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EmergencyHam Network Is Getting Ready for Alpha Trials
Over the past several months, the EmergencyHam Network has been moving steadily from an idea and an architecture into a working system. We are now approaching an important milestone. Starting in September, we plan to begin limited alpha trials of EHN with some of our members. There is still plenty of development ahead, and an
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Introducing the EHN Directory: Connecting People, Roles, and Devices Across Networks
When we talk about building a resilient, off-grid communication system, most people immediately think about radios, mesh networks, or long-distance links. But there’s a deeper question: How does the system actually know who a message is for—and how to reach them? That’s where the EHN Directory comes in. The Problem: Messages Without Meaningful Destinations In
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Exploring APRS as Part of the EmergencyHam Network
As we prepare EmergencyHam Network (EHN) for its first alpha trials, we’re also looking ahead at additional communications systems that could become part of the network. One of the most interesting is APRS — the Automatic Packet Reporting System. APRS is already widely used by amateur radio operators for position reporting, short messages and other
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Introducing the EHN Directory Security Architecture
Building Trust, Privacy, and Resilience into Emergency Communications EmergencyHam.net has always been about more than just connecting radios — it’s about building a modern, resilient communications framework that bridges amateur radio and today’s digital world. As the platform evolves, one of the most important new components is the EHN Directory — a system designed to
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Bridging the Gap: What TPRFN Teaches Us About RF-Only Networks
Introduction As interest grows in resilient, off-grid communication, several projects are beginning to move beyond theory and into real-world implementation. One of the most interesting is TPRFN (The Packet Radio Forwarding Network)—an effort focused on building a fully RF-based data network using packet radio and HF links. Their recent work on bridging Winlink with packet
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GhostNet and the Future of Off-Grid Communication: From Concept to Architecture
Introduction Over the past few years, one topic has consistently driven traffic and interest to the EmergencyHam website: GhostNet. Originally developed and shared by S2 Underground, GhostNet presents a compelling vision for resilient, off-grid communication using amateur radio. It focuses on structured, operator-driven networks that can function independently of traditional infrastructure. It’s a powerful idea—and
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Could JS8Call Become a Gateway for Resilient Communication Networks?
Introduction As EmergencyHam.Net continues to explore ways of connecting modern communication systems with amateur radio, one question keeps coming up: Could JS8Call play a role as a gateway within a larger, multi-network architecture? JS8Call has quietly become one of the most interesting tools in the amateur radio space—particularly for weak-signal, long-distance messaging. But its potential
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Bridging Encrypted Networks to Amateur Radio: A Necessary Constraint, Not a Limitation
Introduction One of the most interesting—and challenging—problems in building the EmergencyHam.Net architecture is not technical at all. It’s regulatory. As we begin to explore bridging modern encrypted communication systems—such as mesh networks and mobile messaging—into amateur radio, we run into a fundamental rule: Amateur radio transmissions must not obscure their meaning. At first glance, this
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From Idea to Reality: EmergencyHam.Net Starts to Take Shape
When we first talked about EmergencyHam.Net, it was very much an idea. A good one, we thought—but still just an idea. Could you take all these different ways people communicate—radios, mesh networks, phones, and the internet—and make them work together in a simple, reliable way? Especially when systems aren’t behaving the way they normally do?
