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March 27, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
55:34
HiCap operator and Eric from Satellite Phone Store talk real-world survival...
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All right, welcome everybody.
This is a really special episode here on BrightTown.com.
I'm Mike Adams, and we're joined by two people in studio today.
This is Eric Talman from the Satellite Phone Store, which is our communications sponsor.
Say hi, Eric.
Hey, everybody.
Great to have you in studio.
Thank you so much for having me, Mike.
Absolutely.
It's great to meet you in person.
And you've got some tech here you're going to share with people.
But we have another guest that we can't show his face.
He's sitting here.
We're going to be able to show his silhouette.
There he is, the back of his head.
You want to say hi, sir?
Hello.
How's everybody doing?
Hello, Mike.
Yeah, we're doing good.
Thank you for joining us.
Now, this is our special guest who runs operations teams for border security in Texas and has his hands and his eyes on a lot of things that perhaps we can't necessarily talk about, but a lot of things happening in the world involved in security, but especially border security.
And his team uses this technology to help secure America's border.
So thank you for joining us.
Absolutely.
Glad to be here.
Well, we appreciate your time because I know you're busy driving back and forth north and south here.
But let's start with the basics here.
So just for people to understand, so the satellite phone store, sat123.com, this has been our sponsor for several years.
And they provide these products.
Here, show our product shot.
The bivvy sticks and the satellite phones for consumers to have backup communications that you can use in case of a grid down collapse or a cell tower collapse.
The bivvy stick is a two-way text messaging device.
And then there's an InMarsat phone.
And then here's an Iridium phone right here.
So, thousands of our customers and listeners have these products and travel with them.
Those are actually out of my car.
I travel with all those all the time.
But now, Eric is here to share with us some really cool advanced technology solutions that are push-to-talk, satellite radios, and a whole lot more.
Thanks for coming.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Mike.
I'm happy to be here sharing new technology with everybody and seeing how we can maybe make this work for different people's homes, businesses, or small tactical groups or community response teams.
Speaking of that, in terms of small tactical groups, let me go to our guest here, whose name I shall not mention, but let me ask him to chime in first because your company, Tina, made a big donation of some gear to his teams, and it's been a couple of months on that gear.
How's that going?
Well, compared to the time when we began this and using the radio communications that we were using at the time, depending on what areas we worked in, the radios were fine.
But once we moved out to the bigger canyon areas, the rougher country, further from cell towers and radio repeaters and stuff, we started having a whole lot of problems.
And that it was then when we were introduced by you, Mike, to the satellite phone store and Eric and his team.
And they were able to set us up with a package to be able to get us moving the bivvy sticks and then the ICOM sat 100 push to talks.
And it's been a game changer.
Yeah.
In what way?
I mean, I know you've used the bivvy sticks with the locator turned on in order to track your own teams for safety purposes, correct?
Yes, that is correct.
We do use the full packaging as far as being able to locate and track our individual team members.
We have a multi-agency group put together, not just the military.
I share this package amongst them so we can all communicate.
We all carry the bivvy sticks on ourselves, but we also carry the ICOM 100 SAT radios.
And we rely on them highly as far as direct communication rapidly and use the bivvy sticks to shoot out coordinates to where we're either tracking an illegal group or a drug group.
Mule group or human trafficking group, depending on what we're doing.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that.
And Eric is going to explain the ICOM, push the talk radios here in a second, but you've also used this technology to save lives of children of migrants.
So because of the desert conditions, you've been able to call in emergency response on dehydration, people on the verge of death, correct?
Correct.
Absolutely.
We've been able to respond to during the summer heated months, which are coming again, and the wintertime.
These groups, unfortunately, for whatever reason, bring their toddlers or their very young children with them.
We're dealing with hypothermia, different things like that.
So we're able to get immediate communications out to the Border Patrol or whoever is running.
We have medics on our teams.
I'm able to reach one of my medics and get them over there for either IVs or warm blankets or cool-down cold blankets for overheating, exhaustion, or dehydration.
And then able to get them out from that point by continually being able to send our grid coordinates or talk a helicopter in if we need airlift or whatever.
Does that make you feel good, Eric, about the fact that your company, your tech, is saving lives?
Man, it's what we pray for, you know?
To have the ability to use technology to serve God, help people, help these types of teams.
I mean, you really can't ask for much better.
