Recruiting

This is probably the most difficult part. 🫤 How do you get the attention of your neighbors and propose something like this?

If your neighborhood has an established community watch, that's the best place to start. Contact your community watch leader and ask them to send something out to the participants describing this effort. Feel free to point them to our website for the basic ideas. If even a few interested people respond, that's success. 😀 Remember, this can be effective even when only a portion of the neighborhood gets involved. You'll never get everyone. If you don't have community watch but do have some other kind of neighborhood association (e.g. HOA) that meets regularly, use that as an opportunity to float the idea. Same goes for social media sites where your neighbors congregate. For example, a Facebook page dedicated to your neighborhood is a great place to go. Note that some social media sites may have too broad an audience.

If your neighborhood has none of these options, it's then either word-of-mouth with the people you know and hope that it spreads (probably not likely) or posting flyers around the neighborhood and/or dropping them off at each residence. Keep in mind that it's illegal to put something in someone's mailbox, so DO NOT DO THIS. You can also try putting a sign in your yard with a few quick words to catch the attention of folks passing by, along with an email address or QR code where you can be reached.

Even if you do get the word out, expect that many people will simply ignore it. 😐 As mentioned on the Overview page, many people believe cell phones are the answer to everything and refuse to consider anything else. Others won't respond because it's outside of their bubble and is not something they have to do. So the only responses you're likely to get will be from people who are likely good candidates because they can see beyond what's in front of them.

Equipment Selection

This is much easier than recruiting. 😁 Basically any FRS radio (or GMRS if you have a license to use one) will work, and there's typically no special advantage between one brand and the next. Also, it's not necessary for everyone in the neighborhood to have the same model. Having said that, it may be advantageous to coordinate your efforts and encourage everyone to get the same thing, just for consistency.

FRS radios can be purchased in local stores like Walmart and, of course, ordered online from a long list of vendors. Each manufacturer will amp up their radio's features and make misleading claims about their effective range. But in the end, each radio is limited by what the FCC dictates so they will all tend to have similar performance.

If you truly want a license-free radio, you MUST purchase one that is truly FRS. In order to claim long distance transmissions by their radios, manufacturers usually sell GMRS radios with a bit higher transmit power capability than FRS. Often one has to examine the fine print to distinguish between GMRS and FRS radios being sold. If you want a little more power and opt to use GMRS, that's fine, but you must have a GMRS license to legally operate one. GMRS licenses are not difficult or expensive to obtain, but FRS works just fine for the purpose of a neighborhood network and there's zero need to mess with obtaining a license. FRS also tends to be less expensive.

Procedures

This is where your goals for your neighborhood come into play, and it's up to you to determine what those goals are. Once you have some folks ready to participate, here are some considerations:

• What will you use the network for?

  • Emergency situations only?

  • Reports of in-progress suspicious or criminal activity?

  • Reports of missing family members/pets?

  • Maintaining communication during severe weather?

  • General chit-chat to build neighbor relations?

  • Other ideas?

• How will you identify individuals over the radio?

• Will you encourage participants to leave their radios on all the time, or only on a well-defined schedule?

• What channel(s) will you use, with what CTCSS/DCS code? Will you have different channels for different purposes?

• Do you intend to have a liaison to work with networks in nearby neighborhoods?

• Will your network procedure be built on an open communication model where everyone is free to talk with anyone else, or will it follow a "directed net" model where a single person controls the flow of communication? Or both, but in different situations?

  • Much of this will depend on how many people you have participating. More people on the air will require more control, otherwise you end up with the chaos of everyone trying to talk to everyone else at the same time.

  • The circumstances of the moment will also factor in. Casual situations really need a flexible protocol where everyone is free to converse as you would in a group discussion. Emergency situations may demand more control.

  • Keep in mind that controlled nets are specifically started and ended, so they are not suitable for situations where radios are left on in "standby" mode for long periods of time so that anyone can jump in at any time to share real-time information.

• If your neighborhood is too large for radios to reliably communicate from one side to the opposite side, you may need to designate one or more people in the middle to relay messages when needed.

• Do you plan to have regular meetings (could be in-person, online, on-the-air)?

• How do you want to handle training?

• How will you identify and add new neighbors to the network?

• Other concerns specific to your neighborhood?

Discuss these and other factors with your neighbors and collectively develop a document that describes how your network will operate. This can then be shared with all participants and updated as needed. You can use these Sample Procedures as a starting point. And remember that Rocket City REACT is here to help. 🙂

Training

While it doesn't have to be complex, some amount of training is essential to ensure your network is ready when you need it. Ideally, training should be ongoing to periodically refresh everyone on what to do. A simple approach could be to just hold a monthly "meeting" on the air to give everyone a chance to dust off, charge up, and actually use their radio. Very active neighborhoods could opt to do this more often than monthly.

If the procedures you adopt include a variety of situations, it's best to train on each of those so that everyone is familiar with what to do. For example, if your procedures are different when severe weather hits compared to monitoring the neighborhood for suspicious activity, people will be confused and unprepared for severe weather if your training has only focused on what to do when suspicious activity is observed. In this case, having regular training (e.g. monthly) that rotates between different scenarios works well to keep everyone prepared.

If you have willing participants but encounter resistance to repeated training activities, just remember that ANY training is better than none. Do what works best for your neighborhood.