"MAY HAM" Ham radio in May. 3 Paths PrepperNet is advocating in amateur radio.

Welcome to the "MAY HAM" episode of the Prepping Academy Podcast! In this episode, we delve into the three communication paths that PrepperNet advocates to help people achieve greater preparedness. These paths are essential for staying connected during emergencies and disasters:

1. Shortwave & SDR with Digital & Voice (Receive-Only): Shortwave radio and Software-Defined Radios (SDRs) are crucial for receiving information over long distances. We explore how to leverage these technologies effectively.

2. Technician License - Handheld or Mobile (Local Only): Getting a Technician License opens up the world of local communication using handheld or mobile radios. We discuss the importance of this license and how to get started.

3. HF Digital, QRP, JS8Call, FLDigi, WinLink: High-Frequency (HF) digital modes like JS8Call, FLDigi, and WinLink, combined with QRP (low power) operations, provide robust communication options. We share insights into using these tools effectively.

Join us at PrepperNet.Net and enroll in our Ham Academy to learn more about these communication paths and enhance your preparedness toolkit. Stay connected, stay prepared!

Join PrepperNet.Net - https://www.preppernet.net
PrepperNet is an organization of like-minded individuals who believe in personal responsibility, individual freedoms and preparing for disasters of all origins.

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Transcript

2:35

all right it's been so long since I've done this I forgot how to do everything here going live hey welcome everyone I am forced welcome to mayhem and we have patrick patrick you looking kind of funny there yeah well you know it is what it is hello everybody and to my friend thunder chicken Hello, radio. Hello, radio. That's got to be an inside joke for sure. So welcome everyone. Soon we'll all get it. Sweet. Some of y'all will. Oh, some of y'all will. So I can't. Okay, yes. So we're having all kinds of issues and everything. I tried to stream this not only on YouTube, but also Rumble. That didn't work out so well. So I'll have to figure out why we're not streaming on Rumble. So anyway, but hey, we'll get it next time. You know, you get one shot and you screw up. But anyway, hey, welcome. We got a good show for you guys tonight. This is being recorded live. And welcome to the show. You got nothing? Hey, what was that? What were you drinking, by the way? What was I drinking? Maybe peach moonshine. I don't know. It's some good stuff. We'll put it that way. We got San Antonio. We got all the San Antonio folks around. That is a popular prepper in that spot, man. That place is growing like mad. Yeah, them people are a little nuts down there, though, aren't they? No more than those Charlotte people are. That's true. That's true. Well, I'm going to share a presentation here, guys. We're going to talk about everything comms this evening. We're going to talk about, I mean, if you're new to PrepperNet, welcome. If you're new to comms, this is the place you need to be. We're going to cover from... newbies to experts and we'll cover newbies and all that stuff first and then if you get bored when we start talking about the nerd stuff then that's fine this isn't I mean this isn't for everyone would you agree with that Absolutely. And that's part of what we're doing with PrepperNet comms is we're trying to build a system that you at the level you want to participate can participate. Yet you have access to resources that far exceed that level. So everybody works together and we have ability to leverage a network across the entire nation. yes and so um yes and so we will talk about beginners new news all that kind of stuff then we'll get in some some detailed stuff it says starting off why do you use ham radio rather than more modern methods of off-grid communication that is a I mean Would you like to take that Patrick? I'll take that question. Absolutely. Yes. So more modern methods of communication. So ham radio is a modern method of communication. It has developed tremendously in the last few decades. And that's one of the things that, you know, people think, okay, it's archaic. Some things are, some things aren't, but the real thing about that is no other communication system offers that which HF radio offers. And that is independent from something that someone else owns. Every other communication method depends on somebody else's toys. And if they decide they want to take their toys and go home, you don't have any communications. Be it satellite phones, PLBs, Starlink, any of that stuff. You're using somebody else's toys. They can turn the switch off. They can turn the switch off. Or a TV. No, you're getting what I'm saying. HF just bypasses all that. HF radio is a piece of wire in a tree, and you can communicate around the world given the right conditions and various other technical things. And Thunder Chicken, man, come on. You know better. So... Cell phones may not work. If cell phones don't work, then satellite radios won't work. If the Internet goes down, cell phone, I mean, satellite, everybody thinks satellite phone, satellite phone. No, satellite phones are dependent on the Internet. Look it up. We've researched it. There's no other thing that can go like HF radio. So that's the more modern, I guess the most modern is Meshtastic, but we only need 17 billion more Meshtastic repeaters out there and then we could use that to work. And that's the thing, Meshtastic may fit your city group's needs. And if it does, then roll with it. You know, that's part of what being communicators is about. I'm not. a ham by beginnings. I am a commercial critical infrastructure engineer that deals with those sorts of things. And ham radio is one of those other things I use for prepping. I've actually never participated in a contest or anything like that. So I'm not your typical ham. And there's some good examples of ham radio during a Hawaiian fire. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of information shared there. There was a lot of people that actually kind of got mad because the government there, whatever level it happened to be, really wanted to be the sole source of information about that. They were pretty unhappy with The fact that information was being passed around outside of official approved channels and tried to try to stop some of that stuff. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's one of those things that's kind of hard to control. And in those cases, it's a way to pass information and it's proven and works in that and a lot of other situations. And it's older than your grandfather. Yes, it is. Well, let's get into some announcements and we'll get right into this stuff. But that way we start off with a good question there. So it is mayhem. I made that up and I thought it was funny. It's very punny. Um, may, and I even, you're like prepper net. Where's the, where's the prepper in the net? See, it's, it's mayhem. I could have done prepper upside down in white, but it's, it's, it's mayhem. So we're, it's all about ham radio this month. And we've done this year at the year at the year. We have trained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in ham radio through the years. I remember that when back in the day we had a gentleman named Natty and we had over 200 people go through and get their technician license. And then since then, we've done we've helped hundreds and hundreds of people. I'm just telling you, we are the king. We are the mayhem. That's what we are. So we're going to let me go over some announcements real quick. So. On May 14th, just just the FYI, we're going to be helping and training our city leaders. So they're going to get a little bit different training than you guys because we expect them to do be a little bit, have a little bit more responsibility and helping with the PrepperNet infrastructure. Do you want to touch on that? Because you're the one doing that. Yeah. So one of the big things there is awareness of what is available within PrepperNet as a organization. We've got a lot of tools, a lot of people supporting our mission and kind of what our goals are. And not everybody who's new knows about that. We're very heavily active on the PrepperNet.net site. If you are not a member of PrepperNet.net, I strongly encourage you to go sign up. It's free. So there's a lot of things that go on there, but not everybody is kind of indoctrinated into that when they join. So we want to make sure everybody knows what resources are available to city leaders and how that they can extend those resources to you. And all the city leaders are going