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Posted on 02/04/2012 12:36:51 PM PST by DCBryan1
20 or so people in there, half of them under 30 going for their technician. I was one of 2 in there to upgrade to general, and one showed up for the highest class, amateur extra.
Anyways, I ask this kid (22-25yo) "Why are you getting into ham radio"? He matter-of-factly said, "For the upcoming zombie apocalypse". I laughed and half the room turned around, glad to proclaim the same, hell even bragging about it! A couple more admitted that they were embarrased to say that but essentially that is why they were there.
I found out with a little more prodding that some of them have family members either already taken the exam(s) or studying for it in solely in case the balloon goes up.
Anyways, your days of old guys in wearing dirty hats, thick glasses, and coveralls with pocket protectors and the newest Texas Instrument calculator or slide scale are LONG gone in ham radio. Lots of young, professional, worried, high and tight clean haircut young adults and family units getting into it as a last ditch effort to communicate with family. Hell...2 girls in there! Wife and daughter!
Anyways, just an acute observation for you guys, especially the Preppers.
In general I can understand the desire not to be on a list. But I'm not sure it makes a difference if you're involved in transmitting RF from a stationary location.
You are an “establishment” emergency preparedness type who likes to network with others like you..
I am an isolated self-sufficient type; very few social contacts of any kind other than a couple forums.
I do happen to live next to a sensitive government installation and this area would be very heavily patrolled in the event of even a non-catastrophic societal breakdown.
When the power comes back on, which it will in D.C., they’ll come and confiscate your communications gear via the database.
Once again, any HAM who does not answer an emergency call due to licensing issues had better be prepared for legal and, in my case, personal consequences when I get back.
ping
True, but I'd be in my bug-out van somewhere in the Cascades.
Is CB still alive? It is not very good, actually, for mobile communications because you need an antenna that is 7' long... (11m / 4 = 2.25m = 7' for a quarter wave vertical - and you still need a ground plane to complete the antenna.)
I’m going to get some sort of mobile shortwave tranceiver (Icom or such)
As I understand you don't have a license yet. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If you are licensed then read the following as generic words on the subject. You need to have a license if you plan to buy from official resellers like HRO.
I will never use the shortwave tranceiver without a license, but I will if there is ever an EMP or complete societal breakdown
It's like buying firearms and ammo but never shooting them until TSHTF. How would you know how to operate your radio? How would you know that it still works? I guess you could transmit into an attenuator, but that's not the same as being able to match the transceiver to a random wire.
As others mentioned, using a radio is not rocket science, but it takes certain learning. This is especially true for modern HF rigs. They are loaded with DSP that allows you to optimally match the passband to the shape of the signal of interest. It is not trivial to just remember what button does what. You must use the radio - if not every day then at least every month (pick a contest) if you want to work your radio when there is no time to learn.
Also certain modes of communication have their unique aspects. How quickly can you tune to an SSB transmission? The frequency error must be under 50 Hz, and there is no time to experimentally tune here and there. You need to know how much off you are and turn the knob to where it should be; otherwise you are wasting time. RTTY is yet another example - it uses two tones and you need to hear both. What filter you are going to use? 200 Hz is too narrow; 300 Hz is about right ... but while tuning you can hear only one tone and you don't know where the other one is. The waterfall is helpful, but it may be a distraction too. Modern digital modes are even harder because they require identification by the ear, and there are tens of modes, each with several bandwidth options. The RSID is not a silver bullet because it depends on someone transmitting it - and if time is short and power is precious the other station may turn it off. Then you are on your own. Even today most digital mode operators keep RSID off. I use it only when working in more exotic modes.
In other words, there is absolutely no reason to invest a lot of time and money into hardware but at the same time skip on getting a license. When TSHTF you may reach for your radio and find out that it requires some cables and connectors that you never obtained - and it's too late now to go to HRO. Do you have your ARRL Repeater Handbook ready? If you never operated then it wouldn't even occur to you that you need one (or that one exists.) By the way, do you remember by heart how to program PL tones and offsets into your gear? I don't, honestly. It's different for every radio that I have, and that's why I have manuals (hardcopies and PDFs) for everything.
On that subject; many repeaters will go down after TSHTF. But quite a few have battery backups and other power sources. A repeater on a mountaintop can be happy with a moderately sized solar panel. But even if the repeater is down, its output frequency is a natural gathering spot for area hams. It helps to be tuned to that frequency all the time. Not only you will be testing your gear every single day, you will also get to know people in your area. After the TSHTF day it will be *much* harder to make friends.
Good luck with that.
