My family spent four days in Mt Rainier National Park around the Labor Day weekend. It was a good time. The area is beautiful. The campsite it a great place. We stayed at the White River campground. What makes this place special is that it is a first come first serve campground. Other campgrounds take reservations six months in advance. What this means is that the entire campground is full when you look online. You cannot get a spot. If you do show up, you will see many open sites that that were reserved, but the people who reserve the site never show up. Our campground does not do this. It is first come first served. It really is nice to be able to show up on the spot and camp on one of the sites. There is risk involved that the campsite is going to be full. Showing up in the middle of the week during a rain storm insured that we had our pick of a site.
This year my youngest daughter and I traveled to the campsite ahead of my oldest daughter. She needed to leave a few hours later than us. Since there is a remote possibility that the site may be full, how can you communicate it when there is no phone service at the National Park? That is what happened this year. We had a few options. Secure our favorite spot, find another spot, or go to an entirely different campground if the entire place is full. I could not imagine my daughter trying to find us if we went to an entirely different campsite.
Luckily this year we secured a site. We were able to send an SMS (text) message to my daughter’s phone that we are in our favorite spot. How is it possible to do with without phone service? This is where technology and camping come together. We brought along an amateur radio and a laptop. Using these we were able to use Winlink RMS Express to send an email to a SMS gateway.
Message: We are in the same place as last year. See you soon. No rain. Please reply receipt of message.
Ten minutes later I checked for a reply.
Reply: On our way.
Here is how it was done. In one instance, I tuned the radio to the 30 meter band (10 MHz) and transmitted a data signal to a remote radio station with an internet connected computer. The radio signal traveled 1300 km from Mount Rainier Washington to the KE7XO node in Las Vegas Nevada. I was transmitting 10 watts of power. This is very low power for radio transmission. My laptop and the remote computer exchanged information and authentication commands. The messages were relayed. Transmitting on HF frequencies (30 MHz or lower) is slow. The speed of transmission is 300 baud. This is glacially slow by today’s broadband standards. It may have been possible to transmit on VHF (144 Mhz) at 1200 baud, but the nearest VHF node was over 50 km away and out of line of site. HF radio can reach almost anywhere on the planet. VHF and UHF are limited to line of site, so they were unreachable from the campsite.
The total radio time was about 5 minutes. I waited about 10 minutes between my transmission and my daughter’s reply. During that wait, I powered down the laptop and radio to conserve battery charge. It was worth it the wait. Had I needed to phone in our location, it would have been necessary to drive to an area with cell phone reception. The closest place is 45 minutes away (Crystal Mountain resort). We were still putting items in the tent and preparing for dinner. A 90 minute round trip would have put our set up at risk since the nighttime hours were approaching.
In today’s text message focused society, it is important to realize that a text message will be answered almost immediately, while an email may go unnoticed for days. Keep this in mind. Look up email to sms gateways to learn how to send an email to a phone as a text message. In my case I sent a message to my daughter’s Sprint phone. Example: 15558675309@messaging.sprintpcs.com.
The communications set up is pretty simple.
- Amateur Radio License (General or higher license is needed if HF services are used)
- Laptop Running Winlink RMS Express
- Tigertronics Signalink USB Soundcard for Winmor Protocol
- Yaesu HF Capable Radio
- Cabling
- Wires for Dipole antenna
- Painter’s pole and rope for an antenna mast.
- Battery Power
- Optionally a GPS can be used to post a location report.
Most of the time the radio and the computer were off. Each afternoon I would check and send a few messages. I let my parents know that we were having fun and I relayed a message that my daughter was going to miss out on a speed skating practice. We spent most of our time enjoying nature with the help of a little technology.
Some might ask, “Why the technological devices during a camping trip?” They help us enjoy our time. In the case of the communications gear, it is like a stove or a flashlight. It is a tool. Additionally it presented an opportunity to see if it was possible to use the radio equipment in a non-emergency situation. I enjoyed seeing that I had better reception on 30 and 20 meters than I do at home. I spent a little bit of time listening to some shortwave broadcasts as well. I did not bring my microphone with me. Most of the time I use my radio strictly for data transmissions.
I have been a licensed radio operator since 2010. By most standards, this is a short period of time. My observation is that people view the radio service as a hobby to enjoy. I am glad that it brings joy to their lives. I use amateur radio as a means to communicate when other forms of electronic communication are not available. There is joy in making that contact in a situation where no other option is available — self reliance. If there was cell service at the campsite, the radio equipment would have stayed at home waiting for the next big windstorm.
This post illustrates that Winlink RMS Express has its uses outside of emergency communications and hobby use. It served as a true utility during our trip.
If this is interesting to you, research some of the aspects of Winlink at Winlink.org. There are a lot of uses for a system like this in everyday life. You can view a short demonstration of the radio at the campsite in the video link below. Thank you for reading my blog post about this subject.
