The military, various government entities, and some NGOs, plan for emergencies by implementing a multi-layered plan. Essentially, four "independent" levels, each one more reliable and less reliant on infrastructure than the one before it. As you might imagine, each letter represents one of the levels: P(rimary), A(lternate), C(ontingency), and E(mergency). I suspect you can guess which layer we fall into!
For PACE to function all players must roll through the levels in order, from P to A, A to C, and C to E. As we often say, Amateur Radio: When all else fails!
While each layer is to be independent of the resources of the preceding one, it is not always the case. Obviously, the more self-contained each system is, the more likely it is to function despite other failures. In the case of communications the primary means of communicating would utilize cellular and internet services. In the event those services fail, or degrade significantly, the next level (alternate) of fall-back might be commercial landlines and satellite technology. If those prove inadequate, the entity would probably fall back to its contingency level, which would involved their own internal phone system and links to associated facilities.
As you can see, all of these would assume some level of infrastructure is functioning. In a massive cellular and internet outage will landline phones be functional? In an EMP event (be it solar or man-made) will satellites be functioning? If the power grid is down for very long most of the primary and secondary systems will be offline fairly quickly, and the contingency level won't be far behind.
We, "Plan E", must consider the fact we will only be utilized if everything else has failed. This likely means no power, internet, or cellular functionality. At least, not on a broad scale. So, this means we need to be prepared to operate under those circumstances. Independent power is a must (battery, solar, generator, etc). Radios operational during an EMP event may not survive the incident, so backup equipment would be useful (we'll cover EMP in more detail in the future).
Power will be a premium resource to not be wasted, so a detailed plan for how and when to attempt to make contact is useful and is near completion for Carroll ARES. The primary frequency (The W4FWD 2 meter repeater), secondary (the 440 meter repeater), simplex alternatives (output frequency of the 2 meter repeater and others to be announced soon) would be followed in that order. Think of it as our own Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency plan levels.
When to attempt contact should be coordinated, to avoid operating radios full time, wasting power. Obviously, we'll all be inclined to tune to the repeater at our first opportunity if something unusual should happen, and you may find a net operating. If not, we'll likely follow the "3-3-3" monitoring rule - checking every three hours (3:00, 6:00, 9:00, and 12:00 AM &PM) and monitoring for three minutes.
More information soon to follow.