We're talking past each other because you're being inconsistent in your argument.
In post 16 you said: "...I am taking the advice of another FReeper to not be on any FCC license list if TSHTF...," but now you're arguing about "establishment" and "suing" in your post-SHTF world.
So, which is it? Is there an establishment to "get back" to as you allude to in this post, or is it "SHTF" as you allude to in post 16?
Oh, and a "power outage" is not SHTF, except maybe to DC types.
-PJ
After the Northridge earthquake my ham father-in-law 100 miles away in Bakersfield knew more about what was going on than the news radio. He could pick up the mountaintop battery-powered 2m repeater on the ham emergency network. We were 2 miles south of Santa Monica and didn't know what had happened, where or how bad.
It's a cheap insurance policy for when nature gets bad and the phone system dies.
ROFL! Whatcha plan on doing there junior, suing all the hams that live around you for NOT hearing you? Good luck with that empty threat.
As for you, you'd be wise to shut your pie hole about your bootlegging on the amateur radio bands lest YOU suffer some "personal consequences" for transmitting without a license there, bootlegger.
If that happens they are welcome to confiscate my crystal receiver because that's all I have left. All my other radios, even I had them (which they can't prove - no registration required,) had been irretrievably lost in an unfortunate UFO accident.
Aside from that, if "they" are going to come to you for any reason whatsoever you should be already on the way to the hills with your bug-out bag in hand. This is simply because you shouldn't expect anything good out of that visit. You will have plenty of warning, and the visitors will not be searching every nook and cranny of your home anyway; they have thousands of residences to cover, and they don't really want to do any of it (they'd rather be in the hills themselves.)
Once again, any HAM who does not answer an emergency call due to licensing issues had better be prepared for legal and, in my case, personal consequences
That's why every net that ever was on begins with the net coordinator asking if there is an emergency traffic and then giving enough time to respond. After that pause the coordinator explains how to break in if an emergency occurs later on.
However improbable it might sound, I witnessed one such emergency break-in on a local repeater. An area ham was reporting a road emergency (a pedestrian in danger) and was asking to call the police about that. It was done. So it's not just a tradition. This thing works. And if an unlicensed child breaks in and reports an auto accident where her daddy, a ham, is injured, nobody will be berating the child for an unidentified transmission.
I have signed up to take the online class and get my license. Just have to sit down and start studying. Promised my husband I would do it first and then he will follow. Just figure it is best way to stay in touch with people if something should happen. Talked my girlfriend in another part of the state to do it as well. Her husband is a fireman so she is usually left alone because he is a first responder.
Thanks for the input. That’s a hell of a lot of information to digest. I do have a HAM friend that is trying to get me to study and get a license. I was hoping he’d just teach me the basics for an emergency. I obtained one book “HAM Radio for Dummies” or something like that but the information is not presented in such that it can be grasped easily.
As far as CB’s, I figure those that are working after an EMP there will be people using them, and the SSB can go for (I’ve been told) a few hundred miles. The idea was just to make contact with others to learn news. I have an old Zenith T/O B-600 with the battery pack to be able to receive any foreign broadcasts, again, just for news.
Communications is important, but not at the top of my list, especially when it comes to time investment. I’ll take your advice seriously moving forward, though. Thanks again.
thx for the lesson. It's always nice to have a discussion about a subject where facts trump opinion!
I shouldn’t presume — what do these youngsters mean by “the zombie apocalypse”? For all I know, to them it might mean a conservative presidency.
License?
I don’t need no stinking license...
Ahem, I shall not seek to procure a Right, a**hole! lol
So... how long before some race baiter picks up on the prepper movement,
calls the word “zombies” a “racist code word”,
deems “preppers” to be inherently racist because they are preparing against said “zombies”,
and proposes “anti-prepper” laws?
73s!
My old nemesis, math, was present. Therefore, an adult beverage is currently un-cramping my brain. ;-)
Actually, it was all much easier than I expected - the online practice tests are pulled verbatim from the larger pool of test questions. I encourage anyone who is contemplating this to go ahead and dive in.
There was a heavy prepper / paleocon / old-time, small-town law enforcement and volunteer firefighter presence at this gathering. A number of young, former military types as well. One fellow, mid-30's, asked about a truck in the parking lot (my SUV). He wanted to know where to get a Hoppes No. 9 auto air freshener like the one dangling from my mirror.
That turned out to be quite an icebreaker, both with the other students and the examiners.
I took my technician's test last Saturday in a class (paper, not online), and I'm still waiting for my callsign to show up on the FCC online database.
No transmit privileges until the callsign shows up in the database.
-PJ
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