The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Comms is Sorcery

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcastSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*The MoF boys shanghai'd longtime listener Scott onto the show to talk about the mystical and mysterious world of Communications. Wonder what HAM has to do with radios? Or what's the difference between CB and GMRS? Is your Comms plan two cans and some string? Sit down and listen while we unpack and educate.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwfpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rabelais, and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Bobo is on the other side of the mic and here's your show. So welcome back to Matter Facts Podcast. This is the show where I have Shanghai browbeat bullied and begged a listener to come on the show and talk to us about something that Andrew and I don't know near as much about because as is kind of tradition for us at this point, we start the show by saying that Andrew and I don't know a whole ton about the subject and we're here to learn and share information with the audience. We don't know a whole ton about the subject, and we're here to learn and share information with the audience. So to greet the guest, Scott, thanks for coming on the show, and I'm going to stand by and poke and prod you and get you to ramble as much as humanly possible about the subject we all want to know about. Welcome. Thanks for having me, and good to be here. We'll see if we can actually impart a little bit of knowledge I have on everyone else,

and hopefully everyone's a little bit smarter and not any dumber for having listened to me. I mean, if they've been listening to us for any length of time, not getting any dumber, I think they've already bottomed out. So, Andrew, you look a little disheveled. I know you just came from another engagement yeah i uh um started the preparation for the truck so my buddy uh he's i talked about last week uh he's got a youtube channel called carswell cars uh, Carswell's Customs. And, um, he's kind of helping me film and, uh, trying to get my YouTube channel off the, uh, off the ground a little bit. Uh, so we were putting the, we got the bed rack on, uh, and we actually, so I forgot that I, so I bought supports,

uh, uh, bed supports, um, to help stabilize, uh, cause Tacomas,omas if nobody does if they don't know tacomas have a composite bed um and over time if with weight and if you especially if you put like a lot of i mean basically if you put really a lot of heavy stuff in the back of the truck for a long period of time especially like a um bed rack or just like i put the decks drawer system it tends to just warp over time because of that composite and uh so i bought uh their bed stiffeners basically that kind of reinforce and they bring the bed back to uh alignment factory alignment and everything so we opened up the package from cali raised and where I got my bed rack from and those dropped out and I'm like oh yeah I bought those too well so then putting those in we decided I mean a lot of the we did a lot of filming for that uh because doing with the deck drawer system uh we found that I had to pull

the deck system apart uh the basically both sides of the both wings I had to pull off basically uh which wasn't a big deal but then we got everything in good to go uh yeah and the deck drawer the the system the wings basically on each side um i had to actually notch out a little section uh to it so we covered doing that and just yeah it was i mean it was a lot of fun uh it was really interesting and he filmed a lot and um so we did that and then uh yeah we got the we got the, I got my, uh, bed rack in, uh, and go in. And then, so tomorrow, uh, tomorrow after church, um, I will be going back to his place and, uh, we're going to put the rooftop 10 on. So, and then, uh, my buddy, one of my buddies, uh, him and I are planning on, uh, doing a, just a quick overnight, uh, camping trip I think, next Friday, I believe.

So it's going to kind of test it out, first time out. So it'll be interesting to get it out and test it. But, yeah, so he had something he had to get going on. He had to leave by 5, and so did I. And so it was like, you know, quarter to 5 or so. And I was like, all right, see you later. Texted you, hey, I'm on my way back way back 20 minutes away and got stuck behind someone slow and not a chance to pass them so i ran in made a cup of coffee and like booting up like i think i ran my stairs like four times uh between booting up the computer making coffee and everything so

so yeah no it was uh it was a good day though. It was fun. It was good to hang out with an old friend and, uh, smoke some cigars and just kind of getting my feet wet when it comes to YouTube. So kind of, I think, I don't know, I, the YouTube channel, I guess I'm kind of curious on people's thoughts, but, uh, I almost thought about making it saying something like bobo's taco or bobo's tacoma or something like that i don't know if it'll fly or not but we'll see i mean social media and content creation is kind of an extension of the creator so it's like does if it flies with you, it flies. Right? Catchy. Yeah. All right, so two-topic.

This is something that has been brought up multiple times. I've had, personally, at least four different people request information about off-grid communications over the years. And Andrew and I have been, I wouldn't say we're calcitrant. We've both kind of come at this from the perspective of, of like we just don't know a whole ton about it like i dove headfirst into it and started learning as much as i can but like i hate to speak on a subject i don't know a lot about and scott knows more than the two of us andrew remind me now just kind of like front load the listeners i went ahead and got my gmrs license from the fcc and even though i'm probably going to wind up getting my ham license at some point in the future like gmrs was the big draw for me because i can't get my wife to get a ham license

so gmrs allows me and my wife my daughter all talk back and forth to each other all under my call sign, all under my license. And because there's a handful of frequencies shared with FRS, these FRS radios can also talk back and forth with these GMRS radios if we're on a common frequency. like gmrs was kind of the direction i went because it gave me that flexible entry with a low barrier to entry that i can actually like make this work with my group and my group is my wife and daughter if i can't talk to the two of them on it it just doesn't it doesn't serve my my needs um did you ever end up getting your ham license or have you been procrastinating and i need to start brow beating you uh i've had my ham license for 11 years um i've i got it back when i was on search and rescue uh we carried ham radios and so when i was on search and rescue for the county um we had to have it as a requirement so i got it way back then i actually just renewed it so actually 10 years um i just renewed it and so, and it's one of those

things. Ham has always been one of those things I've been always interested in, just never picked it up, started kind of dipping my big toe into the water again, uh, took a class on ham, uh, started learning the radio. And then I just haven't done anything with it since. And, uh, um, I need to, I really need to like buckle down and start doing it. Cause I, my goal for this year is to actually get my next level, uh, ham, um, ham license and, uh, kind of want to start looking at, uh, high frequency stuff that maybe if I can reach my parents, uh, or reach, you know, I know you can reach a long ways away, but just, I don't know. It interests me that you can talk to people around the world, depending on atmosphere and all that crap. So, uh, no, I mean, so yeah, having Scott on, I mean, it's, uh,

