Common Myths Of Ham Radio For Prepping 

When my previous ham group talked to a prepper group, we discovered they bought ham hand helds but never got their license. They thought it was more important to put them in faraday cages for shtf. Since they were gun focused, we asked if it was ok for us to buy guns and never learn to shoot them. This was the question that got their attention. Radio is no different than a gun, you need a target and know how to hit that target. Even without a government, hams will expect to communicate with other hams who know how to communicate on a radio with licenses, everyone else will just be noise and we won't have time to teach them.

The no 1 myth about ham radio prepping, is at best, you might be able to say goodbye to your radio amateur friends. Keeping in touch with an ageing population of local radio amateurs may offer some small possibility to help others less able than yourself, but I suspect one will have plenty to do looking after your walking distance community. The whole game of radio prepping thing is just an opportunity to have some fun building bug out radio boxes and playing radio in the woods. In the UK, If something kicks off, within 24 hours, chaos will reign. The power will be down, the phones will be dead, the shops will have no food, and in a few days society will break down and there will be gangs of bad people robbing whatever and whoever they can. This is not the 1950's , things have changed. I agree that it 'might' have some use for environmental disasters, but most people are screwed when the local shops run out of toilet paper, let alone food

As a survivor of Hurrican Michael and a grid down situation. Every tower including the transmission lines except Verizon and AT&T came down. I can testify that Verizon is not so good about refueling their generators. The whole town was quiet like it was 1880 and you could hear it run out of fuel.

My wife and I are both licensed HAM's in Canada. I agree that HAM radio is only part of a much larger preparedness plan. We've been prepping for roughly 10 years. I can tell you that the single most important preparation you can make, after the essentials for personal survival is to be part of a larger community. Moving information across a community is the core value of HAM radio, or any kind of extended communications system. This includes FRS/GMRS radios, CB's etc. HAM can dramatically extend the range of communications, but all emergencies are local, so local networks, even direct personal communications are essential. Messaging priorities and being part of a series of different networks, from local to national will be essential in a grid down situation.

This is one of those videos that you save and have to keep referring back to. You hit so many points that I myself have struggled with as a prepping, comms, YT creator. This is exactly why I use YT, to spread knowledge and learn everything I can. Honestly, great video. I'm subscribed.

I have watched at least a dozen of your videos. They are so informative and helpful. Can't thank you enough for putting this information together and presenting it all in an easy to understand format. Great job and thanks again!!

If things go completely haywire, I don't need to talk to anyone, I need to listen to the world. Preferably some kind of AM/SW/SSB multiband 'crystal' kit, with headphones and an ability to derive power off the electromagnetic environment. Two way comunication is great, but if everything go south, I need at least to be able to listen to the world, so, thats my plan :)

Communications are the first thing used in an emergency. Information is most valuable at the beginning of any emergency!

Great info. Thank you for your outline and viewpoints.

Excellent video. You covered just about every point.

Loved it. Great information. Love the links in the description box.

Very helpful. Thanks!

Thank you for breaking through the commercial fakery and providing actual information. You are right. Watching YT videos only confuses the need for helpful direction.

This is just the information I was looking for as a new Ham, plus I enjoy how you present it. Thanks.

Good info. Thank you.

Great video, thanks!

Good Video. I've been saying this for Years.

Incredible presentation and information. Will definitely be in touch. Studying now for certification.

Yeah to all the go bag guys, as one of those people with property in the woods - yeah I may think it's cool that you have your ticket too, but if I find you camped out next to where my family lives we are going to have an uncomfortable discussion, and I'm far more reasonable than most. Real prepping is thorough planning and practice, including relevant destinations and terrains. "Bugging out" is not a plan.

Very helpful!

Great information - will recommend to your channel to people thinking about getting into comms for prepping.

You sir, are a blessing! Thank you for all your effort. You have been a great help! God Bless

Don't let anyone tell that HF radio doesn't have high value in emergency communications. The most advanced governments and militaries still have HF communications as a last resort or special operations mode of communications that is being increasingly leveraged through blending with other digital platforms.

A very good video! THANK YOU! I have to agree is is one video to save & review it from time to time!

