Welcome in to the next episode of the
Ham Radio 360 Podcast.
No, that was 2014 to 2018.
Welcome in to PrepComms Podcast.
I'm your host, Caleb Nelson, K4CDN, and taking
it back just a little bit.
You know, that's not a surprise I said
that.
Actually, you don't hear a lot of that
in the audio podcast when I'm able to
do a lot more editing than I ever
dream of doing here.
So if you don't like the background or
the fact I shift and move, or I'm
even personally leaning up against the counter right
now, you may want to listen to the
audio only show.
I am the host of this program, started
it, I don't even know, maybe 2024 and
took a break.
And anyway, the whole premise of this show
was to build a library of understanding for
people, preppers, people who coming into the hobby
or the movement or the lifestyle of preparedness
and having, you know, stuff but not really
knowing what to do with some of it.
So I decided, hey, we're going to create
a podcast for communicators or wannabe communicators or
those who want to learn about communicating for
prepping.
And here we are.
So we have started this new series just
the last time.
And thanks for the comments, by the way.
Great to see you too.
We started this, I've started this, this next
chapter, the final chapter of the show.
And we're talking all about the amateur radio
hobby.
I said last week that I thought it
was the pinnacle of communications for a prepper.
And I say, I'll say that again, I
still believe that.
A week hasn't changed.
Because looking at this from a very broad
view, people coming in trying to figure out
what to do, not wanting probably because most
preppers are cheap as nuts.
This is probably about the best they're going
to do.
Now they do have to take a test
or two and do have to buy equipment.
So, you know, there's those challenges there within
preparedness.
But at the same time, the bang for
buck cannot be beat when it comes to
ham radio.
Now I understand again, I want to reiterate,
I get it.
Some of you don't want to come here.
Some of you aren't interested in ham radio
at all.
Some of you think that ham radio operator
is just a bunch of fuds or what
sat hams, I think is the new one
or something.
Okay, then this video, the rest of this
podcast is probably not for you.
And here's your invitation to press the button
and take off.
So those of you that have stuck around,
let's talk about ham radio, amateur radio as
it's also known, and why it matters to
me.
Well, I've been a communicator my whole life.
Got into CB radio when I was about
six years old and Nextel showed up in
the very late 90s, mid to late 90s.
Loved it.
Maybe one of the best communication services I've
ever paid for.
Not necessarily with the service, but the ease
of use and how well it worked.
At the time, it was groundbreaking.
And I'm confident if there were a company
that would release something like that, that could
work with the ease that the Nextel radio
walkies, whatever you're going to call them, worked,
I think that we could definitely move down
that road again.
Now, I guess the next best thing to
that would be those radios you see on
Facebook advertised with, you know, nationwide coverage, push
to talk because those are basically just Nextel
radios without the encryption.
So I'm not talking encryption, but we're talking
ham radio.
So I came into the hobby.
I was actually looking for a communication solution.
We're talking post Y2K.
We're talking post 2008 collapse of the economy.
In 2000, Y2K 2000, I had purchased some
amateur radio gear for the end of the
world.
And the end of the world didn't happen.
So I sold that stuff and bought some
chrome for my Harley that I bought instead.
And did that for a couple of years,
became a dad in 2003.
And things, you know, as you become a
dad, things start to change.
Things look different.
You begin to look different as I'm realizing,
staring at my phone here.
I had a haircut today, so I look
even different, but maybe a little, a little
tidier.
We walked on through the Y2K and the
new parenting, and then a second child, and
then a third child, and then the economy
collapsed.
And we ended up leaving the city and
ended up way down in the country where
there was no cell service.
Nextel didn't work.
Verizon didn't work.
We eventually found that the only thing that
worked here was AT&T and Boost Mobile,
which is a reseller of AT&T.
So we've been AT&T customers for a
long time, but even then I knew I
wanted an alternate means of communications because if
anything I had learned between Y2K and 2008
is, wow, stuff can change real quick because
it did for my family in a very
dramatic fashion.
