Excellent video and very informative as usual. Now to let my weak brain absorb it all! I agreewith you on the disconnect. In my opinion, Emcomm seems directed to only serve pubic service agencies. I am concerned with emergency comms with family and friends first then public agencies if needed. And that is after 37 years in Public Agency Emergency Response.
Wonderful to get a comment like this. Public service is not a bad thing but, the systems and methodology don't provide the tools necessary to establish or maintain Communications, with friends, family, or a group. I think you're really going to enjoy the next big video coming up.
"When our focus is emergency communications or communications for preparedness, we won't always have the luxury of establishing communications during a *sked*, during a *net*, or leaving it to the *random contact*. In fact, the idea of leaving emergency communications for preparedness to chance is pretty ridiculous." [Yes, it's wonderful to see you talking about this subject, which I noticed right away, at about 11:48 in your video presentation] "Most of the communications taking place in Amateur Radio do so in a couple of different ways; (1)First we have the Sked or schedule; (2)Then we have the Net; (3)And finally, and probably the most common, is the Random Contact (random chance). That's where we're making a random CQ, not knowing who, if anyone, will answer." said Julian OH8STN. [Thanks for your wonderful elmering on this subject, Julian.]
I've heard a few references to JS8Call's functionality for store and forward and relaying and this is the first time I've seen it clearly demonstrated. Great demo, thanks.
Thanks Bill. Hopefully we can Inspire others to give it a try and see what we can do with it. Thanks for the comment and kindness, It's very much appreciated. 👍
I guess I'll have to make a bad one sometimes 🤔😀 I'm just joking. It's always good to get feedback, good or bad. Thanks for the kindness and the comment, it's very much appreciated.
Thanks for the kindness. This thing with my mother has knocked me off balance. Certainly will find my footing again, it just takes a little time. Thanks for the kindness and for reaching out. It's very much appreciated.
Once again, great content Julian. I was so happy that we managed to have a brief QSO at the end of my JS8CALL talk at Worksop Amateur Radio Society. Sharing to my club page as usual.
Thanks Andy. You know I just put up a new antenna that will (should) make our js8 contacts much easier. My previous antenna was really set up for DX to North America. This one is designed specifically for EMEA. Would you like to give it a try at your next Club day? If I know the schedule ahead of time, we can have a longer contact then last time.
Awesome ! I have been playing with JS8Call for some time and have been very impressed with it. It was a subject of conversation with another station last night. Thanks for sharing !
Hello Brett thanks for the comment. JS8Call really takes the "slow is reliable" concept to the extreme. So it was important to get this kind of video out there to show people the practical applications, and thinking outside the box. Extremely awesome to hear you've been trying it as well. 73 Julian oh8stn
My plan is to leave a message for JS ,,,, yes that's Jordan Sherer , in one of the mailboxes of one of the few stations he can reach . He's running a magnetic loop on his kitchen table, I'm running an 80 meter skywire loop on 40 m. He's in Atlanta, I'm in Northern California. Should be interesting. I haven't noticed a lot of activity by stations in Europe with stations in the US, say on the east coast. But, hopefully conditions will get better. And one thing you didn't mention, the message could be possibly put on a station with 40 and retrieved via 20 or 80 at the same station. Pretty sure.
Thanks for the comment. I couldn't get it to work like that. It was a message on my station for a station I heard on 80m. When I heard him on 40m, he queried my station but my station said "no messages". I was surprised by this but honestly don't remember how it should work. Is it band specific, or can stations pull messages regardless of band!?
Really a great video - lots of information and it's relaxing to just watch it. Good background music. Thanks and many greetings from Scotland, 73 de MM7SDH
Nice video!!! I learned a LOT from this. Thank you! The capabilities remind me of packet in years gone by. I had no idea this was possible with the mode. On another note... while this 'feature' is not necessarily important for EMCOMMS, NVIS is a bit more difficult for direction-finding fox-hunters.
