HAM RADIO INSURANCE
Two things right up front. 1) Your home owner's insurance will NOT cover your ham gear unless you pay extra for it. 2) Your automobile insurance will NOT cover your ham radio gear in your vehicle unless you pay extra for it.
The solution? There are two (and only two as far as I can tell) ham radio insurance companies that are specifically geared toward insuring ham radio gear. The two are more alike than different and the rates are competitive.
Below is some basic info on the two companies and a link to reviews on the two companies from eham.com.
ARRL Ham Radio Insurance
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Membership/Ham%20Radio%20Equipment%20Insurance%20Plan.pdf
OR
http://tinyurl.com/28g249b
$1.50 per $100 of replacement value. ALL items must be listed with serial numbers.
HRIA Ham Radio Insurance
http://hamradioinsurance.com/index.htm
To purchase "All Risk" radio and computer equipment coverage (no towers, antennas or rotors) simply choose from a table the amount of coverage necessary to replace all of your equipment at today's prices and the corresponding annual EZ-PREMIUM. No need to list items and serial numbers.
$2,000 of coverage = $30/Year or $40/Year to include Mechanical Breakdown
$5,000 coverage = $75/Year or $100/Year with mechanical breakdown coverage.
No need to list items or serial numbers UNLESS tower/antenna/rotor coverage is desired. Then you have to list ALL covered equipment with serial numbers.
CLAIMS
Deductible is just $50 for each claim with both companies.
If I have a loss, will this Plan pay full replacement costs? Yes! You will receive the replacement cost or equivalent value of the equipment that is covered - not a depreciated value - as long as your equipment is insured for full replacement cost.
ARRL - If your claim is due to theft, send a police report to the Claims Administrator at once. Sales receipts for the replaced equipment are required before payment is made unless waived. For repair claims, an estimate of damage must be submitted. Claims resulting from theft or damage to newly acquired property must include a proof of purchase.
HRIA - Equipment damaged by lightning must be sent to HRIA before a check will be issued. There are exceptions.
Reviews by hams who have the insurance including some who have filed claims.
http://www.eham.net/reviews/products/63
NOTE: Some reviews are very old and no longer apply. Both of the two providers have changed underwriters in the past couple of years. This means that older complaints are most likely no longer applicable. Both companies are responsive to their customers and work to correct deficiencies.
I have included links to both companies. You will have to decide for yourself which one is best for your situation.
It does not take a disaster to cause you to need ham radio insurance. About 10 years ago the Salt Lake City hams were providing radio communications for a Jordan River clean up project when one ham accidentally dropped his HT in the river! The repairs were very expensive. Ham Radio Insurance would have covered the repairs.
Don't just think earthquake, flood, fire, lightning, wind, theft, etc. Think kid with soda pop and peanut butter sandwich, think fumble fingers and a four foot drop onto the concrete driveway, think teenager running over HT in driveway, think radio in fish bowl, etc.
Think about it...
N7OZH - until next time.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Food Supplies for your Grab & Go Kit & Field Day
Field Day June 26,27 2010 - purpose = Radio Emergency Preparedness
ERC, MARA, RACES, ARES and many LOCAL NETS all exist to further Emergency Radio Preparedness. The ultimate ham radio emergency drill is called FIELD DAY.
More info is found at www.arrl.org including a field day station locator. Some (most) field day setups include a GOTA station. GOTA = Get On The Air. a GOTA station is a radio at the Field Day site that is reserved exclusively for people with NO ham license! There is always a dedicated Control Operator next to the radio, but this is a chance for your non-ham family members and friends to talk on HF to people all over the country and even the world!
NO ONE gets bored at field day stations. Come see the excitement, enjoy the refreshments (bring some if you like), help out where you can, and leave with new memories.
ARRL FIELD DAY IS ON TWITTER
The account for ARRL’s Field Day actions with Twitter is ARRL_FD. Sign up to create your own Twitter account -- it’s free -- and follow ARRL_FD. If you already have a Twitter account, just follow us.
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets, text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers (who are known as followers). You can send these short messages by computer or even via text with your cell phone. When you receive a tweet, you can also relay it on to your own followers (called a retweet). Your followers can in turn relay it even further, getting your message spread around, growing and going.
For posts with #FIELDDAY (the # sign must be included) in with the message, Twitter will keep track of it: “If there is enough traffic with #FIELDDAY in the text, then major blogs and news take note of it. So by taking part in this experiment, tweeting and using the #FIELDDAY insert in with your message -- called a hashtag -- will help bring all of Field Day to the media’s attention. Social networking is new to a lot of us, but I found it is really not hard at all to learn and do. The more people we get on, the more tweeting we do, the better opportunity we have to expose Amateur Radio to a new audience.”