to be mad at me. But if you're part of a city group and your city leader doesn't have a comms person yet, harass them until they get one or step up and do it yourself. Yep, yep. Then on May 21st, we're going to do a Mayhem month. We're going to do a premium member Zoom. And that's where we're going to have anyone of our premium members can call in. and ask any nerd, any question. I can't because I'm a ham. I got my ham station, got my ham radio, got my everything. I am there, but it's fun to make fun, I guess, but we're going to open it up. It's going to be a Zoom call for any premium member that has questions with radio setup, with anything. It's going to be hands-on. We're there to help. Yep. You need to know how to communicate with the people in your area and need help building a plan? Ask. We'll help. Exactly. Then on the 26th, I'm calling it. I don't even know if I labeled this right. You told me Digital HF Connect Night. Yeah, so we're going to encourage everybody to come out that night and participate in our HF Digital Net. More information kind of about that. It will be forthcoming because I don't want to tie up this call or this Zoom or live with it. But we run a net every Sunday night. So you're welcome to come participate every Sunday night. In about 40 minutes, it will actually be starting. Details about that are available in our signals operating instructions or in the event section of the PrepperNet.net site. And it's a great way to connect and network with people across the country that are already communicating and don't need any infrastructure to do so. Yep. So that's on the 26th. So you're like, well, where do we learn? Where do we learn? Well, we've got just a thing for you. So the first thing I do want to announce is this coming week, this coming week, I'm doing a free webinar. It's absolutely free. You go to that site. You actually have to register. And all I do is I get your email address so you can get all the dates and the times. But if you're interested in creating a home based business, learning how to save taxes, learning how to to buy proper stuff and comms gear and deduct it from your taxes and and anything about business taxes. um even if you don't have an idea I help you with an idea this is um go to prepper.com free I mean free is good right free and it is good good good stuff okay so that is just go and sign up prepper.com free And you'll get an email on that. When you get emails from PrepperNet, always open the emails. Because if you don't, then it literally hurts our delivery rate. And then they kind of get mad at us. So open it. Always open it. It will just help PrepperNet a ton. with, you know, our email server, which we just, I mean, gosh, we pay them a ton of money, but anyway, open them, click on a link or two and go, Hey, I did my duty today. So anyway, prepper net.com slash free. Also, we have a store that has a lot of calm stuffs on it. You don't have to buy from the store, but if you do, we, we make a, I think 3% to 4%. But we want to show you exactly what we're talking about. So on Amazon, Amazon's really the only place we can do it with ease. And then you can go there and check out our store. And it's amazon.com shop PrepperNet. By the way, the only reason we have this is because Amazon, for some reason, thinks that PrepperNet is a... community of unbelievable. Usually influencers only get this PrepperNet, I mean, the store on Amazon and you have to have a hundred thousand followers or more on social media. And so anyway, I conned them and they let us have it. So let's utilize that. So that's Amazon shop PrepperNet. So I do want to make this statement though. PrepperNet, we want to Literally, we want to help you, but this is all, everything we're doing in PrepperNet is to prepare America and to go through tough times, chaos, disasters. The more PrepperNet people that have their communication, can listen, transmit, whatever, the better America is, the better your community is, the better your family is. And we're here to assist you in your journey from starting to the end, the whole gamut. We're here. We know it's going to make a better PrepperNet, a better you, a better your survival group, whatever you're doing. This is a key skill. And we have enough people to make a difference. Look at every P represents someone in that zip code. Now, you can imagine that some of the P's or logos have a ton of different people in there. I think the Dakotas are falling down on their job for us. It's kind of spread out. We need a recruiting mission there. I haven't updated this in about a year, so thanks for bringing that up. But that was so accurate like a year ago when I did it. But we cover the nation with PrepperNet members. So there are three paths that we're going to work on. And really, Patrick has kind of put together that PrepperNet will help you go down this road. And you'll take one path. I'll take the middle one. You take the last one. Sure. You just tell me which one you want me to talk about. Number one would be great. So shortwave radio, which is the same as HF radio. In the amateur world, we call it HF. Everybody else calls it shortwave. So the ability to receive shortwave radio with either a software-defined radio or a sub-$100 shortwave receiver allows you to receive... either amateur radio or commercial broadcast, military communications, all sorts of things on HF. One of the important things we kind of emphasize is digital and don't think digital voice, think data like an old, almost like an old fax is a way to send information and that in digital, you know, people say, oh, well, digital is new and it's not going to work. They were using radio teletype in World War II. Digital has been around in HF since the beginning. And so anyway, back to the kind of the topic here is you can receive this information. Don't expect to go buy a, a receiver and set it in your house and pick up all this stuff. It's not going to happen. You're going to have to put in some sort of antenna outside, but it's not hard and it's not expensive. And there's a lot of tools to get into this cheaply. A lot of people think they've got to go buy another computer and spend hundreds of dollars. There's some inexpensive options there too. And we discuss a lot of that on the.net site and in other locations. Do you need a license for this? Yeah. You do not. If it's flying around the airwaves, you are allowed to receive it. So no license required, just a little bit of skill. And remember, when you're receiving those folks that are transmitting with hundreds of thousands of watts to overcome the antenna inside your house are quite a bit different and have different agendas and plans than do just listening to regular amateur radio traffic and that kind of thing. Because just because they're speaking English doesn't mean they're American. I'll just put it that way. Would you say every prepper needs to be able to receive shortwave advice? Yes, absolutely. And not just from an amateur radio perspective, but from a shortwave perspective. And I'm going to kind of veer aside here a little bit and tell a quick little story on this. So there is a group in China. I'm not going to go into details on this, but they actually transmit into China on shortwave from various countries around. And they're using low power transmitters. They're not using, you know, hundreds of thousands of watts like big national broadcasters would be. They're using low power transmitters to get information into China, into the restricted areas with HF radio, with shortwave radio, because shortwave radio can travel very long distances. No infrastructure. It's very hard to censor. So they've leveraged that and leveraged it very effectively. There's again, I don't want to take up too much time on that. But if you search that on the Internet, you'll find some really cool articles on it. So I'll cover number two. So number one is receive only. Every prepper needs everyone needs to be able to receive information. And I will add to that what information you don't know can kill you. It can harm you. So you gotta get the information. Number two, I'm gonna handle is handheld and mobile. That does take a technician class license and it's for local only, meaning transmit maybe from, around you, maybe in your city. That is number two, but it's local. Think of walkie talkies and local. And that's number two. So that's path one is receive. We teach you everything about that. Path two is local communications with a handheld or a little base station. And that is just, again, no more, possibly no more than like 60 miles. And that's if everything is working perfectly. And we'll get into this a little bit