The worst happens. Overnight America’s sophisticated, fragile public communication systems are turned into scrap metal, high-tech junk. What happens to you and your survival group? Sure, you’ve provided for as much as you can of your own medical care, and the group is well drilled in protecting itself in the absence of constituted authority—or the presence of unconstituted authority—but what about communications?
In previous articles of Prepper’s Will, you may have read some measures you can take to fill the gaps, but there is still a great void. Where do you go to pick up the knowledge and skills necessary to put radio communications solidly in your corner when you really need it?
No single book, no one article will get you there. Even Uncle Sam won’t provide the background you need, because military training tends to be specialized and dependent on the availability of one particular type of gear.
Once you leave the service, where can you hone and develop your skills? The answer is Amateur Radio or Ham Radio.
A little bit of Ham radio history
The capital letters man Amateur Radio is a government-sanctioned hobby that allows individuals in the U.S.—anyone who is not an agent of a foreign government, regardless of age, sex, national origin, or anything else—to acquire and develop radio communication skills through hands-on experience.
Radio Amateurs, or “hams,” as they are popularly known, have been building, operating, and maintaining their own radio stations since the dawn of radio in the first decades of this century. Before World War I, before there was any government agency involved in regulating telecommunications—which then was known as “the radio art”—hams were pushing out the horizons of technology, always well ahead of government and industry’s efforts to understand and um this new medium.
And as the government and industry have developed an appetite for new pieces of the electromagnetic spectrum, hams have fought as a group to have portions of that spectrum set aside for their continued use and experimentation.
Not only have hams been responsible for many of the quantum jumps in radio communications technology, but hams are proud of their ability to do more with less, and to provide the means of contacting the outside world when all other means fail. And here is where you, the prepper, come in. High on your list for achieving survival should be becoming a Radio Amateur.
What’s that you say? “Ham radio is for engineering types, people with big glasses and little scientific calculators hanging from their belts.” Nonsense!
While a lot of hams are scientists and engineers—many of whom were influenced in their career choice by an early love affair with the radio hobby—most are not technicians by trade.
Tests
You don’t need a hefty back-ground in electronics to become a Radio Amateur. You must pass some tests, for which you will have to study. There are several study guides available online to help you prepare for these tests, and almost any community has an organization of hams who will be delighted to help you study. What is important to you about Amateur Radio is not what abilities you bring to the hobby, but what you acquire in the process of being a ham radio operator.
These tests should not be intimidating to someone who has committed himself to learn the inner functions of a semi-automatic pistol, or the proper first aid treatment for shock, for example. The difficulty and subject matter of the examinations depends on the level of license you are after. Each class of license allows certain increased privileges offering greater flexibility in the mode of operation and portion of the radio frequency spectrum you are allowed to use.
Beginners are likely to acquire the Novice Class license, which gives its holder certain limited privileges upon passage seta test of his ability to send and receive Morse Code at low speed. There is also a written test of electronics fundamentals and basic FCC regulations. These tests have been passed by elementary school students!
The highest license class is Extra, which grants all of the privileges available to Amateurs in the U.S. Of course, the tests required are much more difficult. The Advanced class license privileges are significantly greater than those granted to the General class licensee, but not significantly less than those granted to an Extra class licensee.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the agency responsible for regulating Amateur Radio, and in accordance with international treaties, sets limits and standards for the operation of Amateur stations. In addition to policing the ham bands, the FCC also serves to protect the ham from an incursion into his part of the radio spectrum by persons and organizations who have no right there.
The FCC also defends hams against local laws and ordinances, which might restrict their activities by venturing into the federal agency’s domain as the sole authority in this field.
Why bother to get a license? Of course, if somebody drops The Big One, there likely will not be any FCC to quibble over such details. You probably wouldn’t need a license to practice medicine, either. But you wouldn’t wait for your first appendectomy to start reading up on anatomy, would you?
Read next: Crisis Communication Advice – Ditch the cell phone (or not?)
To get the most out of ham radio during a disaster, you need practice, the right equipment, and the ability to improvise. Give yourself credit for your abilities and earn legal access to the radio spectrum. You will have tangible proof of the accomplishment, a license, plus awareness of simple facts that will keep the feds away from your door. Who needs fines and jail terms?