I mean, they're helping to secure America's borders, number one.
They're interdicting human trafficking, drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking.
Stories he probably can't repeat here, but that he's told me that maybe are crazy.
But your company and through the generosity of you and Tina making the donations, your tech is in the hands of people who are using it to help America and actually save lives of even the migrant children.
It's amazing.
Yeah, and these satellite radios are working on the same satellite technology as our satellite phones, the Iridium satellite phones, but they have a layer of encryption, so it's keeping these guys safe, anyone who uses them.
Right.
So it's fully wrapped in AES 256-bit encryption.
These radios don't talk to any kind of cellular radios or terrestrial radio towers.
It's just up to the satellite and back down to the other radios.
So tell us how that works.
This is a push-to-talk satellite radio.
Radio.
I've got a couple of these, too.
But for the user out there, it's like a walkie-talkie, but it uses a satellite.
Yeah.
So a popular radio manufacturer, ICOM, came together with Iridium and realized there's a big opportunity to do radios over satellite.
There's huge expanses of land and ocean that just...
Aren't ever going to be covered by any type of terrestrial communications.
So having a handheld portable that's not a phone, that's a radio, was a really big need for applications, much like our friend here.
One of the things that I've seen over the past 16 years working in tough environments, whether it be races or conflicts or natural disasters, you could train, train, train, but when it comes time to making a phone call, people sometimes will dial the wrong number or there's too many zeros and then a one or they can't.
Remember, in a stressful situation, with these radios, you just press the side button and that communication goes out to everybody else with the same radio.
But importantly, it's not broadcasting laterally.
It's broadcasting up to the satellite and then that satellite is relaying it.
Encrypted only to the people in your group who are predefined as receivers in your group, correct?
Yes, yes.
We can figure that for our customers or we can give account access to them and they are able to define which of their radios are able to receive and transmit in those talk groups.
Wow.
We can give each one a name.
This could be Johnny or Alpha One and it actually shows up on the other radio so you can see the name of the person who's talking to you and you can see their distance away from you in the direction.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, exactly.
On the screen, I've seen that myself.
It'll say like 2.7 kilometers northwest or whatever.
Yeah, and a lot of our groups and businesses will actually have multiple talk groups.
So they might have one main talk group.
It's kind of a catch-all.
But then we might have an operations talk group or another talk group with just a couple radios so they can drop down and have private communications with each other.
That's amazing.
Let me ask you, sir, we've got to come up with like a code name to refer to you here during the interview.
Mike, I'm sure that you will come up with something else.
I will definitely come up.
You may not like it, but I will come up with something.
And I'll live with it.
Well, I want to ask you this, though.
The fact that these are encrypted, that your team is using these, I would imagine, isn't that a requirement that whoever your commanders are up the chain, they probably wouldn't even let you use this tech if it wasn't encrypted and basically hack-proof?
You don't want the enemy monitoring, obviously, all your radio traffic.
Well, based off of my history, Mike, in the operational field, as far as that goes, I'm on board right with my commanders and them.
They are 100% correct.
We would not just use any walkie talkies or whatever, because we are being monitored from across the border.
So they have their own listening posts out there.
Yeah.
And they are trying to pick up different avenues.
Unfortunately, some people have lost some of our regular radios, you know, due to whatever's happening, you know, not on purpose or whatever the case may be.
And that radio has to go through and be wiped just so it's not picked up by the wrong people and carried in.
And that's something that I love about this system is that we can shut one down if one comes up missing or gets stolen.
We can eliminate that from the system so they cannot...
Listen, I mean...
And Eric, thank you for meeting down here when I was able to come down here together so you can help educate me on the capabilities of this equipment because you just expanded Our ability to shoot, move, communicate, medicate 100% more.
So that's wonderful that we have the educational portion that happened prior to this.
So thank you.
Was there, I don't know if it's okay to talk about this.
If not, I'll scrub this part.
But weren't you working on a possible solution where you could define the region in South Texas, but then also have another region somewhere else so he could talk to team members on a different continent as well?
Yeah, so the Iridium Satellite Network is fully global.
However, these radios will not work everywhere.
They only work in the places that we define little bubbles or squares of coverage.
It's all online, it's all real-time, we can change the names of the devices, and we can change our coverage points.
