[ Off-Grid Communications: When Cell and Internet Go Down ]

Cell service and the internet feel like the weather: always there, right up
until they aren't. Both run on grid power, towers and fiber, and a bad enough
day takes out all three at once. On Maui in August 2023, that's what happened.

This page is my plan for that day. It pulls the radio and mesh guides already
on this site into one place, sorts them by the job each one does, and adds
what the Lahaina fire showed about which systems keep working. It's the
connectivity part of my living off-grid notes, and like those, it'll
grow as I build more of it out.

The short version: have more than one way to talk, make sure at least one of
them doesn't need the internet, keep it charged, and write the plan down.

On August 8, 2023, a wind-driven fire destroyed most of Lahaina and killed
102 people. I'm not going to retell that day here. What I want to pull out is
narrower: what happened to communications, because it's the hardest
real-world test of everything on this page.

The network went first. West Maui's fiber was strung on the same power
poles that burned. Hawaiian Electric said about 400 of its 750 poles there
were damaged or destroyed, while fiber buried underground came through
(Civil Beat). By August 13, 19 of the 21 cell sites from Kapalua to
Olowalu were still out, and the FCC's status report noted 911 calls not
completing because the Lahaina phone switch was cut off. The warning sign
came six months earlier, when a single fiber break in Lahaina knocked out
phone and internet from Lahaina to Kapalua (Maui Now).

The warnings rode the same network. Most of the county's alerts went out
as Wireless Emergency Alerts, which need working cell towers. In the
Fire Safety Research Institute's report for the state Attorney General,
62 of 71 residents interviewed got no county text. The outdoor sirens weren't
sounded, and the same report notes they rely on a cellular connection that
may not be there when cell service is down.

What stayed up was radio with its own power. Maui's AM and FM stations
kept broadcasting. The county's police and fire radio system stayed fully
working; its problems were crowded channels and police and fire not being
able to hear each other, not a dead network.

Ham radio kept running, with gaps. Hawaii ARES handled its traffic on the
state's repeaters, with HF nets on 7.088 MHz (ARRL). KH6COM, the
countywide system most of my Maui channels use, has emergency backup power
and stayed on the air in Central Maui, on Haleakalā, Lānaʻi and Molokaʻi. But
the repeaters at the Whaler and the Kaʻanapali Beach Hotel lost their links
because, in the ARES bulletin's words, "fiber optics cables burned." People in
Lahaina were pointed to the Puʻu O Hoku Ranch repeater on the east end of
Molokaʻi, reachable across the channel by radio alone. Two internet-linked
Lahaina machines were listed offline, including WH6FQM on 444.800, my NAPILI
channel (ARES bulletin).

GMRS went down. I was there during the fires. The fiber links the GMRS
repeaters depended on burned with everything else, and GMRS went with them.
You won't find that in the official reports, which don't mention GMRS at
all, so take it as what I saw. It fits the pattern, though: whatever leaned
on the fiber failed. Between the two, ham held up better.

Ham didn't save the day by itself. The same bulletins called contact with
Lahaina very limited, partly because so few hams lived there. That's a lesson
too: a radio system is only as good as the number of people on it who know
how to use it.

What I took from it:

  - Everything riding on that fiber (cell, 911 routing, internet, phone
    alerts, the GMRS repeaters and the ham repeater links) failed together.
  - What kept working was radio with its own power: broadcast stations, the
    county's radio system, and ham repeaters on backup power.
  - A repeater that loses its internet link still works as a repeater. Plan
    around the local machine, not the network behind it.
  - You need the people. More licensed hams in Lahaina would have meant more
    messages getting out of Lahaina.

No single radio does everything. Here's how I sort them:

  Job                       Tool                       License
  Hear what's happening     AM/FM radio, NOAA weather  none
  Talk to family nearby     FRS radios                 none
  Talk across town          GMRS radios and repeaters  GMRS, no exam
  Reach across the island   ham radio, 2 m and 70 cm   Technician
  Text with no towers       Meshtastic (LoRa mesh)     none
  Reach off the island      satellite messenger or SOS subscription

Everything in the top five works with no outside infrastructure at all, as
long as you have power. That's the point.

The rules, briefly, for the US:

  FRS     no license. 2 W on channels 1-7 and 15-22, half a watt on
          8-14, on radios certified for FRS.
  GMRS    a license but no exam: $35, good for 10 years, and it
          covers your immediate family. Up to 50 W on the main channels
          from a mobile or base radio, plus repeaters. GMRS radios only.
  MURS    no license, 2 W, five VHF channels, certified radios only.
  Ham     a license with an exam. Technician covers 2 m and 70 cm, and
          any radio you like.