more. And then there's another path that we go. So usually you learn path one. Then you go to path two. Maybe you can do one and two at the same time. And then three is always the last path. You want to talk about that? Absolutely. And also to add to, there are some unlicensed options out there we can talk about that don't require an amateur license that may be well suited for your retreat or your neighborhood watch or just tossing out to neighbors when a hurricane hits, you know, that kind of thing. So path three, HF Digital is a way of passing data. We can actually send files back and forth. We're going to talk about that a little later and show some examples and give you guys a fun little project if you want to try it. that is related to that. HF digital works in band conditions where the voice communications, what amateurs call phone, really don't work. It takes a lot of power to get human voice through because we span a pretty large amount of frequencies in order to understand our voice. Whereas with data, you can send a fairly narrow signal and it gets through much better than voice. Force has got QRP listed. That's ultra low power operations. I'm not going to go into that here because that's way out there. JSA call is a very low power data mode. It has its pluses and minuses. Again, we're not going to get into details here for you guys. FL Digi is kind of the workhorse of the digital radio world. It's a piece of software that literally handles hundreds of different communications modes. of which we only use a handful of, but it's a very powerful Swiss Army knife of tools. And last, WinLink. So WinLink is kind of a hybridization of internet and non-internet, allowing you to communicate out of a disaster impacted area into an area that has communications and then communicate with anyone you want to via email. So if you're in a regionalized disaster like a hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, whatever, you can get set up very quickly and get communications out that way. And it's a very powerful tool to use because it not only allows you to communicate with others, but it's also very commonly used with a lot of emergency OXCOM and other NGOs and whatnot. So you can help. other people out. So you can help your family, your friends, your community out by being able to lend a hand on that. And to HF, HF that we're talking about for the folks that don't know, because a lot of you guys are probably new to this, HF is a method of communications that is below 30 megahertz. So if you think somewhere between AM broadcast and FM broadcast, it's a big swath of band there. And each section of that interacts with the atmosphere in a different way and allows us to reflect signals off the atmosphere back down to another part of the world. It's a very powerful tool to allow me to bounce radio from the East Coast to the West Coast and communicate that whole distance from one side to the other or communicate in very mountainous terrain. Okay, guys, I live in one of the worst places on Earth to communicate. I'm in the Appalachian Mountains. And if you're on a mountain peak, it's wonderful. If you're in a valley, it's impossible. And HF allows you using other methods to communicate literally around the mountains and you cannot hide from the signal. So again, that's a little more advanced and we can talk more about that at another time. I'm going to let Forrest move on. Yep. Okay. So here is, I'm going to, I'm going to make, I'm going to make numbers up on the fly, Patrick. You tell me, I'm going to say a hundred percent of every listener listening right now needs to do path one. In some way, shape, or form. Yes, in some way, shape, or form. Okay. I'm going to say path two. I'm going to say 100% because if you're in a survival group or if you just want to use the walkie-talkie or anything local, you need to know how to use the device. So I'm going to say... 100% of the people listening should do possibly number two, maybe without a license, because I forgot the GMRS, but they need to learn some aspect of that, either non-license or license. I'm going to say 100%. Yes. And one thing about that, too, that I want to bring up, this may not be the best place in the slide to do it, but I'm going to do it before I forget it, is when you become familiar with what's going on locally on that technician level, in most communities, there are people who are doing National Weather Service storm spotting, all kinds of different things, search and rescue, a lot of different resources become available at your fingertips there. So, for example, if there's a wall cloud or rotation or something like that in an area, you may actually hear about it as soon as the storm spotter sees it rather than waiting until it goes from there to the National Weather Service that gets relayed as an emergency alert. So you may receive that information a lot sooner. than you would other ways. So it allows you to interact and get access to some of those sorts of things. Then I'm going to say number three, because we are kind of preparedness and mindset, and because of how easy it is in the community that we have to teach you and to help you, I'm going to say at least 50% of the people need to do number three. Okay. I'll go with 50% of the people, maybe less. I mean, HF digital is not for everybody or HF in general. It's not for everybody. And, um, I won't encourage people to get in over their head until they're comfortable with that, but anybody can do it. I mean, it's not hard. It's not impossible, but it does require dedication and practice. It's not something you're going to set on the shelf and leave because Forrest can tell you checking into our nets that he has gotten his gear out more than once and it not worked. Sorry to put you on the spot. And not only that, last time I checked in, I checked in with the information in the wrong order. I just forgot. So anyway, so we've created this thing called Perpetual Ham Academy. It's on the .NET site. And that is where you're going to go to learn everything to start off. Because some of the easy steps, the beginning steps, you really don't need an individual to hold your hand. You just need to go do it. And it's free. Hey, and wait, there's no more. It's just the Ham Academy. And it's free, OK? So here's what it looks like. When you go to PrepperNet.net, you're going to see Ham Academy on the left. Click on that. And it opens it up. It says Ham Academy Home. We'll have information there. You have to click on the link right there that says training and files. So there's going to be some files there. Any kind of file that you need or that we talk about will be located there. OK, then. Phase one, step one. Look, we've already got the training there for you and it's free. We're not selling you a thing. We're just helping you in your growth as a prepper. So shortwave, SDR, digital and voice. We've already done videos. We've gone through the software. We've gone through the hardware. We've gone through everything. The training is 100% there. The only thing we have to add to that, Patrick, and you're going to have to remember, we have the steps to install the software on the computer, and I need to get that, and we need to put that in the file downloads up there, okay? Yeah, and I've got a couple of white papers on doing some of that stuff that we need to get up there, too. So there's path one is already set there waiting for you. If you go through path one, you can literally any Sunday night. If you want to test your skills and what you've learned, we have a net and we're going to talk about that later that you can. We every Sunday night we have a way that you can test. And if it's not working, we have people that will help you out. We will literally hold your hand to help you get through this stuff, especially the testing. The learning, you just need to watch and learn, and we go over everything. So that is path number one. Path number two, I did a video not too long ago on how to get your technician license. And that is ready and available for you to watch that. We probably need to do one on focusing on GMRS. Now that you mentioned that. And we'll put another, we'll have, we're building this university, okay? This is the ultimate guide to every, no, it's not. It is our guide to ham radio. So that's step number two, or if you want to go down path number two, that's a lot of local stuff. A lot of our national guys like Patrick and his whole team, it's hard to help you local when they're not local to you. So that is where we're going to rely on city leaders and other people and even other organizations. Number three is the digital, you know, communications. And we're