So I was looking, now being 30 minutes
conveniently located from everywhere, I was looking for
a solution that would allow me to contact
and have connection with others, whomever those are,
maybe my family, maybe others, in case of
an emergency, in case of being resettled like
we had been, in case of needing some
help when the phone stopped working, because again,
they didn't want to work down here in
the deep, deep sticks.
So I ordered the ARRL study manual.
It came in the mail and my wife
said, what are you doing?
You've been talking about this since before Y2K.
You're never going to take the test.
Well, I knew right then that I was
going to take and pass the test.
And in a matter of weeks, studying with
a CD-ROM and the practice test they're
on and their book, back when you read
a book, I studied, I passed the test.
And a couple of weeks later, I went
back and aced the general.
And then that's where I've stopped.
I think about sometimes, you know, going to
the next level of extra just to say,
hey, I'm an extra class licensee, but I
don't really use anything outside of the privileges
I currently have.
I don't have a desire or a need.
So I haven't been able to talk myself
into giving myself 30 minutes a day for
30 days to study and pass the test.
So I'm a general class license.
That means I'm in the middle and I
have virtually all the privileges that I could
stand to use it because the reason that
I use the amateur radio service.
So yeah, I decided to become an amateur
radio operator and I bought a walkie talkie.
And that was all I had for a
very long time because the crunch, you know,
we moved down here for a reason.
And I was a tech and I had
my walkie talkie and I used it as
a base station.
I used it as a mobile.
I used it as a portable station.
It was all I had.
And that was great.
It was $120.
And I wish I'd have gotten it out
to show you.
I still have it.
It still works.
Now, I think there might be one part
of the LCD screen that is dim or
burned out, but it's an Oshine.
I think it's a UV2 Delta that I
bought from a gentleman in North Carolina.
He was one of the only importers at
the time bringing these things in.
This is before they were on Amazon.
And this is before the $30.
Well, it was $30 when it came out.
Now it's maybe $16 for a UV5 or
a Baofeng or a Pofeng, however you want
to say it.
Either way, these were Oshine or Uxon if
you want to say it that way.
And it still works.
It's been a great radio to the point
that I probably have had maybe a dozen
or so of those.
I've had them in different flavors.
And then when Carla was sick, I had
to sell 90% of all the stuff.
So anyway, I still have my original and
it still works.
Works great.
And that got me started.
Eventually I was able to save up for
a mobile radio, a dual band radio, a
Kenwood 707, not that it matters, but it
was a great radio.
I sold it.
But anyway, it worked great while it was
mobile in the truck at that time.
And it didn't take for forever, but I
was able to finally purchase one Easter Sunday
used Kenwood TS-50, which is kind of
the same size as a CB radio.
But back then they made it, it was
10 meters through 160.
If that's not English for you, we'll get
there.
But it's a full on HEF radio for
ham radio operators, a compact 100 watt radio.
I wish I still had that one for
sure.
But that gave me the opportunity to begin
to work in the HEF bands, the short
wave, like we've talked about in the past,
on sideband inmate contacts.
I'm looking at my notes over here.
The reason that I wanted something a little
different than what I've had before.
So by this point we had our AT
&T telephones here.
We had an AT&T MiFi hotspot.
So if you're an old podcast listener from
the 360 days, all that was done, majority
of that was done with a very limited
hotspot that cost a lot every month.
My wife wanted to kill me because I'd
go over every month just recording the shows
with Skype.
Anybody remember Skype?
In addition to that, we've put the driveway
alerts that we've talked about up.
The MERS M-U-R-S radio at
151 point something megahertz is what we used
around here.
It worked great for the farm.
We'd go up and down the road and
it was okay.
We had the walkie, the big monster walkie
talkies we could take in the cars with
us.
And it was great, but I couldn't talk
to my in-laws.
I couldn't talk to my neighbors.
I couldn't talk to someone across town.
Amateur radio gave me that.
CB radio gave me that to an extent.
Like I could talk to my brother, but
there weren't very many people left over on
the CB radio that I was actually interested
in talking to back in the day.
