Prep Comms - Ham Radio The Last Act

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Ham radio usually comes up at the end of the conversation about communications. Not first, and not early—after people have already tried other options and figured out what feels easy and what doesn't. In this episode, I talk through why that happens. I walk through patterns I've seen over time: how people approach communication planning, how radios get bought and set aside, and why plans often fall apart when they're never used or practiced ahead of time. This isn't a tutorial or a licensing guide. I'm not explaining how to get started or what equipment to buy. It's simply a conversation about time, familiarity, and why ham radio tends to sit where it does—at the end. Trot Over to YoutTube to actually watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCSRyX6ECBg&lc=Ugw6l1c4ZMLW_Qb1H6J4AaABAg 30/30 Challenge: https://www.familyconnectsystem.com/3030welcome Why Your Family Won't Use the Radios - Mindset Book #1 https://prepcomms-shop.fourthwall.com/products/why-your-family-wont-use-the-radios If you want someone to look at your situation—your family, your distance, your goals—and help you decide what actually makes sense, you can book a family communications planning session with Caleb.  

Welcome back. I'm Caleb K4 CDN. Hope you doing great. Happy New Year. Can you believe 2026? Hey, if you've ever wondered why you've heard me say I've got a face made for radio and you're listening to this in the typical podcast fashion trot on over to YouTube, I think I'm going to post this video up. I've got no special lighting. Just this overhead glaring. No powder on the forehead to keep the The reflection down. No microphone. Oh, M.G. I feel naked. Yeah, I've been in FM radio for, God, over 20 years now, 21 years.

I don't know. Are you impressed? I'm not. It's just weird standing here in the corner of my radio shack talking to a camera. Actually, it's just my pixel phone. So, yeah. Hey, this, let me just say it flat out. This will be the last act.

of the prepcoms podcast. Oh, don't panic. I mean, I'm not going anywhere fast because we've got a lot to talk about. But just to let you know, I think this thing has about run its course, meaning that when I established the program, when Derek from ZBM to Industries

talked to me into getting back into podcasting, I decided to use an old URL I had bought years ago, I've told this already, and develop and devote the program to preppers, most especially those who just did not, know what to do in regards to communications because I mean there's some really great information out there and there's some stuff that's not so great you have to be the one to to wade through and try to decipher what works best for you and your family your crew your group mag whatever so I thought

hey I would come in I just build like these chapters these library books that you can come in and check out and read and see where this would help you maybe you have no understanding of the iPal system or and the, I don't know, the weather alert system. So you're like, oh, I need to learn about weather radios or I don't really understand scanners. Why do I need a scanner? I'm a prepper. I don't need a scanner. I think we made a pretty good case for a scanner. Anyway, I probably even sold some CB radios to some people. So say all that to say this. Now, we've, we've kind of graduated through all those. I think we're getting to the granddaddy. It's going to offend some people when I say this, but I think amateur radio, ham radio, if you

will, is probably the pinnacle. Unless you're buying your own infrastructure, unless you're buying your own encryption, unless you're buying your own towers and your own, okay, all right, for the average dude, dude at in America, amateur radio's peak in emergency communications. Now, that doesn't mean that the fire department needs you to run down to the station every time they have an alarm and set your hand radio stuff up and, you know, call a net for the emergency. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is for its capacities, for its resilience, and its ability to withstand, you're going to be really hard-pressed to beat amateur radio. That's my opinion. No one else has to like it. It's my opinion. And having been in and around radio for, God, 40-some-odd years,

46 years, FM radio over 20-something years ago, amateur radio since 14, no, 11, 11, Yeah, started in 11. I mean, at least these are my experiences. They don't have to be anyone else's. I mean, you could have tried all this before and hated everybody that you came in contact with and think that every ham radio operator is the worst human being on the planet.

You're entitled to that. Because there are some really not awesome people in this hobby. There's also some really not awesome people at your Little League baseball game. There's also some really not awesome people in your Harley Davidson biker gang. I had a couple of Harleys so I can say that. There's also some really not great people

in the large-scale model railroading hobby. How do I know? I've been involved in all of them. I've met some of the finest people on the planet in and around those different genres. I've also met some of the world's worst. Like, I don't care if I ever talk to that person again. They're so not my style.

So if you've had a bad experience in amateur or ham radio, I apologize. But I can't fix it. Only you can. I've decided a long time ago because my experience has not always been necessarily awesome, but it hasn't been bad. It's just I walked into a local amateur radio scene that really wasn't vibing with me. They had been around and established since World War II. And they like going to Golden Corral.

