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Mastering Emergency Communication: From Ham Radio to Cutting-Edge Alternatives 2-28-25 by John Rush
SPEAKER 09 :
this is ready radio preparing you to be ready for anything now here’s your survival guide for ready radio john rush all right good afternoon denver and beyond i’m your preparedness pastor the modern day noah pastor bill anderson and i’m today i’m filling in for john it is live today february 20 28th i almost couldn’t see almost the 29th but There’s only 28 days in February, and tomorrow is March 1st already. I can’t believe it. But, hey, we invite you to call in 303-477-5600 or text 307-200-8222. And we have a special guest with us today. We have Paul with us who has over 30-plus years in emergency communications. All right, you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, Paul?
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, Bill. Thanks for having me over. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invite. Well, I’ve been involved in different types of emergency communications since, well, around 1981 when I got my amateur radio license. And before that, we were all running around with CB radios. So I’m not sure we were doing any emergency communications. Since that time, I’ve been involved with several amateur radio clubs, and nearly every single one of them has been in one way, shape, or form focused on emergency communications. That, and I spent about seven years over at the University of Denver managing some of their emergency communications as well. So, yeah, it’s a great time to be involved in emergency comms.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, for sure. I remember the CBs. I still have one in my motorhome. And it’s a little disappointing because when we go on road trips and stuff, it’s like nobody uses Channel 19 much anymore. I don’t see as much activity as I remember as a kid. So this station and this show is all about preparedness and being ready and things of that nature. So how does radios play a role in that?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I think it plays a role in several ways. First of all, you can actually contact and talk to other people without being connected to the Internet, without having a cell phone. a lot of people don’t understand that uh… even though a lot of our systems today are connected both amateur and otherwise they are connected to the internet for different types of reasons but when it comes right down to it uh… you can throw up a wire in the tree turn on a 10-watt radio, and you can communicate all over the world. And with shorter-range communications, you can do the same thing with systems that are not tied into the Internet with battery backup and using radios that you charge ahead of time. You’ve got to be prepared. But, yeah, there’s a lot of different options for using radios for emergency communications.
SPEAKER 09 :
And there’s a lot of people that are like-minded that participate in this activity. So you could call and hopefully have somebody on the air that can give you a weather report or maybe a condition or if you have a natural disaster, tell you what’s going on or things of that nature. And you practice these things?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, we do. I’m with the Parker Radio Association, which we can talk about here in a little bit. But I’ll tell you an interesting story. We had about 150 members before COVID. And I was concerned how the club was going to weather the COVID storm. When we got finished with COVID, we had close to 300 members. So nearly everybody that we added as club members died. had some serious concerns about them being able to communicate in emergency situations. And although we had focused on that as a club previously, we made a commitment to make it a major part of our focus and started to set up different types of training exercises and and training classes that would allow people to understand a little bit more about how you use radio communications in an emergency because you just don’t buy a radio today and have a weather emergency in six months and turn it on and expect it to work and know where to go and know who to ask for help. So we practice this on a regular basis. And actually this year we have instituted our emergency calm weather net, I think, four different times during weather events. And so that’s actually getting on the air on many different systems and radio systems and frequencies. And we test our systems. Do they work? People turn their radio on and find out their battery wasn’t charged, so they learned a lesson. But you have to practice this stuff. It’s not something that just happens if you don’t take time to understand what you’re wanting to accomplish.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, that’s something I say over and over and over again here when I’m with John and in my classes and just people I talk to all the time. It’s like you have to practice this stuff. You don’t have it in the box or have it on the shelf and then go, oh, when the event happens, I’ll figure it out. In fact, Paul, that’s what led me to get into ham radio. I’ve kind of shared my story with you a little bit. And by the way, Paul has helped me out tremendously. I am still learning all of this stuff. And the Parker Radio Club has been great. They have classes. They’ll come alongside you. They’ll really help you out to not only advance the the hobby and the awareness of, of this hobby, but you know, it, it kind of benefits everybody when we, when we all know a little bit more and a little bit more prepared, but I say this all the time, Hey, you got to practice it. And so I was told get radios. And so I went out in my, from a, from a friend of mine, he said, Hey, get all these radios. And they were GRMS. And then the ones he got also had the ability to have the ham. And so come to find out now after my talking with you, and we’ll get into this a little bit later, but the radios he suggested may not have been the best one, but those are the ones that I have, and that’s what I worked with. And I was doing a generator install with a guy up in the mountains, and it was interesting because we had to call a supply house. And we didn’t have cell reception at his house. And so my son went up to the top of the hill. I gave him one of my GRMS radios. And I’m talking to him as he was able to call into the supply house in town. And we’re having this communication through the radio. And he’s talking to the supply house. And the guy’s watching this. He’s like, why don’t you just get your ham license? And I’m like, oh, I don’t know, you know. And anyway, he convinced me to get it. And so that’s that, you know, to your point, it was great. Just that practicing of it and knowing now and working at all the kinks and the details before the situation happens is very, very important. You know, as we let’s just talk about this real quick, because there’s a lot of people that are afraid of the test. the ham radio test. