I decided to to Idaho to see the total eclipse in August 2017, as did a couple hundred thousand other people. Getting from Salt Lake City to Pocatello was a piece of cake, getting to Sugar City in the middle of the night before the eclipse was also a piece of cake. The eclipse itself was almost indescribable. Getting back was CRAZY (but was expected). We were stuck in traffic for 8 hours! We had mostly prepared making sure we had plenty of food, water and gas to make it a couple of days if needed, so an 8 hour drive was not too bad, though it really seemed to be something the likes of that Idaho had never seen. We spend the better part of 3 hours in Blackfoot, ID itself going about 8 blocks. It was so slow I was able to get out of the car and walk around town, finally catching up right before 91 started to pick up again.
Preparations
In planning for the trip, I brought my 2m/440 HT and a set of FRS radios. We were camping so I expected to be well out of cell phone range and wanted both types of radios to talk to people in camp / while driving who didn’t have radio licenses, as well as farther out.
This was a rare case where 146.52 was active and came in handy. Once we were stuck on the road I put up my mini mag mount (UT-106UV Dual Band Whip $12 from Amazon) and my Yaesu VX-8R. I had preprogramed simplex and repeater channels before I left on our trip and they came in handy. The most used were 146.52 and some of the linked repeaters. Net control was great and was taking traffic reports from around the area. This in combination with Waze/Google maps showed that things were bad all over. Waze and Google Maps were overwhelmed and their instructions and timings were not to be believed. Everything was bumper to bumper and stopped. We eventually just got way off the main roads and things cleared up.
Things to think of in the future:
- Pre-programming was a great thing to do, I heard many people asking for other repeater frequencies
- 146.52 was very active and local, I heard general travelers plus caravans using the frequency
- In camp the day before the eclipse, I could raise repeaters but never got a reply from anyone.
- In camp, 146.52 was mostly dead, but I heard one person from Pocatello calling but I could never raise them
- My cheap mag mount was great, feels like a toy but worked well enough with an adapter with my VX-8R and stayed on the car even at 80 mph
- We picked a hybrid as our rental car. It averaged over 40 MPG which really put me at ease with all the concerns about traffic and gas stations running out of gas. We saw many cars with jerry cans strapped to their back. The car reported a range of over 500 miles which I believe. We returned the car with plenty of gas.
- The FRS radios were nice since I could take a hike and keep in touch with camp
- I thought about using APRS but it was one more thing to carry. I wish I did, but didn’t really have a chance to look or play around with it anyway even though we were stuck in the car for hours, we mostly talked and played games. Would have been interested to use for ham to ham messaging for conditions
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