TelescopeMan--A weekly podcast about Astronomy and Amateur Radio with practical suggestions for improving your hobby enjoyment. TelescopeMan posts on RU-vid and also at these web sites.
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first. everybody should be a “prepper”. not end of the world thing. but just i case of a job lose, earth quake, tornado, hurricane, etc. never hurts to have a couple months food supplys put away the right way. but then there are those of us were work just gets in the way of life. retired now. but i have so much to do. learning other things. i am in a group were i am learning field medicine. Not emt style, but to help the victim survive till proper care can be reached. alone with search and rescue. some are hams, but grms is the radio spectrum of choice here. thanks to how many hams hate people that do not talk only about ham radios. and it is not allowed to just talk. some of the fcc rules just flat out suck. and must be opened up to allow others to just talk on some of the bands. but i do hope i can “ up grade” this year or next. having trouble getting my head wrapped around some things.
In a shtf situation, getting out of town should be the first priority. A base station will be useless. It's to big to carry. An ht with a small solar panel will be a lifesaver. More people have ht's than base stations with huge antennas.
sad buy yaesu decided to stop making a number of very good radios that must make a comeback. easy carrying. multi band, low juice usage, then comes the HT’s a hand full, extra battery's, ( long term usage thing), quad bands. WATER proof to 30 feet, then all this MUST be affordable. to high a price no body will buy them. yes you get what you pay for. but look at how many uv5r’s get sold each year.
Dude......I'm in the mid Tenn. area. If an EMP or serious civil unrest happens, i aint interested in whats going down in detroit, seattle, or singapore. A 10 mile radius will do me good from my current location. Dont need a repeater if i plug in my "toy, juvenile, POS" handheld into my basestation antenna or plug it into my mobile antenna (with a ground plane under it) and run it up a pole 30' or 40' up. Or just bolt it on top of my roof somewhere. I'll get out just fine....for what i need to do.
This aged like milk. Geriatric gatekeeping by guys like this are the reason for the decline of the hobby. Tech tickets are only for repeaters and LOS? What about 28.30-28.50? The ubiquitous baofeng uv-5r "toy" HT got me into ham, and a majority of new hams. A radio now costs less than a happy meal at McDonald's. I can reach out 80 miles, simplex with an 8 watt HT, some lmr 400 and a coat hanger dipole 40 feet in the air. If there is a EMP, zombies, or any other emergency, fcc law says you don't even need a technician ticket to transmit. God I hate these old men spreading misinformation....
Joe a few years ago I also noticed an influx of narrow minded Preppers. I took time to ask them why they were becoming a Ham, I learned a great deal about the prepper motivation and mindset. I believe our tube operated radios and teletype machines will be useful 😎🔉👀 73s Steve AA4SH
Lol. Bud, you need to learn a little more about tubes. If there's another Carrington event, there will be 1000s of volts riding your end feds, fan dipoles and low loss coax right back into your finals. Tubes or transistors, your radio is toast. Meanwhile a baofeng in a metal filing cabinet would probably survive.....
i have a uv5r in the factory box. wrapped in styrofoam in a ash bucket. that is sealed up. that again is insulated from the knack box. hiding in a building. with many other emg items. some say it should be in the ground.
This is why i so rarely use ham radio. I'm extra class and commercial operator with 40+ yrs with GROL and many other certs. Guys like this clown are why i rarely interact with most hams.
True, grid down, repeaters and internet will likely be out. But small radios can relay messages and information from one to another. Someone will have communication with someone having a stronger base unit. Something is better than nothing. I am in the entry level and learning curve right now.
My HF and VHF radio equipment is boxed and stored in my basement since I last used them last back in 1993. Stored in boxes, will they still be protected from an EMP? I'm a GENERAL with CW since 1988.
They need to be in a Faraday cage to be fully protected from an EMP. There are tons of videos and information on making them as well as tons of off the shelf versions out there. Homemade cages are easily tested by putting your cell phone inside and calling it from another cell. If the signal gets in then there is an issue. It's not the perfect test but it's a pretty good indication without spending a lot of money.
