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Reply to: Beginner’s guide to amateur (ham) radio for preppers Posted October 6, 2018

Great intro to ham radio. I’m new to it, but I have worked radios and created digital communication systems for over 40 years for various emergency services and “government agencies”. I know that lots of preppers consider themselves “immune” to radio regulations, but one thing I note is your statement, “no license is required” for CB, FRS or MURS. This is not technically true because nearly ALL transmitters in the USA need “a license” (including your cellphone and wifi). You automatically GET a license (by “rule”) for those, if your equipment was officially approved by the FCC (“type-certified”) for those uses. Transmissions using modified radios that violate power, channel and other restrictions would be “operating without a license”, which is a federal crime. The ham radio structure, on the other hand, delegates this compliance (output power, frequency choice, antenna, type of modulation, etc) to the licensed ham operators themselves. Having said that, it would be “completely illegal” even for a licensed ham to transmit using a ham radio outside of ham bands. You cannot, for example, legally use a Baofeng ham radio to transmit on FRS or GMRS frequencies because they are not “type-certified” for those, and a ham license is only “valid” for ham bands. Yes, “nobody will care” and “it’s impossible to find you”, until they do care and they do find you, slap you with a $10,000 fine and confiscate your gear. Ignoring such laws, during peacetime, is probably a bad policy. I think more energy can be put into CHANGING some of the unnecessarily burdensome laws, thus allowing everyone the opportunity to test their prepper gear legally. As you suggested, a bad time to start figuring out how to work your radio/firearms is during a real disaster. The FCC recently changed the FRS/GMRS rules, for instance, combining all 22 channels into FRS, which needs no individual operator licenses, since relatively few people were getting the $14/year GMRS licenses anyway. Final note, “radio direction-finding” (RDF) can be a useful prepper skill, if you might someday need to locate someone who is using a transmitter to jam you, or to help find a missing person, or perhaps might indicate the location of other local survivors. Even if you’re not using it, you can be fairly certain someone else is… Thanks for all you do in raising awareness for self-preservation.

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Reply to: Beginner’s guide to amateur (ham) radio for preppers Posted October 6, 2018

Great intro to ham radio. I’m new to it, but I have worked radios and created digital communication systems for over 40 years for various emergency services and “government agencies”. I know that lots of preppers consider themselves “immune” to radio regulations, but one thing I note is your statement, “no license is required” for CB, FRS or MURS. This is not technically true because nearly ALL transmitters in the USA need “a license” (including your cellphone and wifi). You automatically GET a license (by “rule”) for those, if your equipment was officially approved by the FCC (“type-certified”) for those uses. Transmissions using modified radios that violate power, channel and other restrictions would be “operating without a license”, which is a federal crime. The ham radio structure, on the other hand, delegates this compliance (output power, frequency choice, antenna, type of modulation, etc) to the licensed ham operators themselves. Having said that, it would be “completely illegal” even for a licensed ham to transmit using a ham radio outside of ham bands. You cannot, for example, legally use a Baofeng ham radio to transmit on FRS or GMRS frequencies because they are not “type-certified” for those, and a ham license is only “valid” for ham bands. Yes, “nobody will care” and “it’s impossible to find you”, until they do care and they do find you, slap you with a $10,000 fine and confiscate your gear. Ignoring such laws, during peacetime, is probably a bad policy. I think more energy can be put into CHANGING some of the unnecessarily burdensome laws, thus allowing everyone the opportunity to test their prepper gear legally. As you suggested, a bad time to start figuring out how to work your radio/firearms is during a real disaster. The FCC recently changed the FRS/GMRS rules, for instance, combining all 22 channels into FRS, which needs no individual operator licenses, since relatively few people were getting the $14/year GMRS licenses anyway. Final note, “radio direction-finding” (RDF) can be a useful prepper skill, if you might someday need to locate someone who is using a transmitter to jam you, or to help find a missing person, or perhaps might indicate the location of other local survivors. Even if you’re not using it, you can be fairly certain someone else is… Thanks for all you do in raising awareness for self-preservation.