<intro/housekeeping 0:00 – 4:17>
[00:04:17]
Jack Spirko: Alright with that. Hey Steve, welcome back to the survival podcast.
[00:04:21]
Steven Harris: Hey Jack, I am thrilled to be back I have another jam packed and use it right now, kind of show for you.
[00:04:27]
Jack Spirko: You have another jam pack show, you are right. What have you been doing for a year? It have been a year. People hear you all the time Steve, but it has been a freak'n year since you have been on the show.
[00:04:39]
Steven Harris: I just don't want to come on and do a so so show. When I come on I want it to be hard hitting, jam packed, loaded, stuff you haven't heard before. I covered everything in energy almost, with all you guys. I did everything from hydrogen, methane, manure, solar, battery boxes, home battery banks, and how to power your house from your car. I have done all that stuff already. I am running out of material.
[00:05:09]
Jack Spirko: What do you have for us today, man?
[00:05:11]
Steven Harris: What do I have for you today? Jack, in a disaster, a blizzard, hurricane Sandy, a regular hurricane, an earthquake, a big tornado near by, or large scale black out... What are you going to be glued to? What is the one thing that you are always going to have going?
[00:05:30]
Jack Spirko: You are going to what to know what is going on. You are either going to be hooked up to a radio, a television if you can pull it off, a scanner, or something like that to see what the hell is going on?
[00:05:40]
Steven Harris: Yep. If you had one of my power classes then you know how to power your TV easy enough. For a lot of other people, you got that right, it is going to be a radio or TV. That is what this show is all about today. It is all about radios.
[00:05:57]
Jack Spirko: Are you a ham operator, Steve?
[00:06:01]
Steven Harris: Yeah. I have since I was 16 years old. That is 30 years of ham radio experience. For the longest time I was fully immersed in it. All aspects of radios and communications. I was all geek-ed out on it. One of the things I loved to do was build antennas from scratch. Scene this show is all about radios, Jack, guess what new domain name I have.
[00:06:24]
Jack Spirko: Oh freaking dear god, an other "1234.com" domain...
[00:06:28]
Steven Harris: Yes Jack, that is right. For the audience, the show, and the future I have Radios1234.com. That is "Radios" with an "S" at the end, it is plural. Just think of a lot of radios. Radios1234.com is where you go if you are online and want to follow along with us right now, you can. Plus, later on this show will be posted on Radio1234.com for anyone to go there and listen to it as well. Just like all my other shows. I am going to talk about every single radio that is out there. What it is. Where to get it. What you can do with it. I am not just talking AM, FM, and Shortwave. I'll cover those, but I am talking about air band radio, marine band radios, GMRS, FRS, CB radios, ham radios, and scanners. Plus I am going to talk about how you can setup your own FM radio transmitting station on the air, so you can play TSP episodes. Or any of my stuff and shows with Jack on the 1234 websites around the general public around you on FM during or after a disaster. So that anyone in your area can listen to a podcast or listen to you talking. They can listen to this on any regular FM radio. This is to help people get better prepared and how to help themselves after an emergency. Plus I am going to reveal everyone today, how you can use one or two of these different radios I have a show to get the Coast Guard, any other rescue aircraft, or both to come directly to where you are. Right on the spot. Right where you are and to rescue you from a bad situation. This will be a little later on in the show, so keep listing.
[00:08:28]
Jack Spirko: Steve, we have had other shows on ham radio and then things like. My personal view is this.... First of all thank you for not being a pain in the ass, over the years. I did not even know you were a ham until recently, because most hams are like... Well it’s like they found Jesus and they want to come to your house and you about him. So you can get saved too. They kind of go over the top of the evangelism. To me ham is a great specialized form of radio. To me for a lot of people it’s a nice thing. Maybe I want to do that someday, maybe I do not. There are a lot of other technologies that we can use.
[00:09:02]
Steven Harris: Yeah.. I'm going to cover ham radio in a little bit, but its not going to be about studying and getting your license and that stuff. I'm not going to tell you how to get your general class license and to get an HF rig and to put up an inverted V dipole antenna for 80, 40 and 20 meter bands so you can try to talk around the world. Which is not as easy as it might sound. I can let you listen into these ham conversations with a radio I will talk about. I'm going to tell you how to get Ham VHF and UHF radios that will talk to each other, so you can do it outside of the ham bands. Which is technically illegal, but I don't think the FCC is traveling with FEMA when they go to a disaster looking for transmissions outside of the ham band.
