From the Havasu City SkyWarn Group:

Emergency power & antenna setup

This has happened to me more then once: I am sitting in my house, outside is a major thunderstorm, I have disconnected my outside antennas to prevent lightening from taking out my radios. Then the power goes out, I check the phones, but they are out also.

How do you communicate with the outside world when any or all of these events happen? Emergency power and inside antennas. All you need is a regulated power supply, a car battery (or ideally a deep cycle marine battery), a mag mount antenna, a few fuses, and a metal area or piece at least 12 inches by 12 inches.

The power supply should be adequate to run your radios off of, it should be filtered to prevent ac hum. A solar panel or battery charger could also be used, but chargers should be filtered to prevent ac hum. A Deep cycle marine battery or several in series works best, the more batteries you use, or the bigger the batteries, the longer you will have power in an outage.

Any good mag mount antenna will suffice. The metal should ideally be at least 12" x 12", a trash can lid, piece of sheet metal, or any other metal area or piece of metal that the mag mount will stick to will do.

You can hook your radios directly to the battery(s), have the power supply connected to the battery(s) to keep them charged while in normal use, use fuses where appropriate.

If you can get your communication across with low power, do so to conserve battery power during outages.

The antenna should be mounted, on your metal surface, as high inside your radio room as possible, and appropriate measures should be taken to avoid stray RF radiation exposure in your house/radio room. An antenna switch makes it easier to switch to your inside antenna(s) in a storm, but complete disconnection of all outside antennas is still recommended.

In the case of the repeater(s) in your area being down, you can often communicate to others on the output frequency of the repeater, but be sure to make it clear that the repeater is down and that you are on simplex on the output frequency. After making your contact there, it is best to QSY to another simplex frequency in case anyone else needs to make use of the repeater's output frequency.

After a quick test of your inside antenna's coverage, you will be set for almost any situation.

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GOOD ADVICE!

Stan - KC7CJS
Oro Valley