Public Comms SHTF

[Joe]

It's maybe an idea to explore comms in a bit of detail.
To start with you have your ultra local comms, mainly uhf handhelds under 1 watt and mainly intended for use around 0.5 to 1 miles.
Next up you would be moving to local comms, this would be a mobile radio, possibly vhf around 25w. I would be using this for contact between vehicles when the comms first go down.
Moving on you have comms around your region, possibly a vhf mobile running 50 plus watts operating to a base station or via a hill top repeater.
Beyond that we move on to HF comms, apx 100w plus and aimed at covering national coverage, apx out to about 500-1000 miles using low frequencies around 3 to 7mhz. Ideally this would be base or fixed mobile. This would be your main source of info during a long event.
For Global work we would still be using HF comms but now operating around 14 to 20 Mhz and ideally with a proper base antenna and power from 100 to 1000w. This gives us good comms beyond the 500miles range and out to several thousands.

I do agree with the other comments, it is safer to listen rather than transmit if it's a serious event but for most normal disasters it's doubful that groups will be trying to DF your position, just use what radios you have set up to contact your family and friends. A cheap 25w mobile with a magmount antenna can live in the boot of your car for years and takes 2 minutes to plug in.