They like going to the fish camp. They like eating donuts. and talking about the heyday. They weren't really interested in, like, what will we do if we had a tornado come through town again? Or how could our radios communicate with someone else across state lines if there was a flood or an emergency or a hurricane in the mountains?

You know, they didn't care, they didn't want to do any of that. They're like, stupid, man. That's stupid, dude. Just get on your radio. You can talk to Japan. Okay. I like Japanese food. Maybe we can talk about that.

I don't know. No, when I got my license, my primary objective was to be able to talk from Maine to Miami, Florida, to Knoxville, Tennessee, from the northwestern point of South Carolina. And I thought if I could do that, and it was an emergency and something bad had happened, and it was Tio Tawaki or whatever James Wesley Rawls said back in the day, if it was something like that. And I could talk from there to there and over there, I'd be okay. I'd be good, you know? And I tested, got my license, tested again, got my upgrade to general, bought an HF radio, set it right over there. And in five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, I had talked from Maine to Miami to Knoxville. And then I didn't know what to do because I'd spent all this time thinking, oh, if I could just only do that, if I could only just accomplish that, I'd be okay. I had a piece of coax cable, so you can't see it, but right over here on the other side, where my radio stuff used to be, had a piece of coax cable,

and I would roll it up every time I would get finished, and if I was going to use it, I'd roll it out and out the door of the barn and connect it to a balin, and then there was a wire that ran from the barn, eight feet off the ground, about 103 feet, give or take. They called it a random wire, eight feet off the ground, Nivis,

near vertical incident skywave. It was all of that, right? Yeah, within five days, I had done more than I ever thought. Who would have thought? Yeah, 100 watts. Yeah, around the world. Crazy. Crazy.

So we've talked about the simpler, the easier, the more accessible to the general population. Like family radio service. Like general mobile radio service. Like multi-user radio service. that'll make sense and for the most part it's cheap enough it's easy enough to get in get going and get started and make it happen and that's okay i mean why not but now it's time to talk about the next step and i think it's peak again it's not uncle sam it's not you spending you know thousands and thousands of dollars to buy this encryption equipment and putting up

all your own repeaters and you know doing voice over IP or a sailor whatever, push the talk over it, whatever. It's just, I'm talking RF, man. I'm just talking RF, RF. General class, RF. It means you've got to take two tests. It's not a big deal. My daughter's done it.

All my family's passed their tech. It's easy. But maybe you're like, oh, these guys were mean to me at the ham club, and they told me I was stupid and didn't like my beard. Okay. I've had people tell me I'm stupid and didn't like my beard too. I just stop. So look, I'm not going to try to convince you.

I just want to tell you that if you have had bad experiences, maybe you are an amateur radio operator, and you haven't found your group, you haven't found your crew, don't give up. Because there are people out there that have the same goals and desires that you do. Maybe you're thinking about getting your amateur radio license, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is scary. No, it's just humanity.

Ham Radio is just a subsection of humanity, just like anything else. I mean, you stamp collectors, coin collectors, 3D printer guys, right? Scanner enthusiasts, podcasters, YouTube creators. There's some great ones and there's some guys that aren't great. It doesn't change the fact that the good ones aren't good because there's a couple of bad ones. But it's up to you. I'm not going to try to convince you.

I'm just going to tell you why it's the best. It is so weird to be standing here in front of my phone having this conversation, because again, I've been on radio since back. I started in 2005. My mic's right here. It's so weird not to have it right here and having to focus here. So if I'm over here, please excuse me. This is what you got.

But again, this is kind of the last hurrah, the last arc of the story in regards to prepcom's podcast. Now, there may be additional subsequent shows. This is not the last one, but this is the last chapter. This will be the longest chapter because it has the most information in it. And the information ranges from historical to technical, to application, to reasoning, just like we've done through everything else. We're going to go through it the same way.

Except I wanted to give a little introduction, face-to-face here, to help explain why it may feel different, while the conversation, the tone might be different. Here's the thing. I've got, you can't see it, but back over here, there's a MERS radio. There's a GMRS, actually two GMRS radios. And there's a CB. So I have it all right here. Matter of fact, let me just get out of the way. These are scanners.

This is an older GMRS radio. MERS radio from my boys back at Radio Shet, yo, yo, president, CB. This is an old school HF rig. I traded an antenna for this radio. Talk around the world on it. It's amazing. This is ham radio. This is packet radio. This is fire department radio. And over here you can't see, but down there is the brand new B-Tech GMRS 50 Pro. And right over there is the brand new B-tech. What is that? UV-50 Pro. It's all in here. It's all. I use it all, guys. It's just some things work better than others for particular instances. Like you don't want to hand your kid. You know, your five, six-year-old kid, you want to hand them, you want to hand them something like this. Okay, especially if you have a daughter. This is my daughter's from back in the day.