==========
Today I held a mini-emergency drill using my Harbor Freight 1.5 Watt Solar Charger. In direct sunlight it can produce 25 Volts with no load. Under load it produces 12 Volts at 1/8 amp for 1.5 watts. The test today was to be able to use it indoors about 6PM to charge a battery. Since my neighbor's house blocked three windows from receiving direct sunlight, I used the only window getting direct sunlight, the frosted glass window in the bathroom. I measured 22.4 volts with no load! Plenty for charging Gel Cells and other emergency batteries.
These things are not very expensive and are great to have around to keep your Gel Cells topped off without running up the electric bill. Some modifications are required to work the unit with a battery. The standard plug is a cigarette lighter plug since the unit was designed for us in cars to keep the battery topped off.
Two way to reverse that. 1) get a female cigarette lighter socket and wire it for attachment to a battery with alligator clips or other connectors. 2) there is a standard automotive "offset" connector in the middle of the cable. These can be purchased at auto parts houses and then you can make your own cable with Anderson Power poles to connect to LOTS of things.
=============
On Monday June 7th, the Deseret News Front Page had an article titled, "Down Economy puts food storage in focus". They mentioned two local emergency food storage places, Emergency Essentials and Survival Solutions. Both can be found with Google Maps or MapQuest.
The article got me to thinking about the food in my Ham Radio Grab & Go Kit. It is about time to replace some items in there. You have to rotate the food items in there or prepare to be grossed out when you open the kit next time.
In addition to water, three excellent items to keep in there are MRE's, Food Bars, and hard candy.
If you do not have experience with MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), ask before you buy. Eating all the wrong ones can either bind you up or give you the runs. You need the right mixture. It is a good idea to try various ones before deciding to make them a part of your Grab & Go Kit.
Food bars are great and last a really long time, but require more water than do MREs. You can buy bulk granola bars at Costco, Sam's Club, and Wal-Mart.
Hard candy will keep your mouth moist and quell your appetite. In a true emergency situation lasting several hours, you will do a LOT of talking as a radio operator and will need some way to conserve your water supply while keeping your mouth moist. Hard candy works great for this.
If you can get the individually wrapped candies, so much the better. People used to recommend Life Savers. Experience has shown that time and/or heat will turn your package of Life Savers into just ONE long piece of candy that is mostly just a sugar lump. Individually wrapped hard candies are exempt from this phenomenon.
A great suggestion from Allan, W7WSQ, try to use standardized message forms and train your operators to give only the data, not the labels. For example, a neighborhood post-earthquake inventory form might start like this.
STREET = 2200 block of Downington Ave
Houses = 24
Deaths = 3
Injuries = 21
Resources =
Fires =
Broken water mains =
etc.
When reporting in, you do not read off the labels (Street, Houses, etc.) just the data. "2200 block of Downington Ave, 24, 3, 21 skip (or 0), none" and so on.
This makes collecting the data easier and faster, gets to the next report sooner, and makes totaling the data for upstream reporting much easier. It also helps to cut down on unnecessary chatter by overly "wordy" operators. Remember the TV commercial that describes a lady who could take an hour to tell a five minute story? We don't need long wordy descriptions when succinct facts from a standard form will do just fine.
We will have a special training subject on the second Tuesday in September on the ERC Stake Net on 145.45 at 9PM. Hope to see all of you there.
73 de N7OZH - O. D. Williams - Salt Lake City, Utah.
ERC, MARA, RACES, ARES and many LOCAL NETS all exist to further Emergency Radio Preparedness. The ultimate ham radio emergency drill is called FIELD DAY.
More info is found at www.arrl.org including a field day station locator. Some (most) field day setups include a GOTA station. GOTA = Get On The Air. a GOTA station is a radio at the Field Day site that is reserved exclusively for people with NO ham license! There is always a dedicated Control Operator next to the radio, but this is a chance for your non-ham family members and friends to talk on HF to people all over the country and even the world!
NO ONE gets bored at field day stations. Come see the excitement, enjoy the refreshments (bring some if you like), help out where you can, and leave with new memories.
ARRL FIELD DAY IS ON TWITTER
The account for ARRL’s Field Day actions with Twitter is ARRL_FD. Sign up to create your own Twitter account -- it’s free -- and follow ARRL_FD. If you already have a Twitter account, just follow us.
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets, text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers (who are known as followers). You can send these short messages by computer or even via text with your cell phone. When you receive a tweet, you can also relay it on to your own followers (called a retweet). Your followers can in turn relay it even further, getting your message spread around, growing and going.