So we could be operating here in Austin or different places, San Antonio or along the border, and be able to change that coverage in real-time as we need to, or put someone on the other side of the planet.
But what about two bubbles?
That's what I was wondering.
Can his team talk to his people in South Texas, but then also reach people in Venezuela who are allowed to hear on the same network, let's say?
Is that possible?
Absolutely.
And we have many businesses and manufacturing and different types of companies that will actually have their facilities with regular radios.
But then there's somebody in a basement in New Jersey listening on the same radio, a stakeholder, able to communicate and advise and listen in on what's going on.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
So as his team operates, he could have somebody in a totally different state that's monitoring for him and being able to advise on weather, conditions, or other intel.
Wow.
Okay.
That's really cool to know.
Okay.
So as I understand it, these, and by the way, folks, if you're interested in these, just contact Satellite Phone Store, SAT123.com.
But these are typically offered, what, a minimum of five at a time for teams?
Yeah.
Yeah, so unlike satellite phones and BIVI devices, which are singular, you just need one in order to get access, these radios, you need at least three to operate on the network.
And if you get three, you pay for a talk group.
It's about $70.
If you get five, you get a free talk group from Iridium.
This area will cover the size of about the state of Florida.
And you can move that around.
You can break it up in little bubbles, so you can define where your coverage is going to be.
Okay, and you mentioned $70.
That's just a rough estimate of the monthly service, but then the radios themselves are quite pricey.
Yeah, they are quite pricey.
These radios are around $1,260 a radio, and the monthly service is about $85 a month, which is a little bit unattainable for most small businesses and small groups that actually need the technology.
So what we've done is we've come up with a promotion.
That allows you to get the radio and unlimited service and the talk group for $149 a month.
Per radio?
Per radio.
It's a 24-month plan.
Wow.
And this just makes it to where you don't have to come so big out of pocket to actually get the tech in your hands and start making use of it and get the value out of it.
So let's say a local sheriff's department could absolutely benefit from this.
Search and rescue, fire response, first responders of all kinds.
It doesn't have to be military teams.
We have a lot of small transportation, construction, oil and gas.
I mean, all these types of businesses use radios.
If they use radios today, most likely you have a place in your organization for a satellite radio to fill those gaps.
We have a lot of viewers of this program that have small businesses or sometimes even larger businesses and also that work in government.
You probably talked to some of our customers or some of our listeners.
They are decision makers for government operations as well.
And so this kind of device or this kind of setup can actually give them access to areas where they could not previously communicate whatsoever.
Absolutely.
You can send somebody anywhere for your organization and not have to worry that you're not going to be able to stay in touch with them.
And they don't have to dial.
It's just one button, push to talk.
It can work from a plane, a boat, a vehicle, a building.
So we have packages that make it work in any environment.
So yeah, even on a cargo ship crossing the Pacific.
If that's your idea of a vacation, you're like, I'm hanging out on the cargo boat from China here, but you could use a sat phone or a sat walkie-talkie.
Yeah, anywhere you can use a satellite phone, you can use a satellite radio.
We just have to define the coverage areas first.
Can I caveat stuff for that?
Yeah, please, go ahead.
So, I'm currently in an operational build-out To where we'll be working in another country.
So we'll have a command talk set up.
And learning from what I've been learning from Eric, I can set up a monitored command reception spot that can control, send out messages to these phones.
And I can be able to talk from that area, plus where I'm at, plus where my team is at in another country.
And that is wonderful.
Game changer.
I mean, I've been sitting in, I'll just say, close to the San Antonio region and was driving and I happened to have my sat phone up next to the dash by the windshield and picked up my whole team working down in the canyons by the Rio while they're talking.
And this was hundreds of miles away and perfectly did a radio check right there on the spot.
Well, I wanted to ask you also about the reliability that you've experienced there with, you know, have you had outages at all?
But also, I've come up with a nickname for you, if you're okay.
I'm going to call you High Cap, which is short for high capacity, because I think that those are the magazines we all prefer.
So, you're High Cap.
Are you okay with that?
I'm okay with that.
All right, High Cap.
I said I'd live with it, right?
Okay.
But yes, we have had outages.
We have had places where the weather was extremely bad.
We couldn't get into an area, but it's a speck.
I mean, literally, on the map where we're working, we moved another 25 yards and was able to get full communication service.
But in the areas we're working, that's not unreasonable.