it's a good thing cause maybe able to get me interested again. Uh, but I mean, I don't know the first thing about ham. I know it's like, okay, I'm going to be talking to this repeater and this person, they can talk to this repeater and all this crap. And it's, yeah, I mean, it, it, mean it it's it's way way above my pay grade so yeah so scott i mean talk us through like what what's your history with ham and gmrs like where tell the listeners like where you're coming from i guess well i've always been interested in radio so you you know like most people it may not be popular to say in the ham radio community but but most of all everyone started

out on CB you get kind of hooked on CB and then you want something more so the way I would describe it as ham radio is like CB on crack. You can do more with it. So I started out with that as a kid and then procrastinated and finally got my ham license in 2001. And I've been licensed since then. I think I'm going on maybe five or six years with my GMRS license. It's seen a big explosion. GMRS has grown a lot in probably the last 10 years. When I first learned about it, there was really only one repeater south of us, Phil, and that was it in the area.

If you go on the website mygmrs.com, which is kind of like the granddaddy of GMRS information, you can punch in your location, and it will give you a map or a list of repeaters in your area. And if you go on there now, I mean, there's a pretty good network of repeaters here in the state of Louisiana. And there's a massive system out in Texas, which I think connects, if not all, most of the state of Texas. So GMRS has exploded like crazy in the last 10 years.

And it's good. Like you were saying, that was one of my things. I ask people when they are interested in radio and they say, hey, what should I get? You know, what's your goal? What is it you're trying to accomplish? Phil, you said you want to get in touch with your wife and daughter when you need to. And if it can't do that and you have no use for it, well, that's your goal. And if it can't do that and you have no use for it, well, that's your goal.

You know, some people get into it because they like the contest aspect of ham radio. If you're not interested in that, that's fine. There's all kind of stuff you can do with not only ham radio but the GMRS side as well. Like I said, that's what I start with. What's your goal? If you're just looking to communicate with family members in a city or even a more rural area. That's handheld to handheld. You'll get more range with higher powered mobile radios.

And of course, the higher the antenna, the better. the higher the antenna, the better. So if you can put up 20, 30, 40-foot antenna at your house, you can increase that range even more. But it all depends on, like I said, what your goals are. And that's where you just kind of work from there. Yeah, and I mean, like, you know, from my perspective, I feel like at least most people in the preparedness community,

like a lot of us probably have a lot of the same use case, if not exactly the same variables. It all comes down to the idea that like every one of us has had an experience where you pull this magical little box out of your pocket and it stops working all of a sudden. Most recently, that was, you know, kind of a distributed outage that hit lots of cell phone services across the country. But, you know, more recently, like Hurricane Ida punted us all back to the Stone Age a couple of years ago and Hurricane Katrina before that. And most of us have been in some kind of a situation where our primary means of communicating with people over the horizon failed. And I think that's why a lot of people in the preparedness community really get – they really get wrapped around this idea that, like, I have to have some kind of a backup to the cell phones. Because a cell phone is a wonderful tool when it works, but it, like many things, is dependent upon this long chain – this long supply chain working. And anything along that chain breaks, it doesn't work anymore.

and anything along that chain breaks it doesn't work anymore and I think a lot of us came to this idea of having off-grid communications just as a backup to be able to reach our family members and make sure that they're okay and be able to talk to them further than we can shout at them

right and coming from the prepper aspect you know the ever popular Baofeng UV5R radios, everybody's grabbing those. And there's a whole community that just pooh-poohs on them. But hey, if it serves a purpose, it can't be all that bad. So if that's all you can afford or all that you're willing to invest, I say go get you the $20 or $30 radio. Get you a few of them.

At that price point, they're disposable. If you leave it on the back of a truck and then drive down the highway, well, you're only out $30 max. It's not a $500 radio like I have. I'd much rather lose a $20 radio. I'd much rather lose the $20 radio. But with that recent outage with the cell phones, that's what I started seeing a lot in forums or on Facebook groups was people saying, oh, I need to get my ham radio license that way if this happens again, I can talk to my husband, my wife,

whoever it is they want to talk to. Well, how far away are they? Well, they're in the other state. Well, you're not going to do it with a five-watt handheld radio. And, you know, there's a lot more to learn than just tell me what to buy and let me go get it. You know, so it can be a little overwhelming, but it's all, it's a tool. Just like, you know, your fire starter or your pistol on the side of your waist. It's a tool. It serves a purpose, but you have to learn how to use it.

Getting a radio and just putting it in your bug-out kit and doing anything with it does you pretty much no good. pretty much no good. So if anyone was to invest the money in any type of radio equipment, I'd also say invest the time and learn how to use it. And, you know, that way when you do need to rely on it, you're not fumbling trying to figure out what to do. Yeah. So let's kind of unpack that because, like,

we've talked about three primary radio systems. And forgive me for not discussing MERS because I just don't know squat about it and i have no interest in it but um like ham and gmrs and frs and most people have gone to walmart and seen these things these tiny little bubble packs with non-removable antenna scott and i were actually goofing around before the show started about how walmart tells you these things will talk 35 miles and they won't. I mean, anything that runs on a couple of double A's is not going to go that far. But, you know, this is where most people start their radio journey. And this is just like a little FRS walkie talkie requires no license. And people like we use these camping a lot because I can hand one of these to my kid. And if she gets out of sight, I want to find out where she is, I can

hit her on one of these. And hers actually has a whistle on the bottom of it. That way, if for some reason I need to locate her, all she has to do is blow into the whistle and then I know exactly what direction to go in. I just follow the noise. But once you start looking at like something with more capability and power than a little bubble pack, FRS radio, you're kind of,

you're in this, you're in this territory of, do you go for ham or do you go for GMRS? And like we were talking about earlier, like my interest with GMRS really boiled down to the, the barrier to entry is a lot lower. I mean, the FCC's website is a travesty in the 21st century, and whoever designed it should be flogged in public.