For posts with #FIELDDAY (the # sign must be included) in with the message, Twitter will keep track of it: “If there is enough traffic with #FIELDDAY in the text, then major blogs and news take note of it. So by taking part in this experiment, tweeting and using the #FIELDDAY insert in with your message -- called a hashtag -- will help bring all of Field Day to the media’s attention. Social networking is new to a lot of us, but I found it is really not hard at all to learn and do. The more people we get on, the more tweeting we do, the better opportunity we have to expose Amateur Radio to a new audience.”
==========
Today I held a mini-emergency drill using my Harbor Freight 1.5 Watt Solar Charger. In direct sunlight it can produce 25 Volts with no load. Under load it produces 12 Volts at 1/8 amp for 1.5 watts. The test today was to be able to use it indoors about 6PM to charge a battery. Since my neighbor's house blocked three windows from receiving direct sunlight, I used the only window getting direct sunlight, the frosted glass window in the bathroom. I measured 22.4 volts with no load! Plenty for charging Gel Cells and other emergency batteries.
These things are not very expensive and are great to have around to keep your Gel Cells topped off without running up the electric bill. Some modifications are required to work the unit with a battery. The standard plug is a cigarette lighter plug since the unit was designed for us in cars to keep the battery topped off.
Two way to reverse that. 1) get a female cigarette lighter socket and wire it for attachment to a battery with alligator clips or other connectors. 2) there is a standard automotive "offset" connector in the middle of the cable. These can be purchased at auto parts houses and then you can make your own cable with Anderson Power poles to connect to LOTS of things.
=============
On Monday June 7th, the Deseret News Front Page had an article titled, "Down Economy puts food storage in focus". They mentioned two local emergency food storage places, Emergency Essentials and Survival Solutions. Both can be found with Google Maps or MapQuest.
The article got me to thinking about the food in my Ham Radio Grab & Go Kit. It is about time to replace some items in there. You have to rotate the food items in there or prepare to be grossed out when you open the kit next time.
In addition to water, three excellent items to keep in there are MRE's, Food Bars, and hard candy.
If you do not have experience with MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), ask before you buy. Eating all the wrong ones can either bind you up or give you the runs. You need the right mixture. It is a good idea to try various ones before deciding to make them a part of your Grab & Go Kit.
Food bars are great and last a really long time, but require more water than do MREs. You can buy bulk granola bars at Costco, Sam's Club, and Wal-Mart.
Hard candy will keep your mouth moist and quell your appetite. In a true emergency situation lasting several hours, you will do a LOT of talking as a radio operator and will need some way to conserve your water supply while keeping your mouth moist. Hard candy works great for this.
If you can get the individually wrapped candies, so much the better. People used to recommend Life Savers. Experience has shown that time and/or heat will turn your package of Life Savers into just ONE long piece of candy that is mostly just a sugar lump. Individually wrapped hard candies are exempt from this phenomenon.
A great suggestion from Allan, W7WSQ, try to use standardized message forms and train your operators to give only the data, not the labels. For example, a neighborhood post-earthquake inventory form might start like this.
STREET = 2200 block of Downington Ave
Houses = 24
Deaths = 3
Injuries = 21
Resources =
Fires =
Broken water mains =
etc.
When reporting in, you do not read off the labels (Street, Houses, etc.) just the data. "2200 block of Downington Ave, 24, 3, 21 skip (or 0), none" and so on.
This makes collecting the data easier and faster, gets to the next report sooner, and makes totaling the data for upstream reporting much easier. It also helps to cut down on unnecessary chatter by overly "wordy" operators. Remember the TV commercial that describes a lady who could take an hour to tell a five minute story? We don't need long wordy descriptions when succinct facts from a standard form will do just fine.
We will have a special training subject on the second Tuesday in September on the ERC Stake Net on 145.45 at 9PM. Hope to see all of you there.
73 de N7OZH - O. D. Williams - Salt Lake City, Utah.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
MARA NET - 2/Jun/2010 2100 Hrs UTC
And now, The Disaster Continues
(The Disaster started in 1974 and ran weekly for decades. It now is a monthly feature on the first Wednesday of each month on the MARA net on 146.74 Mhz in Salt Lake City, Utah)
After the earthquake, you are asked to assess damage in your neighborhood. You are assigned a 4 block area and asked to report on EVERY house/building in that area. Some of the other hams are reporting their findings on 6 Meters or 1.25 Mhz or 33 cm in order to avoid simplex crowding. The Net Control Station has radios to handle all those frequencies. You are then asked to become the NCS station. The current NCS operator is going to leave 15 minutes after you arrive (for another assignment)and he will take his radios with him. What do you do?