I appreciate this information and am sharing it with family. Subscribed. One thing that you and every other prep oriented site glosses over is the use of solar for backup power. Many of us live in zones where solar is not an option for 6-10 months of the year. This is most likely because there aren't a lot of alternatives and what there are have serious downsides. These include need for consumable fuel for a generator - gasoline, LP or natural gas. These also generate significant noise when operating and require venting of noxious exhaust streams. Human-powered generators, both hand crank and pedal crank are insufficient for anything beyond a few minutes to hours of small appliance time. Large battery banks are expensive, require some degree of knowledge and expertise and some way to recharge. Wind is really not an option. Micro-hydroelectric generators are an attractive option IF one has legal and defensible access to year-round flowing water, e.g. a decent sized stream on or near one's property. Most of us don't have that luxury. Aside from moving to the sunny side of the street (mountains) which has its own set of logistics, I'm fresh out of ideas. Thoughts?

Good stuff !

There is an excellent article about the California wildfires and how long several of the towers had backup power after the grid was turned off. Ill link it shortly. It was quite specific. Generally all towers have 2 to 7 days backup. Link on the way

Thanks

Hams that do not know but join a local ARES GROUP for EMERGENCY TRAINING you will not be able to help in a Emergency Event with out it

Ham Radio Operators are "preppers" because they prepare for mains down! Battery, solar, generator, and line power from their own hydroelectric dams are accomplished sources. Most sources are expensive, but done one piece at a time, all are affordable. Ham Radio for "preppers" is important because Ham Radio doesn't fail like the internet, cellphones, or TV does on occasion or during storms.

hope your health improves. thank you for the videos

I found QRP (multi-band & mode) w/solar & hand generation recharge, which is currently my best option. May add in an Amp (variable 50w or 100w) later on when I figure a power pack for the amp & trx combo.

I’m studying to get my ham license but 1st I got GMRS. In my area GMRS has become very popular and a lot more users switching over from ham. Someone on the net has logged over a 100 plus users.

I'm a HAM radio operator, and I'm adding to my list of "What if's" about prepping. I'm looking at technology and considering Starlink for internet service. If the grid goes down, then I'd fire up the Honda eu2200i generator converted to propane and run it to power everything in the house (fridge, lights, fans, charging needs, wifi and modems, etc...). I chose Icom radio's (ID-5100 in my Jeep, and an ID-51A HT) for their D-Star capability. With Honda generator power and Starlink internet, I would be able to connect to my OpenSpot3 and have global communication (along with local VHF/UHF 50 watt simplex comms). And, with Starlink powered by the Honda, I'd also have wifi to my cell phone for internet/messaging/email to everyone outside the outage. If weather concerns you, then add a travel trailer/5th wheel camper and boogie to cooler/warmer climates, while being self-sustained as mentioned above. Or, drive and car camp to the best of your abilities. And, when the "grid goes down", how far around you does that mean? One City, one County, one State? If you're mobile, you'll be pretty easily able to re-group so you can also help those in need. If you're stationary in your home, a Honda generator can keep you going for quite a while until normalcy is restored. Other factors are involved; water/food/sanitation, so stay stocked up and be ready. Peace and 73. Pete - KI7LIL

I'm coming at this from the military perspective. While I was not 25 series MOS (I was 11Bravo) I remember enough that this is familiar to me. My goal is for information purposes. The US media cannot be counted on anymore for anything. I am currently studying for Tech and General. Maybe Extra later. My focus is on mobile equipment first, then maybe a base station later.

I would start by taking to your local repeater first then try CQ someone on simplex frequencies. you have calling frequencies then open frequencies. when atmosphere conditions are good try simplex long distance. in the meantime learn for your general class license then more lot more frequencies will be open. 6 meters is a good hit and miss in ham radio. 73

Did you ever complete this series? I don't see follow on videos

I love this video, it has really good information, however one thing that was missed is the fact that Tecnitions have access to a portion of the 10 meter (HF) band on voice and CW. Again this is great info for the unimformed. Thank you for mentioning AmmRon and PrepperNet. Subbed and liked. 73 de K0MRD

I found a Amronn Veterinary, I found a amrron radio, Nationwide Emergency Communications Network for Preppers

How is your club able to access Verizon tower…. It seems like any commercial set up like that would not want “ham” interference at the site, do you have to go through a site administrator to coordinate any changes or antenna placement type of things?

Comms are very important because my children live 30 miles away so they are essentially in case it happens out of the blue one day get caught off guard.

