Lou de Give rattles off megahertzes and frequency numbers as easily as the rest of us recite the alphabet. He speaks the universal language of ham radio operators. That language comes in handy in an emergency. When electricity and telephones fail, hams can still communicate across the airwaves. The 65 members of the Saratoga Amateur Radio Association (SARA) are ready.
Last winter, when back-to-back storms turned local creeks into raging rivers, SARA members stationed at City Hall and at various locations throughout Saratoga relayed information to emergency crews and volunteers about water levels, bridge conditions, mudslides and road closures.
During the 1989 earthquake, when county communications were temporarily silenced, hams took over. During recent fires in the Saratoga hills, hams stood by, ready to help.
Sometimes SARA's role is more preventive. Every Halloween, for example, members are stationed at local schools, ready to report any intruders they see on the campus. Vandalism has gone way down since they started this practice.
The hams also assist in other ways. During Celebrate Saratoga!, they relayed information from one end of the Falcon Fun Run to the other, and during the community parade, they helped the organizers keep track of what was going on along the 1.7 miles from the start at Fruitvale Avenue to the end near Wildwood Park.
Coordinator is prepared
De Give, emergency coordinator for the club, insists the story is not about him, but about ham radio. But in Saratoga, it's difficult to separate the two. De Give, wearing a SARA baseball cap, his handie-talkie portable ham radio attached to his belt, is proud to show off SARA's emergency communications setup at City Hall, located within shouting distance of the city's Emergency Operations Center (EOC). The club has a similar setup at the fire station.
A bank of radios--144, 220 and 400 megahertz versions, an emergency services scanner, a laptop computer and printer are lined up ready for use. Operators can listen to truckers on citizens' band radios, contact the American Automobile Association directly and talk to officials and other hams in other cities and counties.
Cupboards underneath house powerful batteries that de Give checks every month to make sure that even if the city's telephone, faxes, computers and other forms of communication go out, the hams will still be able to talk to the outside world.
Out in the city, other hams communicate with the base station via home and car ham radios, as well as their own handie-talkies. De Give's handie-talkie receives 800 channels, he says, including police and fire bands.
While the radios are the main mode of communication, a Packet system connects them to computers that printout information in the form of countywide bulletins, as well as notes on radio callers and their frequencies.
The equipment at City Hall and the firehouse was provided with help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a generous donation from the Saratoga Rotary Club, de Give says. Originally housed in a "closet" at the Saratoga Senior Center, the new emergency communications center was built under de Give's supervision when the new City Hall was built several years ago.
Paula Reeves, who works in the city manager's office and oversees emergency services, coordinates the use of ham radio operators for the city. The hams, all volunteers, come whenever the city needs them, she says. They report to the EOC and branch out to their homes, the firehouse and city schools, which are all equipped with ham antennas. The SARA hams have been trained by de Give and other members of the club to handle emergencies within Saratoga and to interact with other hams at the county level through Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES).
"They're very beneficial," Reeves says. They add an extra avenue of communication and a source of information, as well as a backup to city communications.
In order to be ready for emergencies, the hams train and practice often. Someone is listening 24 hours a day, and they have a telephone tree set up to contact each other in emergencies.
Members check in
At their meetings, held the second Wednesday of the month at the firehouse, guest speakers teach the hams about emergency services. Recently, a county dispatcher told them the correct way to organize information when reporting an accident. Previously, a fire department spokesman explained how the 911 system works. The group also has taken field trips through the county communications center and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Once a week, members check in with a central station as part of a club-wide "net." De Give estimates that 25-30 hams call in during that time.
They also have regular simulated emergency tests. Last month, they used a smoke generator to simulate fires at the elementary schools. The hams' role was to communicate with the fire department on progress evacuating the schools. The kids were out in two minutes, and the schools were completely cleared in 15 minutes, de Give says.
During the drills, operators are trained to serve as net control operators, coordinating input from several sources at once. The hams learn not only the use of the equipment, but the lingo as well. Unlike police and fire professionals who rely on number codes, hams use plain English. Simple words like "copy," meaning they hear and understand what was said, or "traffic" meaning someone has information to transmit, pepper de Give's conversation.
The hams also learn to speak slowly and clearly and to spell out names using international phonetic code.
Today's modern radios make ham much more portable than in the past when the radios were big and heavy and not very mobile. The pocket-sized handie-talkies reach 50 miles or more with the help of "repeaters" scattered across the country.
