E1458: Ham Radio VS Cell Phone Which is Better for EMERGENCY Situations?

one works more often? Ham Radio or really any radio service at all, Ham Radio, GMRS Radio, CB radio or your cell phone or your smartphone? Which one do you think actually works more consistently, more regularly, more often than the other. I have some thoughts about this, and you might be surprised by them, and I'm curious to see what you might have to say. Yellowstone National Park. Here, it's some geysers, and man, it's a good looking truck.

And we're here with five or six guys. I have at and T, Robert has Verizon, Kyle has T Mobile. This is a short video of short vertical video that I recorded when we were activating one of the times we were activating Yellowstone National Park on PODA in July of twenty twenty four. There is no cell service in the area, but you know what works.

activation in our PoTA blog book. I myself have said numerous times on the channel that I want to activate one park in every state. I want to get all fifty states, and I didn't have Montana. So Frank and I and Kyle and Rob all drove to Montana, and a couple of days after that, Frank and Rob flew out of Billions Montana back home, and Kyle and I continued our road trip and activated some more states after that,

throughout after we left Yellowstone Park. The reason I'm telling you that after we left Yellowstone National Park there was not much cell service throughout the state of Wyoming. I had AT and T. Rob had Verizon, Kyle had t Mobile. So we had all three, all of the big three networks in the USA represented during that trip. And let me tell you something that once you got inside of the national I kind of understand that you don't have you know, okay, because they don't put up cell towers

in national parks. They think they're ugly, they're kind of right. I understand that. I get that, okay. But here's the thing. Once we left the park, we had the same type of trouble in northern Wyoming, northwest northeastern Wyoming. Driving into Montana had the same type of trouble. In Montana, we drove the Beartooth Highway, the Beartooth Parkway, which is a scenic drive, very beautiful drive. You ever get a chance

to do it, I highly recommend it. So we're driving that and there's two or three national for probably more than that that National forests that it passes through or passes very close to, and of course those are all PoTA spots. Well, once we got into Montana, the group of us that wanted to act, well pretty much all of us wanted to activate Montana. We found a National forest pulled over to the side of road did in activation. Had no cell service to spot ourselves. Rob's verizon eventually worked.

I think it took him like between five and ten minutes after posting us on the PoTA website for it actually to show up. So it kind of worked. Sort of, yeah, it kind of works. But AT and T and T Mobile, we're dead. My road trip that I took in July, where I drove throughout Utah, Wyoming, Montana, we came into South Dakota, drove south through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma back to Texas. A few more places than that, but that's basically what

we did. I didn't have cell service much in the whole state of Wyoming or Montana with AT and T, so I put up that video or recorded it while we're out there. Put that video up, and then I and then I get a couple of pretty good comments. And I got this one comment, and this comment here is why I'm making today's video. This is a good comment. Is a good comment. I think that he was trying to refute what I was saying, or rebuttal what I was saying, or contradict me. But I think he's proven

my point here. Okay, broke prepper, that's a good name, broke prepper. Okay, more often quotes is certainly relative. Lol. Cell phone's absolutely, without a doubt work more often, do they? Okay, not because the are more reliable, but because I can transmit all day long and not get a single response with the range I have with a cell phone. No, he means with a radio, but he's not very clear

with that statement. I'm in the mountains and the nearest repeater is fifty miles away, which never has any traffic on it that I can tell. In order for me to reach anyone, I would have to have a hell of a setup. I can afford a handheld. That's about it. I keep four of them for emergencies and weather, for my weather as in storms, for my family to be able to communicate with each other. Now, Okay, so number one,

first and foremost point here. When I first read that, I was like, Yeah, of course, of course your cell phone's going to work more often. That's not really my point. My point is that the radio is going to work when the cell phone doesn't. And then I got to thinking about it, I thought, no, no, that's not right, that's not right. I contradicted my own thought process there. Okay, but first, he's talking about two things here. Let me

make something very clear. Okay, he's talking about king repeaters and not getting response. He's not talking about the radio working or not working. So the radio work if you're keying the repeater and hearing the courtesy tone and squotch tale of the repeater coming back to you. Guess what. Your radio is working. Your radio is working. Okay, Just because you don't get a response doesn't mean the radio's work. Repeaters being inactive or dead has nothing to do with

whether the radio is actually working or not. There's two separate issues here, and I've addressed the repeater issue, and I have more videos coming soon about the repeater issue. Key up your local repeaters, get more activity on repeaters. I'm a big fan of trying to get the repeaters more alive, more connected, more used, more active throughout the United States and the world. But you're missing the point here.

I'm not saying that the radio is inactive. I'm saying that the radio works more often than your smartphone does. And I'm going to tell you why I think that here in just a second. First, I want to tell you about today's sponsor and the important of amateur radio's national organization that A Double RAL, the American Radio Relay League. The A Double Ral represented the interests of amateur radio

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In fact, if the FCC gives the whole nine hundred megahertz band to a commercial entity, there goes mesh tastic, There goes your its ITSM band, There goes your nine hundred megahertz. Anything you're using, any kind of commercial nine hundred megahertz is gone. Depending on how they write the bill, depending on which sections of the spectrum they give commercially, but it could be that Meshtastic might just simply go away because we wouldn't be able to use that band anymore.