Just to be able to have communications in the areas we're working is great.
And we don't have just a little bit of communication.
I can give a solid 80% to 85% of the time perfect communication.
We might have some guys that don't hold the button proper.
It's just using the equipment or being in the purpose box.
They have to hold this antenna vertically, for the most part, or close to it, right?
If people are holding it like this, it's not broadcasting to the satellite.
That's a great point.
We go over this during onboarding with these radios, so we teach best practices.
Yeah, I often say hold it like an open water bottle.
You don't want the water to spill out, so you want to keep that kind of up.
These antennas pick up the satellites at 8 degrees up off the horizon.
So anything in our 360 viewpoint is gonna potentially block a satellite.
So the more out in the open you are, the better it's gonna work.
Closer to the body might be a little tougher, away from the body better.
But these types of problems are often fixed with accessories.
Longer antennas, external antennas on a vehicle or a building or even a command post.
So if we do dispatch three of these units with a small team, it's nice if there's one kind of headquarters unit on an external antenna with somebody kind of as dispatch.
Kind of running, routing, and information to our other field units.
So we often find that there's a main kind of head base unit, and then we talk out to our team members so they have that support.
That's just usually a nice configuration.
I think we're going to be doing that with HiCap here shortly.
Yeah.
See, the name's sticking, HiCap.
Absolutely.
Totally working.
See, I think this would be great also for, let's say, a survival group.
Or a prepper group.
So, you know, there's a lot of prepper groups that are kind of in the same region, and they've put together groups like this person is the firearms expert, this person is the medical expert, and so on.
And it is, on these sat phones, it is more complicated to go through the phone book, you know, who do I dial, and how do I, you know, what's the prefix?
Saving all the contacts in there.
Exactly.
And then calling each one.
Are they available or not?
That same call you placed to one person could have been made to...
The whole team.
At one moment.
Right.
So this is great for even survival teams.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The technology really enables all different types of applications and different types of people, but especially small teams for survivability, making sure that they have that tactical radio style connectivity, but over satellite.
Yeah.
I tell you, it's worked for us.
And, you know, as talking about having the antenna pointed up correctly, I literally have had that antenna point in many directions in the middle of some events and still able to receive or send out.
So the best practice, as you said, is to have it that way, but they will function in other ways, I promise you.
Even upside down, it will function just half the time because of the polarity of the signal.
Is that right?
Yeah.
No kidding.
But they won't function indoors, obviously, because you can't have obstructions.
No, it depends on the material of the roof.
If you have a big metal roof, not at all.
You have a wooden roof, fiberglass patio roof, yeah, you're in a tent, 100%.
You're in a bivouac or some type of remote post or a hunting blind, absolutely.
Absolutely.
We carry on in the dash of our vehicles all the time or on our fast attack vehicles.
We'll carry up on the dash and it'll be laying on its side and we're still able to receive.
Then we get out and make a car, hold it up proper to do what we're doing.
But we are still able to receive and talk with it under some cover.
You know, by the way, I know you do some pretty cool outdoor vehicle kind of adventures, but have you seen his vehicle?
His military vehicle?
I was hearing a little bit about it, but I have not seen it, no.
You've got to show them, HiCat, before you go.
Because we can't show the public, this is an awesome rig.
We run them pretty hard, that's for sure.
The military dune buggy thing, whatever that is.
It's an M-Razor.
It's designed by Polaris.
Oh, is it?
But it's for the military operational groups only.
You can't get them on the civilian market.
You're not supposed to be able to get them on the civilian market.
But we know how that works.
Afghanistan has quite a few for sale, if you want to.
I would imagine.
Ken, you've got to mount the.50 cal on the top of that thing.
You can mount belt feds all over that thing.
So actually, off-road and off-road racing is one of the places that we put this technology to the test first, over in the deserts of California and down in the Baja, the races.
We have these embedded into vehicles, helicopters, into intercoms, so that way you don't even have to hit the button.
It's just in a docking station and turn it on the roof.
Wow.
On the steering wheel, you hit the button and you hear the beep and you speak and the rest of your team, you could have three chase trucks or a helicopter or people acting as a group.
Wow.
And that really made us put it through the harshest conditions we could.
That's awesome.
So that's a lot of where we learned and developed the technology with Iridium.
So if someone is listening and they want to do what you just described, they can call the satellite phone store and can you then help them actually set this up and configure it like that?