New to Ham, but not to prepping. I am currently studing for my Tech License now and Im glad I found your site ... Im planning on getting the Radioddity 6666 for a few reason. 1 it can also do CB with some easy on the fly programming. 10 Meters will be great for the next few years do to sun activity.. Last by not lease, I old friend who lives in Oregon and Im in Florida, Im hopingb to surprise him one day. Hes big into field days and POTA. He also had a General License. Hes been a ham since H.S we are both in our 60's. Over 45 years. I guess better late then never. Thanks for all the tips.

I used to live in rural Utah, where most people there store 1 year worth of food, and other supplies. communication is last item. I guess it depend on how bad disaster are. local or wide area.

Brilliant videos, best on youtube for a beginner such as myself! What I fail to understand is that you seem to imply a difference between HF and shortwave, but aren’t these virtually the same thing? It should not be lower cost than VHF/UHF as far as I’ve understood from other videos?

You could join a local ham club that has a public service nets and rag chew nets. Being able to command the air waves.

You have really good vides, you must have been a school teacher the way they are presented.

I wish I would have heard all of this years before I bought a Baofeng tri band years ago . Its been in the closet ever since. I really enjoyed your video and it will be a great help to others who find it . I've always had nice ssb shortwave portable radios and multi longwire antennas . I have family band / fmrs radios and I went with 12v ssb cb radios from President. Mag mounts for cars and a base antenna at home . I bought solar kits . Solar batteries , aa / aaa etc . Small duel fuel generator, 100 gallons of propane. Currently have 6 to 9 months of everything and live in a good place . I did make contact with a local ham in town and if time allows ill try to start learning .

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters LOL :) very good video explains a lot for preppers.

I understand the sentiment behind getting a general license, but I'm not sure it's applicable here. You can already access parts of the HF band with a technician license, and you can access the VHF and UHF ranges with it and people who can help you most effectively are likely going to be people in your area who were also affected and are in line of sight range for coordinating day to day goings on after a disaster from a distance without use of cellphones. what more can you meaningfully learn about HF radio usage outside of 28.300 - 28.500 besides simply having more strangers farther away to talk to and get more contacts? i'm sure it's more fun but is that going to help you get by better in an emergency? is rajesh in india who you make small talk with once or twice on a good day going to be able to help you survive after a disaster hits your area? I think there's plenty of practice that you can get in with just a technician if you want to stay there. In an emergency situation, you don't need a general license to access the parts of the HF range that the general license affords And even if it may be illegal, the FCC is not going to do anything about it, so there's no practical effect for that, it's just a formality. people break amateur radio rules all the time already and only the most egregious ones are ever confronted about it. You're looking at this from the perspective of a ham radio enthusiast. For you, this is a hobby, but the people that you're trying to talk to in this video are not seeing it as a hobby, they are seeing it as something they might need to use someday. They should absolutely still familiarize themselves with radio practices and there is a lot of learning that goes into getting proficient at it, and if they don't do that, the radio is going to be borderline worthless to them in a real emergency, but I think there is a reasonable middle ground between completely ignorant about radio, and active radio hobbyist / enthusiast And in my opinion, in this video you are not meeting them halfway and recognizing that that reasonable middle ground exists and that it's okay for somebody to get there and stop without having to make amateur radio a major aspect of their normal life in perpetuity. communication capabilities and knowledge and training about them can be incredibly useful in times of mass crisis but past a certain point there are severe diminishing returns where your time would be far better spent learning about other things. you can't drink or eat radio waves, you can't sleep under them, you can't fix a wound with them and they're not going to keep you warm at night. radio communication can help enormously with all of these things depending on the exact circumstances, but most of the work is going to be right in front of you and even if you know someone on the opposite side of the continent and you know how to talk to them and your radio is capable of it and the environmental conditions are right for it, what in the world is katie going to be able to do for colin when things are so busted that there isn't even a functional power grid where colin lives? depending on the scale of the crisis, katie might not have a power grid either and colin is in oregon and katie is in florida. i think colin can get more use out of talking to his friends and family who all live within driving distance of each other on either VHF or UHF or even GMRS, assuming they all have radios capable of this and they all know how to use them well enough. with that in mind i think GMRS would serve a lot of these hypothetical people very well as an alternative to ham. it's easier to practice because it's so much less formal and there's no exam to get a license, and one GMRS license covers all of the license holders family and it is probably a bit easier to simply hand a GMRS to someone who has never used one and give them a basic rundown on how to use it at a bare minimum functional level in shorter order than you can with a more complicated handheld ham radio. on the other hand, a ham radio has enough extra versatility that it could be useful and worth the trouble, but that should be up to the discretion of the individual. with that said though, i don't see any reason to try to turn people away from ham because you think it won't be useful to them. it doesn't come across as altruistically looking out for their best interests if. i'm sure with everyone it's a bit different, but the tone i get from ham people telling preppers that ham is probably useless for what they want it for has broadly struck me as them simply saying in so many words "we don't like you, we don't like the idea of our hobby being associated with people like you. go away".