building that out right now. So so we're going to have it all there. So don't don't think we're going to just leave you like with a lot of everything with like everything else and prepper prepping a lot of stuff. You just got to learn yourself and we're going to have the tools so you can do that. And Rome wasn't built in a day. Okay. Some of this stuff is hard and some of it takes time to practice and learn. So if you don't get it in five minutes or five days, don't feel bad. I tell people at times I can get you hitting a 10 inch square at a thousand yards with a rifle faster than I can get you doing some of this stuff. It just it takes time and it takes learning and experimentation. And it's, you know, your your situation is a little unique to everyone else. So but you and your team are here to help, correct? Because Josh, we are communications officer. Wait, wait. I called him something chief communications officer. Did you know that was your title? I thought I was comms king, but anyway, so, uh, yeah, back to, back to, back on topic with that. But, you know, there are a lot of different things to do and a lot of different, uh, a lot of different ways to do that sort of stuff. So, um, yeah, we, we will move forward. we are there to help, but we do also, like you were saying with city comms leaders, we can't talk to every person in PrepperNet. There's how many thousands, tens of thousands of people in PrepperNet. So we're building a network of folks that can help. Yep. So I'm going to go over some basic stuff real quick and Josh is going to chime in when he needs to chime in or so we will get started. Anyway, So the first path is you have a little computer and a radio. It's receive only. We have all the training for that. So imagine we have three transmitters. That's the P with the waves. We have three people in the United States transmitting. Everyone in the United States will be able to take that little receiver and a computer and get all the information we're transmitting. No matter where you are in the United States, pretty much everywhere in the United States, we can have three people, one person, and everyone can receive information. So the information may be, hey, the White House is struggling, the president is on Air Force One, EMP hit. Whatever it is, we can get that information out to everyone. Yeah. And that's the thing. There's the network of people who are participating, those number three that you had on your previous slide. And other people, you know, other people can listen in via receive and hear what is being discussed and hear what's being sent around and, you know, access that resource that way. And, you know. You can listen, not just to PrepperNet, to other people as well. That's why you need to learn the basics. This is the basics. And so you can receive information. That's again, step number one. Yep. Another one I would suggest, and while we're talking about other resources, just a little pro tip here for everybody. Get on the internet, find out what frequency that your state amateur emergency radio service, ARIES, phone net is on because that is the statewide HF net that they use to communicate if other stuff is not working. And it's a great resource to find out what's going on in your state if there's an emergency. So knowing where that is, knowing how to listen to that. Most of them have a net, if not daily, at least multiple times a week that you can tune into and listen and see who you can hear from where. Yep. So that is path number one. That's very simple. Everyone should do it. So now let's look at... Path number two, which is handheld mobile technician, which means you need a license or it could be GMRS. So just, which means you don't even have to have a license, but let's go through this. You have to have a license for GMRS for us. Oh yeah. Mirrors and FRS. You can do license free and CB if you want to kick it old school. Yep. So there's you and your town USA and you've got your ham radio. Who do you talk to? Well, you are limited to distance. So that little bell thing, which everyone, their brother has, you, you, it's very limited. So, And I'm going to let you describe this. So flat earthers take note. We can prove that the earth is curved by radio waves. Sorry, I had to pick on those folks. Anyway, so the earth is curved. And the further that you get apart, the more that the earth itself actually starts to interfere. So with two portable radios not accounting structures and vegetation and mountains and all the other things that get in the way, of what we call the radio horizon. Once you get far enough apart, you will no longer be able to hear each other because the earth physically gets in the way. So that limits the range that you can communicate from handheld radio to handheld radio. I bought a radio that had 60 mile radius on it. Well, I've talked 120 miles with a portable before, but both stations were – well, one was on a 3,000, the other was on a 6,000-foot tall mountain. So, yeah, if you get high enough above the curve of the earth, you can make it work. Yes. But that's the thing. If you're standing on the ground, especially in a neighborhood where there's a lot of structures and that kind of thing – So, seven miles is tops. That's – Mostly. Yeah, it's going to be less, generally. So, you – So don't buy ham radio to think you're going to talk to your grandmother or your son when they live 10 or 12 miles away. It's just not going to happen. Don't buy a bell thing and think that'll happen. There's other ways you can do it, but don't think that's going to happen. And, you know, to go along with that, I know you're going to pull up the repeater slide too. Yeah. If the extent of your plan is to get a bow fang and use a repeater, have a plan when that repeater doesn't work. Right. And realize that, you know, that handheld may not function any better than a FRS radio that doesn't require a license when there's not a repeater involved, unless you've got height. Right. Yep. So there's you and you can transmit seven miles radius just by using the curvature of the earth. Let's say there's no buildings or trees and you're getting seven miles. That's the range of your little radio. Now, if you go stand on top of your house and fall down, you die. But let's say you stand there and you transmit, you can go a little further than seven miles. So... But so, but there is something, now this works all the time. There's actually a program for this and it's the Amron, you know, and we have this in the PrepperNet package of how you can actually talk to people within your seven miles. And the thing to remember about the Channel 3 project is the Channel 3 project is what you do when you don't have another plan. It's a plan for those that haven't coordinated and made contacts ahead of time and built a plan for when the grid goes down or when communications go out or whatever it happens to be. So, you know, it's important to make those connections, build that community, have that tribe prior to something going wrong. So you, you know, we'll talk more about that, but so you know who to communicate with. If you don't, you know, you can hop on Channel 3 and hope you get somebody. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. And we'll have the details in the documents down. You'll understand that more once you kind of look at it. Then we have people that actually go, wow, wouldn't I like to transmit further and maybe cover the entire city? So they put things, they go to the top of a bank or a radio tower or a big building, and they'll put like a, what we call a repeater, means it receives a signal from someone and broadcast it out higher and maybe with more wattage, so more it will take your surroundings of to the entire city possibly. Yep. Whole city, whole state, um, depending on the size of your state, of course, uh, big States, probably not, but, uh, yeah. And, and that's the, that's the cool thing. But remember, you know, repeater again, it's somebody else's infrastructure and if the power goes out or it's in use by some other organization that's laid claim to it or whatever, uh, that resource may not be available, but it's, it's an important tool to be familiar with. Again, like I was talking about with the weather service and, and, that kind of thing. They're going to have one of those that they hang out on and knowing where that stuff is, is, is important. So Charlotte has one on the, on the largest building and it just, you could transmit like a 28 mile radius of Charlotte. But there are some like on top of Mount Mitchell, which is the highest peak on this side of the Mississippi river. And that can transmit to like five States or