When disaster strikes, and conventional communication systems fail, amateur ham radio operators step in to bridge the gap, providing a crucial link between those in affected areas and the outside world.
If you have an iPhone 14 on and iOS 18 you can now text via satellite during an outage too. People in NC were raving about how great it was to be able to check in with loved ones and get help.
Starlink was approved by the FCC to run a limited test in North Carolina and Florida in the damage pads of the two hurricanes and it’s doing pretty good as well. With their system, anybody on any carrier can get wireless emergency alerts and currently T-Mobile customers can send and receive text messages.
Edit: I would like to expand on my word of limited above. It is actually in very early experimental stages, and they say that coverage will be spotty, and it could take 15 minutes to send and receive a message. They say if you are receiving it, your phone will show 1 to 2 bars like it would on the regular cellular network, but it will say T-Mobile Starlink at the top as the carrier name
Edit 2: Any phone that knows how to talk to the cellular network would be able to be used with this service. With the current technology, like the iPhone has, you are basically getting hardware that knows how to talk to the satellite. Where in this trial, they are putting the hardware on the satellite that can talk with your phone.
Cool! Since I do the occasional mountain bike ride or hike into places with zero cell service, it’s a huge plus for me to have satellite communication capabilities on the phone. Interesting they’re working it the other way too for disaster areas.
Eventually, it won’t just be for disaster areas. It will be for the entire United States and will show up anywhere that you would normally not have a signal.
Um, hold up for a second. Did the author seriously at the very end of the article say 73 SK? I’m sorry, but those two things do not go well together. ROFL
Doesn’t 73 mean “best regards” and SK just mean “end of contact”? I see that SK can also colloquially mean that an operator is deceased, though. Genuinely curious, not familiar with the hobby.
It’s both. SK, Stop Keying, is used in CW (morse) whenever a station is done transmitting. SK is also Silent Key, but you’ll rarely hear the abbreviation over voice or CW.
I don’t know anybody who uses SK as end of contact. I’ve always heard it referred to as the operator being deceased.