I would use those 15 minutes to find out if any of the hams reporting in on 2 Meters and 70 centimeters can also do 6 meters or 1.25 Meters or 33 centimeters. If so, they could relay messages (both ways) as time permits.
If that fails, I would see which of the current frequencies my radio would receive (but not transmit) and notify the stations on those frequencies that I would monitor their transmission, but not be able to reply or ask for clarification. If possible, I would have those stations move to the 2 Meters or 70 cm frequencies in spite of the crowding so that two way traffic can be maintained.
In doing your four block assessment, you will report on damage, injuries, deaths, needs, and resources. In the case of needs, you will need to report immediate needs such as bandages, first aid, medical assistance, etc. You will also need to gather and report information regarding people who will have a pressing or life threatening need in the near future as follows:
Household assessments
Level I - Within 24 hours
Level II - Within 48 hours
Level III - Within 72 hours
These would include people who need oxygen, insulin or other medical supplies once their own reserve runs out. There are state agencies and Red Cross divisions that will assist in providing the needed items IF they know of the need.
Infection Control
Wash your hands before and after EVERYTHING! Carry disinfecting wipes and/or hand cleaner with you. Rubber gloves are a great help. If you are doing rescue work and moving objects and debris, work gloves are a necessity.
After an earthquake, there will be lots and lots of dust in the air. Some of it will be carrying infectious organisms. The hospital masks that are passed out at ALL hospitals and nursing homes are effective against most airborne germs. They are NOT effective against chemical agents and gasses.
There is also the matter of conflicting priorities. Some of us belong to several ham radio groups. Which one will you serve with? If you are CERT trained, will you be doing CERT work, Ham Radio work or both? (A ham radio could certainly make it easy to know where you are needed when you finish your current task!)
Just serve wherever you can do the most good. Most if not all of us will have many different assignment during the course of the disaster before things settle down into a routine. If you are no longer needed where you are, find out where you CAN serve!
N7OZH - until next time!
(The Disaster started in 1974 and ran weekly for decades. It now is a monthly feature on the first Wednesday of each month on the MARA net on 146.74 Mhz in Salt Lake City, Utah)
After the earthquake, you are asked to assess damage in your neighborhood. You are assigned a 4 block area and asked to report on EVERY house/building in that area. Some of the other hams are reporting their findings on 6 Meters or 1.25 Mhz or 33 cm in order to avoid simplex crowding. The Net Control Station has radios to handle all those frequencies. You are then asked to become the NCS station. The current NCS operator is going to leave 15 minutes after you arrive (for another assignment)and he will take his radios with him. What do you do?
I would use those 15 minutes to find out if any of the hams reporting in on 2 Meters and 70 centimeters can also do 6 meters or 1.25 Meters or 33 centimeters. If so, they could relay messages (both ways) as time permits.
If that fails, I would see which of the current frequencies my radio would receive (but not transmit) and notify the stations on those frequencies that I would monitor their transmission, but not be able to reply or ask for clarification. If possible, I would have those stations move to the 2 Meters or 70 cm frequencies in spite of the crowding so that two way traffic can be maintained.
In doing your four block assessment, you will report on damage, injuries, deaths, needs, and resources. In the case of needs, you will need to report immediate needs such as bandages, first aid, medical assistance, etc. You will also need to gather and report information regarding people who will have a pressing or life threatening need in the near future as follows:
Household assessments
Level I - Within 24 hours
Level II - Within 48 hours
Level III - Within 72 hours
These would include people who need oxygen, insulin or other medical supplies once their own reserve runs out. There are state agencies and Red Cross divisions that will assist in providing the needed items IF they know of the need.
Infection Control
Wash your hands before and after EVERYTHING! Carry disinfecting wipes and/or hand cleaner with you. Rubber gloves are a great help. If you are doing rescue work and moving objects and debris, work gloves are a necessity.
After an earthquake, there will be lots and lots of dust in the air. Some of it will be carrying infectious organisms. The hospital masks that are passed out at ALL hospitals and nursing homes are effective against most airborne germs. They are NOT effective against chemical agents and gasses.
There is also the matter of conflicting priorities. Some of us belong to several ham radio groups. Which one will you serve with? If you are CERT trained, will you be doing CERT work, Ham Radio work or both? (A ham radio could certainly make it easy to know where you are needed when you finish your current task!)
Just serve wherever you can do the most good. Most if not all of us will have many different assignment during the course of the disaster before things settle down into a routine. If you are no longer needed where you are, find out where you CAN serve!
N7OZH - until next time!
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