It's bad. But it's a $35 fee, and it's 15, 20 minutes of your life to navigate a horrible website, and then you have a license to use one of these things legally. And the cool thing about GMRS, at least for my purpose, was your GMRS license can be shared across your entire immediate and most of your extended family. So I can hand one of these radios to my wife or my daughter or my brother-in-law or my sister or my parents or a huge group of people. And as long as they know my call sign, they can use it. And we can all talk back and forth to each other on one license, which is something that, you know, to my point, I think is the reason why you're seeing GMRS

really take off is that they've made it so easy to get into and utilize. And I'm finding that like the more I dig into this particular radio, which I can't imagine that they're that different, but I'm finding that this is really easy for the layperson to pick up because there's – you're talking about a fixed number of channels versus a near infinite number of frequencies. It may be more restrictive, Scott, but GMRS to me seems like the thing that's really easy to jump into. I would agree. It's more user-friendly. Yes. One thing to keep in mind with these handhelds, FRS, GMRS, AM radio, they're all operating in the VHF or UHF range, which means basically, as a general rule, it's line of sight communications. Do you need to physically be able to see the person? No, but expect two miles at most with any of these radios if you're talking radio to radio. A little bit more if you're talking a mobile station to mobile station.

And then, of course, if you have a repeater, you could cover, you know, 100 miles if you can access the repeater and the repeater is high enough and has that kind of range. You know, FRS, it costs nothing but the purchase of the radios. You know, if you're using it, like you said, at state parks, perfect for that. GMRS used to be, what was it? It used to be $80 for the license. In 2021 or 2022, I believe, they cut the price to $35. And ham radio used to be nothing but submitting paperwork, but they now add that $35 fee onto getting your ham license or renewing it as well.

So even with that, it's not too much of a barrier for anyone to enter into it, you know, $35. And the GMRS, like you said, it's easy. You navigate the crazy website, submit your payment, and usually within two days you have a call sign assigned to you. You know, ham radio, you have to study a little bit for the exam and find pass find a place that is given the exam pass it and then submit your payment um once that's in usually within two three days you'll have your license as well but there is that testing um that you have to to go and uh take the exam but um they they all serve their place and again it's just a matter of what it is you're looking to accomplish why why do you want the radios again the frs is perfect for state park and gmrs is going to get you a little bit more range even if you're not using a repeater, and ham radio, it opens you up to, you know, repeaters,

excuse me, and also more frequencies. And, yes, you'd have to figure out which frequencies you need to program in and all that, whereas the GMRS, the frequencies are assigned channel numbers, so it's easier to tell someone, hey, go to channel 12 or whatever it is, instead of saying, hey, punch in 146.52. What are you talking about? So GMRS, yes, it is a little more user-friendly for backup communications. You can just give it to someone, tell them, turn it on, put it on this channel, and go. But would it be fair to say that

I guess, I mean, here's one question I have, and I'm sure it's not a question only I'm thinking of, but like, I know that HAM covers everything from like a little handheld this size all the way to gigantic, very high-powered base stations. So I guess my question is, if we were to compare HAM and GMRS handheld to handheld, is there a range advantage with HAM? There's more repeaters out there for HAM radio. Yeah. That would be the benefit if you're using strictly handhelds. You have that network out there that is more in place.

Now, your mileage may vary. Like I said, in Texas, there's a system that covers almost the whole state for GMRS. Mississippi, I don't think I've seen one GMRS repeater listed on the website yet, where there's probably three dozen or so easily ham radio repeaters throughout the state of Mississippi. So your mileage may vary on that depending on your location as far as how much is out there. But there's tons and tons of ham radio repeaters. Some are in a VHF range.

Some are in a UHF range. It just depends on what the club or that person decided to set up in that local area. So as far as what you end up having more at your disposal, the ham radio would win that. You know, if you're looking for coverage as far as how far you can talk handheld to handheld. Yeah. Well, I mean, ham is infinitely better established. I mean, hell, my parents have been ham operators longer than I've been alive. are established. I mean, hell, my parents have been ham operators longer than I've been alive, and my parents, at least my father has a four-digit ID for his ham license. So he's been a ham operator since well before I was thought of. But I mean, I know GMRS is kind of a

newer, it's a more recently codified and set-aside set of bandwidths. So I mean, it makes sense that the repeater network out there is far more limited. Although, like you said, you know, I don't know if you said after we started rolling or while we were waiting on Andrew, but like, GMRS is really, I see it taking off in popularity. And I don't know based on the limitations of GMRS versus HAM, of GMRS, whatever, Eclipse HAM, but I can say that it seems to be growing at a very, very fast pace, mostly amongst laypeople, people that are kind of in my boat of, I would take the time to learn HAM because I'm a nerd about whatever piece of equipment I have. I want to know how it works. But to be able to take one of these radios and hand it to my 11-year-old and say, it's already on the channel and needs to be on, hit the button and talk to me. Like, that level of – that ease of use is something I don't think exists with ham. No, I would agree with that statement. Well, GMRS is family-friendly.

