Advanced Comms: Take Your Setup to the Next Level 

In the past, while living in an apartment, we tuned the drainpipe on the building and used it with our ham rigs. It worked pretty well. We were in Washington state and we got contacts in Russia and Germany.

as a bored kid growing up in the country friends and i would go out to the tracks where a road would cross them at night. We would get a mag light and run down the tracks like we were a train. We also would run a wire from one side of the track to the other to make the arms come down and the lights come up stopping cars as we would run down the tracks like idiots with our mag light yelling WHOOOOOO WHOOOOO like we were a train LOL :) Bored country kids ;)

Buried radials with a flag pole in the middle supported by a sturdy old whiskey bottle made an excellent antenna for global communication for 35 years at my dads house.

This is a way better strategy than memeing about smoke signals

I remember being a kid in the 6th grade we had a teacher that would take the notes we would pass around in class and read them out loud. One day I got the idea to learn Morris Code and I copied it down and made keys for my friends and we wrote our notes in code just dashes and dots on paper and it drove that teacher nuts and we laughed about it.

The meshtastic thing is extremely interesting. I just went down a 4 hour rabbit hole on that. Looking into building a solar powered meshtastic repeater network.

I believe the Cuban people have become the masters of covert antenna building. Theirs, of course, are mainly for reception. Among my favorite favorite hacks are the use of CocaCola bottles for insulators (their shape lends itself to wires being attached) and I once saw a bicycle wheel being used as an antenna on a Canadian cod fishing trawler.

For just receiving, I discovered while living in the back of my truck while traveling that I could connect the broken stub of an old handheld SW radio (using an alligator-clipped test lead) to the inside of my windowless aluminum canopy at night, turning the entire canopy into a really good antenna with world-wide reception.

The fun thing with the simple Baofeng repeater is that with the addition of some Raspberry PI you have a networked IP repeater. Basically the two PIs act as a very long cable streaming the interconnect over the internet. You will encounter some sub-second delays in most cases, but you can then setup many-to-many repeater networks covering any reasonable distance. (I've setup a test system playing around that relayed Boston suburban transmissions back and forth to Seattle and San Antonio without a problem). The ~150-250ms total delay didn't make to much of a difference in well disciplined radio use.

Well done. Low power, spread spectrum, novel encryption using digital one-time pads, burst comms are hard to detect, hard to track, hard to jam, and very secure. 👍

A couple of other ideas - using electric wire fencing to make an NVIS antenna on the HF bands. Unremarkable in rural areas. For VHF/UHF, take an unused pizza-box sized satellite TV antenna and cut slots into the dish to make a "slot antenna". Cover the slots from behind with gray spray painted cardboard and the mods could be invisible.

It’s my understanding that ADSBXchange ignores all requests to block aircraft. As far as military aircraft spotting with ADSB goes, fighters will pretty much never have ADSB, bombers and attack helos will sometimes show up, and transports and trainers are pretty much always have them. This isn’t a matter of their hex ID being blocked, but of the aircraft not being equipped with a 1090MHz transceiver in the first place. I can’t say what logic goes into which are equipped and which aren’t, but that is the pattern I see across the US. It is also important to note that the military is not subject to FAA regs about keeping ADSB on inside of US airspace (like civilians are). They are probably turned on during flights through civil airspace to mitigate collision risk, but I am positive that under certain FPCON conditions that all aircraft will simply turn ADSB off.

If I may say, without being a know it all. On every USN ship I was on from 1989-1997 and again from 2002 to 2007 we always used sound powered phones, both for watch to watch communications underway and station to station. I dont think they ever stopped using them, it was just noted in lessons learned as a organic/attached C4I asset for said event. In every Damage Control Scenario, and Basic Damage Control PQS, which every sailor must qualify in, within 3 months after arriving at a new command, you must also qualify in sound powered phones and associated damage control symbology.