[00:09:49]
Jack Spirko: Well Steve, you've got a lot of subject there on radios. Where do you want to start?
[00:09:02]
Steven Harris: On the Radios1234.com website, I have simplified it for you and given you a list of priorities. In my experience and expertise, that you should have. These are priorities for radios not for all preparedness... Priority #1: a "D cell" or "AA Cell" AM/FM radio. I'll cover this in a few seconds, but I'm talking about a shirt pocket AM/FM radio that runs off of 2 AA batteries. This is your radios Priority #1. Priority #2: a portable low power digital LCD TV with antenna. I'm talking about a TV that is portable you can hold in your hand that runs on 5 to 10 watts of power. Not your 40, 50, 60, 70 inch TV. Priority #3: a simple scanner for police and ham frequencies. Listening to the local police and the ham radio repeaters, which will be on in an emergency net control situation, will be an incredible source of what is happening locally. Right now this second, that is not being reported on the news talk radio stations. I am going to tell you how to get a radio that will work as a simple scanner for as little as $40. If there is a fight for gasoline at the local gas station and police are being dispatched, you'll know about it. Of course, you have all listened to my "Fuel and Fuel Storage" class I did with Jack at Solar1234.com. You should have all of your fuel stored away that you want. Priority #4: an AM/FM radio with shortwave ability. If it was a massive event that happened to the USA and you wanted to listen to the BBC or other foreign broadcasts, then you would want to listen to shortwave radio. Usually at night when the atmospherics allow for worldwide propagation without the interference from the sun. I've listed this as #4 and that is pretty far down the list because I don't think shortwave radio is that important these days. Yet, I own one of course. This radio will more than likely be your home radio rather than your portable radio. This along with your shirt pocket AM/FM radio... This home radio AM/FM/Shortwave will be your "two is one, one is none" radio. This is how important a basic AM/FM radios are in a disaster. I want you to have two of them. Priority #5: a CB Radio for local information and talk. You can get a good CB for as cheap as $35 and a good mobile antenna for $30. You might want to use this to listen to the local chit chat about what is going on locally and to talk to other people. This is also a good source of info outside of your area, because truckers will be on channel 19 and (they will be) talking about what they have seen or heard in other parts of the country as they are driving through your area. In order for disaster recovery to happen in any disaster the trucks have to be rolling. Truckers will tell you what they are carrying as well. They will all be on channel 19. Last and lowest Priority #6: an advanced trunk tracking police scanner. Priority #3 was a police type scanner, but increasingly the police and fire are going to digital trunk-ed radios which require a very expensive scanner to listen to. In this case the advanced trunk tracking digital scanner is $500. That is why its the last on the list. You can get a lot of food, water, and other supplies before spending $500 on an advanced scanner.
[00:13:36]
Jack Spirko: That is an extensive list. You have probably got peoples heads swimming there, man. I like the priority spectrum you have there. To help people get through it, we should probable break it down. Let us start with priority #1.
[00:13:50]
Steven Harris: Priority #1, this the simplest Jack. That is a standard simple AM/FM radio that runs on AA batteries. I'm talking about a $13, AM/FM radio, a good one, that fits in your shirt pocket, and will go into your emergency kit or get home bag. In the past AM/FM radios use to run off of 9 volt batteries. I don't use those today. 9 volt batteries are very low in power. Two AA (batteries) are better. Its very important that they run off of AA batteries, and NO not AAA batteries. Simple AM/FM radio gets you the most information for the lowest dollar cost. <audio cuts out> I try to think of things that give the lowest dollar cost. That is what I am doing here. Most people do not realize this but in a total USA grid down situation, where there is no power in the USA. Which Jack and I do not really think is a thing that is going to happen from our past discussions. In this situation where there are no AM or FM radios in the USA. Let us say there were not AM or FM radio broadcast stations going, it was grid down. A simple shirt pocket AM radio will pick up AM radio stations from Europe and even as far as way as Australia, especially in the evening. The AM radio used to be the worldwide communications format back in day, like the 1930's and everything else. That is all there was. People would easily do what is called AM DX'ing, listening to AM radio from around the world. In this situation you don't even need a shortwave radio to listen around the world, if it was a grid down situation. However, the disasters that are most likely to affect you; earthquakes, tornados, large bands of thunderstorms called derecho, winter blizzards, large area power failures, hurricanes, and nor'easters. You will be wanting to listen to your local AM or FM radio stations or at least the ones outside of your affected areas.