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I can. And just for clarity, I also have a GMRS license and I also operate on MERS. And with the grandkids, I operate on FRS. And used to in the world I was in at the University of Denver, I operated commercial radios. So amateur radio is but one of the areas in which I operate. But the way to get an amateur radio license is actually fairly easy. But there are people who think it’s hard. And some of that comes from the fact that in the old days, and I’ll say that 20 years ago, you had to learn Morse code to get your license. And while it’s not difficult to learn Morse code, it takes some commitment. And it takes carving out time almost every day. And so the purist didn’t want to get rid of that. But about 25 years ago, the FCC dropped that requirement, and you do not have to learn Morse code any longer to get your amateur radio license. So the entry-level license is called a technician license, and all of the questions and answers are actually published online. There are different organizations that provide training materials, both online and their books as well, that you can purchase relatively inexpensively to learn about what it is that you need to know to take your test. Now, the test is a 35-question multiple choice test. And it is given almost every weekend somewhere in Denver by volunteer examiners. And the system has been very, very well refined. So you go in, you sit down, you fill out the information online, you take your test. Immediately, you get the information back that you’ve passed. and then it is submitted to the Federal Communications Commission, and within literally a day or two, they will issue you a grant. Now, the grant is a call sign, and from then forward, you will be using the call sign whenever you operate on amateur radio frequencies. Now, the material for the technician license is pretty basic. rules and regulations. You need to know that. You need to know a very small amount of information about technology, but not extensive. maybe Ohm’s Law, something like that. And you need to really understand how the amateur radio service is set up and what radio frequencies and what bands that we have access to because as an amateur radio operator, you need to stay on the amateur radio frequencies. Those frequencies are dedicated to amateur radio operators. Nobody else can use them. It’s been that way since the 1920s. And so we’re very, very fortunate that we have radio frequencies all the way from just slightly above The radio station we’re transmitting on today in the 1.8 megahertz range, which would be above AM broadcast, but all the way there, all the way up to 2.4 gigahertz. And every single band, we have dedicated frequencies that only amateur radio operators can use. But the technician license gives you operation on all the high frequencies. So you can use the repeater systems to communicate locally. And you can use radio-to-radio communications. So it’s a starting point. Your jump into amateur radio needs to be your technician license. And quite honestly… We work with kids that are 9 and 10 years old, and they get their license. And we have a friend of one of our club members in the Parker Radio Association who is 98 years old, and he’s currently working on getting his license. So once young people understand the difference between right and wrong, because you want to make sure they – they understand what they can and can’t do. Once they get to that age, they can get their license and anyone else in between. So it’s not difficult at all.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, and I downloaded an app. I think it was Ham Radio Prep. It was an app that I bought, and you watched a video and took tests and took practice tests, and I just kept taking – I’d take a couple tests throughout the day, and I think after about a week of doing that every day, I was on average scoring like in the 80s and 90s, and I said, okay, let’s go do it. And I went and did it and got through it on my first time, and then you guys said – hey, you want to try the general? And I said, why not? And yep, I got some studying to do. But it was a good exposure to at least what questions was on that. But why would I, if I have a GRMS license and it’s $35 for the whole family or whatever it is, and if I have that, well, why would I want to go to the next step? What’s the difference, would you say, between GRMS radios and the ham license? What’s the difference between the two, for lack of a better term, structures?