This is the lesson I keep coming back to. A lot of systems that look like radio
are really radio at the edges and internet in the middle:

  - Cell service. The tower is radio; everything behind it is fiber.
  - Linked repeaters. Lots of ham repeaters are tied together over the
    internet (IRLP, EchoLink, AllStar and the like). When the link goes,
    the repeater itself keeps working; you just lose the next island.
    That's what happened to ham repeaters in Lahaina.
  - GMRS repeaters that lean on the internet. On paper a GMRS repeater may
    use the internet only for remote control, not to relay traffic, and the
    FCC cited a Georgia network for linking in 2026 (DA 26-821). In
    practice, plenty depend on it anyway, and in Lahaina the GMRS went down
    with the fiber. Ask how a repeater is powered and linked before you put
    it in your plan.
  - Meshtastic's long lines. On my Hawaii mesh page, the lines between
    islands are MQTT over the internet, not LoRa across the channel. In an
    outage, each island's local mesh keeps passing messages, and the
    inter-island links go dark.
  - Phone apps for radios, maps and messaging that need a server.

What keeps working is plain radio: two radios talking directly (simplex), a
repeater on a hilltop with its own battery or solar, and a mesh of nodes that
each have their own power. When I set something up for emergencies, I ask
one question: if the internet and the grid are both gone, what's left?

I carry two handhelds, both covered in their own guides:

  Baofeng UV-5R Mini      the simple one: color screen, USB-C charging,
                          phone app programming
  Quansheng UV-K5         the one I tinker with: patched firmware with a
                          spectrum analyzer

Both carry the same statewide Hawaii channel list, built from the Hawaii
repeater coordination list, so either one picks up where the other left off.
Each has a printable cheat sheet (UV-5R Mini, UV-K5) to keep with the radio.

What matters for an emergency plan: both are ham radios. They'll listen
to FRS, GMRS, MURS, marine and weather, but they can't legally transmit on
FRS, GMRS or MURS, because those services only allow radios certified for
them under FCC Part 95, and neither of these is. So:

  - If your family plan runs on FRS or GMRS, buy FRS or GMRS radios for it.
    A ham handheld is a great receiver for that plan, not a transmitter.
  - If your plan runs on ham, everyone who talks needs a license. The
    Technician exam is 35 questions, and on Maui you can take it over Zoom
    (details in the Baofeng guide).
  - Either way, program the plan's channels into every radio you own, and
    set the ones you can't transmit on as receive only.

Why ham for the long haul: the repeaters are coordinated, many sit on
hilltops with their own backup power, and there are trained volunteers whose
whole job is passing traffic when everything else is down.

Meshtastic is the piece that needs no license and no infrastructure. Small
LoRa radios, about the price of a dinner out, pair with your phone over
Bluetooth and pass text messages and GPS positions from node to node. Every
node relays for the others, so a node on a ridge can carry messages for a
whole valley.

It's slow, text only and short on range at ground level, and it's still the
thing I'd hand to family first, because it works like the messaging app they
already know. My guides cover it end to end:

  Build a node             the board, antenna, solar power and settings
  Mobile network           a group mesh on the move, with tracking
  RF coverage planning     modeling where a node will actually reach
  Hawaii mesh              the local meshes here and how to join
  Cheat sheet              the settings on one printable page

Two things I'd do before you need it: put one node up high on solar power so
it relays for everyone around it, and set up a private channel for your group
so your messages aren't mixed into the public one.

In an outage, text beats voice. A message waits until someone is there to
read it, it gets through on a signal too weak for voice, and it doesn't tie
up a channel while everyone listens. Here's every way I know to send text
with no cell network, easiest first:

  Meshtastic        type in an app and it hops node to node. No license.
                    It's the section above.
  FRS/GMRS texting  some certified FRS and GMRS radios can send a short
                    text or a GPS position to another specific radio. The
                    FRS and GMRS rules allow it, at most once every
                    30 seconds.
  Satellite         inReach, ZOLEO and phone satellite SOS, below.
  Ham digital       a ham handheld plus a phone or laptop can send text
                    on 2 m and 70 cm: NBEMS, APRS and Winlink. Needs a
                    license, like any ham transmitting.

Acoustic coupling: no cable needed. This is the oldest trick in the
book, the same idea as the old modems you pressed a telephone handset into.
An app on the phone turns your text into tones, and you hold the phone's
speaker near the radio's mic and key up. On the other end, a phone listens to
that radio's speaker and turns the tones back into text. No cable, no
interface and no drivers, so it works with my Baofeng and my K5 just as they
are.