[00:16:11]
Jack Spirko: In fact you were in the middle of a blackout in 2003 in August, in Michigan weren't you?
[00:16:16]
Steven Harris: Yes, I was in the middle of the great blackout of 2003. Which I wrote a book on. The blackout happened at 4:14pm. Within a minute I went out to my pickup truck to turn on the radio and all of the FM stations were off the air. Within 10 minutes a good fraction of them were back on the air and transmitting on generator power. If I tried the AM band, and I did not I should have tried it, I'd of probably picked up Chicago WGN. Which was not affected by the blackout. I was in Michigan at this time, which was affected by the blackout. An AM/FM radio is going to be your lowest power device and simplest device to get information on what is happening in your local area and in the nation. One of the AM/FM radios I have on Radios1234.com will run for over 80 hours on its AA batteries, so you can listen for a long time. If you want a free copy of "Surviving the the Blackout of 2003" book that I wrote. Go to Radios1234.com and in 45 seconds there will be a pop up that will allow you to get a PDF copy of the book for free. It is a great simple read. Its always a good idea to have a list of your local radio stations on a piece of paper, especially the news / talk radio stations. Have this list taped to the back of the radio. The news stations will be on top of what is going on, but the popular music stations, playing git, will not be dialed into what is currently going on in the nation. They will just get back to what they do. Just print out the frequencies with your printer small enough to fit on a clear area of the radio. Cover it with clear packing tape so its laminated to the radio and you won't lose it when you need it. Since I've had satellite radio for the past 8 years I've not listened to terrestrial radio hardly even once. I could not tell you the frequency of any of my news and talk stations at all. But I have it taped to the back of my radio so I can tune in right away to a good station and find out what is going on.
[00:18:27]
Jack Spirko: I want to move on to talking about TV, but I want to add a couple things to that that most people will not realize. A lot of use trave a lot and we take a bug out bag or a get home bag with us when we do. What you will find is in most major markets you will find that like 570, 660, 880 that those stations will have a station in a major market. I guess it is just kind a like you know 95.5 or whatever. It is a desirable number. Like a desirable phone number. If you have that list odds are that even if you are away from home, if you are anywhere near major market, you can probably find stuff around those numbers which is a great thing. I completely agree with you on having your station for your market on your radio. The one thing I wanted where we can back up and explain to people, because I get it but I think some people out there are stuck on it Steve. When a person hears, "Well you use this little AM radio to listen to Europe if the grid is all the way down, the zombies have marched, cats and dogs are having babies, and whatever." They may not get exactly why that’s the case. Could you the 22 second answer to why that is the case?
[00:19:30]
Steven Harris: Yeah, because there is no noise in the United States. There’s no AM or FM stations. There is no AM stations on the air to dominate receiver of your AM radio. It is complete silence. Is like being in a quiet room and listening to someone whispering on the other side of the room. Versus being in a room with 20 people talking, you can never hear the whisper of their side of the room.
[00:19:57]
Jack Spirko: Correct I just wanted to back up and cover that really quick. What about watching TV for the news? For a lot of people that is going to be huge deal for them. A lot of people are not very visually, they need to know what the hell is going on around them. They want to be able to actually see it. Frankly there’s just things to get better coverage on TV than radio.
