Prep Comms - Prep Comms: An Introduction

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Welcome to the new Prep Comms Podcast featuring Caleb Nelson (K4CDN), the host and visionary founder of HamRadio 360. Prep Comms Podcast was created to become a vital learning resource tailor-made for individuals within the preparedness community seeking to delve deeper into the realm of communications while crafting robust strategies amidst the dynamic socioeconomic and political landscape of today. In this inaugural episode, Caleb delves into the core motivation driving the show and provides a glimpse into the insights awaiting the listener. Show Page: www.prepcomms.com Show Sponsor: Hub City Mercantile Shop: Show Merch and Mentions  

Hey, welcome in the prep comms podcast. My name's Kale Nelson. My amateur radio call sign is K4CDN. Some may know me as Caleb Nelson, and that's okay. Caleb is just the long form version of my nickname, Kale. I was born in 73 and my dad was a huge NASCAR fan. His favorite driver was Kale Yarborough, and his name was Caleb as well. So I got Caleb and then have been called Kale for years until now. So here I am, Kilo Fort Charlie, Delta, November. And what does that

matter? And why am I here? Right? So if you're not familiar, I am the host and founder of a program called Ham Radio 360. I kicked that show off in 2014. That was a couple of years after I had gotten my amateur radio license and had a thirst for knowledge and understanding of the hobby. And I just was not getting those answers locally. And let me just say, that's not a knock on my local club. They just weren't interested in the things at that time that I was interested in learning about. So I decided, after having spent almost a decade in Christian radio, that I would start a podcast. And this was back before every ham was a YouTuber and every other ham was a podcaster.

There weren't a lot of us back then. And I just kind of decided, oh, I'll do this. It'll be kind of fun. I'll talk to some of my buddies. I'll interview some guys I know. And the next thing you know, we're 50 episodes in, the show has grown ridiculously and we're rebranding the whole thing. Yeah, I went, I almost, well, some people, some people say that changing the name of your show halfway through is a virtual suicide. It didn't happen. It actually, uh, we branded the program to be

more amateur radio friendly and it just paid off in dividends. It just quadrupled. It was ridiculous. So way back in 2014, we started a program called FOTIME and it was just an inside joke from an old internet forum. And then we decided to call it ham radio 360 in about 2016 somewhere around in there episode 50 you can find it online it's a lot of fun by the way it was a great time we had a great run just just gobs of downloads we had the best listeners on the planet we launched two shows out of that one show i think one's still running now and it's just crazy how uh back then there was such a hunger for information and there still is i understand that but um i'm just an audio guy and i've been an It's just crazy how back then there was such a hunger for information. And there still is.

I understand that. But I'm just an audio guy. And I've been an audio guy for forever. So the majority of everything I create is going to be audio. If you're seeing this on YouTube, it's just because it gets pushed over there that way. We may create some episodes for the YouTube audience. But right now, it's me and it's audio. So welcome into the new program. Some people are like, Kel, why didn't you just go back and pick up 360 where you dropped

off? That's a very good question I'd like to address right here, right now. That was about five or six years ago. And to be very frank, one, the show was rolling along just phenomenally. And we had a ridiculous audience. We had downloads that were just crazy. Two other programs out of it. And, man, it was just like what everybody wants to achieve is where we were at. And about the same time we got to that point, my wife began to develop some serious medical issues. And fast forward a couple of years as these issues progressed and got worse and worse.

My wife was diagnosed with severe and aggressive cancer. They gave her four months to live. She was 41 years old. And we had five children at the time. We still have five children, by the way. And that is much more important when you look at it than continuing a podcast about a hobby. Sorry, guys. But that's why the show went away.

I had to focus on home. And my wife went through you know where and survived. Actually, she didn't survive. She overcame. And she's thriving today. Her health is phenomenal. And thank you, if you're coming back in here, all you guys, for your support, prayers back in the day. That was so appreciative.