You can make slot antennas with old satellite dishes for any frequency above 130 mHz. The problem with using a repeater is that people get complacent and lose trak of time so if someone detects the location of the repeater they just have to listen for a while and get the input frequency then they can just start locating the individual stations who are using it while the repeater is in use.

This video is proof..you are doing the Lord's work..and this channel is golden. So much great information. Much appreciated.

Ill add an important device being a nanoVNA, incredibly important. Battery powered device that will help you to build a low loss antenna. SWR or standing wave ratio is RF that is reflected back into the transceiver. A high SWR will result in a reduction in power output to the radiating element of the antenna. If you are into HF mix31 torroids are also a good thing to keep in stock. These torroids are great at reducing RF noise and even common mode noise on your antenna feedline.

Copper wird hanging from tree to tree in the woods works pretty good. The old ham way

Some fun facts: - In the USA, an HOA *can not* prevent you from putting up an antenna for HAM radio. You can slap a 199' tower in your front yard and they can't do a thing about it. - Aluminum gutters can make a quite respectable antenna for HF operations if you have a good tuner (and you *need* an antenna tuner). With a good amp and tuner, significant DX ops are achievable. - If you have a non-conductive roof (i.e. not metal or solar panels) then you can string an antenna in your attic or crawlspace. - Don't forget about satellite repeaters on the HAM bands. Modern software tools and antenna trackers make satellite ops somewhat consistent, and it's possible with nothing more than a handheld antenna and a baofeng.

Could you do a more in depth meshtastic video like for dummies? I fall into more so the last category as my radios consist of two midland two ways.

Great information. People pay thousands of dollars for this type of class

Fun fact: On 9-11 I was a soldier overseas in Germany. Watched the 2nd plane smash into the towers and our brigade commander instantly put the entire installation on lockdown. We ran steel wire commo lines to every BN HQs from the switchboard in BDE HQ and used those as backup. So yes, the old-school porkchop "tanker phones" that are part of the inventory on every main battle tank in DoD are still being used when needed.

Nicely presented. Clear, concise & digestible.

Thoughts on making a video on basic Comms plans? What the overall structure should look like?

Dude - this was fascinating, informative and just all around fantastic. Tanks eh!

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for all of this information.

Atak used with the ttgo tbeam meshtastic units and a plugin called atak forwarder works beyond LOS with a simple tbeam at higher elevation or just simply between and some decent antennas

One thing we got trained for on the HF 150 radio was a connector that allowed the connection to a chain link fence. It surprisingly is a good antenna for long reaching comms

Great video. Thanks for taking the time to put it together.

Awesome, this is exactly what I need to do! Thank you so much!

As a ham I know about gain from antennas. Some give 3db or more of gain. But then if you have to use feed line depending on the coax you might loose 1db of gain per hundred feet or so. Then you have to evaluate you average height above terrain or AHAT. The higher you get the better you avoid obstacles that would block VHF.

Dude, your channel is phenomenal. Thank you for the content

Outstanding video! I love the part about LoRa Radio, I will be added them to my e-comms plan.

I find the information you give fascinating and very useful thank you

Nice channel, just found it. Thank you for taking the time to explain these things.

For radio antennas, people can also use directional antennas to significantly narrow the directions from which the radio signal can be picked up. That way, a device can send signal to a repeater which is further from it than other listeners, and still have the listeners not hear the sender but hear the repeater, unless the listeners are in the cone of emission of the sender. Although laser is used, a phone camera and a small or tiny telescope (which can be very cheap or home-made) can transmit data without lasers, making it more difficult to be intercepted without knowing where specifically to look like. A few lights, which can be camouflaged as an internet router or broken screen of a device still powered on, can be used to send a message, and small electronic devices can decode the message. And the emitters and observers can be split to be located in the most camouflaged locations. Also people underestimate the power of using even if not satellites, just hot-air balloons or kites, to effectively get a device high up in the air. It could be used as a repeater, it could be used as a better antenna, it could even be used with medieval levels of technology (mirrors and/or lenses) to get an aerial image of other areas, or it can have cameras which to be used from the air. And an autonomous radar+lidar airplane+parachute could very well fly above an area, send or receive a message, then move to a different location. With some ingenuity, a solar-powered or wind-powered autonomous tiny plane/blimp/drone system could be used to periodically send and/or receive messages. Even those use-cases are useless in most situations, there are edge-case situations in which they would be very useful. Imagine looking at an enemy base using a phone, a telescope, a mirror on a tower or inside a house, and a series of camouflaged plastic lenses, to see from home what is going on at your job on the other side of the town spanning tens of km or tens of miles.