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, amateur radio from the beginning has been built around experimentation. And the way the Federal Communications Commission looks at amateur radio license holders, we have a very wide range of technologies available to us that are not available in GMRS. Now, I have nothing against the GMRS system. It’s fantastic for what it does. For short-range communications with minimal linking capability to other markets and other places around the world, it’s a fantastic system. But when you become an amateur radio operator, there are 100 different facets of the hobby. And while not everybody is involved in all those different areas, you have many, many, many more opportunities. to expand your communications horizons as opposed to a single GMRS type operation where you’re communicating on a simplex frequency, radio to radio, or through a repeater system that is for the most part a local system. Now, if you take one of our digital repeaters, for instance, that’s up on one of the mountains here close to Denver, we link that repeater system to 2,000 additional systems around the world. And that’s something you can’t do with GMRS. We have digital systems where we’re using keyboard-to-keyboard transmissions and communications that are not allowed by GMRS. And I don’t want to take more time, but we could go on. There’s 15 or 20 other technologies that are in use today in Denver by not only the Parker Radio Association but other companies. of organizations and individual ham radio operators that are available to amateur operators that are not available to gmrs operators so the idea you can buy one license and your whole family can use gmrs is absolutely fantastic and i encourage everybody to go down that path because when you’re listening to the gmrs repeaters what you maybe don’t know And I do because I recognize some people. Half to three-quarters of all of the GMRS operators in the Denver area are also ham radio operators. So it just doesn’t limit you to one type of system.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yes, it’s layering because we like to talk about that layering effect. You know, it’s the old saying, you know, one is none, two is one, three for me. And a lot of people say, oh, well, that means that if I have one radio, I should have two radios. And it’s like, no, that’s not really what it means. It means that if I have one source of communication. And that particular source goes down. Well, I have another source of communication that may still be up and operatable. How are the repeaters and stations and batteries, just with the electronics in it, how is that protected against, let’s say, an EMP?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well… We could spend probably a couple hours talking about EMP, right? It’s a very interesting subject and something that I’ve spent a lot of time over the years learning about and teaching. But really nothing we do in the amateur radio world prepares us for an EMP. Yeah, that’s what I tell people too. We have a member that has a microwave oven that he doesn’t use, and he keeps it in the basement, and he takes an HF radio, and it’s a small one, and he puts it in that microwave oven. And his belief is that should an EMP occur, that that radio would probably be still usable. Probably would be. But then I might ask the question, who are you going to talk to? Right, right. So if it’s a localized EMP, then possibly you could get on the air and talk to someone further away. But we don’t really spend any time protecting for EMP. We do, however, provide battery backup systems on selected repeaters, and those become our MCOM repeaters. So while we have six repeaters on the air, three digital and three analog repeaters, we only provide substantial battery backup to one. And that’s where everybody goes. We all go to that repeater system when we have a power outage.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. Gotcha. All right. Main line 303-477-5600. Text 307-200-8222. If you’ve got any questions for Paul, we’d be happy to take those. But in the meantime, let’s grab a break.
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SPEAKER 09 :
All right, welcome back. And just one more time, main line, 303-477-5600. Text 307-200-8222. If you want to ask any questions of Paul, our ham radio communication, MCOM specialist for today. So we were talking about EMPs and all that. And I tell people that as well. It’s like, you know, first of all, the testing of these things is very limited. How do you really know if it’s going to work? They have limited resources. laboratory tests, but it’s like, we don’t really know what’s going to happen. It’s so subjective to where it goes off, when it goes off, how high it goes, how big it is. Solar flares is probably a bigger danger than maybe an EMP that we might have. But a lot of times those are just, those are hard. There’s no one hard answer to that scenario because I don’t think anybody really knows what’s going to really happen.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, they don’t. And height and the megaton rating of the weapon, there’s just too many things that are unknown. And when you look at military radio equipment that supposedly is hardened against EMP in a lot of cases, that’s laboratory testing. Right. And so, you know, I… I wouldn’t want to bet my life on a military radio either because I don’t really know how those will survive either. But it’s an interesting topic. But most amateur radio operators, and I would say most people that operate GMRS and the other radio services, don’t pay too much attention to it.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, you you need to have other things in place to protect yourself. You know, that’s why we have many layers of protection here that if that goes down, well, you better have other forms of communication that will work. And maybe it’s just the old written plan that. You with my family all have that, hey, if something happens, we can’t talk to each other. Phones are down, radios are down, whatever’s down. We go back to the when we were kids and it’s like, you know, be home at eight o’clock kind of a thing and, you know, go back to those plans. So tell me, just give me a scenario. How would you use radio in an event, in a situation, emergency situation?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I’ll tell you how we practice. That may be helpful. So we had a major snowstorm this year, early in the year, and the Parker Radio Association, we brought up our MCOM nets. And I say nets because this is how it works. We start out at 8 a.m. on our VHF repeater system. And we run a net there, and essentially what we’re doing is people, we want them to check in. We get road conditions, conditions at their house, and do you need anything, right? Oh, okay. Because we have a lot of members in Elbert County, a lot of members.