Actually I think how we define EMCOMMS, determines its importance. With Public Service emergency communications, I'm not sure there would be much value, since they have their own tools and requirements. Change the focus to Communications for preparedness, and it becomes an indispensable tool. You're absolutely right about nvis. Those fox Hunters can be pretty clever. Low power and NVIS will make it much more difficult for them. Always good to hear from you. Thanks for the comments and feedback 👍👍👍
@@OH8STN Just for clarity, the 'feature' I was referring to as not important was the difficult triangulation. I think the messaging/forwarding capabilities could be quite useful although limited in a regional effort. Our VHF/UHF races effort is focused on our county, but there are statewide nets on 80M... where I use a NVIS full length dipole @ 10ft above the ground. Covers the state as well as several surrounding states (I'm in PA). Best wishes!
This entire video just flew right over my head... I wish I had a clue! Love your videos bro but this one was like rocket science to me. I've only ever used CB radios so as you can imagine, I'm waaaaay out of my depth here. Love you videos. Clear and concise. A pleasure to listen to. Maybe you can point me in the right direction of the amateur radio newbs class!
I need to think about a real answer for a while. With CB radio you have skip. You've heard about guys talkin on channel 36 37 38 and 40 on Lower Side Band. Well they're taking advantage of skip to get their signal out of their neighborhood and into some other part of the state or country. Unless you're using a yagi and a lot of power, rarely are you able to talk to intermediate-range stations. This happens because those stations are too far for ground-wave, and not far enough for your first skip Zone. So when we want to talk to those intermediate-range stations, we do so by moving down in frequency. CB is 11 meters, but we want to move down yp 40, 60, or 80 meters. When to use a horizontal wire antenna, mounted a few meters or yards above the ground. This gets our signals to go straight up and straight back down. That is called NVIS. This method is good if you want to have Regional Communications throughout a large County for example. This is for communications between ~0-350 miles. There's no exact science but that's the basic gist of it. You can think of the messaging we were doing in that video, as a sort of text chat. It's relevant because it's extremely narrow like a laser beam. A good analogy would be the difference between a shotgun and a sniper rifle. Another one would be the difference between a laser beam and a flood light. We compress all that dated into one narrow signal then use the NVIS technique for communications between 0 and 350 miles. Does that help?
I don't think of it as ignorance. We all have a starting point. The thing which is most difficult to figure out, you can pretty much do on your own. That's understanding what you want to do with your Communications. Once you understand that, you can look at the skillsets required to achieve it. 👍👍👍
@@OH8STNWasn’t interested in this type of communication, the messaging/keyboard/software stuff… listened to 8 minutes of this video, read your answer here, and will subscribe to this channel. I primarily NVIS on 40M and hope to learn more about this type of communication. new ham says 😊much thanks KJ5EQO
Hi Julian, thanks for the really useful video. New to JS8 Call so trying to learn as much as I can before hitting the TX button. Traffic is a little sparse in this part of the world (VK) but keen to give it a go. 73's
Thanks for the comment. There is a VK js8 net each week. I don't know all the details, but it is mentioned from time to time In the js8call group on groups.io. One thing I found useful, was to leave my station on for 24 hours, acks and spotting enabled, no HBs. Then looked at the last 24 hours on pskreporter to see what my coverage looked like.
Thank you for this awesome video Julian. I tried to send you a dollar but PayPal wanted a dollar in service charge and that made me mad. If this video is any indication I'll be a monthly Patreon supporter after watching a few more videos. :-) I love your attitude about emergency communications. I have similar interests. I particularly appreciated you showing the transmissions in real time even though it was slow. It was the honest way to demonstrate the capabilities.
Thanks for the kindness. It was important to show the real-time transmission while explaining this "slow = efficient" concept. It's really awesome to know people are paying attention.
@@OH8STN - I love the features of JS8Call. If it didn't require PCs to be time synched within a couple of seconds with each other it'd be a great choice for emergency communications. It probably wouldn't take much to listen for a preamble on a new communication and record a time offset to temporarily sync with a new sender for the duration of a communications session. As new participants dropped into a conversation, they could each sync with the existing ad hoc net. That strategy wouldn't work as well for mesh network and message forwarding, but should be possible to implement with a bit of creativity. The strict adherence to time standards is the only contesting holdover that I can see that doesn't work well for EmCom.