Yes. It's – I mean mean especially with what you're talking about i mean if you have a group of people and i mean say a group of 10 and you're worried about comms in any kind of way uh getting people through a ham class even though a lot of them are online but studying for the class uh studying for the test going to the class doing all the stuff and it's just it's a headache i mean if you're not really serious about it and i mean and so when you're sitting there and you're like okay well we have this group of 10 and we live within a few blocks of each other say or whatever and you know it's it's just easier it's easier to just hand these radios out, have the GMRS license,

and if you can get to where it can cover a group of people or one person in the family or whatever, or each family has one license or whatever it is, it's just more family-friendly, and it's just easier to really do. I mean, yeah, you're not going to be on any kind of encrypted channels, and it's not really going to be a hundred percent secure, but you have communications. Yeah. And just, just brought up the family friendly aspect. This is from the FCC's website. This is what they consider immediate family when it comes to GMRS licensing. It's your spouse, your children, stepchildren, parents, grandparents, step-parents, brothers, sisters,

aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and also in-laws. Jeez. So they are pretty liberal with their definition of immediate family. You know, if you have a big family and they all fall under one of those descriptors, you're good to go with one license. That does mean you'll have to share one call sign, which I've talked to people that said that they usually, like they'll use their call sign because that's just to keep the FCC happy, but once you've spouted out your call sign,

a lot of them will have like some descriptor after their call sign so that within that group you can identify individual people all using the same call sign. Right. You could, you know, any kind of identifier you could use. There's no restriction against that. They just want you to use that official call sign every so often. Yeah. And we do it in ham radio as well.

If you work in a public service event, you know, you might use what, you know, air quotes, a tactical call sign where it's, you know, hey, rest stop one to rest stop two, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, the way you're not repeating, you know, it's all about brevity in those situations, the way you're not tying up the frequency that, you know, with unnecessary stuff, which you know, could be your call sign, especially some of these people with the southern draws that like to drag it out. You don't want to wait 30 seconds just for them to get their call sign out. There is kind of a trope about southern people talking slowly, and I'm not going to say

it's true, but it might be. Just remember, we talk slow doesn't mean we think slow. But yeah, I need to loop back around to a couple of things that we've spouted off because I don't want to lose the listeners. We've mentioned HF, VHF, and UHF, which just for the listeners, please don't, for God's sakes, don't ask what frequencies those equate to. But, like, HF means high frequency, which is the lowest of the three ranges, and then VHF and UHF. the lowest of the three ranges and then vhf and uhf it literally just means if you take all these frequency bands and you lay them out like on a timeline then hf is high and vhf is kind of in the middle and uhf is yeah very high and memory serves me gmrs falls into uhf which is like 462 to 467 megahertz. Correct. And it's, you know, if you want the VHF and UHF for your local communications,

the HF is for, you know, your worldwide communications, and you have certain frequencies that work great at certain times of the day and certain times of the year. You know, we can get into a discussion that would really go over everyone's head if we started talking about HF radio. But just know HF is your worldwide frequencies, and that's when you see the large antennas on 100-foot towers or 100 or more feet long length of wire that's being used as an antenna. length of wire that's being used as an antenna you know just without getting too nerdy the higher the frequency the shorter your antenna is going to be and you can you can look at that if you take a vhf radio you know 140 150 so megahertz and compare that antenna to a gmrs antenna you know your gmrs

is going to be shorter because that's up and like you said 450 to 460 range somewhere around there that's why your cell phones don't have antennas anymore on the outside because they've gotten so high up in frequency they can hide it inside of the phone. And that's all based off of literally the wavelength that you're operating on. Yeah. Which, if anybody here is, like, even remotely nerdy, I started looking into, like, the theory behind building your own antenna and everything.

Not that I think I would do it, but just I was curious, and that gets really interesting really fast like there's there's a reason why i named the episode comms is sorcery because it's it starts to look like witchcraft at a certain point i mean anytime you're playing around with radio waves that are floating around in the atmosphere and you can't see them that that appeals to certain certain of us oh yeah it can get you can get deep into the atmosphere and you can't see them, that appeals to certain of us. Oh, yeah.

You can get deep into the weeds when you start talking about antenna theory. Yeah. But for the layperson, just buy one. Yeah. Well, that brings me to one of the points I wanted to touch on, too, when you held up your GMRS radio. to one of the points I wanted to touch on too when you held up your GMRS radio.

One of the best things you can do with a handheld which it looks like you've done Phil is change out the stock antenna. You know those things are pretty much nothing but a dummy load. These little things?

Yeah. They're good for what they do, but you've just increased your range by getting that larger antenna that even if it only has one dB of gain, you've increased the efficiency of your signal, not generating heat, but actually getting out there into the atmosphere to where you can talk to where you want to.

You know, pretty much everyone that starts out with radio, getting out there into the atmosphere. It's a way you can talk to where you want to. Pretty much everyone that starts out with radio, whether it's ham radio or GMRS, that's one of the first things they buy is a handheld radio. That's your gateway. And then usually the next thing is a mobile with a vehicle mounted antenna. So that's the best piece of advice I can give anyone that's buying a handheld is look at some reviews online. There's tons of them. Find yourself a better antenna than the stock antenna that comes with your radio. Yeah. Nagoya 771 is the one, at least for the 771G,

is one you'll see recommended very often for GMRS. And I wouldn't say it's the best i will say it's very often recommended because it seems to work well it's it's also one of the most counterfeited ones out there so buy from a reputable retail yeah the other thing i would point out because you mentioned like getting a mobile setup and like that's on my to-do list i haven't done it yet obviously i just got into got into GMRS. But I did go ahead and take and purchase a Nagoya vehicle mount antenna, and I got the adapter I needed to screw it into a handheld, which I figured down the road when I get a mobile radio, kind of looking at Midland. a mobile radio kind of looking at midland they're they're little micro mobiles just because i don't want to have anything that like sits in the cab of the truck and super obnoxious for the limited amount of time we're going to be using it but i was looking at that and i realized very quickly

two things first of all i tried mounting that antenna like up on the hood and it worked but i realized as i was driving around that what direction i was pointing had an incredible effect on my reception because i heard some people talking back and forth to the point where like as i was exiting the interstate i went from listening to static choppy broken. And as I made that sweeping right turn and I came more and more from pointing west to pointing north, all of a sudden the reception cleared up dramatically. Oh, yeah. Because I wasn't trying to receive a signal through the cab of the truck. Yeah. Again, the higher the antenna, the better.