I just can't get over the audience that we had with 360. So my wife is fine. She's better. My kids have grown up even more. Three of my five kids are now hams. My wife is now a ham. They're not hams like the typical ride around in their car and talk to their buddies on the radio they did it because their dad asked them to uh and and it's they can do it if they want to and they understand the reasonings and

whatever behind it but they're not active like i'm active um anyway carla got better life just showed back up and then all of a sudden here's COVID and the shutdown and everything and it's just been swirling we found we had some issues in our actual structure of our home we had to it was we've just had a crazy couple of years but in that time I kept thinking about a project that I had thought about really from the very early days of the FOTIME podcast back in 2014. And the reason I say that is because I had so many people from the prepping community reach out to me back then with questions or desire that I would go there with my podcast. And I didn't. I didn't want to. I wanted to cater to the amateur radio community. That was who that show was for. And that was the audience I tried to reach. That didn't mean that every week

I was getting messages and instant messages and emails and whatnot from people who had questions that were prepping, if you will, and trying to figure out communications. And I would try to address those any way we could. I would always refer them back to the program and say, okay, I've got a guy who had to pack all of his water up and had to take his communication devices to a deserted island in Florida and survive for the weekend while he was communicating with other hams around the world. Can't you learn something from that? And I get that's still amateur radio related, but I tried to, you know, I tried to, I tried to play both sides of the fence. And the reason being is because there's, there's a lot of division when it comes to amateur radio and the prepping

community. And I think some of it is founded, some of the concern and whatnot I get is, is there. Okay. I understand. But at the same time, amateur radio has grown exponentially in the last 10 years, by and large, thanks to the prepping community. We've got thousands of preppers, probably millions out there with radios, thousands of them wanting to learn how to use them and participate locally and learn about the local radio scene and they're getting their license so I guess it was probably 2016-2017 I was just looking through GoDaddy which I do way too often and typed in prep comms and it came up and I thought I'll buy that and I sat on it for, thought about selling it a couple of times because there were some

folks who could have used it and, you know, to promote their business or whatever. And I guess it must have been sometime in 2023. I was on Facebook and I'm friends with a lot of people, but I follow virtually no one on Facebook. And so I get a lot of ads and a lot of suggestions. And while the suggestions I kept getting were amateur radio groups. And the large majority of those were new beginner, ham radio beginner, ham radio questions or whatever. So I thought, wow, this is pretty interesting.

So I joined a couple of those and started reading them. And one of the things I found was this. The large majority of people asking questions on those types of forums or Facebook groups were preppers. The large majority of the questions that were being asked were the same questions that had been asked the previous day and even sometimes earlier in the same day. And the answers were always the same. Really, the questions were the same. How much does it cost? What do I need to buy?

And how far can I talk? And I get those are really good, solid questions that it's really hard to answer for every single person without copy and pasting because everyone's desires and whatnot are different. I remember when I was a ham, when I first got started in 2011, I had a very minimal budget, extremely minimal budget. There were no $30 walkie talkies. There were especially no $12 walkie talkies. All we had at the bottom end of the barrel was a $120 handy talkie from a company called O'Sheen, which you've probably never heard of because you think it may be pronounced Wookson. And those were imported by a guy named Ed out of North Carolina. And I saved and saved and scrounged change out of the drawers to get $120. I mean, we're a single income family with five little kids, man. What are you going to do with that?

And I bought a little handy talkie and that little handy talkie became my mobile radio connected to an external antenna. It became my household base station connected to an external antenna. And of course it was a portable radio as well. And I lived that way for about two years before I was able to, to purchase another radio and to get an actual mobile radio in my truck. And then one in the house as a base station, if you will. So, um, I've been there. I've, you know, what do I buy? What can I afford to buy? I'm trying to talk to somebody. How can I talk to those folks? And I get it. And I kept reading these, these questions and in the responses, man, they were from left field all the

way to home plate. I mean, it was everywhere. Oh, you just needed immediately need to buy, you know, a $10,000 radio and a 150 foot tower, or no, you'll just, all you need is a $29 big pen radio. And all, you know, it was just, uh, it made my head hurt. And I tried to, I tried to answer with my opinions and expertise and experience. And man, we had 33,000 people in one group. And I think 33 of them asked the same question every day. And I'm not against asking questions because I understand wanting answers. That's even while I'm here today. It's because I had a lot of answers that I couldn't get, questions rather, that I couldn't get answered back in the day as a new ham. So I started a podcast to get the questions answered. And that show still exists online,