This was an amazing presenation, Thanks :)

The info is appreciated, thanks.

Thanks for posting on LBRY

Many Thanks your content as always to the point and very much appreciated

Thanks for the call out!

Loving this playlist.

That was the best information. I have ever received about communication. I have been building little small Antennas, collectors boosters things like that. To increase my cell phone radios strength I live I live in the woods closest tower to me is Approximately 15 miles. I've had to turn 5G off. But I have 4 bars of 4G right now. I have built several Yagi antennas. I got one right. Thank you It may take some time but I intend on watching all your videos.

My new favorite channel!

I've never watched a any video that had such a wealth of information all in one video.

Great point about one way comms at 38 min. In OIF 1 I sent a one way message to a PSG with a rendezvous point based on his pistol serial number. Eg digit one up three digit two down four

appreciate the knowledge, thank you for your upload

Thank you, this gives me tons of ideas.

good stuff, thank you. no bs, just the facts, etc. again, thanks

Thank you for the great view of home, New Zealand....

I did a video on the range of GoTenna, in the woods, its about a quarter mile to half mile. I live in north Georgia, there were hills and such. But I still like the idea of having them prebuilt, app included.

Idk how I stumbled upon this channel but this is preparing me for something and I am taking notes.

Nicely done!

Great video buddy, very informative

Interesting, thumbs up and subscribed!

3 yrs later, still a great video!

Excellent video.

Meshtastic looks fantastic!!

Thank you S2.

How am I just now finding this channel.. stupid YT algorithm. Great content 🤜🤛

Super info

I need a few classes on this subject! Whew! 😱

Modern track with signals has copper leads connecting each piece, each rail is half a circuit and the train wheels complete that circuit and show up on a screen at the dispatcher's office.

Thank you for the video.

Keep up the good work

25:40 The original goTenna used the MURS band. The goTenna Mesh devices use 900 MHz in the US - the same as the Meshtastic devices.

One doesn't need 2 separate handhelds to create a repeater. There are a number of Dual-band (or multi-band) radios that have the ability to perform cross-band repeating (e.g. 2m to/from 70cm) within the single handheld radio. Single radio repeater functionality has been around at least 40 years or so. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Bao-Feng also has at least one handheld model offering this functionality.

Railroad tracks have current or signal running through them and isolators that interact with the train location which measure the impedance of the signal running from the track to the signal source and tell crossing guards when to lower/raise amongst other things. You can listen to the signal with a earbud and a wire wrapped around a coil.

Great video

This is an amazing video

Would love to see an updated version of this video...especially regarding the mesh network stuff...

That almost looks like the map from Cherno in DayZ

Cool info

You have to do the baofeng repeater with the two radios on different bands. Otherwise the antennas will interfere with each other. That's why repeaters that operate on one band are so expensive and rare. Also, you said nobody could direction find you with a repeater, but they can just look for the uplink frequency and find you no problem.