so. You can get into it from East Tennessee and I think you can get into it from Charlotte. So it's a very, very high profile. Yeah. So if there was a plane at 50,000 feet, that might even be better, but we, we don't, we don't have that. But anyway, but let me, what's the problem with using repeaters a lot of times. So, uh, you know, the, the number one, one that I kind of mentioned before is, you know, if the repeater doesn't have emergency power, And the power goes out because that's usually the first one of our utilities to fail, except maybe cable TV, but usually it's the power. Then the repeater doesn't work anymore. And you're back to square one. The other issue is during an emergency, some local Oxcom group or other organization may have laid claim to that repeater for its use. So it could be tied up with that. So it's important to know that kind of stuff, know the lay of the land, as it were, for communications in your area. It's also important to realize that when it goes down and your radios don't work, the same goes for a lot of public service radio systems. Their radios don't transmit any further than your bio thing does if their repeater system or their trunk radio system or whatever is not working. Right. And, in fact, they're usually hamstrung further in that they don't have the ability to go to a channel where they can talk back and forth from radio to radio. They should, but they don't always have that forethought set up. So, you know, they may even be in a worse boat than you. So, you know, keep those things in mind. So, again, that's local. This is path number two. Path number two, you can talk to your neighbor's. And with the repeater, talk to your city. And that's it. You're not receiving signals from New York, Florida, or England. You're just local. And you're less local if that repeater goes out and you're back to this. So just know that path number two is local. Also, path number two is also good for survival groups because that's all you kind of need a lot of times to talk within your survival group. So we won't spend a lot of time on that either. We can talk about that on the premium call if people get specific questions. So what this does, so let's say I live in Charlotte. We have a repeater. And we're using the repeater and all the Pepperdine members can hit the repeater. All of a sudden, we kind of can build a network and share information within our city of Charlotte. So someone from North Charlotte can say, hey, there's rioting going on. down in South Charlotte, we can go, well, it's clear down here. Or something more important is, hey, the Harris Teeter off Independence Boulevard is out of toilet paper. We need to all go to Northeast Charlotte where they have a Sam's Club and they have toilet paper and water. So that is what local communications is all about. Yeah. And that brings up something for us. And I want to go down a little rabbit trail here, which is communications. We're talking about radio here. We're talking about amateur radio. But one of the things that we forget and that particularly the people who really love radio as a form of communications kind of forget radio is just a tool. It's a tool for communicating information from point A to point B, whatever that information is. And building that network of friends, that network within PrepperNet, that group of people. And right now, today, sharing information about what's going on in your community on your city group on the Mighty Network site or a signal chat group or Facebook, whatever. getting in the habit of sharing that information that's important about what's going on. And I don't mean posting, you know, conspiracy theory news articles and what the latest, you know, whatever, but actually useful information like, hey, you know, somebody's truck got robbed on this area. There's an uptick in break-ins, whatever. Sharing that stuff today and getting used to sharing that information and building that network of people that you can trust and know who is providing good information, who tends to report stuff that maybe isn't. now is critical because you're not going to be able to build that communication network, that clan of people to share stuff with after the balloon goes up, after whatever happens, happens. That's got to be established today. And then when that fails or when the grid goes down, as it were, whatever it is, and you have to move to another method of communicating from whatever you were, be that move to ham radio or smoke signals or whatever, you've already got the network built because that's the hard part. The rest of this stuff's actually easy. I know it seems hard to a lot of folks, but a lot of these people don't also spend a lot of face time with one another. That's the reality. That's why we start where you started prepping at was, Hey, I got to go meet people. Yep. So now you've built a network in your small town and you, everyone in there can network, um, communicate, um, maybe using a repeater, maybe it's just the seven mile, whatever, you have a network. So imagine now in North Carolina, and we did that in this kind of Raleigh area, the Houston, Texas area, And is that Idaho? No, that's not Idaho. That's Montana. Which one? The one on the left coast there. Yeah, that's Utah. Utah. Okay. And Utah. So we have three cities now that have built the infrastructure of this. Now, how can they communicate with each other? So that's why. And imagine if we got every city in America that has a prepper net or just you. a body or a group of people and we spread, we built all these little cities that have communications in their little towns or their big towns like Charlotte. Imagine if we did that. And so now there's communication being shared with each one of the webs there, the networks. Now we're going to throw in the thing where we have like our expert comms team or you get on digital, which is path three. Then someone in North Carolina can get on the digital or the HF and send that information to people in Texas and. And then also into Utah. And then what happens then? Then that person can spread it down within the city and get the information out. So this is a way to get information in and out of small towns. A great example of this. I'll give two quick little examples of where we want to be with this, where PepperNet wants to be. One is, say, Forrest is traveling for business and something happens and he is near, say, PrepperNet. We'll say he's in Texas and he needs to get a message back to his wife. that uh you know hey I'm here I'm with these folks we got supplies we're good we're taken care of but I want to let her know I'm okay and this is the next plan of how we're either going to get me home or I'm going to hold up or whatever then he can get with the people in in that city group and then they can get that out via the national prepper net group of guys that participate in that We encourage you, if that's something you want to participate in, to get plugged in and help us expand the network of cities that we can interconnect with. And that message gets back to Charlotte of his status and his situation. Another example might be, you know, and I get asked this question all the time. I'll teach classes on communications and other things and people will come and go, Hey, you know, my daughter is at a school in Florida and, um, you know, I want to know how to communicate with her if something happens. And the reality that we have to face there is our kid that is in high a dorm one probably doesn't have the interest in learning how to do what's necessary and two doesn't have the really the space uh to have the gear to do that they'd have to go somewhere that they could do it which could be dangerous or you know other things so having you know them connected with another person locally within a prepper net group that Hey, something happens, you know, find this person. Maybe you do use your bow thing to get ahold of this person, you know, whatever it is. And then they can communicate and get a message back to you via your city group. And, and we have that, you know, helping each other community that is, you know, a national community of the PrepperNet folks. So that's really, you know, part of the dream of where we want to head with this. is the ability to do that and, and support, you know, our community. That is the reason I started prepping at. So over 10 years ago, we had a young lady in my survival group, which has been around for 24 years and, We had a young lady who wanted to go to the University of Alabama. And we're like, what? It was the first really kid from our group to really kind of go off the collar. What are we going to do about this