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So be sure to support the A DOUBLEURL. I put a link in the description blow use the coupon code of JS one if you renew and thank them if you do renew and see them at a hamphest thank them for sponsoring Ham Radio two point zero. So I just want to make sure that we're on the same page when I say radio more often. I'm not talking about the lack of activity on repeaters. Now here's the next comment, the next comment in this and this guy

signed his he signed his call sign in the comment. Okay, and this is on this comment's on a public video on my YouTube channel. So I don't really enjoy I'm not really about internet shaming people. But this guy kind of shoots himself in the foot on a public comment, and I'm just gonna kind of let him that's this. Yet he says, yep, I wouldn't put my life online with a Ham rig today. There are four Ham repeaters in my area around fifty and around fifty Hams County wide.

Guess what, almost no repeater activity. I trust the cell phone any day to a bunch of radio wannabes. Okay, you're missing the point. You're missing the point. Okay, I'm not talking about the activity on a repeater or the lack thereof. I'm talking about whether the radio is working. If you're able to key up your repeaters and get a courtesy tone and a squelch tale from the repeater, then your repeater and your radio are both working. It's working.

It's able to be. And check out all of the videos that I've posted on this channel within the last month about the repeater on Mount Mitchell in North Carolina that's been one of the only ways to pass traffic into and out of that area devastated by Hurricane Helene. For two to three weeks. That's been the only communications method because both cell phone networks and internet and power in many places have been down. He goes on to say he has Verizon as well, and it works fine

in my part of Wyoming. Well, I would assume it worked. I didn't travel the entire state of at Wyoming. Surely it worked somewhere, Okay, I just found that it didn't work much in where we were. Had a friend that just went across the state line into Colorado. Guess what, He put his call out several times along the way, No joy until he hit the Denver area. So why bother with hand radio in that case? Again, you're missing the point. It's not the point I'm trying to make today.

But that's it. And several of the towns he passed through do have ham repeaters, just like must have forgotten it, just people must have forgotten used them. Just some thoughts. Seventy three. This is my response to the original commentor and then I made later on I made a response to the second comment or the guy we just looked at because I was like, you're missing the point. You're

not getting what I'm saying. Okay, So my original comment was, and when you call someone from your phone and the call drops or they don't answer, what then you have to call other people one at a time, hoping that the internet and cell sites are working properly in a perfect situation. Yes, cell phones do work more often. I disagree with now. This is when I was thinking. This was my first response to that. But I've changed my mind.

I've changed my mind. Okay, I write cell phones do work more often, But the point that your comment seems to be missing is that cell phones do not always work. The number of comments I get in my videos where people think cell phones work one hundred percent of the time is scary. I get drop calls when using the phone in the Metroplex on a normal day when the weather is good. How well will this same setup work

in a bad storm. Just look at the North Carolina and Tennessee right now post Hurricane Lean, cell phone networks have been down for days. What I failed to think of, the reason I changed my mind is this. Okay, think about the times where he's talking about your cell phone's work more often your radio's working during those times too. In fact, think about it like this, Okay, your radio always works because the only thing you need for radio

is a power supply, an antenna, and the atmosphere. For a cell phone smartphone, you need a power supply, have built in battery most of the time. It has an antenna, whether it's internal or external, and you need a cell network. And the cell network is what's been down for two to three weeks at the time of this recording in the eastern Tennessee and North Carolina areas post Hurricane Helen. There was some damaged post Hurricane Milton also, but not

nearly as badly. But we've seen this in the past several times, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Okay, this is not a new thing. This is not something brand new that we saw in late twenty twenty four with her Helen. Hurricane Helen's been the largest and most catastrophic hurricane to hit the United States in maybe forever,

in record time. Your radio is going to work even those times where your cell phone's working great, you're driving down the road, you're calling people, you're doing your normal day. Your cell phone is working fine. Your radio is working fine during that time too. Your radio doesn't stop working when the cell phone's working, but your cell phone stops working when the cell network is down from natural disasters, from wars, from terrorist attacks, from anything. So which one

actually works more often? The radio does? The radio works more often because guess what, it's working all those times that your cell phone's working too. And I'm not talking about activity on the repeaters you could use. The two commenters on this post completely missed my point. It has nothing to do with activity on repeaters because if you were to call out for an emergency, you might get

someone help you. You're just thrown out your call sign and monitoring the repeater or maybe maybe not, but the repeater is working even if nobody needs monitoring it, even if no one's talking on it. It is working. You might say, well, that's not gonna help during the emergency. Well, maybe it will, maybe it won't. I don't know. I hope you and I never have to find out if

it will work or not. But if your cell phone is dead because the cell network is down, and your last resort is radio, because it doesn't require an external network source, it'd be a good idea to try it. At least, wouldn't it be a good idea to try simplex HF repeaters whatever. So, no, the cell phone does

not work more often. It's probably used more often. More people have a cell phone, But all those times your cell phone's working, your radio is working also, so more often is exactly the point that I was making in that short video and in this video today. Guys, i'd love to know what you think about this. Put a comment below, and check out these videos over here on this side, because YouTube thinks you want to watch these next seventy three