[00:20:15]
Steven Harris: Yeah, there is. I remember you are probably stuck with your local stations. They are going to be probably listening to CNN through their satellites. You won’t be getting CNN over local air. A small TV would be priority #2. If you've taken any of the Steven Harris how to power your house from your car class at Solar1234.com, or the home battery bank shows I did with Jack, located at Battery1234.com. Then you'd be able to easily power up your TV and watch what is going on. Keep in mind you need a good pair of rabbit ears to pull in the digital broadcast stations. I have a good pair of rabbit ears to pull in the digital broadcast stations. Your TV does not come with an antenna built into it. I have a great set of rabbit ears that I keep behind my TV all the time. They are at Radios1234.com, they are at Radio Shack, and they are at Walmart. You can go get them.I would suggest you power up your smallest TV with the battery bank or the car. Don't try to power up the 70" TV with the car, that's 225 watts I measured it. The rabbit ears that I spoke about is a link in the text for the portable TV at the very bottom of the Radios1234 website. Definitely have a pair of rabbit ears. A this moment I am sad to say that my favorite portable TV at this time is no longer available on Amazon, or on the web. It drew only 5 watts of power, had a 7" screen and was a DVD player and had awesome reception. It even took an external antenna so I could put the rabbit ears on it, boy did it pull in the stations. I have searched and searched, and at this moment in time I have NOT found a good replacement for you guy for it yet. Every TV I check out the reviews for before I purchase it. All of them have people complaining of the poor reception. What good is a TV if its reception is dead poor. Of course, you could be listening to this show in the significant future. My show have been going back three years now. By then I might have found a good small TV and it might be on my sites. If you see a small TV listed on Radios1234, or any of the other 1234 websites, then you'll know that I own it, have tested it extensively, and it is Harris approved. If you see one it will be good. For now you will just ahve to power up the smallest LCD TV you have in your house with an inverter and use rabbit ear antennas. Or get a battery bank or power it from that or power it from an inverter from your car. Listen to my shows on the subject first so you can get the most time out of your TV from the power that you have. The other nice thing about a radio is that you can listen to it while you are doing other preps and stuff that need to be done in a disaster. A TV pretty much has you staring at the screen. If you take away one thing from this, have a pair of rabbit ears for your TV. They only cost about $9. They plug into the antenna or cable port on the back of your TV. Without these, when the power fails and your cable box and the whole cable system fails, you are not getting any TV. Hook this up and play with it and get your TV programmed for the over the air channels before a disaster happens. Many TVs have to do that little search thing, scroll around, and find all the channels. You want to do this now, not when something happens. You want this done so all you have to do is hit the LINE or SOURCE button on your remote, select TV or ANTENNA, and watch local TV.
[00:24:15]
Jack Spirko: I want to backup really quick before we move on to scanners, police, and Ham. I was on Radios1234.com, you have that little 7in LCD portable TV with DVD player in it.
[00:24:28]
Steven Harris: Yep
[00:24:28]
Jack Spirko: You had them marked for $90 or something like that. You must have sold a bunch of them because they jacked the god dang price up to like $100 and something dollars.
[00:24:38]
Steven Harris: That is the one that is no longer available
[00:24:40]
Jack Spirko: It is available, it is just a $176 now.
[00:24:44]
Steven Harris: Yeah, different companies might have a few of them. They come on and off the market but they are through 3rd parties rather than through amazon prime.
[00:24:54]
Jack Spirko: Dude, you must have inspired the maker because Azend Group is the people who make it. It is being sold directly on Amazon by them.
[00:25:08]
Steven Harris: Ok.
[00:25:09]
Jack Spirko: They must have brought it back, but it is a $176 bucks now. In your option is it worth a $176?
[00:25:15]
Steven Harris: They bigger 9 inch one, yeah.
[00:25:18]
Jack Spirko: No this is the 7 inch. The 9 is only available used. It is cheap, but there is only one there. I might buy it before anyone gets a chance. <Jack laughs>
[00:25:25]
Steven Harris: Yeah, that is closed to it being worth it because it is so low power. It comes with every adapter in the world. I thought my god I can't plug in my external antenna. I look in the box and here is an antenna adapter to plug in the external rabbit ears. It comes with DC power. It comes with AC power.
[00:25:47]
Jack Spirko: I might buy one.
[00:25:48]
Steven Harris: It comes with video in. It come with everything. Anyways for all you guys listening in the future, I will try to find another one and put it up there for you. I always try to keep everything current on the 1234 sites.
[00:26:01]
Jack Spirko: Even at the price I might buy one, Steve. With all the the accessories, if you bought all of those accessories it would get pretty pricey pretty quick.
[00:26:10]
Steven Harris: Right.
[00:26:11]
Jack Spirko: That would run great off of my little truck power system that you helped me build about a month ago, (it would run) like forever. Anyways let us go. Lets go on to priority #3. A simple scanner for police and ham frequencies.
