Sunday, August 5, 2018

Thailand Cave Rescue – The Ham Radio (and CQ) Connection



A 2001 CQ article by John Hey, G3TDZ (SK), inventor
of the "HeyPhone" radio used in the rescue of the boys'
soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand.
The world watched and waited a few months back while Thai Navy SEALs and others launched a massive effort to rescue a dozen young soccer players and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand. One of the tools that helped make it all possible, according to Newsline, was the HeyPhone cave radio, a specialized transceiver that operates on 87 kHz, a frequency at which it's possible to communicate through rock. 

The HeyPhone is named for its inventor, the late John Hey, G3TDZ, who was a cave rescue expert in England. Hey developed the HeyPhone in 2001, soon after he wrote an article for CQ, titled "Cave Radio in Britain" (CQ, January 2001, p. 26). In that article, he described a different communication device which operated using magnetic induction rather than traditional RF. It can be accessed (for a small fee) via the CQ archive on Hamcall.net at <www.hamcall.net/cq>.