young lady? We need to go down to Alabama and maybe meet other preppers. How do you just, if y'all know how to do that, please write a white paper and let me know how to go to a city and find preppers that you can trust. And it takes time. So that's why I created PrepperNet. So when we had a young lady go to Alabama, Florida, Missouri, you know, wherever the school is located, we would already have groups there, people there that I know through a city leader. I've met people. They've come to bug out camp. I met them at prepper camp. And then all of a sudden we can build an infrastructure system. Friends don't let friends go to Alabama. That's funny. But we can have all of a sudden now as more of our young adults in our group are going off to all these colleges, we'll build an infrastructure and I can meet other people. So it's literally expanding your network. Just not only think of college students, think of family members. Have you got a mom or dad? So what would happen is Let's say you have, I know that you gave the situation I was in Texas, but let's say that you have a brother or a sister that is in Texas. And so you contacted a Charlotte local radio guy and he goes, well, I'll put a call out in Dallas, Texas. And in Dallas, Texas, they may be able to get communication down within the neighborhood and someone go check on them. And say, hey, tell them I'm all right. You know, and that information comes back and will come back to you. It won't be instant. But imagine mentally how that would help you get through tough situations. And that's what this network does. And imagine then we have this throughout the United States and we literally have a network. that can go down to the address level of an individual to most, to a lot of cities, at least the bigger cities. I'm telling you right now, this network that I'm showing on the screen and what we just explained does not exist Anywhere in the United States, not in the government, not in the military, not in Aries and not in any club. This doesn't exist. And this is what we're trying to build. The closest thing is probably the national traffic system, but you know, it's, we're, we're trying to accomplish something. I think that it's a worthy goal for all of us. And it's, it's a lofty goal, but it's, it's coming together. I feel like it's supposed to come together. It shouldn't be going as easy as it was if it wasn't supposed to. So I think there's a, you know, so. And this is for information and this is for families. This is for us to use. This isn't to call an airstrike on Alabama. Yeah, no, no, it's yeah. It's to support our communities. And, you know, one of the guys posted here, health and welfare traffic. You know, that's what we call it. Amateur radio operators call it is it's it's health and welfare traffic. And the other thing, you know, one of the things we try to do with PrepperNet is, is we try to interact as a radio group and maintain friends within a lot of other emergency communications groups, many that may be liaison to local governments and That kind of thing. We have a very broad group of folks that participate. And, you know, with that, you know, there may be the, you know, there is particularly with local city groups and that kind of things that may also do. and interact with those groups that if there's a hurricane or heaven forbid something worse and the ability to reach, hey, is this person on the shelter list here? Can we locate this person that can interact and even help us find people who may have had to take shelter somewhere because their home was destroyed because of whatever the unfortunate situation is. It's, you know, after those sorts of events, days, sometimes weeks can even go by or longer where they don't know where someone is. But if you can go, hey, is this person on this list here and get a name and go, yeah, they're here and they're okay. They're at that location. That is a huge, huge, huge weight off of somebody of not knowing. And if you've never been there and had a loved one that you don't know where is and you don't know where what's happening, it's not a place to be. It is not a place to be trying to take care of yourself and possibly other emergencies at the time while worrying about that. It's a tough time mentally. Yes. And so we're asking you, if you're involved at all, get more involved. If you're not involved, get involved. Because we need more help. We need more people. We need people that are listening that haven't started their journey. We need you to start. If you started your journey and you're a technician, we need you to go and get the digital. We need you to go. We need to build out this infrastructure, which we need more hams. We need more people that... I don't want to say that I was going to say that care about the, the America, but that you don't care about America. I can't, I'm not going to say that cares about your fellow man. Okay. And one of the things about that, when it comes to radio that we see within the amateur space, we'll just call it that at times. Preppers should be better suited to dealing with emergency communications than anybody else because we can actually sustain ourselves independent of anybody else to operate, to do these sorts of things. And that's a problem you see a lot of times in larger scale emergencies is that the folks who are able to help or there to help can't sustain themselves. So I've seen, I've seen this cartoon and it, Don't hate. OK, I'm just relaying what I've seen. I'm on it. I don't I don't have it ready to show. I just remember I can explain it, though. And it is like everyone knows that most ham radio people like are really there. They're older than younger people, without a doubt. And when a crisis happens, there's this kind of cartoon of a skeleton right next to his ham radio. And information's coming in, but the dude doesn't have any preparations. Nothing else. It's just him and his ham radio. And he's bones. And so we are so much better suited. We'll have food. We have protection. Most ham people don't have that. Most people that know how to pull this off during the grid down, two, three, four weeks in it, They're struggling. They're trying to survive because they don't have food. They're just and we we're the ones that need to be able to pull this off. And so we're just asking you, hey, if you get started, if you're in, if you've got your technician, hey, let's go digital. We need you. We also need leaders in different cities to kind of take charge. You could literally be in a phase one right now. And if you come to us and say, hey, I want to get my digital. And in that, if you need help in this city, I will help you either find a leader or I'll grow into being the leader. And we're just asking you to do that. Come on, Patrick. Amen. And if you're a city leader, I'm just going to throw this out there. If you're a city comms leader, if you end up in that role, um, not to, you know, be not nice to everybody else, but you're going to get special attention, uh, just because you're a force multiplier for the rest of us, as far as helping others. So, yep. Uh, So with that, that's all I have, except now we're going to talk about the, and Patrick's going to take over and woo us. Woo. I'm not sure that's the, not sure that's the word, but let's see. I'm not sure what the next slide after this is. Is it the trap? That's all I have, dude. I have this and then I have your Amron stuff. Yeah. OK, yeah. So we're going to talk about that actually in a second. So a lot of folks don't understand when we talk about digital and HF is what that really is. If you're not in the ham radio world or you're not in the communications world, you've never been in the military communications world. The idea of digital is kind of like, what are they what are they talking about? And really what it is, is it's a way of communicating text over radio. So kind of like sending text messages or back in the olden days for the folks that might remember something called the radio teletype or the AP wire back in the day of news gathering where information was literally communicated keyboard to keyboard across the country or across the oceans to share information. And it accomplishes a couple of things. You know, one, you don't have to have somebody standing by the radio all the time listening to go, oh, there's something important. I need to write that down. It copies and collects it for you. In the days of the radio teletype machines, it spit it out on a little ticker tape that you could read. You know, in the days of digital, it pops up on your computer screen in a pretty formatted format. looking fax type document that Forrest has got on the next