Great video. Bugging in is the best policy 90% of the time. The only exceptions would be military bombing and usually they tell you its about to happen. Think palistine. Then fires " maui" and then evacuation due to flooding/hurricane. Other than that it's best to fight as hard as you can to keep your home and stuff. Once you bug out its only a matter of time before you fail. Ive bugged out a couple times and its always been for fire. I wasn't living off the land either. I was comfortable in a hotel. In a wide spread emergency it's going to be hell anywhere out on the road or in the wild. Bugging out is an absolute last ditch effort to save your life.

I put comms at no. 5. No. 4, as I see it, is sanitation.

If ham newbies are one of your intended audiences, it might be a good idea to edit in explanations of references and terms about which newbies are likely clueless (e.g., what in the heck is a "hex beam"?)

Exceptional video!!!

Best case in point is if you can not budget your transmit power you will have too much wasted power to be an effective radio operator.

Same reason prepping. I always knew and had defensive tools but never realized and factored in that nobody else would pitch in and help or believe you or go sour so quickly. In the last 8 months tho I been playing catch up. It's been something else I can tell you.

I've had a look into rtty psk31 and wefax as possible emcomms. There is some value there I think. For just pure shtf Comms a set of PMR radios that you know how to use and how they work will do most of what's needed. Someting like the ft8900 that can be setup as a repeater can help out in a real bad scenario. As far as HF is concerned, I'm not sure how useful it would be in an emergency. I've not found any news channels that transmit. I won't care about the other side of the planet in shtf. Just what's within travelling distance at the time. The only exception being possible reports of troop movements during war. I think VHF on a baofeng is the way to go for shtf Comms. Practicing with PMR is great to build awareness.

The radio itself may never help one in a shtf scenario but the things a person learns in the hobby may save them

Cool that Verizon lets you guys have power. Loved the vid, can’t wait for more !

Can HAM frequencies be made unusable by agencies?

Just makes dying more drawn out

Someone gave me a Baofen raidio for prepping , I have a CB , I will use that if shtf , and I will be buying a good short wave , the ham really wont help me .

Not a joiner. Don't like people. I'll just stay out here doomed, thanks.

Preppers…LOL….house full of guns basement full of canned beans and a big stack of zombie apocalypse DVDs

CB is the way to go.

This was an excellent video. Very well done. KA0KAE

Weapons and ammo is 4th not comms

The number 1 myth about ham radio and prepping is that ham radio is for prepping. It’s really about science, fun, and learning. It’s limited in scope/reception to other hams, or about one in 300 people in the US. For simple communications, FRS radios are cheap, with a range up to a few miles, and require no license. You can buy them everywhere. CB radios require no license, with ranges of 5-10 miles, and are cheap. You don’t need a specialty VHF/UHF radio, you can’t rely on repeaters in disasters, and hf is useless. You don’t need two grand worth of radio gear with which you can speak with 0.3% of the population.

When TSHF no one will be paying attention to how they are using their radios, call signs or anything else. It will be a free for all just like CB radio has become with people south of the border with linears bleeding all over the spectrum. The FCC might as well get used to the fact that they won't have any control over the radio spectrum. There will be so many people misusing their radios, they won't be able to keep up. Expect this all to happen within the next 5 years.

I am so glad that You are taking the time and EFFORT to make the videos. Hopefully there are a lot of people will benefit from the knowledge that Your dispersing. Unfortunately, I am not gifted with learning from vids. maybe NOT even from books. More like Monkey See/Monkey Do kind of person. STAY SAFE & WELL.

Excellent presentation. DE WA1KLI

Another interesting video. Thanks! Just one comment the use of the word Simplex. In your context it is used as opposed to Repeater. The maybe more relevant to use Direct as opposed to the Indirect for Repeater. Simplex/Duplex; see en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_(telecommunications)#Simplex 73 de SA5QED