If you want something to do with burst on the cheap, use a Digi device FLDigi (plugs into a phone or ipad 3.5mm audio jack to provide impendence matching) then an APP like PSK 31 and run the FLdigi into a Baofeng and send complete PSK31 burst transmissions to another point. I did this out of boredom with another ham buddy using a simplex point to point Yagi 8 element 2 M beam on both sides for something to do. Watch the Baofeng TOT and heat output issues.

i don't know what I just watched, but I'm definitely on some sort of list now

Iv a strong belief that this type of information is going to come in handy, a lot sooner then later.

I still own a crank weather band Radio*.... I've probably had it for over 20 years, and it still works.

Very good stuff man!

This video is definitely one to DL

The last image is funny. All those comms when you can just walk up to the fence and talk.

downloaded printed saved used as template setup for helping others as well as self be prepared/knowledgified

Good information, I would like another video on the LoRa radios. I have 4 of the GoTennas work pretty good. Don't seam to work to well when hiking and you have trees between you and the car in the parking lot and probable less the a 1/2 mile away from each other. Be nice if there was a way to connect the LoRa radios to a cell phone some how. That way when in the woods hiking you could still reach the car in the parking lot that would have some type of device that could put out more power to be able to hit cell towers.

GoTenna is pretty nice tech and Mesh Networks are certainly part of the future.

Run coaxial underground to close telephone pole. Find cable support with turnbukle mounted in ground. The pole support cable works if you are high groung especially.

I have a pair of 2-wire field phones. Work wonderfully and are relatively cheap. AND, have more uses than just a phone since the bell crank outputs 90-115vac.

with more or less conventional radios, some mention of digital modes would be good. Consider various non speech systems, such as Hellschreiber, RTTY or various PSK variants. Some things are almost indistinguishable from noise unless you know what you are looking for and could be used on plain vanilla CB, UHF CB (via a repeater) or pretty much any radio system, just a matter of feeding it with audio from a computer with the right software and the same stuff at the other end. Plenty of free PC apps that handle a number of these systems.

It's not only antennas the Lora protocol is fhss and if you have a gps you can have a time synced key so the radio not only knows what frequencies to hop on it also uses the ones with the least amount of noise

my first thought for the stealth antena example image was guy was using the plumbing vent pipe as an antena, if the rest of your plumbing is pex/pvc/etc and the vent is metal, that'd be a great antena.

i dont know why its recommended to me but its super interesting

CCE is common in some bino or telescope tech, and ofc CCTV, especially at airports and train stations, where left-behind luggage can be a ... liability.

I m very interested in thee meshtastic system have been watching videos and would like to see more in depth informative videos regarding all to do about set up and use . I think i will be ordering 4 of these little buggers by days end today . I love the concept . I am a cb radio operator ansl gmrs . I for sure am no technician, still this is intriguing to me. So more focus on meshtasic and specific antenna info as well like dipoles . Water proof box small solar panel to maintain state of charge stick up in a tall tree . Let it rock.

You convinced me to hit the subscribe button in the first minute. I am glad I found this, it's been years since I learned or used most of these things and am a bit rusty, this video has helped a lot.

This stuff is great for hunting!

fuck man this is so much better than shitty army powerpoints. God bless you

Just so you know railroad tracks are electric and are connected to each other The expansion gap is still connected to the other track because they are all bolted together Using hydro pole grounding wire works plus if you're near a power station the power poles are metal

Can you please do a LoRa Meshtastic tutorial? Like a SOP (standard operating procedure) that covers setup, issuing a unit, usage, any maintenance etc.

Very interesting information. The field of comms has changed so much since I got out of the Army. We were using PRC-77 when I enlisted. I was confused about using those radios then. Then when SINGARS came along, I was confused even more. I want to understand it more, but I don’t know where to start. Like I said, comms was not my strong suit. Running and gunning as a grunt was what I knew best. Any help or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Beware antenna relocation kits on low powered devices. Check cable loss charts vs run length. Much better to relocate the device. :)

Just found this channel. Awesome. Thoughts on solar EMP protection? Thanks. BZ

The newest version of GoTenna Mesh operates on the 902-928 Mhz band.