SPEAKER 09 :
That’s where I live, yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. So we do that at 8 a.m. on the repeater system. At 8.30 a.m., we do a simplex net. So radio to radio. And then at 9 o’clock, we move to an HF frequency, which is 40 meters. And it’s 7.42 megahertz. So it’s a lower frequency. And we work a local HF net. Now, in order to do that, and that’s called NVIS, by the way, in order to operate a local HFnet using NVIS, you have to have an antenna that’s built for NVIS. So for the last two years, we have been running different types of training classes and going out to members’ homes and helping them install NVIS antennas. And basically that means we want the radio signal on 40 meters to go straight up hit the ionosphere, and come straight down. Local communications out to a couple hundred miles. Now, that same radio frequency, using a different antenna, we can talk all over the world with it. But that’s not what we want. So at 9 o’clock, we use our HF 40 meter NVIS net. And we do the same thing. Can you make contact with other people, indicating that you can get help if you need it? Does your equipment work? Do you have sufficient battery backup? Does that NVIS antenna that we help you install at your house, does it really work, right? So then at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we run our VHF. A repeater net again for those people that couldn’t make the morning net. And then at 2.30, we run a simplex net. And at 3 o’clock, we run another 40-meter NVIS net. And then at 8 p.m., we run what’s called an 80-meter NVIS net. So for those people that… weren’t around during the day. We’re now moving to a radio frequency in the three megahertz range that allows them to test their communications on that frequency using the same method. A radio signal goes straight up, hits the ionosphere, and comes straight down. So we do that for the duration of the weather event, every day. So if the event, in this case, lasted three days or four days, I think earlier in the season, the first big storm we had, we ran the net for four days. And we have anywhere from 30 to 40 people, any given net, that check in. And we ask the same question again. What are your weather conditions? What are the road conditions if you’ve been out? And do you need anything? Because we believe that there are going to be weather events in Colorado where it clobbers Elbert County, right?
SPEAKER 09 :
We’ve had a few recently.
SPEAKER 06 :
You’ve had a few recently. And we have some people that don’t have the ability to get out. Now, we’re not going to. go out and plow our way to their house. But we do have the ability at that point when we find out that someone needs something, especially if it’s a medical need, we can get a hold of the right people. So that’s the second part of our training is what do we do if we find someone that needs some assistance? So that’s part of our emergency plan, but the other part is a 32-page document that each of our club members has access to that is basically an emergency communications and emergency preparation guide document. that primarily focuses on radio communications. And then one other thing I’ll mention as well, in addition to being on a repeater systems and using HF, we also do some email over low frequencies. And we use a system that allows you to send a message and store it. with individual members. So if they can’t get on a voice frequency, they can still use their radio to transmit a message.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, that’s worth the price of admission right there.
SPEAKER 06 :
It sure is.
SPEAKER 09 :
I mean, what’s the cost of the radio club?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, $25 a year.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, $25 a year. And do you have to be local? I mean, you could join and participate in this stuff out of state, or what’s your opinion?