This had some kind of straw. I don't remember what the deal was here, but this was for my daughters. FRS. You don't hand, you hand this to a kid, right? You don't hand something like, I don't know, I've got too many radio. You don't hand your kid a DMR encrypted radio. wouldn't make any sense that too many buttons too many buttons so it's just like that with with everything you've come in you're wanting to learn about communications you're a prepper and and what

I hear from everybody is how far can I talk and what is it going to cost fair question my question back to you is how far away are they how much are you willing to spend money and time how bad do you want to talk to them. Second part of that question is, how far away you ask that person, the other person, how far away are they from you? How much are they willing to spend in time and money? And how bad do they really want to talk to you? And if those don't kind of mesh, if those answers don't kind of go together, you're not going to talk to each other. Maybe on a cell phone, but on a radio, it's not going to happen. Can't do it. You have to be, what is that? What is that? I don't know

together. You have to be equally yoked. How about that? Oh, man. Oh, man. This camera thing, I don't know, guys. I really don't know. I'm going to need some encouragement on this. Ham Radio is not an acronym.

Have I said that yet? I don't think so. It's not spelled capital H, capital A, capital M. That doesn't mean anything. It's some old school history we'll probably talk about in the next show. But it doesn't mean anything. It's not wholly authority microphones or, higher antiquity mechanics.

It's none of that. It's just an old nickname. It's basically a nickname. And nicknames aren't acronyms, and they don't have to be capitalized. So it doesn't bother me when I see it, but I immediately catches my eyes. I'm just like, oh, they don't know that it's not an acronym.

And it's not a problem you don't know. That's why I'm telling you. That's the whole premise of this whole thing I've been doing for months is to help you, to teach you, learn that way you know you don't have to sit here and watch these videos or let's these podcast over and over you're learning so that you can go do something i mean if you just spend all your time learning and not doing man you're going to burn yourself out your family's going to be like i thought you were trying to figure out how to talk to me ma you know and and you still don't know

what to do because you're watching too many videos and you're not putting anything in the place you're not doing any action got some action man you got have a plan i know i know it's hard But here's the deal. It's not impossible. Amateur radio is amazing. It's a great hobby. It's a better service. And if you are serious about long-range communications

and you're not looking to buy a mortgage your home to buy gear to do that with privately, then through the public amateur radio service, can't beat it. You can't beat it. I understand you see beers have got basically 120 frequencies to talk on if you count the sidebands. I get that you MERS guys got five frequencies and 60 feet of elevation. I understand that you GMRS guys get up to 50 watts, you know, on your 22 frequencies or channels. And you can have repeaters, which, hey, I talked on one the other day.

It was great. I got the check-in to a net. It was awesome. Yeah, I get all that. I get all that. But you can't count the frequencies that amateur radio operators have to use and the modes that they have to use. and the resilient infrastructure that already exists for you to be able to talk across your county, it's already there.

The infrastructure built where you can talk across the country and send messages and receive messages. And I'm not talking about millions of dollars invested here, guys. It's just baby steps. I understand, but man, you can really do some stuff. I've proven that. I've proven it for years. So anyway, I don't want to take you. any more of your time. I don't know how this video is going to turn out. Thank you for listening

if you're still here on the podcast player. And again, we're going to enter into the ham radio hobby. We're going to talk amateur radio. I know not everybody likes it. And that's fine. You don't have to come back. I mean, it just, it's what it is. My parents don't even listen to my stuff. I'm not going to be offended if you don't. So anyway, come back if you want to know more. In the meantime, if you're interested in the hobby and you've never heard my old shows, I will invite you to the Ham Radio 360 show. It's on all the podcast players. I think it's on YouTube, but it's kind of weird because that was way back in the day before,

you know, we all had YouTube channels and everybody was cool, but it's on your podcast player, Ham Radio 360. It was a program that I developed because I had a lot of questions about the amateur radio hobby that I couldn't get answered locally. So if you're kind of past where we're talking today, I can tell you this, the hobby moves at the speed of snail. All right? So you can go back and listen to those shows from 2014 to 2018

and a vast majority of what you'll hear is still relevant today. That's why I've left it up for so long. So until next time, I guess, I need to go and say, 73, y'all. God bless, thank you for being here. I hope you do come back and hope you like the format, Although it's a mess, it's my shop.