Does Anybody Even Bother With CAP/MARS Modifications Any Longer?
Ok; You are a ham. Your day job is with IT at a private company. You are on a hiking trip deep in the Sierra Nevada mountains. You happen to be carrying your front panel programmable VHF commercial radio that you use solely for Part 97 Ham Radio operations.
Rushing toward you on a trail is a young mother frantically waving. It turns out her young daughter has fallen down a ravine, impaled herself on a small tree and is bleeding very badly. The father has the wound controlled but is clear the patient will need to be carefully extricated and airlifted.
So, while this is a very painful, and scarey experience, the father has the bleeding under control?
My original statement stands. Emergency trigger on my SPOT and a call via sat-phone to the non-emergency number of the local dispatch centre. Again, 911 does not operate on sat-phones.
Between you, you have three cellphones and none of them can get service.
Great!!! Send them down the trail, with instructions to call 911, when they either get service, or they get to a land line.
You try your Ham radio on all the programmed local frequencies and no joy in raising a repeater or another operator on simplex.
Oh well. In that case I would also try my LMR radio on the almost 200 legit LMR channels I have programmed in it.
In your cellphone you have a pdf copy of DHS NIFOG inter-operational communications frequency directory.
What is your next step?
Wait. The child, likely in extreme pain, is not in imminent danger, her father has managed to control the bleeding. Next step is to keep her calm, and keep the wound stable until the pros arrive.
You don't have a SPOT or a SAT Phone neither do the victims parents or any of the fifteen other hikers who have arrived who also cannot get dial tone on a cell phone.
Quick the child has lost a lot of blood.
Actually, I would have a SPOT or some other type of PLB. I go out prepared.
Unless any of those 15 hikers has advanced medical training, you send them all down the trail to call 911 when they get service, or get to a land line. Making sure at least one of them comes back to confirm help is on the way.
At this point all you are going to do by getting on a first responder repeater, is confuse them, and slow down any help while they try and figure out who this unknown person on their frequency is.
The wound is controlled, and the child is stable. Pain is not a imminent danger to human life.
Section 97.403 states that no provision of the Rules prevents the use by an amateur station of any means of radiocommunication at its disposal to provide essential communications in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available.
The child is stable, and being cared for, people have been sent to get help. Because the child is stable:
The father has the wound controlled
Section 97.403 does not apply. You now open yourself up to legal liability by using your modified ham radio
OR your commercial radio programmed with frequencies you are not authorized to use.
The disclaimer being, so many people who modify the damn things to start with have absolutely no clue (in addition to an entitled inflated self-worth) of what an actual emergency is.
That is abundantly clear in this thread.
Unlike most people here, I actually have had to summon emergency services via radio. Except I did not have a radio, and there was no cell service where I was. What was there was a OTR driver with. A LMR radio with LAD 1. We had all three emergency services on scene with in 15minutes. No need to use a hacked ham radio on the RCMP or BCAS repeater. Just a simple 30w simplex call from trucker to trucker got the job done.
Wannabe Rescue Randy's with their modded radio need a reality check.
Edit: just saw the FPP commercial radio part. Regardless, my statement stands. I will not use channels I'm not authorized on. Period.
It's not only about the gear. Popping up on frequencies you are not authorized is only going to slow down any response.