PACE emergency communications worksheet — Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency. Saves locally on your device. Works offline after your first visit.
A PACE plan lists four communications layers — Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency — so a cell outage does not leave a household or incident team silent. This worksheet saves on your device and maps each layer onto ICS-205 channels.
ICS-205 link: Each PACE layer should map to at least one row on ICS-205 (channel, tone, assignment). COML delivers both — see COML hub.
PACE is the emcomm habit of documenting four ways to pass traffic before you need them. Primary is usually cell or internet voice. Alternate is often GMRS simplex or a family channel. Contingency is a ham repeater, NETNRC-linked machine, or Meshtastic mesh. Emergency is last-ditch simplex (146.520 MHz) or HF NVIS.
Fill this planner at the kitchen table, not after the towers go dark. Name the property or incident, write who holds which radio, and copy frequencies into ICS-205 so net control sees the same plan. East Tennessee households typically put NETNRC GMRS (462.600 PL 88.5 in the Johnson City area) on Alternate or Contingency and 2m 146.805 PL 203.5 on Contingency for SKYWARN District 7.
The form auto-saves in this browser. Export a text copy into the go-bag. For ranches and staffed acreage, start with the free assessment on downloads and the PACE examples page.
See also: Deployment workflow · Property consulting
Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency — four layers of communications so one failure does not leave you silent.
Before deployment, at home base, or when staging for an incident — not after comms have already failed.
No. Families, ranches, and businesses use the same four-layer worksheet. ARES and RACES teams add ICS form numbers; households add names and radio models.
This tool stores a copy in the browser. Also print it or save the .txt export on a phone that will be in the go-bag.
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