@@Liberty4Ever that functionality already exists. In a situation where we lack a GPS signal, we simply sync up with the other stations on the band. Preparedness built in 👍
Thank you for the great video. The one thing that would just make JS8 an "over the top" mode would be to figure out how to independently automate routing (no Internet!). It might be a bit of a moot point when operating HF with ideal propagation, but when do we really have those ideal conditions? Querying adjacent station's heard lists and then organizing and de-duplicating the information is not exactly a small chore! Fantastic new mode though!
I think you mean something like an autonomous store and forward. Honestly I 100% agree with you. To send off a message without knowing the route to that station. Then the message makes its way through the network to the intended station. That would be epic! Thanks for the awesome comment 👍
Just now studying for my HAM license, so forgive me if this is an ignorant comment, but it seems with this configuration you should be able to communicate all over the US if there were a mere 50 or so dedicated stations doing this at all times. The nature of NVIS seems to be it gives you a cone of coverage of about 200-300 miles in diameter, and the mesh nature of this network would allow all "adjacent" overlapping stations to propagate all received messages to the next one. This seems fascinating to me.
We currently use one-way 80m Voice NVIS for our Group. Most of our group is not licensed and only receive via SW (Tecsun PL-880, PL-365, etc) Can you explain how this can be used to send digital one-way and what minimal hardware/software is required on the receiving end? Thank You Echo Papa PrepperNet Asheville NC
Actually I have a video in the works on this very topic. Canadian Prepper asked a very similar question. Your idea is sound! It might take me a few weeks, but let finish putting it together. Julian oh8stn
What do you use for a laptop when you’re out in the field? I’ve seen you use a Samsung Android tablet. In this video, it looks like some Linux derivative - possibly even a Raspberry Pi.
Excellent question. So the radio and the Raspberry Pi are always connected. In fact all the software for communications is running on the Raspberry Pi. But I use different devices to connect to the Raspberry Pi which runs headless with the radio. So sometimes I use the Android tablet to connect to the Raspberry Pi, sometimes I use an old Asus Eee pc, sometimes I even use my Samsung S8 phone to connect wirelessly to the Raspberry Pi. I try to look at the Raspberry Pi and the radio, as one piece of kit. When we do it this way, it removes all of the configuration requirements for different devices. All we have to do is installed the VNC client on whatever device we want to use. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BcMMlGvPCsw.html
And are you using the Raspberry Pi with your Yaesu FT-891? If so, how do you connect the radio to the Pi? Are you just using a USB cable and an app on the Pi to do CAT control? I vaguely recall you testing some USB audio adapters for the Pi. I have the same audio adapter you were testing out and I also have the FT-891. It would be totally amazing for you to do an episode on the inner workings of your computer/tablet/Pi strategy. I’m an IT guy by trade so I geek out on that stuff! Always looking for new and interesting ways to use computing tech with radio! Thanks so much for your response! 73, -JeffH W4JEW Atlanta, GA
I just watched it. Perfect! I concur about how radio manufacturers need to start putting single board computers in their radios. What will likely happen is SDR will become more prevalent and the SDR manufacturers will start to allow installation of third party software on their radios. The more tech savvy hams will jump over to them and the manufacturers not embracing the change will lose market share. Then they’ll realize they should have done it long ago! Let’s write an article! Or a manifesto for that matter! :-) Thanks so much! You’re awesome!!! Hope to meet you on the air some day soon. -JeffH
I like your videos To operate you qrp radio's What feedline are you using What length on feedline Do you consider extrema low loose to be main interest ,because you are operating in qrp Thanks KL5CZ
Hi there! Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I'm a newbie Class C Ham Radio Operator from the Philippines, DW2KBF. Setting up an emergency communications has been my dream to do for my our physically handicap community for our emergency and disaster preparedness and mitigation, and since I am a beginner, I don't have that much of knowledge and skills yet to set it up. You do have a step by step video about setting NVIS up? Thank you. 73.