What makes it work:

  - Pick a mode built for it. On FM, NBEMS is the standard: fldigi and
    flmsg on a laptop, or AndFlmsg on Android. MT63-2KL is the usual
    mode, because it shrugs off the hiss and room noise an acoustic link
    adds. ARES groups use it to pass forms like the ICS-213 message.
  - APRSdroid on Android does APRS over the speaker and mic too (its
    AFSK mode). APRS packets are fussier about audio than MT63, so expect
    some misses.
  - Find a quiet room, hold the phone an inch or two from the mic, and set
    the volume around the middle. Too loud distorts the tones; too soft and
    the other end can't decode them.
  - Turn off ringtones and notifications first. Anything the phone plays
    while you're keyed up goes out over the air.
  - Key up by hand, or use VOX if you've set it up, and keep the radio's
    transmit time limit (TOT on the K5) in mind on long messages.

A cable is the upgrade. A cable from the radio's 2-pin jack to the phone,
or to a USB sound card interface on a laptop, takes the room out of the
link. A Bluetooth TNC goes one better and talks to apps with no audio
fiddling at all.

Three ham systems worth knowing:

  NBEMS     radio to radio, no infrastructure. Good for passing a
            message or a form to a station you can reach directly or
            through a repeater.
  APRS      short messages and positions on 144.390 MHz. Digipeaters
            relay packets across the island, and internet gateways
            forward them when the internet is up.
  Winlink   email over radio. A gateway forwards your mail over the
            internet, so in a local outage you want a gateway outside the
            affected area (HF reaches the mainland) or Winlink's radio-only
            peer-to-peer mode. On a handheld it needs a cable and a sound
            card interface or a TNC.

The K5 has one more trick. UVMOD's text messenger app sends short messages
between K5s, typed on the keypad like an old flip phone. UVMOD fits only one
app, and mine has the spectrum analyzer in that slot instead (more in the
K5 guide).

Ham text follows ham rules: your callsign goes in every transmission,
nothing gets encrypted, and it's not for business.

When cell and internet are out, broadcast radio is how official information
reaches you, and it kept working through the fire. The county now tells
people to keep a battery or hand-crank radio for exactly this.

  EAS primary stations   Maui's Emergency Alert System primaries in the
                         state plan are KMVI on 900 AM and KAOI on 1110 AM.
  County stations        the county's 2026 outage guidance lists KPOA,
                         KJKS, KJMD, KLHI, KMVI (900 AM) and KNUI (550 AM)
                         for updates, each on FM too.
  NOAA Weather Radio     WWG75 on Haleakalā, 162.400 MHz, covers Maui,
                         Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi. It's WX2 in my channel lists.
  Ham repeaters          no license needed to listen. When a net is
                         running, you hear what's actually happening.

Any cheap AM/FM radio covers the first two, and both of my handhelds receive
FM broadcast, weather and the repeaters. AM broadcast is the gap: neither
handheld does it, so a small AM/FM radio belongs in the kit.

The county's guidance also says that if 911 doesn't go through in West Maui,
go to the Lahaina Police Station on Honoapiʻilani Highway. Find the
equivalent where you live before you need it.

Satellite is the last layer: reaching someone off the island when every
local system is down, or calling for help from a trail.

  Phone satellite SOS    iPhone 14 and newer and Pixel 9 and newer (not the
                         9a) can text emergency services by satellite in
                         the US. Apple's is free for two years after
                         activation; Google's page covers the Pixel.
                         Neither names Hawaii, so test it where you live.
  Garmin inReach         two-way satellite texting and SOS over Iridium.
                         Needs a subscription.
  ZOLEO                  the same idea on Iridium, from about $20 a month.
  Starlink               real internet anywhere with open sky, as long as it
                         has power. After the fire, local groups had about
                         500 terminals running across Maui.

These cost money every month, which is why they sit at the bottom of my
plan. For a hiker or anyone alone in the backcountry, one of them should be
near the top.

Every option on this page fails the same way: a dead battery. A few habits
keep mine going:

  - Keep every radio charged, and top them up on a schedule, not when you
    remember. A handheld that sat in a drawer for six months is a paperweight.
  - Carry a spare battery for each handheld, and a power bank. The UV-5R
    Mini charges straight from USB-C; the UV-K5 charges in its desk cradle
    (some versions add USB-C), so know how each of yours charges away from
    the wall.
  - Save power on the air: transmit on low power when it gets through, keep
    transmissions short, and agree on check-in times so radios can sit off or
    on standby between them.
  - Meshtastic nodes sip power. In decent sun, a small panel and an 18650
    cell can keep a relay node up for good; the node guide sizes it.

