[Outages-discussion] FEMA, W.H. send victims to Internet

[Owen DeLong]

On Oct 30, 2012, at 08:55 , "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick at ianai.net> wrote:

> On Oct 30, 2012, at 11:43 , Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 30, 2012, at 08:27 , "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick at ianai.net> wrote:
>>> On Oct 30, 2012, at 11:07 , Alex Rubenstein <alex at corp.nac.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> Exactly what would you suggest people do?  Use megaphones?  Put up posters at town hall?
>>>> 
>>>> PA-TRICK,
>>>> 
>>>> 73 DE K2AHR
>>> 
>>> Yeah, 'cause so many people have short wave gear that operates when power has been out long enough for their smartphone to stop working (or at all) these days.
>> 
>> As long as I can get gasoline, yeah, that's do-able.
> 
> 1) "So many people".
> 

You'd be surprised how many HAMs there are in the community, actually.

> 2) "As long as I can get gasoline".
> 

Rephrase... As long as the gasoline in my vehicles holds out...

> 3) If you can get gasoline, are you saying you can power the shortwave but not the cell phone?  Weird....

No, I can power both (as well as a variety of other things, actualy).

> I could go on, but I think everyone here gets the point.  Grandma's cell phone battery will die eventually, and she doesn't have a gas generator, or a D-cell + soldering iron & resistor & etc.  So she's screwed.  But what exactly is the alternative?

She does have a gas generator that will charge her cell phone unless she doesn't have a car.

I also don't recall saying you needed a soldering iron to make the D-Cell thing work.

In most cases, 3 D-cells without a resistor will also work. You can cobble together something that works using the D-Cells, tape, an old USB cable or if you're willing to cut up one of your existing cell phone chargers. No soldering iron required. However, I'm guessing grandma generally doesn't have the knowledge to do the cobbling.

Owen