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Bridging Meshtastic to SMS/RCS
A Meshtastic ↔ Phone SMS/RCS Gateway (Now Working) One of the first questions people ask when they discover Meshtastic is: “This is great… but how do I message someone who isn’t on the mesh?” We now have a working answer. We’ve built a Meshtastic ↔ Android SMS/RCS gateway, and it’s already proving to be both
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Experimentation, Not Circumvention
Why Amateur Radio Needs Real Traffic, Not Just Emergency Drills When people first hear about EmergencyHam.net, a natural question arises: “Is this trying to turn amateur radio into a messaging network?” The short answer is no. EmergencyHam exists for a much more traditional amateur radio reason: experimentation and education. Amateur Radio Has Always Been About
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Building a Resilient Emergency Messaging Bridge
When communication systems fail during an emergency, it’s rarely because everything stops working at once. More often, individual pieces break down: cellular networks become overloaded, internet backhaul disappears, or power becomes unreliable. The lesson learned from decades of emergency communications is simple: Resilience comes from layered systems, not a single perfect tool. At EmergencyHam.net we
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Turning a Salvaged Dash‑Cam GPS into a Precision Off‑Grid Time Source (FT8 Ready)
Introduction When operating off‑grid — whether portable, emergency, or simply disconnected from the internet — accurate system time becomes a real problem. Digital modes like FT8 require your computer clock to be within approximately ±1 second of UTC (ideally ±0.5 seconds). Consumer laptops, when disconnected from network time sources, can drift several seconds per day. Over weeks,
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Local Wi-Fi Information Nodes: A Simple Tool for Community Communication
A Practical, Educational Tool for Community Resilience When large-scale communications fail, people don’t stop needing information — they just lose access to it. In many emergency scenarios, cellular networks and internet connectivity become unreliable or unavailable, leaving communities with few ways to share updates, instructions, or basic status information. One promising approach to this challenge
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Introducing the New EmergencyHam.net:
Bridging Generations Through Amateur Radio, Education, and Modern Technology After a long period of quiet development and reflection, EmergencyHam.net is officially relaunching with a renewed focus, a clearer mission, and a growing community vision. At its core, EmergencyHam.net is about bringing people together — licensed amateur radio operators, students, educators, and modern technologists — to
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GhostNet – HF Digital Communications
During a recent literature search as I re-boot myself back into the Emergency Ham Network headspace I came across GhostNet. Perhaps this is a complimentary track to help the EMH? Who knows but I feel good reading about someone else organizing Operators by establishing new procedures using data communications and existing Ham Radio communications. I
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The People’s Network – low-power wide-area networks
The term “Peoples Network” has been used by some new players in the emerging private network infrastructure termed low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) or the older term low power wide Area (LPWA). These have re-emerged as a growth segment because of the development of the IoT and changes in incumbent cellular networks. LPWA is not new,
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Winlink – Mature, Stable, Reliable, what next?
Winlink is a hard topic to discuss in part because of its complexity but also because it can be used and configured in many ways. It is available 24/7, 100% reliable, functions without the Internet and provides communications across the world, BUT there are complicated conditions and restrictions that place reasonable boundaries on its performance.
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After decades of silence, a vintage spacecraft says hello to Earth
This was the headline in 2014 when a small group of engineers began communicating with a 36-year-old space probe. The Planetary Society details the fascinating story of how modern communications systems recreated the complex control systems needed to control the ISEE-3 as it returned to our planet Earth.Known as the ISEE-3 re-boot it beautifully illustrates
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Cell Phone Networks – What can we learn?
The magic of the cellular system is the division of a coverage area into small cells. This allows for low power and extensive frequency reuse across the cells, so that many users can use their cell phones simultaneously. Prior to cellular networks people used “car phones”. Typically, these were high power VHF two-way radios that
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Light Up the Sky – With Your Radio
The planned launch of LightCube, a CubeSat, will be the latest man-made object in the sky that will flash on command. The command will be a coded radio transmission sent from something as simple as your handheld operating in the licensed Ham bands. The bright Xeon Strobe should be visible from the ground letting you
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DAPNET – Decentralized Amateur Paging Network
DAPNET is a mature once popular Paging system that has evolved into a resilient network suitable for short messages. It would be an ideal candidate for the Emergency Ham Network which could offer redundancy with the Internet for operation in times of local or national emergency. I believe this project grow out of Germany from
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APRS – Automatic Packet Reporting System
APRS would be an ideal candidate to travel over a new digital network which has the potential to offer higher bandwidth and connectivity. Connection to the EHN would likely be through some form of IGate and supporting network so that local APRS data can be forwarded to other local clusters without needing the Internet. APRS
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Holiday Message – President Eisenhower’s Christmas Greeting 1958 – A Technological Marvel
63 years separate the first voice message from a satellite to the almost total world coverage of the Internet from Starlink. Such technology is born from men like Elon Musk who believed in an idea and helped others follow. They did not accept the status quo; they disrupted the traditional wisdom. Then The United States
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Flashing Commercial Equipment – Cost Effective for Point to Point?
