So I got a letter from the City of Providence Emergency Management Agency. Apparently they got my amateur radio call sign off my recent ARRL renewal. The club as it is known is pretty recent, within the last year or so.

It’s part of  ARES/RACES. Those acronyms stand for Amateur Radio Emergency Service and Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service.

I may have mentioned before wherever I go I always carry an HT with me. HT Being short for Handy Talky or Handheld aka Portable unit.

A perfect example of how this would be beneficial is the recent events in Boston. Cellular completely flopped, law enforcement was hammered.

I have two radios to choose from, one a Yaesu VX-7r that does 6m, 2m, and 70cm at 5W, and 1.25m at 300mW. For a little more power on the 1.25m band I have a KST V6 220MHz radio which does a full 5W.

So one covers more bands, the other more power on one band.

I sent my application in and the next meeting is in October so I’ll probably go.