So I decided ham radio was going to
be the answer for us.
And I decided that as great as my
technician license was, that's your first level of
licensing in the amateur hobby.
I wanted the additional license of general that
would give me much more frequency allocations, especially
in the low bands or the high frequencies.
However you want to say it, it's weird,
but it's physics.
So it would allow me to use the
shortwave bands to make contacts.
So I decided to do that because I
wanted more connectivity.
Now, it wasn't that I thought I was
going to call someone, let's say in central
Ohio and say, the aliens are landing in
my backyard, but I wanted to do more
with communications and to have that capability to
monitor things.
And things did happen and we could hear
and whatnot.
It gives you just the opportunity.
Plus being a communicator for at that point,
gosh, 30 years, I was really excited.
I really wanted to be involved in a
geeky guy.
You got questions, I have answers kind of
radio shack dude.
It just fit the MO here.
Now that's the thing to say, I need
to, it's not in the notes, but I
need to toss it in.
Not everybody's a ham, not everybody wants to
be, not everybody needs to be.
Now we'll say that six of the seven
people in my household are amateur radio operators
at some level.
And that's just how we've done it here.
But in most households, if there's one person
interested, maybe the dad or maybe the eldest
son, or maybe probably the youngest son, or
maybe the middle, if he's kind of nerdy,
that's good enough.
I mean, not everybody really needs it because
how many operators are you really going to
have running an HF station anyway?
I mean, I've got three set up here.
And so what I'm saying, it's just not
everybody's going to want to do it.
Not everybody really, even in a proper household
really needs to, especially if someone has a
good understanding and they can help share that
knowledge with the family.
I think I kind of halfway told this
story last time.
I'll just touch on it again.
My primary objective with gaining my general class
license and then buying an HF radio was
to be able to talk regionally, or at
least in the Eastern time zone from Maine
to Miami out to maybe middle central Tennessee.
And within just a matter of minutes, I
had done that.
And over a course of the first few
days of having a wire pulled up at
eight feet off the ground, a hundred and
some odd feet long, connected to a $400
radio, I had done all that.
And I was like, wow, that was really
cool for like 30 seconds, but now what?
And I began to investigate different types of
operating, different modes and whatnot.
And I had a great group of online
mentors over at RFCom.
And if you're watching and you're there or
have been there, thank you.
You helped get me here.
But those guys were great and they encouraged,
we had nets and we would pick times
and days and we would have these random
contact days.
And then we had a 20 meter takeover,
which was hilarious one day, thanks to Piccolo.
And anyway, it was just a really good
solid group of men who were all of
the same mindset and who were all kind
of working in the same direction and wanting
to make sure that they could communicate if
necessary.
So I just fit right in because that
was my mindset.
And actually to this day, that is still
my mindset.
You see, I'm not the ham guy who
wants to have a big station at his
house and make contacts and get awards and
things like that.
That doesn't interest me at all.
I mean, if I hear a contest on,
the contacts are very easy to make.
So I'll jump on and say, hey, make
a couple of contacts and walk off.
I'm not going to sit here for hours
trying to talk.
That's just not who I am.
And it's not the reason that I do
ham radio.
So anyway, it doesn't make it wrong that
I don't do it that way, but there
are a lot of people that do and
they really enjoy it and good for them.
I mean, it's a hobby of hobbies.
Jeremy said that back in the day of
ham radio 360, and it literally is a
hobby of hobbies.
So if you're looking for something kind of
geeky, kind of in the STEM realm, kind
of maybe something you've never tried before, there's
probably something inside the ham radio hobby for
you.
So yeah, it did work literally the very
first time and I've enjoyed it ever since.
So I got to the point where I
thought I wanted to talk to people and
talk, you know, like you're doing a CB,
you know, Hey man, how's it going?
And well, you know that again, a lot
of people, that's what they use ham radio
for.
And their, their, their entire friend group are
people that are all over the world and
have these conversations every day and they're buddies.
And you know, that's fine because that's part
of the hobby and you can enjoy that
if that's what you're looking for.