The system of administering license examinations has undergone some major changes in recent years. In the past, an exam for any of the license classes above Novice had to be taken in front of an FCC examination team at a time and place convenient to the team. As a result of recent legislation, teams of volunteer hams are allowed to administer the exams themselves, thus making it possible to take the test in or near your home town, rather than having to travel to the nearest federal examination point.
Because of cutbacks in the FCC’s funding, it is possible that some field offices may have been closed by publication time. The best way to get current information on where to apply to take an examination is to do a quick online search for your area.
The range of activities available to the ham radio operator with a Technician class license or higher is almost endless, but not all may be of immediate interest to the survivalist. The elaborate, “big-bucks” station, with thousands of dollars worth of non-portable gear and extensive antennas, may not be your best model to imitate. However. you can learn a lot from the guy who set this system up. More in your area of interest may be the local club’s “Field Day” operation or its Emergency Communications Committee.
Activities for Ham radio operators
Field Day is a group activity in which interested members of a club (or clubs) assemble a portable station that will operate in some remote area without making use of the public utilities for transport, communications or power.
Field Day activities are coordinated nationwide, so local clubs all over the country have the opportunity to test their readiness to replace short-range communications facilities, and to establish contact with hams throughout the U.S.
Some clubs may invite the local Civil Defense unit to participate, and, in fact, many members may be CD volunteers as well. Field Day participants test their emergency power supplies and generating systems, and their ability to set up a working radio station to carry high-volume traffic under adverse conditions, all the while seeing to their own survival needs.
You don’t need to make survival radio a group activity, however. If you are part of a survival team, you will certainly want to make ham radio part of your team’s training activities. There is no reason why most or all of the team members cannot become Radio Amateurs.
Group study for the tests might be more profitable for you than working on your own and will help motivation and the sharing of abilities as with the other activities of your group. But as an individual, you can work to prepare yourself to provide communications under adverse conditions by keeping your operating skills fresh and reconditioning used gear to sent as a backup for the primary equipment.
Skills
Of the skills you will learn as a ham radio operator, few will pay off better than knowing the principles of efficient antenna design.
Starting with the basic formulas, you will learn how to build a simple “dipole” antenna of the right dimensions to work at the frequency you need and how to place the antenna to your best advantage. From the dipole, you will progress in complexity (and efficiency) through other designs that offer advantages in every situation.
Directional antennas are very useful tools for survival. Imagine a hare light bull, hanging from a wire in the ceiling of a room. The bulb casts about the same amount of light on all the walls, the ceiling, and the floor of the room. This is a good illustration of the omnidirectional antenna.
This type of antenna is best when you don’t know where the other station is —as long as you don’t mind your signal being available to anyone who happens to be listening within range.
Now, put a reflector like the one behind the bulb of a flashlight on one side of the bare bulb. The area behind the reflector is now in shadow. The light that was shining to the rear is now reflected forward, and the front wall is getting roughly twice as much light as it was, without increasing the brightness of the bulb and its power consumption.
Now let’s put a lens in front of the bulb that takes the light coming directly from the bulb, and the reflected light and focuses it all on one small area of the wall. That spot is even more brightly lit, and the rest of the wall is left dark, as is the rest of the room. The brightness of the light on the target has been increased many times, by concentrating it where it is wanted, instead of squandering it in every direction.
If you were an observer standing in the bright spot, you would have seen the light get brighter and brighter, although the amount of electricity needed to produce that light did not vary.
Now you see that a directional antenna, which acts very much like the reflected and focused light bulb, has several advantages:
- it sends the signal where you point it;
- it keeps the signal away from stations you don’t want to hear it;
- and it effectively multiplies the strength of the signal in the desired direction without requiring more power.
And when you are receiving with a directional antenna, you are listening to the area you want to hear from while ignoring jammers or other interference, and the signals from the target direction are stronger then they would be through an omnidirectional antenna.
A common example of a directional antenna is a TV antenna. All those aluminum rods (“elements”) are helping to concentrate the desired signal and keep out signals from other directions. By the way, if nowadays you see a TV antenna which has been discarded, take it home. The tubing used in most TV antennas is a great raw material for directional and omnidirectional VHF and UHF antennas.
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If you have limited storage space, you can drill out the rivets and remove the other hardware with screwdrivers and pliers, and store the individual elements in a long, skinny bundle. Bent elements may sometimes be straightened enough to be used as is, or may be cut up for use as smaller elements. Designs for hundreds of homemade antennas can be found in several of the books listed in this article.