hamradio360.com. If you've never listened's there's 99 episodes there that may interest you at some level in regards to communications so back to the current time i was telling my wife i'm answering these questions i see these people just begging for information and she said why don't you just start you another show now what you need to know about myself and my wife is we were married in 1999, just celebrated 25 years of marriage. Pretty amazing. And, um, I know people have far surpassed that, but I'm, I'm, I'm very thankful to be where I'm at with who I'm with. Right. So, um, she said, you should start another show. Well, that's quite a shock because you know, why most wives don't ask their husbands to sign up for something else. Right. So she encouraged me to start a show we talked about a little bit.

And she said, you know, she said, we've been in this mindset for a long time, this preparedness mindset. And most people probably don't even know that we think that direction. They just maybe they just think we're weird. I'm not sure, right? But we began learning about preparedness way back in 1997, 1998. We were married in 99. And one of the very first things we ever did was buy a generator.

Now, we didn't need it for Y2K, but man, that dude has paid for itself time and time and time again. As we've used it at previous homes we've lived at where we'd lose power all the time with little kids. It was no fun. And that little generator, man, it's been a, it's been a great blessing purchased all the way back in 99 from Sam's crazy. Anyway, I digress. We've been, we've been in the preparedness mindset as long as we've been married. Um, we're not like the doom and gloom preppers. Uh, we actually were called survivalist back when we got into this and prepper came in later on. But we don't necessarily live the lifestyle where everything's a disaster, everything's an emergency, everything's collapsing around us.

I mean, we can see the reality of where we're living. Don't misunderstand me. But we live by faith and we walk in that. And we also know that things happen. Like when my wife got sick, we had not a bunch of freeze-dried food, but our pantry was full. And Carla had been our breadwinner for 20-plus years. And now she's out of work on the edge of death. And folks helped us, don't misunderstand me but the groceries that we had

amassed over the years in storage we were able to use those things to eat and to feed our family and you know people why are you prepping this and that no it's not it's not about that it's about having a mindset of thinking forward and the what-ifs and not to the point where the what ifs make you fearful or afraid or make you make really bad decisions. You're just trying to think forward to prepare for the unknown. And that was what we were doing. Now, you want to talk about the end of the world as you know it. Your bride is super healthy and beautiful and just full of life and just a great mom. And she's got little kids. And then all of a sudden the doc says, she's got four months to live. We'd like to put her in hospice.

That has some guts of a great dystopian novel, I can tell you. And that's what it felt like for about a year as we walked through that. But we were prepared with food and whatnot that we didn't have to, you know, go hungry. And I just want to encourage you wherever you are in your journey, maybe you're not, you've never even thought about preparedness, which I doubt that would be anyone listening to this program. But if you're just getting started, it's okay. If you've been at it a long time, you feel kind of burnout, I've been there. It's okay. But what we're going to talk about here in this program is communications for and how to the preparedness community. Now there's a million YouTubers out there that are, that are doing this and have been doing this. And like I said, I told someone the

other day, every ham radio operator now is a YouTube guy, and that's okay. I love it because there's so much information. Really, every excuse is gone. This is just my contribution to the big pool of great information out there. So here we go. Preparedness and communications, they really go hand in hand. And we saw that not too long ago when AT&T quit and everybody lost their mind because they were so used to just having a phone and they could communicate with anybody wherever, anytime they wanted to. And we took that away from them, if you will. That breaks people. We are so communication dependent nowadays that it's hard for folks to think about not having a

way or a means to communicate. So that's what this program is going to be centered around. This isn't going to be a theory program. This isn't going to be an Amazon list that you just go by and put in a duffel bag and shove in the top of your closet. We're going to talk about practicalities. We're going to talk about practical communication solutions for you. So as you prepare for whatever you're preparing for, you can make good decisions. You're not going to make decisions out of fear. You're not going to make decisions out of haste.

