Copywrite 2023 Dragon Bear Publishing

#1000NewHams

This is a great idea, especially since it is now 2023. A new year brings new opportunities for the Amateur Radio and Prepping communities.  New beginnings and all that is what this post is about.

To go forward, I feel the need to look to the past, not the long past, but my own past when I became a Prepper. As you know, Dear Readers, I am a graduate of the Y2K Bug that was supposed to shut down everything in the world and cause global panic…. Well that didn’t happen, obviously since you are reading this post. It was that lack of the world ending that made me rethink the whole Prepping thing. Instead of the end of the world as we know it, I chose to prep for the things that can actually happen such as severe weather, job loss, extended illness and the like, these things are perceptible, not the nebulous impending end of everything. So, I endeavored to do just that, and it was good. I accomplished a lot in my preps, much to the chagrin of my now ex-wife. She didn’t get the whole “prepping thing” when the government is there to help us when we need it.  Yeah, that’s one of the reasons that she is my ex-wife, among others.

So, I went along keeping up on my preps, and all the time I didn’t even know I was missing out on one major component, communications. Sure, I had a radio and television just like everyone else, but I never really gave comms much of a second thought. That was until about 2008 when I was introduced to Amateur Radio.

Amateur radio has been around since 1900, when Guglielmo Marconi adapted Heinrich Rudolf Hertz’s theory that radio waves existed and constructed a communication system in the 1890s and experimented with transatlantic communications in 1901. So, it’s been around for a long time and with good reason, one needs only a transceiver, power supply and an antenna to be up and running. No other infrastructure needed, also since Feb. 23, 2007 the Morse Code requirement was dropped allowing more people that were interested in radio communications to become licensed operators without having to learn what is essentially another language.

It was in 2009 that I took and passed my Technicians test and my love of radio communications started.  Ten years later I took and passed my General class test. My 1^st HF transceiver a single band radio (that I still use for portable comms).

Now that I’ve given my personal history, we come to the meat of this post, and that is to encourage any preppers out there that may be on the fence about getting you Amateur Radio license to go ahead and do so.

As Preppers we all know of the Top Three Preps: Water, Shelter and Food, but I would add Communications to that list as it is just as important to be on the top with the others. Why? Because humans are social creatures by nature. We tend to band together when there is a need not only for the mutual benefit of having many hands to do work, but for our mental health as well. We need to be able to talk to another human simply to keep out sanity. Existential thoughts aside, radio communications are essential before, during and after any kind of event that disrupts your daily life.

One has to know that Amateur Radio is a Licensed Radio Service, meaning you need to have a License Grant from the FCC to transmit on any Amateur Radio, you can own, and even monitor the Amateur radio frequencies, but without a license grant from the FCC you cannot, BY LAW, transmit.  You also need to know how to program your radios, which frequencies to monitor, what the national Calling Frequencies are on various bands, and most importantly what the range of your chosen radio is.

For most Preppers they get the Baofeng hand held transceiver, they may even charge it and attempt to monitor the local airwaves. If they have learned to program a local repeater on their radio they’d be in luck and would hear conversation over the repeater.

However, if they do not know how to program their radio, they have a $20 paperweight. There are numerous YouTube channels (https://www.youtube.com/c/K0MRDRadioPrepper), Blogs (like this one) Podcasts ( like mine at https://redcircle.com/shows/aaa94d45-9c3b-470e-ad2a-ab92b255ef9a) and many web pages  that assist the new and or prospective Amateur Radio Operator with learning how to program their new hand held transceivers.  

Something that new radio ops need to understand is the limitations of those very same hand-held radios as they are VHF and UHF and rely on Line of Sight to “hear” each other, radio to radio the best range is going to be about a mile, connected to a repeater you can expect 30 to 50 miles. But why is this Mr. Amateur Radio Guy? Let me explain, a repeater is a device that hears low power signals, such as the 5 watts from  your UV-5R and retransmits at a higher power to every other radio that is connected and monitoring the specific repeater frequency. Repeaters are usually placed up high, on top of tall buildings or on mountain tops to extend the range of hand-held radios. As seen below:

Figure 1Made with Adobe Express

There are more technical things going on in a repeater, but in Layman’s terms this is what a repeater is doing in a nut shell.

That’s all well and good, Mr. Amateur Radio Guy, but I want to talk for longer distances, how can I do that? As it happens Technicians have Phone (or Voice) privileges on the 10-meter band at 28.300 MHz to 29.300 MHz’s. This gives Technicians a taste of worldwide communication opportunities with the proper antenna.

Now is the time for the obligatory encouragement to get your Amateur Radio License, take the test, there are many places online that you can take a practice test, for free and when you score 80% consecutively go a head and take the Technicians test with your local Amateur Radio Club, or on line as some choose to do, just do a google search for on line technician test and you will be given several options. Do you due diligence when choosing how you will take your test.

I hope to hear you on the air, 73 de K0MRD

__________________________________________________________________

If you found value in the post, why not comment and share this out to others that may need it. Also subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss the next post.