Yeah. So if you can put it on the roof of your vehicle, that's the best spot. antenna the better yeah so if you can put it on the roof of your vehicle that's the best spot if you can picture a bubble surrounding your vehicle it's going to be if you have it on the center of your vehicle you'll have not a perfect circle around your vehicle but close to it whereas if you have it on the front hood of your vehicle like you said you have the cab um interfering with that so that bubble is going to go now from that antenna forward instead of around your vehicle if that makes any sense no it makes perfect sense and i mean just just in like in in real world usage that became super obvious very quickly. Oh yeah. It's, it's the same with a handheld.

If you just, you have it at your face talking into it and you take it and lower it down, uh, to your chest to listen, your body's going to block that signal some as well. You know, it doesn't take the cab of a pickup truck to block it. Your body can block it,

you know, just as easily. I would say the other thing I noticed though was like, I just, I decided to like your body can block it you know just as easily i would say the other thing i noticed though was like i just i decided like ab like you know plug in that external antenna versus just use the whip inside the cab and i would say that the the difference in reception from a whip and a handheld inside the cab versus an externally mounted antenna was pretty remarkable. Like it's, it's interesting to me that it doesn't take a ton of, like, if you just bought this thing with a little rubber duck antenna on it, it doesn't take a ton of additional work

to really improve your user experience. Whether you're talking about an upgrade antenna or a vehicle mount antenna, or, or you know very small changes make a very huge difference and vice versa not making those huge changes cuts your range so remarkably like the first week i had this thing i actually realized that a lot of days because i work from home a lot i would literally just turn this thing on and i would stick the antenna in that window over there and with it laid up against the glass all of a sudden I'd start hearing people talk back and forth and I'd pull that

whip six inches into the room and it'd go dead quiet. Oh yeah. It's like you said, it's some kind of crazy magic working in the air. Yeah. Your vehicle, you you got to think

about the wavelength or you know like the radio waves and stuff like that that are going through and your vehicle is a p like i mean it's almost it's almost like a faraday cage in a way is the way i kind of look at it and it blocks signals uh the one class i took the guy was talking about yeah he's he's like yeah you need to mount you. Like if you're going to have a radio inside your vehicle, you're not going to get crap. It's, you need to mount a, uh, an antenna on the outside because your vehicle is going to block a lot, like pretty much just all, like a lot of the radio waves that are coming through. Uh, so, so yeah, I mean, and just like, uh, I mean, just like your house, it's your household block a lot. Uh, and so that's why, you know, when people

have their, their radio setups, they have the, you know, an antenna, uh, built on the outside of the house, just, uh, have the outside, uh, the, the antenna on the outside of the house. Uh, you walk into certain buildings and it's just like a big steel house. You walk into certain buildings and it's just like a big steel structure. You're not going to get crap out. So that's the company I work for. We have a, up the road, we have a, I mean, it's a few miles

away, and we can definitely talk to the whole security and stuff like that when we're outside of the building. But as soon as we walk inside the building, it's just a dead spot. We can't hear. It's hard to hear anything.

So, yeah, you've got to definitely pay attention to the building that you're in and your home, your car, all that stuff. Yeah, which that goes back to those crazy claims where they say oh you know you can get 35 miles out this radio you know that's under laboratory conditions or from mountain peak to mountain i was gonna say that yeah that's like direct uh yeah the now i was telling phil before we started um i was heading um across Lake Pontchartrain this morning, and with my handheld in the car, I was able to talk to someone through a repeater where the repeater was located about 30 miles away as the crow flies. Does that happen all the time? No. I was on top of a bridge, a flat bridge over how many thousands of acres of water.

That's the only reason why that worked. And like you were saying, Phil, with the antenna in the window, you can receive better than just moving it six inches away. Well, that's how I was talking. I had the antenna touching the driver's side window, but if I pulled that antenna and radio in front of me, I'd lose the signal. So as long as I had that antenna touching the driver's side window, I was able to talk with him.

But moving just a few inches, I lost it, and he lost my signal. But that's one of the exceptions to the rule. Like I said, it was perfect conditions. I'm over a lake that, you know, that water is bouncing that signal as well and helping propagate it. That's the only reason why it traveled to that 30 mile, that repeater 30 miles away.

If I would have continued talking to that guy once i got to the end of the bridge i would have lost him immediately you know even on my side of the bridge i would have lost him immediately because it just doesn't propagate through the trees and everything that we have right and the one thing so i mean the gmrs and stuff going back to family friendly and all that thing all that uh I mean Phil when Ida hit like you know I know you guys couldn't like get a hold of your parents so it's one of those things where you know granted as far as the way you know they live far enough away where you might not be able to talk to them but if you can coordinate with people

or family or friends in between that might be somewhere in between where you can talk to them. And then if your parents can, like, if they can talk to them, you know, it's one of those things where you can bounce a message, say, hey, can you reach them, and then kind of play telephone in a way. And GMRS, it just helps with that because it's just cheaper to get into. I was actually talking with my dad about GMRS just this morning. We went out to the gun range and then stopped for lunch on the way back. And he'd mentioned that he had caught the podcast where we'd started talking about GMRS.

And he said he's interested because, you know, like he still has his ham license. He still has all his ham here. I kind of want to get my own ham license at this point. as all his ham gear i kind of want to get my own ham license at this point but he recognizes that gmrs is just another it's an i mean it's an it's a i don't even want to say it's competing radio service because i don't feel like it is i really feel like i really feel like the technical requirements to utilize ham efficient efficiency efficiently place it in a state where you have to be a little bit more committed to it to use it efficiently. And GMRS being a little bit more family-friendly and user-friendly and designed for the layperson makes it to where the person you're going to

reach on GMRS, I was about to say they'd be more like normal people. But quite frankly, I keep finding more and more people that I meet that are in the GMRS community are also in the ham community. So I don't know. Yeah, it depends on – I mean you've got in the ham community, you have these people who are nothing but contesters. How many contacts can I make in 24 hours? What's the furthest? Running gun all the time. They don't want to do what they call a rag-chew.

