Prioritizing our Preps #11: Communications | Advanced Survival ...

This is Part #11 of our Prioritized Preparedness series.

I?ve been around radios for as long as I can remember and have been fortunate enough to have made a career in the industry so adding them to our preparedness plan has been a relatively simple task. Here is our basic plan along with some detailed information at the end of this post.

When our household first began our preparedness efforts, we felt like we were on our own. It was the 80s and there were no other families that we knew to be prepping. Since we didn?t need to communicate with any other groups our comms equipment list was very short: A scanner radio, a shortwave radio and our standard CB radios. Cell phones and the internet were still either too expensive or not in existence.

Our group has grown to several families now. Our needs have changed somewhat but the basics haven?t.

SCANNER RADIO:

The scanner radio lets us stay on top of the police calls in the area. In the 80s, our home was on the edge of a shady part of town and there was always something going on there. 30 years later, we find ourselves in almost the same situation. Having a scanner to give us real-time info was, and still is, very comforting. A scanner has and always will be a big part of our preps. We now have several receivers. They are in every space that we spend our time and are usually always running.

Everyone in our group today has a way to scan the local emergency frequencies. Having the group spread out across a wide area gives us a wider area to gather information which can then be relayed back to the others via 2-way comms. We have enough scanners to share with a select few others in the event of a disaster. This would allow them to hear any of our 2-way messages on ham radio if there was a need for that.

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SHORTWAVE:

I?m not a big fan of shortwave radios. We have them but they?re not used for much other than listening after a disaster somewhere on another continent or to see if conditions are ripe for some ham radio ?hobby? work. There?s not much of anything worthwhile being broadcast in English and I?ve never really cared for any of the American programs that are broadcast over shortwave. I also feel that the prepper community generally puts too much emphasis on owning a shortwave, especially the cheap ones that seem to be the most popular. If I were to have to start buying radio gear from scratch, I would most definitely buy a scanner first.

With that said, I do believe that there is a very good reason to own a specific type of shortwave radio. We have already posted a detailed article on this: ?The Survival Shortwave Radio: things you need to know before you buy?

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2-WAY COMMUNICATIONS:

This is an area that has changed quite a bit over the last 30 years. The basics like ham radio and CB radio will always be the foundation of our plan but cellphones and the internet definitely have their merits. For the longest time our household was alone. We literally had no reason to communicate by radio with any others. Our comms needs were limited to talking with each other and the CB radios were enough. I obtained my Amateur license because I was interested in radio and not because it was necessary.

As our group grew, we needed to add off-grid comms between homes.The CB was the only way to do this at first. Putting a base station in every home and a mobile in every vehicle was fairly simple and very effective for communicating across and around town. We had decent comms for about a 9 mile radius (we live in a valley). When the GMRS option came around in the 90s, we developed a pretty good back-up network with it. It was limited to base stations and hand-helds since mobile stations are very expensive compared to CB and Ham. We tried MURS but by the time the MURS equipment became available we had already put together a functioning GMRS network. To this day though, GMRS is my personal favorite.

I?m very proud to say that almost all of the households in our group now have a licensed ham operator. I?m proud of these guys for getting their license! For what it?s worth, only the folks older than 30 seemed to have an interest. I?ve been tempted to take the cellphones away from the younger guys just to make a point. The younger guys are still on GMRS and CB.

Ham radio has made this part of the project much easier. We?ve been able to extend our range quite a bit between households. We have run into a couple problems getting the network complete without repeaters , but nothing that can?t be overcome. Every ham in our group now has a 2 meter base station that can be set up anywhere with very little effort and in a short amount of time.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

Over the past couple of years we have posted several articles containing our thoughts and recommendations pertaining to radio comms. Below is a partial list of those articles, hopefully there is some information that can be of use to you.

Ben

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Source: http://advancedsurvivalguide.com/2012/02/20/prioritizing-our-preps-1-comms/

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