SPEAKER 06 :
No, absolutely. We have some members in New Zealand, and we have some members in Texas, and we have some members in Michigan and North Carolina. So you don’t have to be local. But most of our training classes are local in Parker at the Douglas County Library. And we have two meetings every month. One is our business meeting, but we do a presentation. Every single month we do a presentation on some aspect of amateur radio. The second meeting is really, really unique. Nobody else does it in Colorado. Very few people do it anywhere in the United States. And it’s called our Elmer Night. So an amateur radio, an Elmer is someone that helps someone else in the hobby. So maybe a mentor is another word. So we have a two-hour meeting every single month. That’s our Elmer Night. And all the new hams in our club can come down to that meeting and they can bring their problems with them. They can bring the radio that they don’t know how to program. They can bring a computer that’s not communicating with something that they want to utilize their computer for amateur radio. We spend two hours every month working with All of our new hams and also people who were amateur radio operators back in the 60s, and they got out of the hobby, and they come back into the hobby now, and it’s really technology-driven, and they need help. So our Elmer Knight and our Elmer team is there to help new amateurs because this hobby is not easy to get started in. I know. You take your test, and you buy a radio. Now what do I do? Now what? Yeah, so we’re there to help people, and that’s really unique to our organization.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and that’s what I have found value in, and I have voluntold Paul that he’s like my mentor.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I think you did do that. Yes, I think you did.
SPEAKER 09 :
You just adopted me without knowing. But you guys came out to my house just this week, and we walked through. And all of those antennas that you’re talking about with that preparation thing, can all of that be done at the technician level?
SPEAKER 06 :
So it can. When we talk about the three different levels of licenses, technician, general, and extra, as you advance through the ranks, so to speak, you’re able to utilize more of the lower frequencies for communications, whereas a technician is a little bit more focused to higher frequencies. But when we come out to look at your house and help you decide what antennas to put up, We know you’re going to get your general license, right? And maybe your extra. So we look at it from a standpoint of, okay, let’s get a VHF, UHF antenna outside so you can get into all the repeater systems locally. But let’s also look at it from a standpoint of how do we put an HF antenna up? Do we use a wire in the tree? Do we use a vertical antenna? How do we do that? So now we’ve kind of looked at both areas of amateur radio, the high frequency and the low frequency. And so as we discussed, we’re hoping you’ll pre-wire for that HF radio antenna so when we get to that point, the wire will already be there. We can just put the antenna up. Right.
SPEAKER 09 :
And what’s nice about that is after the walk, you said you’re going to email me the list of stuff to buy, and then you’ll come out and help me do it. And I tell you, what’s the web address to Parker Radio Club? Because if people aren’t signing up to join this club, I’m telling you, you’re missing out.
SPEAKER 06 :
So you can reach us at www.parkerradio.org. And Parker Radio is one word. So www.parkerradio.org. We have a nice web page, and there’s a gallery section. I would encourage everybody to go to that section and look at all the pictures of all of our events. I think that tells you a lot about our club. We’re very family-oriented. We’re out in the field doing stuff with the radios year-round. But also we’re very heavily involved with Groups.io. And so we’re there as well. We have our own area there as well. But, yeah, take a look at the webpage if you need some assistance. We do come out and help people with their antenna installations. We don’t do all the work, but we certainly do some of the work, and we certainly will give you information. The other thing that happened, I might mention, when we came out to your house was – and this is not – usual situation but we were picking up interference on our handheld radios and we kind of stopped the site survey as you were and we started trying to hunt down the noise and That was fun. We had a good time doing that. I don’t know that we ever actually figured it out. Yeah, I don’t think we did. But we ruled out a bunch of stuff.
SPEAKER 09 :
We ruled out.
SPEAKER 06 :
We sure did.
SPEAKER 09 :
I had solar. We had that.
SPEAKER 06 :
We sure did.
SPEAKER 09 :
I had Starlink. I have a lot of stuff. And then even today, I was like, oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ve got these RF temperature sensors down in my greenhouse that radio to a display in my bedroom and tell me the temperatures in my greenhouse, and maybe that was it. Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely a fun time there. So thank you for doing that and look forward to continuing with that. So we have been talking about different types of radios, GRMS, ham radio. What is your opinion on rapid radios and what is the difference? And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Meshtastic, but other communication systems, if you will, that work slightly different. What’s your opinion about those? Because I know John has talked about rapid radios quite a bit on this program and I think he was going to get some and beta test them. I don’t know if you ever did or not, but have you heard of those?