[00:26:24]
Steven Harris: Ok, priority #3. I'm going to cover ham radio in this section to. You will understand why in a moment, but lets talk about scanners for a bit. I am going to simplify it for the purpose of this show. There are police, fire, and EMS that are either on 1: what is called Repeaters, or 2: what is called a Trunked system. Repeaters are easy to listen to, and are what the scanners in the days of old listened to. Huge numbers of police and fire are still on these older systems. Police and fire will remain on these systems for a long time, because they are already paid for, they are there, and they are working. Unless they get a federal grant for a trunked system they probably will not be upgrading. You can listen to these with an inexpensive scanner as cheap as $40. Then there are the trunked systems, yes, I know there are analog trunks, digital trunks and encrypted trunks. For the sake of the show I'll just tell you that a trunked system scanner costs at least $300 and a digital one costs $500. That is why those items are the lowest priority.
[00:27:41]
Jack Spirko: What about the frequencies of our local police, fire, EM, and ham radio repeaters. How do I find those?
[00:27:48]
Steven Harris: That is one of the most important things. Is you got to have these frequencies on a piece of paper and/or programmed into your radio or scanner. You must of played with it significantly before the disaster to be able to use it during or after a disaster. Let me repeat myself, if you've not played with your police scanner device before a disaster, for hours, left it on for days just listening to the general channels and getting familiar with them. And you don't have the frequencies, (then) it is just junk to you during a disaster. There is no time in a disaster to stop and get out the manual and to try and figure out how to use a scanner. Let us talk about getting the frequencies. I want this show to be good in 10 years or more. I'm going to tell you how to find the websites with the frequencies, rather than just giving you the frequencies here. If I just give you one website now, who knows where it could be in 10 years. If I go to Google right now and type in "Scanner Database", I find 2 main websites that have frequencies for the entire USA. The most popular one right now is RadioReference.com. The next most popular one is InterceptRadio.com. Remember I just did a Google search for "Scanner Database". In Radio Reference, you click on the "Reference Dateable" button. Then you click on your state on the map. Then you click on the county you live in. You'll see your county and or cities listed in a box in the middle of the screen. If click on any of these, an a whole list of frequencies and their cities and what they are will fill your screen. You'll have to pick the ones for your area and then listen to it to see how busy they are. Is it really being used? Is this really the main repeater for what you want to listen to. There is also a tab up there next to Police for Amateur Radio. Amateur radio and Ham radio are the same thing. You can click on this and get your local ham frequencies VHF and UHF repeater frequencies. This is where us hams will be talking. I also just went to Google and Google'd "PIttsburgh Police Frequencies" and found a bunch of information. You can do the same thing for your home town, "Detroit Police Frequencies" or "Chicago Police Frequencies". Let Google be your friend.
[00:30:38]
Jack Spirko: So...
[00:30:39]
Steven Harris: Go ahead...
[00:30:40]
Jack Spirko: It sounds like there is a lot to do here. Figuring out the scanner frequencies for your local area. It is really absolutely is something a person needs to do now. And not be trying to do this with a flashlight in there teeth, running their laptop and modem off of a backup system in the middle of a disaster, and trying to get these frequencies. This needs to be done now, understood, practiced, and played with.
[00:31:05]
Steven Harris: Yep, sometimes the lists are long. They have a lot of frequencies. Like Pittsburgh Police will have a lot of frequencies. There are tactical frequencies and talk around frequencies. They will have multiple repeaters. You got to find the right one to listen to. It just will not say "Pittsburgh Police Main Repeater" for you to listen to in a disaster. You are going to have to just have to plug them into your scanner, start to listen to them, and find out what is on them. If the grid is down, you are not going to have any internet. You are not going to Radio Reference and looking up the frequencies.
[00:31:40]
Jack Spirko: Don't think you would want to be jacking around with a piece of paper with them written down on it. You would want this done.
[00:31:45]
Steven Harris: It is like one of your 13 skills.
[00:31:50]
Jack Spirko: Yeah. I want to hear about this $40 scanner you keep on talking about. That sounds like a bargain, even on the old technology.
