here if the voltage gets below 11 and 3 quarter volts it turns off yes to save its life because low voltage would kill it so here it can go all the way down to 9 volts and boost it back up to the 13.8 volts yes so there's we have go kits and I was going to show you that I have my go kit this is my Coast Guard go kit and with this on it this is a sling I can throw it over my shoulder all of this fits in there including a little battery and the go kit is something you keep by your door and what you want to do there is grab it and blow that fire that was something else those people only had minutes they were waking up people at 1 o'clock in the morning and saying you have to leave now look at the YouTubes all the in the news all the abandoned cars everything else the family just jumped out got in the car and go so you have a bag hanging by the front door I imagine you've got to go bag or go case probably in your house several things that the city county provides people city county has 10 UHF repeaters I have one signed to me we use that as another means for communication the Hawaii emergency management has two HF go kits for HF that can be utilized as well wonderful and in the Coast Guard Auxiliary I'm a TCO which is a technician and one of our missions is we made similar packages up like city county did we have Pelican cases and in it is an HF radio a VHF radio and a LAN and a VHF marine radio and so we can do all the way around and in it is a power supply a battery everything is in one case antenna and we go the antenna the whole thing I was going to show you how cute that little antenna is going to be a little mag mount antenna a camera tripod and a pizza pan slap this on top or obviously on top of a car right and bingo I can get out so you have different antennas for different radios but it's a wonderful hobby I'm joining the hobby but from my Coast Guard Auxiliary experience I like that the usefulness of what you're training you're not just piddling around a couple of guys in the dark room talking to a screen it actually has purpose and as they say ham radio can save lives so we like to thank you all very much for this joining in with us we try to keep it interesting and I'm really grateful for you coming down and joining us here thank you for the invitation think take Hawaii and we're live now but this will be posted up on the YouTube so people if you want to tell your friends that they should have caught it if you're watching now we appreciate it tell them go to think take Hawaii and tell them to look it up and I think they'll find it interesting by the way tonight we have a meeting at seven o'clock over at the by Pearl Harbor it's off base and everybody's public's invited if you're interested in meeting some ham guys be there at seven o'clock where's it at Clem it's the Fleet Reserve Center across from the Honolulu Fire Department Training Center on Vokenburg place it's the emergency amateur radio it's a potluck bring something down come down and join us meet some ham operators and learn how you can be part of emergency training but we thank you so much for turning in and learning with you and hope you got something out of this Glenn Martinez Allamontic Gardens and Clem Jones thank you very much