It's just shooting a bull over the ring. You'll find on GMRS repeaters, what I've seen is, yeah, you've got more of a group of buddies just hanging out they're shooting a breeze uh it's nothing majorly important they're not all you know um the running joke with ham radio is it's a hobby where you talk about your hobby with other people in the hobby you know so you don't really find that so much on gm. You don't hear people, oh, what radio are you using?

What antenna? Blah, blah, blah. You know, it's more just shooting the bull. And, you know, your drive times, you'll hear more people morning and afternoons in your drive time, both on, you know, your two meter repeaters on ham radio and also your GMRS repeaters. And most of the time it's, you know we're traveling we're looking for something to pass the time let's have a conversation and oh by the way my mark is 17 there's an accident get out the left lane you know um you know so you'll find all kinds of different people in both services and and you'll find your place where you fit in um it's just a matter of

first thing i tell people when you get the radio besides upgrading your antenna is just listen you'll learn a lot about what's going on from listening if you're listening to a repeater you kind of catch the vibe of how things are unofficially run on the repeater so you know you kind of get a feel for it and it kind of helps you get over that mic fright, you know, and you'll actually key up and talk to someone that you don't even know. And it might end up turning into a lifelong relationship, you know, where, you know, you'll have some friends that you'll end up creating and whatnot.

Yeah, speaking of mic fright, before I get to this next banner, because it's something I definitely want to talk about but um i had my gmrs radio in the cab of the truck the other day and i just turned it on my daughter and i were going to run an errand and uh i had asked her before we left the house like hey if if we hear somebody talking do you want to try to talk to them she said yeah yeah she seemed excited i to Christ, the minute that radio lit up and it was somebody fired their call sign out, just look for somebody to talk to. My daughter, like, eyes like dinner plates. It was like, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off. She was all of a sudden super bashful about talking to somebody she didn't know.

I was like, okay, honey, take a breath. I was like, okay, honey, take a breath. But I did want to talk about this really quickly because like I – and I call these things privacy tones because I think that's what Motorola calls them. And I just wanted to dispel this myth. I don't – like, Scott, you're the ham guy in this – or you and Andrew are the ham guys in this relationship. So y'all tell me if a similar thing exists on the ham radio side. But in FRS and with GMRS, they call these things, was it PL-Tones or I think DC... CTCSS. Yeah.

Continuous Tote-Equated Squelch. Yeah. No, it's just all advertising hype. Unless you have your signal encrypted, it's not private, which the rules for ham radio, NGMRS, NFRS prohibit encrypted transmissions. The encryption is you're going to find on your public agency's radio systems. But all of that, PL tones, privacy tones, you may even see up radio advertised as having whatever, 600 different channels, when in reality,

all they're doing is taking those 38 channels, multiplying them by however many privacy tones they have, and they're counting those as different channels. If you remember back to the days of the voice pagers, you know, your pager would go off, you'd hear the message from the person, and if you didn't push the button, the squelch was left open, and you would hear other people's messages coming through well that's basically the same thing as a PL tone

that when I called your voice pager it sent the tone to open up your squelch so you would hear my message I left for you same thing with the radios you program in the PL tone or whatever they're calling it then your radio will only recognize a signal that's sending that same tone so it opens up

the squelch and you can hear what i'm saying to you phil and anyone else that's listening they don't have to have the PL tone. They will hear our conversation if their squelch is just wide open and they're listening for anything going on. The tones only allow person A and B to hear communications between themselves. But it doesn't make anything private.

No, it doesn't. And it shuts off all the background. If someone else was using that channel at the same time as you and they were talking, you wouldn't hear them because they're not sending out the tone to open up your radio squelch. That's the only thing, you know, that those PL tones or whatever, you know, that manufacturer calls it. That's the only thing. It's just opening up the squelch on the two radios communicating with each other so you don't hear anyone else. It's not so that no one else hears you.

Yeah, because I've seen this brought up, and I can understand, because some manufacturers call it a privacy tone, which irks my freaking nerves, because it's worse than thinking you don't have privacy is to think you do and you don't so like i just wanted to like cross it off the list and talk about that for those that are like interested in getting a gmrs is that if you see and the same thing applies to frs too because a lot of frs radios have privacy tones or whatever they call it but it just comes down to like all that does is it tells your radio and another radio that are set up similarly to ignore everybody else talking

on the same frequency but if there's person c that's on the same frequency they can hear both of y'all clear as day and that's what worries me is that a person would think, well, it's a privacy tone, so this is a private conversation. And now it's worse than if you realized you're just blasting RF out onto the open airwaves and anybody can hear you and you would be a little bit more careful about what exactly you say because you think it's private. I mean, I'm sized for a size 12.5, 10-pole heavy, but I was curious. But, like, there are reasons why I call these things NSA spy devices because there's a lot of people out there that think cell phones are perfectly private and I need to be the one to break it to you.

They're not. So I just want to kind of cross it off the list. Like, me personally, the way I have this set up is that um for the repeaters that i have programmed into it i only have the transmission ctss assigned and i leave the receiving side just wide open because if somebody's talking on that channel i want to hear them i don't i don't want my radio to ignore chatter you know what i mean yeah yeah and you know after katrina there was a loose group of us um we we managed to keep one of the repeaters up um there was a guy was running out every six hours refilling the generator and And we had our own informal net going on for a couple of weeks.