[00:31:56]
Steven Harris: It is. Well, it is not sold as a police scanner but it certainly works very good as one. It is really a ham radio, made in china, and sold on Amazon. It is on Radios1234.com. Its less than $40. I just checked the other day, it was $38.49. It has an incredible following behind it and very high ratings on Amazon and lots of feedback. People love it. Normally a good dual band ham radio like this would cost over $200. That was a barrier to a lot of people entering the ham radio field. Now this little radio is getting people excited. It is a BaoFeng, a lot of people pounce it differently. Just find it on Radios1234.com. It is a BaoFeng UV-5RE, which is part of the UV-5R series of BaoFeng. It is a dual-band UHF/VHF radio, which means it goes from 136-174MHz VHF and 400-480 MHz UHF. This is really two radios in one, its got a VHF and a UHF transmitter and receiver built into it. On the VHF side, like I said it covers 136 to 174 MHZ, that is the 2m ham radio band. That is one of the most popular. It is only 144 to 148 MHZ, so its covered inside this radio easily. Most ham radios you buy would only go from 144 to 148 MHZ, not just 136-174MHz. The ham radio would have to be modified, usually you go inside (the radio) and un-solder something, to go 'out of band' and to transmit outside of the ham radio frequencies. This unit from china has no such limitations and transmits on its entire frequency spectrum. The ham radios might be able to listen to that whole spectrum, but they can only transmit on the ham frequencies. Of course it also receives on all of these frequencies. Guess where the police, fire, and EMS repeater frequencies are? Yup, right in the middle of the VHF and UHF bands on this radio. You can enter your police, fire, EMS, hospital, and ham frequencies into its channel memory. By holding down the * Scan button it will scan all of them. It will act as a scanner. You don't have to switch between them. There is even a great 720HD YouTube video, that maybe I will have Jack put on the show notes, on how to do this. In fact, there are a tremendous number of BaoFeng radio videos on YouTube for you to watch. There are all these people showing you how to use this thing. You can also just read the manual, or use the programming software. I found many of the YouTube videos very helpful, especially if you are not really familiar with (ham) radios in general.
[00:35:20]
Jack Spirko: Definitely. I got the link here in your notes right now. (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP3y5Jkk6Ag) I will get it in the show notes today. Most of the time when you have all of these million of places you can hang out, there is always some popular ones. What are the most popular ham radio bands where you'll find people talking and disaster nets set up in time of need?
[00:35:39]
Steven Harris: You can listen to the two most popular ones, are the 2m and 70cm bands, which are 144mhz VHF and 440 mhz UHF. The BaoFeng covers both of these bands in transmit and receive mode just perfect. I should note, if you are not a ham, don't key up a repeater and just try to talk. If you become annoying the hams are very very proficient at tracking down transmitters and finding you exactly where you are in your home or your car. Its called a fox hunt. The hams do it on a regular basis.
[00:36:20]
Jack Spirko: Definitely on that, but can we just backup a second? When you were talking about that this will scan the police frequencies that are out of the ham band. Since this little radio transmits, will it also transmit on those frequencies.
[00:36:34]
Steven Harris: Yes it will.
[00:36:36]
Jack Spirko: So do not do that either, because then you are transmitting on EMS and whatever.
[00:36:39]
Steven Harris: Usually the police repeaters have codes. They are called sub audible tones are or PL tones. You can program those PL tones into this radio and it will work on the police frequencies. You could technically key one up but you would have to put a little work into it. It is not something average person is going to be able to do.
[00:37:04]
Jack Spirko: And you should not be doing it anyways. Those guys have there job to do. What we are trying to do here is listen to them. You have mention ham radio disaster nets. What are those?
