Hi Don and everyone!

I think this is a perfect way to start the list.? Thank you for your message, I found it very interesting and helpful!? I'll go with my setup too then.

I live in the Bay Area in California.? Not my choice, life dumped me here.? I live in a second-floor apartment of a two-story, four-unit building, built decades ago by the father of the current very-old landlord.? It's a family building and, as such, one that we all want to take care of and not modify.? Worse, where I live, I am in something of a valley (the "Santa Clara Valley") between two mountain ranges, and the area's huge variety of overhead power lines, all kinds of electronic devices, wireless systems, and other stuff means that getting any kind of signal out of here is very difficult.

For a long time I have been constrained to VHF/UHF only in my home, because of antenna restrictions.? Frustration drove me to buy a Diamond X30A which I clamped to a stand in the back bedroom, just to try to boost my signal over a rubber duck...? and that was my best indoor option.??

For HF, I have been relying?on my vehicle.? I have a Chevy Suburban heavily modified with?four VHF/UHF antennas on the roof and two Diamond 3/8 mounts on the rear hatch that seat a 20m and a 10m hamstick, respectively.? These are manually tuned, and feed through an A/B switch to a Yaesu FT-891 in the cab, along side an Icom ID-800H (v1) 2m/440 FM/DStar radio.? ?The vehicle has two solar panels on the top, fed into a Victron MPPT charge controller connected to two Optima Yellow-top batteries on the primary bus.??

It's not an easy situation here.? I'd love to do the "go buy land somewhere and live off-grid" thing, but family constraints prevent that at the moment.

On the upside, It was a huge win for me when, just last month, the landlord told me he'd be fine if I moved my X30A out to the roof, as long as it stayed small and wasn't a huge break risk.? I have no skill, so I found a professional and had it done later that week, and now at least I can get a signal out from home on VHF/UHF! The change is breathtaking.? But doing anything HF still means sitting in the vehicle.

Knowing full well that this is a negative stereotype, honor forces me to confess that I am only an "armchair prepper," in that I can (and do) buy things, but in terms of actual skill and time to develop those skills I'm heavily constrained.? This is not by choice.? I have a full-time job plus I'm supporting my only kid while she's in college full-time, plus I've resumed work on my own (partially-completed) degrees via online school, so that combined with the living situation means that the only things I can do are buy things and try to learn mentally how to prepare.? In a couple of years, once school is done, I hope to be able to start doing some kind of actual field learning but until that time, this list and similar resources are all I have.

So, I have food, water, solar, equipment, emergency power, and radio gear... and I'm kind of at the "what now" point.? The preparedness plan is focused on financial considerations like finishing the degrees at the moment, but I've been working on digital as I can.

What I have done with my rooftop X30A is put up a 2m packet station (KPC3 into an Icom V3500 at 25 watts) and that has connected me to the small but vocal packet radio group on the west coast.? That has been fun and challenging, but I know that even there I have much more to learn.? Still, I can do a limited amount of direct, digital, off-the-grid communication in this matter, and that's been a good beginning.? I'm now looking at putting up a digital repeater on the 440 side of that antenna, to see what I can do there.

So enough rambling for now, the point is, I'm very excited about the concept of this list, and I look forward to more people joining in and hopefully supporting each other as we move forward on emergency communication preparedness in the digital realm!? 73!

Glen NY3E

> this groups mission:
> It is dedicated to alternative sources of energy, ?utilizing battery,

> solar, wind and associated power sources.

> I welcome your thoughts

I think this is an excellent topic, and I fully support!

But can you clarify for my addled brain what the "-Digital" implies in the list name QRV-Digital?

> We do not want to duplicate the activities of other groups, that would be fruitless.

Are there other groups doing digital preparedness work?? I acknowledge the previous message about EmComm Training but I don't see that as a duplication of discussion, since they pretty much just post announcements about online training?

I think that broadening our scope to include use of digital in a completely off-grid mode might not be amiss, but I could of course be wrong!

I just want to make sure I don't ramble off topic?

Thanks!

Glen NY3E