For bigger power, the rest of the site has the details: solar basics,
a battery pack calculator, running gear off a power tool battery, and the
power section of my off-grid notes.

Radios don't help if nobody knows which channel to be on. The plan is the part
people skip, and it's the part that matters most. I use the PACE layout the
military and emergency services use: four ways to reach each other, tried in
order.

  Primary       cell and internet, while they last
  Alternate     Meshtastic text on our private channel
  Contingency   radio on a set channel at set times: FRS or GMRS for
                family, a ham simplex frequency for the licensed folks
  Emergency     a ham repeater or net, or satellite SOS

Then put it on paper, because your phone may be dead or useless:

  - The channels and frequencies, with tones, for every step above.
  - When to listen: for example, the first five minutes of every hour, so
    everyone's radio can stay off the rest of the time to save battery.
  - Where to meet if you can't reach anyone, and a second place if the first
    one isn't safe.
  - One contact off the island who everyone checks in with. Long-distance
    calls and texts sometimes get through when local ones don't.

Laminate it, put a copy in every go-bag and car, and practice. Try the whole
plan once with the cell phones off. Something will be wrong, and it's much
better to find out on a quiet Sunday.

Ham nets are good practice too. Checking in to a weekly net teaches you
radio habits, and it means the people who run the emergency nets already
know your callsign.

What's the best radio for emergencies?
There isn't one. For family with no licenses, FRS radios. For a group that
wants repeaters and more range, GMRS, which takes a $35 license and no exam. To
reach across an island, ham radio with a Technician license. For texting with
no towers, Meshtastic. Have at least two, and make sure one of them doesn't
depend on the internet.

What happened to communications in the Lahaina fire?
Fiber strung on the power poles burned along with them, and by August 13, 19 of
the 21 cell sites serving West Maui were still out. 911 routing, internet and
phone alerts went with it. Broadcast radio, the county's police and fire radio
system and ham repeaters on backup power kept working, though repeaters that
depended on fiber for their links lost those links.

Did GMRS work during the Maui fires?
Not in my experience. I was there, and the GMRS repeaters went down when the
fiber links they depended on burned. The official reports don't mention GMRS at
all; the repeater outages they do document are ham repeaters that lost their
fiber links, while ham repeaters on backup power kept working.

Did ham radio work during the Maui fires?
Yes, with gaps. Hawaii ARES ran traffic on the state's repeaters and HF nets on
7.088 MHz, and the KH6COM countywide system stayed on the air on backup power.
Some repeaters lost their internet links when fiber burned, and contact with
Lahaina was very limited because so few hams lived there.

Where do I get emergency information on Maui without cell service?
A battery or hand-crank radio. Maui's Emergency Alert System primary stations
are KMVI on 900 AM and KAOI on 1110 AM, the county also lists several FM
stations for updates, and NOAA Weather Radio is on 162.400 MHz from Haleakala.

Can I use my Baofeng or Quansheng on GMRS in an emergency?
They make good GMRS receivers, but they aren't certified for GMRS, so they
aren't legal GMRS transmitters. If your plan uses GMRS, use GMRS radios for it.
The ham emergency provision, 47 CFR 97.403, is written for licensed amateur
stations when normal communications aren't available. It's a last resort, not a
plan.

Can I send text messages without cell service?
Yes. Meshtastic sends text with no license and no towers. Some certified FRS
and GMRS radios can send a short text to another specific radio. Satellite
messengers and phone satellite SOS reach off the island. Licensed hams can send
text over a handheld with NBEMS, APRS or Winlink.

What is acoustic coupling in ham radio?
Sending digital data through the air instead of a cable: an app on a phone or
laptop plays the tones, the radio's mic picks them up, and on the other end a
phone listens to the radio's speaker and decodes them. NBEMS with the MT63-2KL
mode is the usual choice on FM because it tolerates the noise. Silence the
phone's notifications first, or they go out over the air.

Does Meshtastic need a license?
No. In the US it runs on the unlicensed 915 MHz band. Licensed hams can also
run it in a ham mode with more power, but then messages can't be encrypted.

What is a PACE communications plan?
Four ways to reach each other, tried in order: Primary, Alternate, Contingency
and Emergency. Mine goes cell, then Meshtastic, then radio on a set channel at
set times, then a ham repeater or satellite SOS. Write it down, because your
phone may not work when you need it.