[00:37:15]
Steven Harris: Ok, this is one of the reasons I want you to be able to listen to ham radio on VHF and UHF, the 2m and the 70cm band. Which we called it 2m and 440, which is weird the way we switch up the nomenclature. But it is called the 2m and 440. A disaster net is most commonly done during tornadoes, because those are the biggest weather event that threaten most of us. They are set up for earthquakes after they happen. They are set up for hurricanes before and after. They even get setup for blizzards. We hams have normal repeaters that we talk on. I should tell you what a repeater is first. A repeater is a pair of radios located in a secure location and its normally up on a hill or on a very good tower with a very good antenna, and they are expensive. Your little hand held might only be able to talk a few miles on the ground to another handheld radio. It depends on the terrain, how many trees there are between you, the leaves on the trees, and the person that you want to talk to. Are they in a basement or the 2nd floor of there house. You can very easily talk to a radio that has a great antenna up high some place on a very tall tower. Remember, the higher and better your antenna, the further you can talk and listen. You can talk to the repeater and it can be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 miles or more away. It takes your broadcast coming in on the input frequency and it broadcasts it at the same time out the output frequency. We talked in on the input frequency, and listen on the output frequency. This is called duplex or repeater operation. DU as in DUAL frequencies. When you are talking radio to radio on one frequency its called simplex. That is a repeater is. What is a disaster net? There is a repeater in a great location. Let us say it covers several counties. We hams just talk on it. We chit chat, talk in the morning on the way to work, talking in the evening on the way home from work, talk on the weekend, or other times. There are VHF and UHF repeaters. Lets say an average good one will cover a radius of 50 miles. We can all have a conversation on the radio. This can be between 2, 3, 4, 5, or more people. It is kind of fun we have a little system were we just all take turns. We kind of set up our order of who talks by when you came into the conversation. It is just structured talking. During a disaster net, one person becomes net control and they are the boss. Before you talk, you have to call net control. If N8ERO, that is a ham radio call sign was net control, I might say "N8ERO, this is KA8WXR." He would come back and say, "This is net control N8ERO, go ahead KA8WXR." I would then give him my 'traffic'. Which is telling him what is going on my area. What I see, what is wrong and what is bad. In the case of a tornado, and if I was SKYWARN trained by the national weather service. A lot of hams get SKYWARN training for free. I'll call in with the TEL system; Time, Effect, and Location. So I'd say, "N8ERO, 11:30am, funnel cloud descending from a wall cloud, not on the ground yet, near 10 mile road and Mound road." Then I'm done. Unless I call net control again, at this time, someone else who sees something or is going to confirm what I just reported. They will call net control on their own. It is a very structured thing. I hope you can see how valuable this is. You have all these hams out there, hundreds of them in your greater area that your are listening to on the repeater, all with their eyeballs looking at things. It could be riots, it could be people getting together, it could be this gas station has gas, this gas station ran out of gas, or there is a fight at the gas station. You got all these people in there cars or looking out there windows with radios over this huge area. calling in stuff. It is raw information. You can listen to this with that little $40 BaoFeng radio.
[00:41:59]
Jack Spirko: That is great, man. I have always tried to explain it to people. It is good to understand the basics of ham. If people want the licence and all, and if they want to do it then that is great. But understanding the basics so you can just listen is a huge source of intelligence. Can you tell people some of the other things you would call in as a ham radio operator, Steve if you were a on the ground observing during an emergence net situation?
[00:42:20]
Steven Harris: Yeah. For tornadoes and hurricanes we could be calling in the weather, wind gusts, wind speeds, what damage is going on, if someones roof was ripped off,calling in that someone has been found, that needs assistance, or if we need an ambulance at this place. Usually net control is in contact with emergency services on a completely different dedicated radio, directly linked to emergency services. He can immediately relay anything us hams report to the net control. A disaster net is a very structured and formal way of talking on a repeater. We (ham radio operators) have a saying, "When everything is not working, the hams will still be talking." Hams are preppers by nature. Long before the term prepper was invented. We hams are everywhere. Many times we have formal disaster training through ham radio orgs called RACES and ARES. I will not go into those. We have disaster organizations with in the ham radio community that give use specific training for this. It is not uncommon for one of us to also be attached to the mayor, the police chief, the 911 center, and other important people in the city in a disaster. We are their backup communications. If their comms fail and we discover something, we can communicate information directly to them. Now do you see why I place such a high value on a radio that can listen to police, fire, EMS, and ham radio frequencies?
[00:43:55]
Jack Spirko: Yeah, I do Steve. What about regular scanners? How does the baofeng compare to those?