SPEAKER 06 :
I have. Rapid radios is a new take on an old technology. I think it was Nextel, possibly. Somebody may want to correct me there, but 15, 20 years ago, they were offering a similar service. And Rapid Radios has rejuvenated that. And there’s some things I really like about Rapid Radios. The first thing is that I like their pricing structure. I think it’s really straightforward. Not a lot of hoops to jump through. You don’t have to figure out what plan you want to be on and all that. I think that’s very smart of them. The second piece is that when you buy the radio, you’re on the plan. And I think that’s a smart way to do it as well. The other thing is that people need to understand it does work on the cell networks. And so wherever you have cell coverage, the rapid radio is going to work, and it’s instantaneous pretty much. So when you key the button, you can talk to someone else anywhere in the United States almost instantly. I think that’s fantastic. Now, there’s a couple downsides.
SPEAKER 09 :
Is that through Verizon, through AT&T? Is that through one specific, or does that jump on any cell tower?
SPEAKER 06 :
So my understanding is that they have contracts with all the different systems, and so it’s not clear if you’re on one particular network.
SPEAKER 09 :
So you’re using all of them?
SPEAKER 06 :
I believe, from what I’ve been told, you can use whatever network is available to you at that time.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
But two downsides. One is that if you look at a map of cell coverage in the United States, there are areas where there is no cell service. And Colorado has probably more land area where there’s no cell service than almost any other state. In the mountains of California, Montana… These are areas where there’s just not service in small patches of areas and some other places around the country as well. If you do not have access to a cell system, these radios do not work. So that’s one thing. The second thing is, it’s like any radio system, right? You have to have the radio with you. So if you set it up wanting to be able to instantly talk to your kids that live in Indianapolis or whatever, that’s fantastic. But they have to have their radio with them, right?
SPEAKER 09 :
Yep, that’s another carry item.
SPEAKER 06 :
And it’s something you have to think about. It’s a thought process every day. You have to think, okay, I’m going to bring this with me, right?
SPEAKER 09 :
And is it charged?
SPEAKER 06 :
And is it charged? So I don’t know if we have time for the break. I’ll tell you a quick story.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, we’ve still got about five more minutes.
SPEAKER 06 :
Back when I got my amateur license and we went to any type of ham radio event, everybody brought their handheld radio. Right? Everybody did. It’s not the way it is anymore, not even with our club. We meet at Fuzzy’s in Parker every Wednesday for lunch. Anyone’s welcome. Come on out. We start at 1030, so it’s kind of a late breakfast, early lunch. But I noticed of the 25 or 30 people that show up every week – that nobody had a radio with them. And I’m thinking to myself, this is a ham radio club, right? So I put out some messaging, hey, bring your radio to lunch, we’re a ham radio club. And I sent mine out, and I put it on the counter. And I walked out the door, drove over to Fuzzy’s to the luncheon, And I didn’t have my radio with me. It was a little embarrassing because everybody, not everybody, but a few people did. And they were looking at me like, where’s your radio? Where’s your radio? Where’s your radio? So anyway, so you have to, it’s like anything else. You get used to taking your cell phone with you. If you’re going to use rapid radios, great. But make sure you bring the radio with you when you go somewhere.
SPEAKER 09 :
After the break, I want to talk to you about that. But real quick, what do you think about Meshtastic?
SPEAKER 06 :
We could probably be here for two hours on that as well. It’s a fantastic system. I like it for two reasons. One, you don’t have to have a ham radio license to use it. It can be used in many different types of scenarios. It is a true experimenter or maker type of technology. If you have a ham radio license, you can double the amount of power you use on the unit.
SPEAKER 09 :
Really?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. You can use 10 watts, and you can use gain antennas to extend the range, which you can’t do otherwise. So that’s one advantage. If you had your ham radio license, you can get a little bit better coverage. Amateur radio is a hobby, and it’s non-commercial. And it’s against our policies to encrypt anything. So if you use that technology in an amateur radio mode, you cannot encrypt the data. But if you’re using it in a non-amateur radio mode, it’s encrypted. And a lot of people really like that. It’s for people that don’t want it to be broadcast in the clear. I’m going to say, and this number may or may not be exactly right, but out of 300 club members, I’m going to say 50 or so use that technology on a regular basis. It is something that we experiment with. And my unit quit working last week. Oh. So… I was online this morning getting another one coming in. So it’s a very interesting technology. Right. And I love the fact that people that don’t have the time right now or want to get their amateur license, they can utilize the same type of technology that we use every day. It’s just called something different, but essentially it’s the same type of digital packet communications. Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, and if people don’t know what that is, it’s basically a point-to-point or a radio-to-radio or a node-to-node, and you can bounce off of nodes. So I can hit my nearest node and bounce it to that one, to that one, to that one, to maybe eventually get to Arvada where somebody may be, and I can communicate with them. It does work through your cell phone, or you can buy separate individual devices where you can use it. It doesn’t rely on a cell connection because it is a radio connection. Correct. And it is encrypted. So in a bad situation, I might not want to jump on my ham radio and say, hey, Paul, come to my house. I’ve got bullets, band-aids, and beans. You’re okay. Because then everybody that is on that frequency goes, oh, we’re all going to Bill’s house. But if I use Meshtastic and say, hey, Paul, come to my house. I got you. Only you and I see that message. And that could be where the benefit is. So we’ll pick this back up after the break.