We were basically spotting gasoline shipments. And, you know, anyone could hear us if they had the right receiver. You don't need a license to listen to anything out there. You know, FRS, GMRS, HAM, you don't need a license to listen to any, anything out there, you know, FRS, GMRS, HAM, you don't need a license to, to even buy a transmitter and just receive. So anyone could have heard us and all thing was, you know, we don't want everyone to know where the gas is because we want to get there and get it and get out. We don't want to be sitting in line for an hour or even longer. it and get out we don't want to be sitting in line for an hour or even longer so you know we you're not supposed to send coded transmissions but there's nothing wrong with saying hey go to channel two well there's no channel two in a ham radio you know uh handheld or whatever it's it's whatever you assign to that memory like like your car stereo you know what's memory number one

whatever so we would say go to channel two which meant go to this different frequency It's whatever you assign to that memory, like your car stereo, which memory, number one, whatever. So we would say go to channel two, which meant go to this different frequency. Well, unless you knew what we were considering in channel two, you'd have to sit there scanning through all the frequencies that we are allowed to use to find us. Or we'd say, hey, do you know Phil's birthday? Yes, go to that channel, Which actually meant whatever Phil's birthday is add 10 to it and go to that channel. So we had our ways around it and you could develop that with any

of the radio services. It still doesn't give you ultimate privacy but it makes it harder for people to find you. Especially with ham radio, because you have a lot more frequencies that you can use. As far as GMRS, I mean, you're limited to 38 channels. So if somebody hits the scan button, they could probably find you again, you know, pretty quickly. And Nathan Young is asking about digital encryption on GMRS or FRS. I don't think it's, I'm pretty sure the fcc would have a stroke oh yeah if you were digitally encrypting your communications but like the other problem is

like every method i know for every method i am familiar with for encrypting radio comms first of all it's not permitted on i know it's not permitted on gRS or FRS. I seriously doubt it's permitted on ham. There are some digital modes on ham radio. Again, it's not encrypted. But if you were to tune into a frequency and hear a conversation that's being used with digital radios, you're just going to hear a bunch of noises, almost like an old dial-up modem going through. You're going to be hearing all the ones and zeros, in other words. Correct.

Correct. Now, one thing with GMRS, there are some manufacturers out there. I believe Garmin has a couple of radios. I have no experience with this, but GMRS allows you to send short data bursts. Now, the Garmin systems are usually, it's a radio built into a GPS unit, so you can share your location. It will send out a beacon, and whoever it is you're sending it to or happens to receive it on their GPS, it will display your location for them.

Now, there are some manufacturers that are making a smartphone app that connects to your radio via Bluetooth that will allow you to send text messages over GMRS. So it's a little more secure because you got to have the right equipment to decode it. But again, if you have it, have the equipment, you can see what anyone else out there is sending. Yeah. And I've actually seen at least one app in the App Store that utilizes basically your phone's speaker to send those chirps, for lack of a better term, through your handset. And if you have the same app on your phone on the other side and you basically just get the phone to listen to the radio, it transmits that back and forth via the microphone and the speaker. I mean, it's an interesting implementation. I guess I just, you know, this whole conversation about privacy tones and everything else,

to me, what I always try to put out there is kind of a version of the same conversation I've had with my daughter about, you know know controlling the information that goes out assume there's somebody listening you don't want to listen to you so you know like i don't want to say speak in code but say things to me on the radio that i would make sense to me but would not make sense to the average person who's listening right just always assume somebody's listening and you know conduct yourself conduct yourself in that fashion. And that's the best thing is don't say anything over the radio that you don't want the general public to hear. And no home addresses. Let's start with that.

Yeah, right. We used to we used to have a lot of guys that would give out their phone numbers over the ham radio repeater, which it was like, you know, okay, that's fine with you, but, um, you know, I'm not giving out my phone number over to the radio. And that was one thing, you know, when I started getting involved in some public service events with, with ham radio, um, if you're along a bike ride and providing communications and, you know, bike rider number 33 falls to the ground and, you know, his elbow is twisted the wrong way and is bleeding profusely from the head.

You don't say, Hey, Phil fell down and this is what's going on. You just say, Hey, we have an incident with bike rider number 33. We need an ambulance here. Because you don't want that out there, because especially if it's a high profile. We did backup communications for the Super Bowl after the 9-11 attacks, and we were down there in the city, and that was one of the things was, hey,

we know the press is monitoring our repeater right now. So do not say anything that could give away a situation that can make headlines. You know, just if you have an incident, tell them where you're at. And, you know, we had phone numbers given out beforehand. So, hey, I need Phil to call me. I'm at this. We got a situation. Get ambulance en route.

Phil would give me a call, and then we'd discuss details over the phone. But that was one thing stressed. You know, like I said, we knew that the press was monitoring things. So don't say anything that you want to make a headline of in the news that evening. No, that makes perfect sense. I do have one more thing I wanted to touch on as we get ready to wrap up. So before I ask that, Andrew, do you have any burning questions on your mind? No.

I mean, it's pretty straightforward. It's just interesting thinking about operational security and if crap hits the fan and you guys have radios, yeah, keep in mind having a protocol amongst you and the group is important just because you never know who's going to be listening. And then having challenge questions and having okay just like what scott said was okay what's your birth year or birth month or whatever and then add 10 and just as long as everybody knows that then you shouldn't have any issues but yeah, yeah, radios is something. It's just like night vision, truly, just like anything reloading

where you get into it and it's a wormhole. I mean, you get into it and it can consume you. But it's important. It's something that people should get into. They should have a protocol set up, and they should have a way of talking and all that stuff, especially if crap hits the fan or even if the power goes out. Yeah, we have our phones and stuff like that,

but worst day ever is your phone goes out and or your power goes out and your phone died for some reason uh you know who knows what could happen by having the the two is one and one is none having backups it's important especially since nowadays not many people have landlines in their in their homes because we have the cell phone. I mean, I don't remember the last time I had a landline probably since I was with my parents years ago and they, I think they got rid of theirs. So it's one of those things where having that backup. So it's important to learn.