[00:44:02]
Steven Harris: Regular scanners are a lot easier to use. This will probably have a much better manual then the BaoFeng that comes with it. I have a hand held Uniden scanner on radios1234.com and its not $40, its $120. The nice thing is that it runs on 2 AA batteries. It has got 1000 memories to it, more than you'll ever use but its dedicated to just scanning. Not talking, not ham radio, not police frequencies. It is dedicated to just scanning. It is a lot easier to setup and use. If you are on a budget and you really want the ability to listen to police, fire, ems and ham radio and you are willing to do a little extra work and figure this stuff out, then the $40 BaoFeng is the way to go. If you want to spend the $120, then spend the extra money and have an easier to use scanner.
[00:44:59]
Jack Spirko: Before we move forward on this. I just want to let people know one of my favorite little tools. It is only going to work for you, if the cellular networks are up and you got power to your phone. If you do not have power to your phone it is because you don't listen to Steve. That is all I can say about that, right? But there is a radio app (for you smartphone) called "5-0 Radio PRO". You can not go through it and program your own frequencies. It is setup. It is run by a centralized network. I think it is $5 one time to buy the app but most major markets are in it. Even most minor markets including police, sheriffs, EMS, etc. You have it on your phone in about two minutes and you turn it on, you can find all of them. Like Steve was saying earlier, a lot of times they will say this is the frequency or the place to listen to the fire department or whatever. That may not be the one they use a lot. You would need to play with it just as you would. You can save favorites in it. It is I would call it, it is a four is even more. I would not rely on it as your primary thing, but he is an excellent backup to backup of a backup. I would make sure that you think about, if you have a smartphone, if there are any apps like that. Again when I use is called "5-0 Radio PRO". I want to get back to this this BaoFeng. This little this little $40 super radio thing.
[00:46:16]
Steven Harris: Let me through something in first on the cell phones. During hurricane Sandy, which was 1000 mile wide storm that came and parked itself and installed over the eastern seaboard and in the mid Atlantic and everything for about 11 days. It knocked out a lot of power to everyone, trees down, damage, and everything. 97.8% of Verizon towers were up and operational during hurricane Sandy. There is been a tremendous amount of backup ability. Both in huge batteries and in generators (using) natural gas, propane, and diesel generators added to every cell sites. People think all the cell sites are going to go down and everything else. That was true in blackout 2003. We lost cellular communications. But now in repeated disaster, (after) disaster, after disaster, even fire refer back Hurricane Katrina. We are seeing cell phone being operational. The system is getting more ruggedized. It is really not that fragile. Your "5-0 Radio", it might be one of the first things you’re listening to. You might be listening to that thing before you listening to your scanner.
[00:47:37]
Jack Spirko: Not to mention the Zello channel to talk to other folks on Zello.
[00:47:40]
Steven Harris: Yes. On Zello we have role-played emergencies on Zello. We want people who are into trouble to come up on Zello and talk to to us. In fact there was someone during hurricane Sandy talking to us on Zello. Talking about her windows got blown out, she had a walk through the rain with her mother to another house, and everything else. We want you to come up on to Zello during a disaster so you can tells what’s going on. We can bring in resources. You are on a phone and I am sitting at a computer in the sunshine on high-speed Internet. I can say. "Oh I can look for the news, Google, and say your nearest Red Cross shelters here." I can do a something a lot easier and talk to you through Zello, then you could try to do on your phone in the middle of a storm. Your cell phone, I think, is going to be your number one thing a disaster. Specially a smart phone with data.
[00:48:42]
Jack Spirko: That’s what we do so much effort into making sure people can keep them charged.
[00:48:45]
Steven Harris: Yep
[00:48:46]
Jack Spirko: I do not want to get on to complete side thing on Zello. You and I could do a complete show some day, just all the things you can do with it. One of the things we did, we had a couple times are there were female members of the audience were traveling long-distance across the country on their own. You know, obviously they worry a little bit more than men do in that situation. We had people on the Zello network using... Because if you want to be tracked with your cell phone you can do that. Tracking these folks in real time and kind of keeping an eye on them during a long trip and staying in touch with them. That is really awesome that we have that. We will call that our PSA for the TSP Zello channel, in mid show and we will get back to the main content before we spend an hour on that. But these BaoFeng radios, what I wanted to ask you about is using them to talk back-and-forth between family members like on a farm, large property, between neighbors in the neighborhood, top look out for unfriendlies in a disaster. Like what is in the book "299 Days" with Glen Tate, he talks about doing stuff like that.
[00:49:45]