I wasn't really looking for that.
I just kind of went through that a
moment ago, but it's there.
It's there.
I decided that I was much more interested
in the emergency communications aspect.
Like what happens when the phones quit working?
What happens if 9-1-1 goes down?
What happens if we have another hurricane Hugo
come through South Carolina and we have people
from the coast coming to the upstate that
needs somewhere to go.
We have shelter set up.
Can I go help and coordinate with our
local EMA?
I've done all that.
I've been a part of areas, an assistant
coordinator, all this stuff that really doesn't matter.
But again, if that's what you're into, there's
a place for you.
And back on my old show, I talked
to people that use satellites, they did moon
bounce, they set up in parks back before
everybody else was doing it.
Back when it was brand new, when POTA
was brand new, actually it was NAPOTA back
then.
It's great, great show.
You should check it out.
But there's so many different things you can
do.
And none of that was really for me,
except kind of the emergency communications aspect of
how could I talk to my family and
friends in case of an emergency?
What would happen if we were in or
nearby a hurricane like Helene that destroyed, or
maybe a tornado that went through Joplin, or
maybe a severe earthquake like happened in Nepal.
All these different things that you could think
about.
And my public service background, I guess, just
kind of lends me that direction that, hey,
let me help.
And that's where I kind of live in
the hobby.
Now, I'm no longer necessarily officially associated with
our local areas group, but I do assist
and I do focus my efforts in that
with what infrastructure I try to build here
locally.
And the involvement that I have is more
along those lines.
It doesn't mean that it's the right or
the wrong thing for you.
It just works for me.
I don't want to go too long on
this one.
So I'm watching the clock and my notes,
but talked a lot about hobby.
Now let me talk about the service because
the amateur radio service was actually kind of
put together for a public department.
That's the wrong word.
A gentleman's agreement with a public understanding that
in case of an emergency, in case of
a problem, the communicators would work together to
assist the government in the continuity thereof.
And that sounds kind of, you know, black
helicopter in 2026.
I don't think they had black helicopters back
then, but what can be a semi near
official government type situation or association can also
be a full-blown hobby, right?
So there are a lot of people who
spend a lot of time in the amateur
radio world, but they're closely associated with their
state EMD or their county EMA.
And they, they enjoy that.
That's like their thing.
They like working in that near official public
offering that space.
Now it's okay.
But the biggest thing I ran into with
it was just like when I was a
professional firefighter, the politics of it really takes
the love away out of it.
You know what I'm talking about?
But it also gets in the way of
progress.
So you have everybody jockeying for a position.
And at the same time, those whom you're
called to serve, or you pledge to serve,
are doing without while you're trying to jockey
around positions and figure out who's going to
get the money and what equipment's going where
and all that kind of stuff.
So I just like to watch and help
from the periphery here.
But there is a service.
It is, it was started as a service.
It's kind of morphed into a hobby, but
it actually is one in the same and
you get to decide.
So if you're an amateur radio operator, you
can involve yourself in the service aspect of
it.
If, if you want to just make contacts
and set up at national parks or maybe
do balloons or moon bounce or satellite work,
or just digital messages back and forth to
see how far your signal can go and
what kind of signal reports you get back.
It's all there.
So it's a wide open hobby.
I will say again, because I got some
chuckles on it, Ham is, is just a
nickname.
And it kind of goes back that the
best, the best story for this is back
in the day, they were, you know, telephones
weren't necessarily anywhere, but they were using telegraph
everywhere.
And they would call someone who was not
a very good Morse code sender, a ham
fisted, I guess, you know, you remember the
old cartoons where they, you know, they felt
stupid.
They looked like a ham.
Maybe they, in their mind considered the hand
was like a, like a ham, a butt
ham with the big bone coming out of
it.
Like you've seen on the cartoons from the
forties.
Ham fisted operator.
And somehow, some way that that's one story
of how the ham radio operator nomenclature came
around that, that it just stuck for whatever
reason.
I don't know.