We're going to give you some real reasons, some real understandings, and kind of really just help you build your communications repertoire. And at the same time, understand why you need these things and what you can do with them when you have them. Now, some of these shows may be 15 or 20 minutes long. We may have some interview shows in the future that could go a lot longer than that, but I'm not putting any pressure here to create an up to 30-minute program released every Tuesday at 4 o'clock Eastern. We're not doing that with this show.

This show is going to be my contribution to you guys to help encourage you and to help grow you in this field of communications as a prepper. Now, again, I have a hard time saying that word sometimes because, um, we've been closeted preppers for so long. We don't even call ourselves or refer to ourselves like that. We're just weird, okay? And I said earlier, back then we were called survivalists, and that was really weird, too. That always put me in the Mad Max Thunderdome kind of stuff.

But anyway, we're going to talk about communications for preppers, and we're going to be sponsoring this show ourselves. So just so you know, Carla and I, a couple of years back, we had some water issues at our home. Matter of fact, this was before she got sick, but we began getting sick to our stomachs every four to five weeks, all six of us at the time. And I don't mean just like an upset belly. I mean like explosive happenings in the bathroom. And it would start with one of the kids usually, and it would go through all four kids.

And then it would impact myself or Carla or vice versa. And then two or three days later, we were fine. And then four or five weeks later, it would happen in three or four days of just explosive things in the bathroom. It was a lot of fun to clean that up. And then we were fine again. And then Carla had our baby. It was a lot of fun to clean that up. And then we were fine again. And then Carla had our baby Zoe was born in 2011. And about the time she got here and got home from the hospital and everything, it all started back. And I'm like, are you kidding me?

Why is this still happening to our family? What is going on? And a really neat story I'll tell later. We determined that it was actually our well water making us sick. We had tried and tested everything else, but we never thought about the water. It was our water. So I immediately went to the garage. I got our Burtfield filter out, put the filters in, and poured some water in there, started drinking from that, the filtered water, and we've not been sick since. Now, I will tell you that we did, of course, clean our well. Our well's been sanitized a couple of different times now, and we have it tested quite regularly and our water's great. But during that one time,

it was no fun. And again, this is a really long story I'm compressing for you, but that just leads me to this. It wasn't too long ago I became a British Birkfeld water filter dealer. And that is the original Berkey, right? They're made in Britain. They've been around for years and years and years. And we're we are actually a brick and mortar store in the upstate of South Carolina that sells these Birkfeld filters. These are the stainless steel style filters that you see all over the Prepper sphere. These are the British Birkfeld brand, and we are an authorized dealer, have been for years now. Our store is called the Hub City Mercantile. There's links to this on the webpage and in the show notes. And we sell the filters, the parts, the filter elements. We have

a whole house filter system we actually use and have for years. It's amazing. It's like having the Birkfeld under the house that every bit of water that enters your house has been filtered through those filter candles. It's amazing. We have one that goes under the sink that filters in the same fashion under pressure there with a little faucet for you. So a lot of different things that we offer there, in addition to some communication solutions and whatnot. But that is our show sponsor. And that's me and my wife and my family. So if you're looking for water filters in your preparedness journey, or if you need some replacement parts or replacement filters, I'm your guy. And you can find that in the show notes. And we'll be talking about that as the

show progresses. But that's our sponsor. That's our sponsor. And you can find that in the show notes. And we'll be talking about that as the show progresses. But that's our sponsor. That's our sponsor. And just wanted to get that out there to let you know, if we can help you in that fashion, please never hesitate to ask. We've had some great success with the Birkfeld and we're very happy to be associated with them. That's going to wrap episode one of PrepComs podcast. Again, you can find us online at PrepCs.com, prepcoms.com. Otherwise, while you're

there, hey, don't forget to check out the links, blog posts. Got some links there over to Ham Radio Prep, as well as the Hub City Mercantile for your British Brookfield water filter needs and more. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time. God bless 73 y'all.