Each members' equipment varies. De Give has radios at home, and he keeps his RV ready to go, with radio hookups and food for radio field days and emergencies.
Vice president John Glass notes that one can spend a few hundred dollars or tens of thousands on ham equipment.
Hams reach out
It's not all work and no play for the SARA members. Most started in Ham radio for fun. In fact, club president Hamilton Clark, who goes by the nickname Ham, suspects the term "ham" comes from the old theatrical term "hamming it up," showing off in front of an audience.
Clark became a ham through a high-school pal. The friend let Clark speak via his radio to Admiral Byrd's Antarctic expedition. That was it, he says; he was hooked.
Clark talks occasionally with a friend who is on a long cruise in his sailboat is currently on the Atlantic coast of Panama. Clark is able to provide news of his family and let the family know how the sailor is doing. A couple years ago, he was able to reach a family on a cruise through the Maritime Net to give them the sad news that their house had burned down.
He has talked to people in 108 different countries, Clark says, but is not as obsessed with logging long-distance contacts as other operators are. "Some are contest-oriented," he says. "They'll work a hundred countries over a weekend."
One guy bought property in the Grand Cayman Islands because it was such a good radio hub. "That's the extent to which some people will go," he says.
Clark, who is retired from GTE, has worked with radios all his life. Before and during World War II, he repaired radios for the Army Air Corps, and he has been a ham for more than 50 years.
De Give started as a citizens' band radio operator. When his daughter and her husband became hams, they talked him into trying it, too. Now he talks to his daughter on the radio every morning. She lives in Portola Valley, and it saves on phone bills.
An industrial engineer who worked on aircraft assembly during the war, de Give later worked for Hewlett-Packard. Like Clark, he is retired. A Georgia native, he still bears traces of the Old South in his speech.
John Glass, vice president of SARA, has been a ham for 21 years--most of his life. He got his first license in sixth grade. His science teacher at Redwood School had a radio club and helped him get started, he says. Glass has talked to other hams all over the world, including New Zealand, Australia, and South America.
Because Glass is blind, he has equipped his radio, a low-band transceiver that can pick up signals from around the world, with a computer to tell him the frequency, location and other information that he can't see. He's one of the club's best net controllers, de Give says. During the day, Glass provides technical support for Akenstone, a Sunnyvale firm that produces reading machines for the visually impaired.
Glass got his father into ham radio, and they talk several times a week on the radio, he says. Once the operator purchases his equipment, it doesn't cost anything to talk on the public airwaves, Glass notes; so, it's not unusual for family members to use ham instead of the telephone.
Members are licensed
Ham radio operators use low-frequency radio waves to communicate. They must be licensed by the Federal Communications Commission to go on the air. To get a license, operators must pass a written test administered by the Federal Communications Commission on basic electronics and on-the-air operating procedures. Licenses come at different levels: novice, technician, general, advanced and extra.
De Give and Clark are both advanced users. "Novices can't do beans," de Give says, but the advanced license allows them to use all the frequencies they need to communicate with hams all over the world. Glass has progressed to "Amateur Extra," the highest level of license available.
To get the extra designation, hams need to pass a test in Morse code at 18 words a minute, which de Give and Clark claim is quite difficult. Morse code used to be required for all ham licenses above the novice level, but the FCC removed that restriction in 1991.
Clark notes that people have "different fists," ways of sending code that are as distinct as their voices. During the war, U.S. Navy radio operators tracked German submarines by learning the different "fists" of the Morse code operators, he said.
Classes are offered for would-be ham operators to prepare for the tests. Contact the ARES net, WB6ADZ, on 146.116+ or telephone 255-9000 for lists of upcoming tests and classes. Many use books to study for the higher levels once they know the basics, but a class is a good way to get started, de Give notes.
Once on the air, the hams are polite, signing on and off with their call letters, waiting for others to finish speaking before they jump in. "We police our own," de Give says.
De Give is eager for every one of the 210 known ham operators in the city to be trained to participate in the city's emergency communications network. Of SARA's members, about 80 percent have day jobs, and he would like to find more people who are available during working hours.
Some hams join as families. Just as Glass has his father and Clark talks to his daughter via ham, de Give's wife, Bernice, is involved in the club and serves as its treasurer.
Club dues are only $5 a year. The fee primarily covers the cost of the newsletter, which de Give produces with his computer.
The club operates on the 144.4 frequency. To reach SARA on the telephone, call 973-8005.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, Wednesday, December 6, 1995.
©1995 Metro Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.