I'll have something good on the channel soon. Remember, NVIS is very simple. When I show you how, you'll be surprised 👍 I'll try to get a blog post done first, then a video. 73 Julian oh8stn
Julian 73s! I wonder if you would share the FT891 settings you have for JS8CALL in your FT891 menu. Also what settings you had configured on JS8CALL. Thanks! 73s Eduardo
Sure. Let me finish the project I'm working on, then I'll make a small video. I only have the settings for Raspberry Pi since I don't use any other operating system
This video is a little old now, but I just see with locals in my area, that getting folks up to speed on technology is defiantly a work in progress. I'm not sure at least in my area how many folks will be able to use any of this cool stuff is SHTF. The local ARES groups is giving some training which is great, but honestly is SLOW SLOW SLOW. Any Advice?
@@OH8STN Thanks Julian...my main concern being loss of OPSEC for the group. The individual comm data is typically innocuous, but exposing the group members' call with the MESH topology would be unfortunate if things progressed from a disaster situation to a WROL after the MESH had already been learned. Something to consider in drafting Comms SOPs.
Hi Eric. Unfortunately no. I have not been able to get a good signal level out of the DRAWS hat with the FT891 on HF. It was taking up too much time to keep trying, so I shelved it for a while. :(
Hello, Regarding JS8CALL, how would you visualize using it in a genuine Grid down emergency setting? Would you set up groups? Establish specific broadcast protocols?
@@W4BTK I use this one rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_id=114&ipn=icep&toolid=20004&campid=5338072637&mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F3-FT-FT8-FT4-JT65-PSK-Audio-Interface-6-Pin-Mini-DIN-Cable-DC-11F-for-YAESU%2F163772517145%3Fhash%3Ditem26219a4b19%3Ag%3ASCEAAOSwnDpaI31s
OH8STN so just one DIN end to the FT891 and the audio plugs on the computer headphones/mic ? That is all to get the JS8Call to talk and control the FT891? -- UPDATE: OK I see it now! Thanks again. Bought it on ebay.
@@W4BTK yes that's right. You can use an audio interface like signaling or zlp. But for this one I just use a USB sound card, and the cable to the radio.
Not that I've got anything against "Hams" but, the situation requires something along the lines of JS8 Call. I don't intend to get a "licence" to "play" on RF. If push comes to shove, I'll be using "gods air waves," to communicate however I can, the natural law of survive trumps any regulations, kings or nation-states have dreamt up. The challenge as I see it is to make as many people aware, of what tools they will need, and how to use them, on say the 10m band ??? or what ever, to help them in a crises. As we all know VHF/UHF can only take you so far, and we are so "fat laze and have been lulled in to the belief, norm's of today will always be here tomorrow.
Driver's license, flight school, first aid cert, dive school, electrician apprentice, ... the tools and training are out there. Waiting until one needs the tools, rather than training before the fact, is why it often turns into chaos. We don't know what we don't know!
@@OH8STN I'd stay away from "flight school" you will be Red Flagged lol you won't need any "licences" because law enforcement wont be a "payed" profession and you left out firearms training, otherwise, a man with a gun is just going to take all your stuff, if you you cant control your area of operations, your called "Pray" because that's all you can do.
The mistake most of us make is preparing for the worst case scenario while forgetting to prepare for the "lead up" to the worst case scenario. Of course in a societal collapse no one cares about licenses or certificates. But before a societal collapse if we want training, if you want to become experts in something, we need to play by their rules, however fair or unfair. It is faster from a hurricane is more likely than a societal collapse. Earthquake, nor'easters, civil unrest, ... I guess what I'm saying is getting skills it's best done before you need them. Having the ability to put those skills into practice before you need them is also critical. Having the equipment, without the skills will always fail. This is what I mean by we don't know what we don't know.