slide. If you're going to advance to that next slide for us, so folks can see that while we're talking about it. Okay. I wasn't ready for that, but you don't have to, we can, we can hold up for a minute. I got it right here. Okay. And, um, you know, it allows you to send information and this particular one is a piece of traffic that they're sharing on the net tonight. Um, probably in a couple of minutes here actually, they'll be sending this out over the radio. And that's some instructions on how to build a GMRS antenna. Not for everybody, but it's an example of the kind of technical information that you can send in detail over the radio and have as a document because literally that's a screen capture of what it would look like when it appeared on your screen. We use an AMRON blank form. There are literally hundreds of different forms available in the digital world to send specific information. That one just has You know, the basics of, you know, date and time and message priority and that kind of thing that helps people know how to handle it. But it's a way of sharing information. And I will come in, you know, I leave my station on 24-7, 365. And I will return sometimes after having not been at my station for three or four days. And I will literally have dozens of these stacked up to read. So as a way to share information over a wide distance when it's not time critical, if it's a thousand miles away, it may not be that time critical, but it may still be important. You don't have to monitor the radio all the time. You don't have to dedicate a person and that manpower to it. And that's a huge benefit of digital is that ability. Another benefit of digital is, again, the ability to use lower power. Forrest had QRP on the other slide. In the ham radio world, that means 10 watts of power or less from a radio. In the HF world, communicating with that low of power and voice can be a little bit of a challenge at times. It's not impossible, but it can be a challenge and not predictable. Digital gives you the ability to communicate with low power very effectively, kind of like Morse code. I could ask everybody to learn Morse code. Probably not going to have a great deal of success with that because that is a hard skill to learn. So this is a compromise. And it can also be fast. On digital, for HF, it's usually a little bit slower. but still it's, you know, 20 to 35, 45 words a minute, which is faster than a lot of people can type. So, uh, it's still, still pretty quick. Uh, if you're doing this locally on VHF or UHF, which is another offshoot we can talk about in another, um, In another session or on the Preparant Premium meeting or whatnot, if somebody's got questions, they can ask. But that whole sheet could be sent over VHF in maybe 10 or 15 seconds, something like that. In fact, I've got an audio file that I sent to Forrest, if he's got it, that is this piece of information sent as data over the radio. And if you happen to have FL Digi, which is the software this was sent in, or you want to learn how to use FL Digi, you can actually play back this video later. I think it'll be on YouTube. Is that right, Forrest? Yes. Okay. You can play this back later and actually listen to the audio with FL Digi and it will decode that and print it out for you. You'll have to add that Amron form to your forms thing. And there's some information on Amron's website and on our website about how to add custom forms. but if you do that, then it will print out and be in that nice, neat form. If you don't do it and you don't have the form, all the information is actually still going to print out on the screen of FL Digi and you can read it. It just won't be in that nice, flashy form. So... So when you hear digital data, it kind of sounds like old modem noise or those sorts of things. And I'm going to pause for a second, take a drink here. If Forrest has got that queued up and we're going to play this audio just to get it out there for folks. And so you guys can kind of hear what some digital data sounds like and have something to practice with. This is HPSK500F. setting at 900 on the waterfall for folks who might be interested. If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it. That's something to learn down the road if you decide you want to get into this. But I wanted to kind of share this with folks so they could see a little bit of what we actually do and the visual representation of it. So go ahead, Forrest. I'm not sure that's going to work for us. I tell you what, I will post that file on PrepperNet.net if folks want to download it. Can you not hear it? No. You couldn't hear it? I could not hear it well. I mean, it was distorted and kind of off. Maybe it was better in the stream. We'll see. It may just be what I'm hearing back here. So we'll find out. All right. That's an effort to kind of show folks. But like I said, I'll post that on the .NET side if people want to download it, play with it, and see how that works. So, uh, yeah, uh, that, that's kind of where we're at. I don't want to bore people too much with that side of things because it does get kind of heady. And, um, if you're starting from ground zero, it can be intimidating, but I do want you to know what's available and out there. Um, because if you don't know what's out there, you can't go, you know what, that's something I want to check off my list to be prepared for. Uh, most of us, when we started, maybe we didn't know about freeze dried food. Maybe we didn't know about, um, you know, stop the bleed and how to, you know, and then when we learn, oh, hey, this is out there, it's something I want to learn. So one of those, one of those things that if you don't know it, it can hurt you. But if you know it's out there, then it's something you can put on your, on your bucket list to acquire skills. So do you want to take questions for a couple minutes? Do you have other stuff you want to do? No, questions is fine. Yep. Okay, if you guys have got any questions, we'll take questions for a couple of minutes here. I'll also say if you're on here, you have FL Digi set up and you have a radio receiver that is HF. Right now on 7.090 megahertz upper sideband, you can find our digital net going on on Contestia 4-250 at 900 hertz on the waterfall. If you don't know what any of that stuff means, don't worry about it. If you do know what it means, you can go over there and check it out or check in. In spite of all the solar storm stuff that's going on right now, digital is still cutting through and working just fine. So something to keep in mind that's another benefit of that is it performs pretty well. So... I'm not seeing many questions over here, really any questions for us. So, um, it's mother's day. I figured it probably wouldn't be a, you know, yeah. And that's, we're recording it and we'll, we'll, we'll stick this inside. Yes. So, yeah. And that's another thing. Um, so I'll tell everybody while we're, we're talking about that and the resources that are available to you, there is a, uh, signals operating instructions or SOI available on the PrepperNet.net site. The current one is a bit outdated. It was written in 2021. We are in the process of updating it with some new information and some things we've learned and developed and new technology since then. So there will be a new one, but it is there as a guide to kind of help you with frequencies and modes and times and Those sorts of things in the event of an emergency. Another thing is there is the PrepperNet Zello group. I think I mentioned that earlier, that you can join particularly the communications group for amateur operators to learn and develop their skills. That's another important thing. And I will tell you that on the PrepperNet.net site, there are two communications things. And some folks get a little confused by this. There is a topic in the general section called communications and amateur radio, I believe. And it is typically maybe for wider distribution, a little bit less technical stuff about communications. And then there is another group that is actually like a city group type group for communications that you can join. And that's where there is a little higher level, more advanced detailed stuff going on. It's where you'll find some communications events posted. And yeah, Uh, find more, more folks talking about kind of the nitty gritty of that stuff. And if you have questions, you know, feel free to join that group, uh, post them and, uh, we'll try to, we'll try to get you an answer if we can. There's a lot of, a lot of guys in there that are, uh, that are pretty good at this stuff that helped me out. And I'm, I'm blessed to have a bunch of, a bunch of