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SPEAKER 09 :
All right, welcome back. And we’re going to pick this conversation back up with this whole idea of encryption, because I think that was one of the things that people thought with mystastic was was an advantage was you can encrypt it. And, you know, you made a good point while we’re on the break there that, you know, we tend to think that everybody’s listening to us. And that’s probably just not the truth. Right, Paul?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, it’s not the case. There are so many different frequencies that are available on amateur radio anyway, and even GMRS. Yeah, I think that’s overblown a little bit, but if you’re concerned about encryption… There’s two ways that you can probably do it in the MCOM world. One would be to get licensed on a commercial frequency. And that’s where you’re actually licensed by the Federal Communications Commission on a specific frequency. It kind of becomes yours. And you can then operate encrypted radio technology. And there’s a lot of it out there. Most of it can be, you know, NSA can still hear you. You know, you have to just think through that just a little bit, but local people probably can’t. On the metastatic equipment, if you’re concerned about the encryption, just don’t run it in the ham radio mode, and you’re encrypted, and you’re good to go. If you do run it in the ham radio mode, then the software automatically turns off the encryption.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. Right. Yeah. So that’s really something important to you. You know, again, we there’s no one answer that fits no absolute answer that fits every single scenario. So we got to be careful of saying, get this, do this, do this, do this. And I I love your point with the rapid radios, because that’s something I never even really thought about was, well, that’s just another radio that I got to have. So if I got my ham radio. And now I’ve got to have the rapid radio. And then I got my, I mean, I only have so much real estate on my body, in my vehicle, and at home. At home is a little bit different. But, you know, to your point, you told me on the break that somebody had bought this for their families, sent the radios all over the country to their families, and he’s trying to talk to them. His kids weren’t turning the radios on. So, you know, it’s only as good as the cooperation of everybody with the radios, right?
SPEAKER 06 :
So the story there is really kind of interesting. He set up a net. We’ll just call it a net. He wanted all three of his kids, and his wife was traveling as well. So he wanted the whole family to get on the radio with Rapid Radio at a given time, let’s just say 10 a.m., He wanted to test it, see if it worked, that kind of thing. Well, his daughter couldn’t find it. She couldn’t find the radio. His son, the battery wasn’t charged. This is a true story now. The other son, it wasn’t where he was at. He didn’t bring it with him. And the wife did get on, but she was about 45 minutes late. after the appointed time a little late yeah so he his comment was it’s a fantastic system and i’m glad i’m i’m using it uh but uh there has to be a little bit better planning as with anything emergency com right you have to you have to plan a little bit
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, we just last weekend we did a scenarios class with self-defense and we ran force on force. And one of the scenarios was was the the public area, the public venue. And I told everybody, I says the bystanders. They’re the variable. You have no idea what they’re going to do. Some of them might be walking around clueless, not even know what’s going on around them. Someone might try to help but not understand who the real good guy is, and they’re just the variable. So the people that you’re trying to protect, that you’re trying to stay in communication with, They’re the variable. They’re the variable for sure. Correct. It’s only as good as what it goes. So one thing I want to talk about before we wrap up here is I have this layering system with everything in my life, whether it’s work or preparedness or self-defense or whatever it is. And that is the first layer is on the body. What am I carrying with me when I’m out and about? The second layer is the vehicle. So the idea is from the body I can get to the vehicle, and then from the vehicle I can get to wherever I need to go, possibly even home. And so with that said, there’s different options as far as ham radios go. You’ve got your handheld, your HT. You’ve got a mobile device, which may be permanently mounted in your vehicle. and you have maybe a much larger system in what you would have inside your shack, if you will. Talk to us a little bit about that and give us some ideas, some pros and cons, and maybe how we could put this layering system into play in our particular lives.