I’m going to be honest, in a shtf situation, if me and my buddy’s have ham radios we will be “illegally” transmitting. (The government and most of the worlds population will not mind, only ham radio operators sitting at home will care and be writing notes to send to the FCC if it comes to exist again, no emergency or military will care if you’re trying to help and survive)
Like the guy before me said..... it won't matter when the GRID goes down. As long as we know how to do it(Tech License), we will be transmitting on HF!!! You just sit back and take your notes on who's violating the rules. Turn us in when the lights come back on.....LOL
He is deceased. It will be the wild west in the end of times, unpredictable, but nobody will be yelling down the unlicensed people whom will most likely be burning up their amplifiers or tossing their radios to the side as it takes some learning just to use these
if the only radio you own is a HT, probably better off just getting a really well built GMRS. and some FRS for the kids. want more range, get a CB. 💜👍 Amateur is great for mad-scientist, build it yourself stuff. 😂👍
my car is old enough, engine could still run with a dead computer. computer monitors the engine, but I don’t think it actually controls much. noteworthy, my car is never 100% “off” just because the key is out. still has a security system. and any car with keyfob remote-unlock has those listening. Car should run with those dead tho, right? 😅
Let's say a car built int he 60's What possibly can an EMP burn out? The condenser? The alternator? The spark plugs, Not much electronics to an older car..
😅 You’ll probably lose the AM/FM radio. Engine should work, hopefully. 👍 How much of the car would work if, hypothetically, every single fuse was blown, but no other damage? Which fuses would need to be replaced to get it minimally functional? 🤔 If you can figure that out for your vehicle … may want a backup-set of those fuses, for the “in case of EMP” kit in the vehicle.
If SHTF, as preppers say; then whether you have a liscence or not will be irrelevant at that point. Get the tech class and enjoy , learn and work your way up!
Hey Listen you do not need to upgrade and you can do a lot with a tech license 10M and 6M and most bands can work long range if you have a amp and a good telescopic antenna about 40F mas pole and you also can use dipole wire that can go up into a high tree and if you use right amount of power you can talk 100 to 200 miles and there is a lot of digital modes that can work on 2m that can go a long range
Spending $30 on a Baofang or similar HT is hardly wasted money. If you have an hour of fun learning (and trust me you will have a lot more fun then an hour) you got your money’s worth. Sure getting a mobile rig is the next step but I’m not ashamed to say I not only started out with a UV5R and even after getting a FTM 400 and a couple other HTs I still use that Baofang all the time. Granted it doesn’t have great range but with a different antenna I can hit a repeater 10 miles away in a urban area with it and it is a great scanner as well. I honestly think I never would have gotten my license if I didn’t see these things for 30 bucks.
The prepper community faces a much bigger challenge than toy-class radios. Their biggest issue is going to be the focus on secretive communications within their clans; there just aren't enough frequencies to let that work. The ham radio tradition of working with others through nets to help the community will be much more useful and efficient than "no random contacts."
You re missing the point. Even an expensive HT is going to be limited if repeaters are down. He is making a point that HF is really needed in a grid down situation.
most preppers will only need tech 2meter. They use it on their bug out property or local comms for their group. They arent using it for repeaters. They aren't using it to make dx contacts lol. @@LavaKimo
You may be surprised grandma would be called a prepper by todays standards. Also most people want to be legal but with experts like this I wouldnt wat to go further either.
Technician tickets have access HF on 10m, 15m, 40m, and 80m. Unfortunately, it's rather costly to get into HF, and if you're in an apartment, it's not happening. Bought a nice used Yaesu, that sat on my desk for about a year, before I sold it. But you're right, just cause you went to college, don't mean you know how to the job.
You'll find a lot of preppers are only requiring 10 - 15km of coverage to keep contact with their raiding party in SHTF. Raspberry Pi's are added to the mix to encrypt/decrypt the messages or the frequency changed after each QSL. Roll up ladder line jpole's are used and work very well.
appreciate the time you put into doing this but it seems like you are ignoring the option for a technician to use a mobile radio using 50 watts on 2 meter band with a good antenna. They can go much further than a few miles. So while a general license does open up more range... a tech can reasonably achieve up to 50 mile coms with the right equipment. Just comes down to what they need. Many preppers are not concerned with talking to other states, just talking to family and friends in the same general area of say 25-50 miles.
In any emergency the license required to transmit is dropped. In grid down anyone can transmit on any frequency. In the meantime a tech license can cover a lot of uhf/vhf needs.
@@markgutierrez9295 ... well, yeah. In this day and age who knows what people think is an emergency. Folks calling 911 because their Mickey fries are cold? And other such similar silliness? You bring up a great point but I would hope that anyone who is bright enough to pass a ham test would know what qualifies as an emergency. But ... ya never know. 🤷♂️🤦♂️🙄
