Somerset County C.E.R.T.

[ermin]

Hello All

My sister and her hubby belong to Somerset County C.E.R.T. and are studying for their amateur radio license. Does anyone know what frequencies their C.E.R.T. team Use?
Thank you
73 de Ed KE4BMR

 

[W2DHS]

I have been on the CERT team for a few years. For training, drills, etc we have mostly used GMRS/FRS radios. It's not very frequent and would make for rather boring listening during 'blue-sky' days. I have no specific knowledge of any other radios in use.

That said, this will probably change as a bunch of OEM volunteers and employees, including some CERT, passed the Technician HAM exam this month. (This may have even been your sister and her husband..) I think we will see an uptick in the use of Amateur Radio for Somerset CERT in the upcoming months. This will actually be the main topic at this weeks' meeting. Make sure she attends

Dave - W2DHS

 

[djbisme]

Our CERT team also used FRS frequencies for local events and Zello for larger scale events (which worked really well for non-radio/non-ham users). The challenge of getting all the CERT users ham licensed is pretty steep.

 

[W2DHS]

The challenge of getting all the CERT users ham licensed is pretty steep.

Agree, and we would never expect to get all members licensed, but there are a lot of things that you can do with Amateur Radio that you can't with mere low-power FRS. There's a lot of potential benefit from having Ham communicators on a CERT team. During emergencies, who knows what communication methods will be unavailable? If a subset of the team is used to operating repeaters, Winlink, and NVIS comms, there's a lot of value in that when it hits the fan.

I should add for context that this particular CERT team is sponsored by county OEM, so the Ham fit is good.

 

[djbisme]

There's a lot of potential benefit from having Ham communicators on a CERT team. During emergencies, who knows what communication methods will be unavailable? If a subset of the team is used to operating repeaters, Winlink, and NVIS comms, there's a lot of value in that when it hits the fan.

Good points and (as a licensed ham) I completely agree. It would provide much greater flexibility during larger scale events.