guys that are, are, are, um, learning this stuff and getting in there and, and making cool stuff happen. Yes, and so we're committed to help you guys. That's why we have a month called Mayhem. So like you said, join us on PrepperNet.net. There's a comms group. You also can look for the Ham Academy. And if you have any questions whatsoever, just know that when you ask that question, you're going to have like 14 people literally respond. Because, I mean, because, you know, one thing about hammers is They love to share their information and help people. Yes. Even if it's not right. You're right. Wait, you mean you have to be accurate with this stuff? You know, it helps. And yeah, there's somebody in the chat that's commented, and then there's invite-only groups. There are a few invite-only communications groups within the .NET for city leaders and city comms leaders. It's one of those perks we were talking about. There's a few things like that in there, too, that get you a little bit of special attention so we see you come to the top of the flood. right yes oh yeah and you only think about this davida thing that uh this guy's I don't know what this is um ask away thanks I am having issues I don't know what that means I have no idea yeah I got no idea so um um what I don't know. Um, I, I'm not sure what that is either. Uh, drop me a link and I'll look at it. Uh, and, uh, you know, either in the chat or shoot me a note on pepper net.net and I'll take a look at it and tell you what I think, but I'm not familiar with it off the top of my head. Uh, yeah, I have no idea what he's talking about. So, well, Anything else? Do you have any last, any last words? Uh, last words. Yeah. Uh, you know, get out there and practice this stuff, guys. I was so excited to see the Charlotte group. I'm going to give your group a shout out here and give a BG and a few of the others, uh, Uh, over there, Joe 10 and, and those guys, a shout out, uh, because they, um, they were out a few weeks ago in a park practicing sending digital data using Android cell phones. So, um, Something we really didn't talk about here, but some of the software you can run on a cell phone. And they were practicing with their bow things or their little portable radios, whatever they had, sending forms back and forth and even pictures back and forth and stuff like that over the radio just to get some practice in. And they had some issues. One of them called me and asked some questions about how to resolve something. But, you know, they were doing it now when they could figure it out, work those bugs out, learn how it works while they still had the ability to figure it out. So, you know, I encourage you guys, don't just get this gear, set it on the shelf and think if something happens, I'll get it out and use it. You build that community and out of the different PrepperNet communities that are out there. Uh, the comms group is probably the tightest knit of all of them. Uh, those, the guys that hang out there have gotten to know each other through working together over the last three or four years. And, you know, they're, they know each other. They're not just acquaintances on the internet. These guys, you know, they know each other and they're happy to see each other once a year and, you know, would do what they can to help each other. So, uh, Getting in that, building that community, building that network now while you get to know people and know who's on the other end and, you know, can I depend on this person if something happens? Right. Then, you know, that's... They're a little weird too. They can be a little weird. One of them makes really good brisket though. Yeah, yes, he does. So... Someone asked about wanting to buy the cheapest, lightest weight device to buy. Don't you don't need to buy a device right now. You need to because the way you ask the question and I'm telling you, I could give you a Sherman tank and you could figure out how to drive the Sherman tank faster than you can figure out how to use a ham radio. Yeah. Uh, let, let us, you know, ask questions, tell us your situation again on the.net side or, um, one of those ways, and let us help you figure out what you need to accomplish your goals, because it's really easy to go and blow a lot of money on stuff that you find out doesn't really do what you want. And there is also, I'm just going to throw this out there. Um, probably make somebody mad. There are a lot of folks in the prepping community in the communications side of things that are out there to take your money and sell you something you don't need. And I'm not pointing fingers at anybody, but be aware that there are a lot of products that are marketed that you can communicate all over the country with this, or you can do this or that. And, you know, And it re there's gotchas with that. And they're not telling you everything. They're just trying to get you to give them money because you know what, if the balloon goes up, you're not going to be able to come get them when you find out it doesn't work. And I don't want that to happen to anybody. My, you know, my, my goal is I want you to actually have, if the unthinkable happens, I want you to have the best chance that you have making it. I don't care if I make a dollar off of you to, you know, line my pockets at this point. I want you to have the best chance of making it. And that's not what we're here for as PrepperNet. We're not here to market you stuff that's not going to work. So. Right. Well, cool. I don't have anything else. Somebody asked, what's the software used to send pictures and forms? It is a suite of software called FL Digi. You can download it for free. It works on Mac, Linux, Windows, Raspberry Pi, if you know what that is. It works on all kinds of things. It's an entire suite of software, so there's two or three applications that kind of go together to make it work. And there's lots of good videos on YouTube of setting it up. We're probably going to have one of our own videos at some point, but it's, it's pretty straightforward, you know, doing that side of the things. And then the other piece of software I mentioned is called, uh, I think it's Android or A-N-D-F-L message or A-N-D-F-O-M-S-G or something like that. If you search Android FL message, you'll save it. I mean, you'll find it. And it's a stripped down real basic version that will run on a phone or a tablet. Uh, and allow you to do some of that stuff. Um, real lightweight. I mean, you can have a cell phone in your pocket and an eight ounce radio, uh, you know, the little County comm GP seven SSB, you're the Texan, whatever it is, that's the equivalent of it that some of the folks have. You can have that and a cell phone in your pocket and a patch cord and be able to receive some of this stuff under the right circumstances. So it's not a huge investment there to do that. And somebody says raspberry saves the world. Raspberry saves the world. Yeah. And that's the thing. And the other side of this is... Before we go, you know, remember you got to have power to run this. So a lot of these things are pretty energy efficient and you can run them off grid pretty easy. It's I'm testing a receive station behind me at the moment that draws about four and a half watts to leave it on 24 seven running digital modes to receive. So that's just a small solar panel. That's a small solar panel. Yep. to have the ability to receive that stuff. Or five rats. They're running, running on a Ferris. Yep. They got to rotate, you know, Okay, guys, join us on PrepperNet.net. And with all the questions, all these guys, there's guys in the forum here. The chat room has been talking. I'm sure they'll be all there. All the ham guys are there. Join us there. And then we'll be sending out a few emails to get everyone kind of started and make sure they're going through the process of whatever the next step is. And so I would encourage you, to go to the comms and go, Hey, listen, tonight, I'm going to start to try to get my technician license, or I'm going to, I'm starting the ham, you know, Academy, whatever it is, just let us know. And then just introduce yourself. Yep. That's it. Okay. Good night, everybody. Oh, you got one more thing. Go ahead. Now, I was just going to say good night, everybody. Good night. If you do have your license and you've not ever actually picked up that radio and pushed the push to talk button, I challenge you to check into a net this week somewhere in your town. Dial around, find one. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be a rag tune net, whatever. Check it in. Check in. Get some transmit time and start using your gear. Yep. Good night, guys. Good night, guys.