Buying used UHF and Microwave commercial base stations that are supported by groups like AREDN will provide point to point and multi-endpoint systems for as low as $100. This is possible because the firmware can be exchanged to make them compatible with our amateur regulations. This is the most cost effective way of getting started
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Mesh Networking – A Ham Radio Perspective
For radio packet network the use of a mesh network topology can provide longer range and tolerance to interference. Such systems are not commonly used in Ham Radio, AREDN is the notable exception. Low-cost commercial mesh systems have become popular for WIFi and the IoT. This technology could migrate into future emergency ham networks. The
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goTenna – Mesh and Pro Products
goTennaMESH offers a deployed network of mesh communities that would integrate into an Emergency Ham Network. This would allow the public to communicate between local networks. A win for the communities, the radio operators and a step closer to a viable national public emergency network. GoTenna has a company mission: “Decentralize connectivity, and address society’s
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Project NPR-H – The New Packet Radio
The NPR system would allow a single master station connected to a high-speed backbone, to serve up to seven clients through TDMA and achieve data rates of 65Kb/s on 70cm, economically priced this might be the solution for local clusters to be interconnected. The NPR protocol was introduced in 2019 to send data via IPv4
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LoRa – Could this Proprietary Standard Deliver the Bandwidth
LoRa is a system finding some uses in Amateur Radio, but this is limited to operation over poor links and lower bandwidths. It does seem a good fit for point-to-point links on the 920MHz. band where its spread spectrum potential can be used. LoRa (from “long range”) is a proprietary low-power wide-area network modulation technique
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Digital Point to Point on the 33cm Amateur Band
The 33cm band offers unspecified bandwidth for unspecified digital transmissions using conventional modulation types as well as unspecified Spread Spectrum modulation although limited to 10W pep to the antenna. In my reading of Part 97 the 33cm or 900MHz band is the lowest frequency band that does not have a 100KHz transmission bandwidth limitation. It
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Digital Point to Point on the Lower 1.25M Ham Band
Despite the need for approval, the lower part of the 1.25M band could offer interesting possibilities for digital links particularly in urban areas as the frequency has good penetration and coverage although high gain antennas will be physically large. Back sometime in the 1990’s the ARRL successfully defended amateurs keeping the lower part of the
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Emergency Ham Network – Is it Legal?
I have been doing my due diligence on the legality of operating the imagined Emergency Ham Network (EHN). The short answer is yes if there is an emergency and probably if there is not. Since all licensed radio operators have passed examinations, we all know we are governed by part 97 of the relevant FCC
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The Younger Generation – Ham Radios Future?
As an atypical white male in my 60’s I struggle to remain connected with young people, I read about Millennials and what our experts predict will result from the changes in society. The best I can conclude comes in the form of the following two quotes from an excellent 2012 study: Main findings: Teens, technology,
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What is an Emergency Ham Network Smart Phone System?
Overview This document describes a possible peripheral for the imagined Emergency Ham Network. This could be the killer application for the network or just some ideas that is looking to find a problem. Only by writing this paper can that question be asked. Why might we want to do this? What problem are we
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Making the Emergency Ham Network FUN!
We talked about the value in using the EHN 24/7 even without an emergency, primarily because of the “use it or loose it” theory on our licensed spectrum. But what would we use for traffic, how can we give some reward to all our contributors who would have spent their time and effort building out
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Autopatch or Phonepatch Matures into the Biggest EHN Customer Base?
Back in the day, more precisely the 1960’s Amateur Radio Operators provided a valuable service during the Vietnam war. By coupling the local phone system to their transceivers Hams were able to allow American soldiers “free” phone calls home. Usually, you needed the help of an operator in your own state as interstate trunk calls
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The ARRL National Traffic System (NTS) is not like the proposed Emergency Ham Network.
For generations the ARRL has overseen NTS. This national system says in Its documentation “to handle written traffic and participate in directed nets.” Reading more of the official documentation, it was difficult for me to get a clear understanding of their charter or administration process. There is a well-developed operating procedures and rules. Digging further
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Would the Emergency Ham Network protect our licensed allocations?
What would you use a national digital network for when there was not an emergency? It makes no sense to develop such a complex challenging project just to leave it sitting waiting for its ultimate test. For context, let’s consider the lonely UPS powering your computer system. For months it sits apparently powering your electronics,
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Why create the Emergency Ham Network?
Well, like many similar ventures, I want to change the way things are. I am a seasoned professional engineer who has spent his adult life working for large corporations inventing and improving stuff. That all started because at the tender age of 14 years old I met a Radio Amateur who went on to inspire