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I’ll be happy to make a couple comments about that. I think this is the most misunderstood part of amateur radio. You get your license, your technician license, and you go out and buy usually the lowest-cost handheld radio you can find. Guilty. And that’s fine. That’s where everybody starts, and that’s fantastic. But even though, in our case, our repeaters are up at 10,700 feet, Those handheld radios do not work well inside of a car. It’s a metal structure, right? And there’s a distance involved, right? So five watts on a typical handheld portable radio, it’s just stretching it to get into the repeater system, especially if you’re inside of a house or a building or a car. So the second layer would be a mobile radio. Mobile radios are fairly inexpensive. You also would want to install an outside antenna on your vehicle. And that 50 watt radio now gives you the ability to not only get into the repeaters that are close to us up on the mountain, but you can reach repeaters that are further down the front range, Colorado Springs area, maybe up to Longmont or Fort Collins. So it gives you access to more repeater systems. And you sound good. And so that’s a really important piece of any communication system, right? So you may have that handheld radio in your house and you key up the transmitter and you’re trying to get onto one of our nets. But you’re really, really noisy, because the repeater’s noise in, noise out. So while we might be able to hear you, we may not be able to make out everything you’re saying. When you put a mobile radio in your vehicle, you then are using much higher power. The receiver hears you on the mountaintop. Just like we’re talking to each other right here, it’s what’s called full quieting and is repeated that way. So the communications is much clearer and it works much better. So those are the two scenarios with your handheld and your mobile radio. However, most of us have a third setup, you might call it, and that’s equipment in our house itself. We have an outdoor antenna of some type, either for the high frequency repeaters or for the low frequency HF communications, which are two separate antennas. We have what we call a base station. And typically, a radio will be set up for the VHF-UHF. And one will be set up for the HF. Although some manufacturers combine those two now, which makes it really nice. You just buy one radio. But it’s the same principle. You need to be able to get a good signal out to the antenna. And then the antenna has gain. It rebroadcasts it to the repeater system. So, again, you sound good. You sound very, very good. And then if you do portable work with HF, you have another radio. So it’s usually most of us that are pretty involved in the hobby usually have three or four or five different radios. And when you start getting at five or six, it’s probably overkill. But that’s what some of us do anyway.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, and, you know, it’s, again, joining the club, coming down, asking questions.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yep, absolutely.
SPEAKER 09 :
What radio do I buy? How should I get started? It’s probably what I would recommend, except for doing what I did. You know, hey, recommend. Friend says, buy these radios. I bought all these radios. And then going to the club, and they’re like, well, that’s a good start. But, you know, you really should be maybe looking for this. And so the handheld, if I’m out and about, And maybe maybe I’m with two people and somebody gets to the car. I often thought we’re up snowshoeing, whatever. One of my family member gets back to the car, at least from car to radio. I can communicate if I need to. And then once I get into the car, I’ve got a stronger signal to go somewhere else. And then ultimately, if I’m stranded at home in a snowstorm situation or whatever, like you talked about, I’m able to get out and talk to my support group. You know, because maybe in Elbert County, you’re talking to somebody and they’re like, hey, Paul, I’m snowed in. And I’m like, hey, Paul, I’m just down the road from her. I can go help her or her out and plow them out and bring them some groceries or whatever. And that’s the beauty of it all. So one more time with that Parker Radio website.
SPEAKER 06 :
So you can reach us at www.parkerradio.org, and Parker Radio is one word, and different ways you can communicate with us through that website. We will get back with you. If you’d like to just talk about how to get your ham license, we’ll be happy to do that. If you already have your license, you want to know what the next step is, we’ll be happy to talk to you about that. We’ll be happy to come out to your house and take a look around, as we did with you, and give you some ideas on ham. antenna placement and how to do that. We’re a full service club. How’s that?
SPEAKER 09 :
It’s really great. Really, really great. Also, guys, we have a gun class, a level one CCW. If you need to get your permit, now is the time to do it before all these changes take place. We have one coming up March 29th. Make sure you go to prep2protectco.com to check that out and have a great week. Stay alert and be ready.
SPEAKER 07 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