A dipole is the fundamental component of most directional antennas, so take a look at some representative samples that can be produced with the formula: (468/f (MHz) — L (feet). In other words, the length of a dipole. in feet, is equal to 468 divided by the frequency, in megahertz, at which the dipole is to be used. Grab your calculator and try a dipole for the middle of the AM broadcast band: 408/1 MHz = 468 feet. That’s a fairly long piece of wire!
That’s one reason your AM car radio doesn’t use a dipole. For contrast, try out a dipole for the “2-meter” ham band, 468/146 MHz = 3.205 feet. You can see a general rule at work: the higher the frequency, the shorter the antenna.
Costs of Ham Radio
Does getting into ham radio cost a lot of money? Does it take lots of space? Both questions can be answered with an unqualified. “It depends.”
It depends on how elaborate a station you wish, what modes and frequencies you want to be able to, use, and how many “bells and whistles” you’re after. It’s possible to spend upwards of $10,000, and still, looking for more. It’s also possible to have an operating station for less than $100.
Do you want to talk to stations in other parts of the country, or around the world? Then you’ll need equipment that operates in the high-frequency (hf) part of the radio spectrum. Signals at these frequencies may, under the right conditions, bounce back and forth between the Earth’s surface and upper atmosphere until they have traveled thousands of miles.
However, hf signals can’t be counted on to be heard a few miles away. They may be on the peak of one of those bounces, traveling hundreds of miles above the other station’s antenna.
The antenna tuner is an indispensable accessory to the hf station, especially when the need can exist to use whatever piece of metal is available as an antenna. “Antenna tuner” is really a misnomer. This device doesn’t really “tune” the antenna, and rather it modifies an important characteristic of the antenna circuit.
This change makes the antenna more compatible with the transceiver. Any antenna, whether it is commercially made, or simply a random piece of wire, has an inherent feature called “characteristic impedance.”
Impedance is to an alternating current, such as that produced by a radio signal, what resistance is to direct current. Impedance, however, is the complex product of several factors that interact in an antenna to produce an impedance of a specific value. Change any of these factors and the impedance likewise changes.
Most modern ham transceivers are built to operate into an impedance of 50 to 52 ohms. If the antenna used does not have an impedance within this range, some efficiency will be sacrificed, and if the difference is great enough, the equipment may shut down or be damaged.
The tuner changes some of the factors so that antennas with characteristic impedances varying over a wide range may be used with any transceiver over widely differing frequencies. Because emergency antennas may he improvised and need to work over several frequencies, a tuner is a vital part of any emergency station.
By the way, an antenna tuner is a passive device: it doesn’t require any external power to operate.
VHF/UHF
If, on the other hand, you want a reliable radio “circuit” over a distance of less than 100 miles, the VHF or UHF bands are where you need to be. This equipment has the advantage of coming in smaller packages, such as the VHF mobile and hand-held rigs.
Where do prospective Ham Radio Amateurs shop for ham gear? Well, forget Radio Shack.
For new gear, you can go on Amazon or eBay since there are major suppliers of transceivers and accessories that can fulfill your needs.
Books for Ham Radio
Your survival library ought to include some radio reference books along with the ones on orienteering and first aid. Some titles are suggested here. Note that some of those listed are intended to help you win your license, and others should be around for quick reference when you’re setting up and operating your station.
Ham Radio books:
- The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual Spiral
- Ham Radio For Dummies
- Ham Radio Jargon and Q-Codes: A Quick Reference Guide
- Technician Class 2018-2022: Pass Your Amateur Radio Technician Class Test – The Easy Way
- No-Nonsense General Class License Study Guide: for tests given between July 2019 and June 2023
Concluding
This article is intended to get you started in Ham Radio, and to help you understand why being a ham radio operator is of value. If you take survival seriously, you owe it to yourself to join with the radio communications hobby for training and experience you can’t get anywhere else.
Other Useful Resources:
Find Out What’s the Closest Nuclear Bunker to Your Home
Learn how to Safeguard your Home against Looters
Knowledge to survive any medical crisis situation during a major disaster
The vital self-sufficiency lessons our great grand-fathers left us
Good article but it needs to updated. Since the FCC removed the code requirements they no longer have the Novice and Advanced class tests. They only have Tech, General, and Extra.