So to kind of wrap this up, because this episode really was meant to just scratch the surface, give entry level information to people who are curious and have not made a move towards off-grid comms yet. So I wanted to talk, Scott, up really quickly about what is step one for GMRS and for HAM for the person who is at zero, and what path do we put them on so they at least – they're on the path, and how far down the path they want to go is up to them. If you're looking on the GMRS side to get licensed as quickly as possible, go ahead and just type in your favorite browser how to get a GMRS license.

And there are some sites out there that will give you step-by-step directions with website links to the FCC and how to go about their convoluted system of registering and putting in the information and all that. It's bad. Yeah. And it's something you'll probably have to do again in 10 years when you go to renew your license because that's the only time you'll probably go to their website. But that's the easiest. I would just search how to get your GMRS license. And then from there, just look at the YouTube. There's tons of YouTube reviews on GMRS and ham radios, actual units.

So, you know, make the best choice about what's out there as far as equipment based on what it is you're looking to do. With the Baofeng radios or Radiality radios, you can get in for as cheap as $50 for a pair of radios. you can get in for as cheap as $50 for a pair of radios. And like I said earlier, no matter which handheld radio you get, I would suggest upgrading the antenna to something that gets a little bit more dB gain out of it. That will greatly improve your satisfaction with it.

As far as ham radio, the granddaddy is the amateur radio relay league arrl um if you go to arrl.org um there's a tab on there somewhere that talks about getting licensed and there's tons of resources there you can even search for local clubs that may be giving some classes to help you get your technician license. And whether they're in person or online, I say for a technician entry-level license, if you can commit to about an hour a day or maybe even every other day for a month, you should be able to pass that exam. It's 35 questions. You have to get, I believe, 28 or 29, something like that, correct? Basically, you have to score 74% and submit your payment, and then you'll have your ham radio license in a couple of days.

But even YouTube, there's some YouTube series where there's a whole, you know, it might be 10 weeks of courses that you can find that will, instead of an in-person class, you can just watch the videos. And what's good about that as well is if you just search ham radio practice exams there's tons of different organizations have the exams online if you're taking those practice exams and you're constantly scoring 80 percent or better you're ready to take your test and you know if you're getting 80 percent or better you'll pass it first go around one thing i forgot to mention with the ham radio license not only is there a 35 fee like the gmrs license but most people that teach the course

will ask for a exam fee which is usually 15 bucks i've never seen one more than that some are even less some will do it for free. It's just to recover their expenses with getting the materials and everything and possibly renting a location to hold the exam. So it's still not that terribly expensive. But the best thing I can do is tell you there's tons of resources out there on YouTube

and on the rest of the internet. Just search for what you're interested in and absorb as much information as you can and move on from there. Ham Radio Prep is a good source as well. It is.

I'm using that. I've gotten away from it the last couple months, but I'm trying to upgrade to Extra. I've used some of their resources. I just need to get some more time and prepare more for the exam. Yeah, and as we close this out, the one thing I wanted to confront is something I've heard out of my community on more than one occasion, and I just want to dispel it as gently and harshly as humanly possible. I've heard more than one person say, well, I bought the radio because in SHCF there will be no FCC and who

cares if I'm licensed or not. And there is truth to that. In an emergency situation, you are allowed to break damn near any FCC regulation you can imagine if it's a life or death situation. However, I tend to be of the mind of if you don't use this thing, if you don't use the skills, if you don't have the experience, then your ability to use it diminishes greatly. greatly. And yes, GMRS is fairly easy to get into. It's not difficult to turn one on, make sure it's hitting the right frequency and pass to my daughter and send her off on her way. But a lot of the things we've talked about in the last hour, little things like, you know, like technique and antenna placement and all kinds of little things like that. Those are things you don't learn if this thing's just sitting on the shelf waiting for the day that you don't have to bother with the FCC. So that's why I personally encourage people that if you're going to get into GMRS, go get your license and start using these things.

And if you're going to get your hand license, same thing, but like find opportunities to use this to develop the skillset so that you can use the gear when you really need it to work properly. set so that you can use the gear when you really need it to work properly. And please don't be the knucklehead that says, I got a Bay of Fang, it's sitting in my bug out bag, and I'll figure it out on the worst day of my life. No, especially those because the broken English instruction booklets and the interface on the radio itself, it's a nightmare. It can be programmed from the face of the radio, but it's a lot easier with the software.

And in an SHTF situation, you may not have access to that software, so you need to know what you're doing. Yeah, that was a whole aspect we didn't even get into. I actually programmed one of these because I didn't buy this goofy little cable when I first got my radio. So I didn't have this cool thing. And the first time I programmed one of these radios, I did it through the faceplate. And that is an experience. But then after I got one of them set up perfectly, it was like a five minute job to take this and clone all that, those settings to the other radio. So, I mean, I would just say,

obviously, we're going to have follow-up episodes on this, but, like, please, just whatever gear you're going to get, whichever direction you're going to go, just please use it. Especially use it with the people you want to be able to communicate with in the event something goes wrong. I could not agree with that more. Yeah. All right. Andrew, you have anything before we punt this one out the door?

Nope. All right. Well, Scott, I appreciate you coming on again, man. Like I said, I mean, I, I, Andrew and I know a bit, but I really want to have somebody to like, give us that more experience, that more experience, you know, holy crap. You can tell it's a Saturday afternoon when my brain goes away and I can't figure out my words. Give us your experience and your perspective. That was the word I was looking for. Oh, absolutely, man.

It's been fun. And, yeah, if you want to do another one, we'll have to figure out a time. And we can get a little bit more nerdy if you want. There's going to have to be more becausedy if you want there's gonna have to be more because i'm sure we're gonna have questions but we'll go ahead and kick this one out the doors matter of fact podcast heading out go get a radio learn how to use it make all your friends getting radios too and if necessary tell them to come look at this episode and maybe we can help you talk them into it. But heading out the door. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Outro Music