As of the time of writing this article (48 hours post hurricane Ian), we’re still 95% off the grid in Central Florida, with no power and very limited cell service.
Thankfully, our HAM radios have kept us apprised of developments. Especially during the time Ian lingered over us.
The national weather service was invaluable as far as letting us know where the storm was, and what we could expect for continuing hurricane force winds and relentless rain.
We’ve also able to communicate with other Preppers in our area who’ve kept us updated on road closures and limited power restoration in our county.
The 60 gallon container in the picture below was completely empty before Ian hit us.
Many years ago, I found the list of channels in the following picture. I don’t recall the original source, otherwise I’d give them full credit. We have multiple HAM radios, several of them are programmed with these channels. They served us well the past few days.
You can click HERE to download the CVS file I manually created from the channel list.
You can click HERE to download CHIRP, the de facto standard for programming HAM radios, to transfer the channels from the CVS file to your radio(s).
If you don’t have HAM radios as part of your prep kits, I highly recommend you do. HAM radios are cheap, give you the ability to monitor situations, and to communicate when cell networks and the Internet go down.