It's not official and it's not an acronym.
So you can call it, you can call
us hams, you can call us amateur radio
operators, or you can call us whatever you
like.
It doesn't matter.
You're probably not still here.
Is it worth it?
Is ham radio worth it?
And man, I tell you, that's, that really
depends on your goals.
For me and my family.
Absolutely.
It's worth it.
It gives me as the father of five,
a husband of one, it gives me peace
of mind knowing that if the phones didn't
work, my wife, my children could contact someone
here in the family and that we could
make a connection if the normal means of
communications failed.
So yeah, it's worth it for me.
I mean, it's a $30, $35 license fee.
You might pay 15 bucks to take a
test.
There's a question pool of 350 questions and
they give you 35 of those question and
answer, you know, like multiple choice that you
can actually get the test and pre-study
so that you can memorize.
I encourage you to do that and pass
the test.
Matter of fact, if you're interested up to
this point, I do have a 30, 30
ham challenge.
It means I have a free challenge that
you can sign up for.
It's a daily thing.
It's free.
It doesn't cost you anything unless you want
to pay for one of the testing services,
which is beyond me, but I've got a
list of free and paid services.
And the deal is you sign up and
every day we connect via email to encourage
you to take and pass your test.
And it's just, it's just somebody else beside
you saying, Hey, don't forget to study today.
I found that most citizens, if you'll spend
30 minutes a day for 30 days, you
can pass your test and probably not even
miss a single question.
Now you're laughing.
Some of you are chuckling 30 days.
Absolutely.
You can probably do it in seven, but
I didn't want to overload busy people and
make them say, Oh gosh, if I couldn't
pass it in seven days, I might as
well quit.
Cause some people have that attitude.
So 30 minutes for 30 days is very,
very broad.
And it allows everybody to get their heads
around the information and be able to pass
the test.
I use the same system.
That's where it came from to help my
youngest son pass his test 30 minutes a
day for 30 days.
And he passed, didn't miss a single question.
It was awesome.
So you can also test at home.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this.
It hasn't always been this way, but COVID
changed everything of course.
So you can actually study at home on
your laptop or your tablet, and you can
also test at home on your laptop or
your tablet.
And it's just like taking the practice test
that you take as you are studying for
your license.
Now I'm sure I'm going to spend some
more time in the next installment here about
testing, but just to mention that real quick.
So is ham radio worth it for me?
Absolutely.
If you, if you don't want to spend
say a thousand dollars to have a station
that can talk around the world.
I'm not talking with a tower.
I'm not talking about some huge antenna in
your yard.
I'm not talking about dedicating the space in
your spare bedroom and having to move all
of your wife's porcelain dolls.
I'm saying you can, you can do this
with a backpack, but you can spend about
a thousand bucks or less and talk all
over the world.
Matter of fact, a little true SDX or
whatever it's called.
It's 120 bucks on Amazon.
It's a little five watt radio, plug it
into your laptop, throw a wire up in
a tree, do the same thing.
So figure 300 to a thousand bucks to
get into the amateur radio service to talk
around the world with a general class license.
So is it worth it?
Absolutely.
Again, I will, I will go to the
grave believing it's worth it.
You're not going to convince me otherwise.
I understand again, CB guys, you have about
120 channels.
If you count the sidebands, the GMRS guys
have 20 with 50 Watts and the MERS
guys can get up to 60 feet with
five channels.
I can't count the different frequencies I have,
but I know it's a lot.
I've never used them all.
I don't know that I could, if I
really wanted to.
Well, I guess I probably could just maybe
take a couple of years.
It is a vast expansion of your capabilities,
but it may not be for you.
And I understand that, but if it is
come back the next time we're going to
continue our conversation about amateur radio, ham radio,
if you will, as we figure out if
it works best for you in regards to
your preparedness plans right here is we're winding
down the prep comms podcast.
I appreciate you listening.
Thanks for being here again.
Thanks for your comments.
The conversations have been fun.
Look forward to continuing with you, but until
next time 73 y'all and God bless.