It takes setup, yeah.
And almost all of our associates are now familiar with all this technology and used to helping groups pick out the right pieces or accessories needed.
Sometimes it's the accessories that make it work or not.
So having the right antenna or having the right hand mic is going to be the difference of it working or maybe not working so great.
So absolutely, our people are ready to help.
Okay.
I actually need your help, too, so I'll be calling you after this because I want to get an antenna mounted in my vehicle and then want to have a different home base station that I can always put in there as charging all the time and receiving, but there's an antenna on the roof.
That's all doable, right?
Absolutely.
From your truck to your house to your office to your warehouse, being able to keep that constant communication is absolutely key, and that's exactly what we do.
That's very cool.
Okay, next question for HiCap.
You're in some pretty rough conditions out there.
You've got dust, you've got sand, you've got rain.
How is all this gear working for you?
Not just this, but the bivy stick.
Are you having any problems with water inundation or screens failing or keys failing because of dust or anything like that?
Or is it mostly working?
Actually, everything seems to be working real well.
Now, we have sent one back to have it replaced.
It took a dive at a higher speed in the middle of a capture, but that busted a screen when it landed, and I'm surprised that's all it did.
Oh.
But it took a good...
You basically destroyed one.
Yeah, we basically did.
But as far as the bivy sticks and the icons, I mean, they have really out before.
The bivy sticks, seriously, I hook them on our backpacks and we take off.
And so we throw those down or we're going through the brush or climbing up on a rock face or whatever where we're at trying to get ahead.
We're tracking these groups on foot, tracking their tracks, so it can get pretty intense.
And so being able to communicate ahead to a group that's doing the same thing, we're leapfrogging each other, picking up these tracks, trying to catch up with them, it keeps us from having to spend all day just with one group.
Behind the other.
But we beat them up regularly.
They're in the heat, they're in the sunlight, boiling, the dust in the vehicle.
I've pulled them off and we blow them off and clean them off the best we can.
But, I mean, we are using them as they are meant to be used.
No, and that's great to hear.
If the technology breaks, it doesn't work for anybody.
So hearing about it either in off-roads or harsh environments and how it holds up just helps us become better, helps the tech get better.
And this is basically as good as you can get for commercial off-the-shelf sat-coms.
Absolutely.
There's really nothing better in the world.
Otherwise, they'd be on the table right now.
Military guys are using it over the other possible gear.
Absolutely.
I can vouch for that 100%.
We have great gear when we're mission-capable military style.
I know that this is still considered a military operation a lot on the border.
But when we're running from a special operations in another country, we have a different setup.
And that different setup is specific for its use, and you really can't beat it.
But when it comes to running, what we're doing for the average soldier to be able to keep up and, as I always say, shoot, move, communicate, medicate.
When we're able to do that and have a piece of equipment that is able for us to use, this is Far surpassed our expectations and helped our needs 100%.
What about battery life?
What are you actually getting on the different things?
Do you charge them at night or sometimes you run night?
Well, we run those on the charger at night and I can get a full day's use out of a battery.
I haven't quite figured out some of the other stuff we're going to try to do and how much that will eat up batteries, but that's why Eric's here also as me and him are still going through some things to try to look at that.
And also having extra batteries because you can put those batteries on the charger by themselves.
And that's really nice because you may have your radio with you, but you can have a battery charging.
It doesn't have to be on the radio to do it.
A couple extra things is we do have a six-gang charger, so for a lot of our groups, we'll bring them back at night or switch them out, so we can charge six at a time on a desktop charger.
Very cool.
These units have Bluetooth that you can turn on and off, which means you can't have a Bluetooth headset.
You can also Bluetooth it to a smartphone and use the ICOM app, so you don't have to be audible.
You can actually text to your group, and that's also unlimited.
Really?
So this actually functions also kind of like the Bibby Stick in terms of testing.
Only amongst themselves.
Among the group.
Yeah, not to a cell phone number, to an email, but encrypted and only amongst to themselves.
Nice.
Yeah, we can also hook one of these up to a computer and use the RDT tool or radio discovery tool from ICOM. That allows us to plug it into Google Earth and see the positions of our radios.
Again, all encrypted.
We can hit an SOS button.
We'll see an SOS alert come up on our screen.
This is really for teams that are operating either hunting groups or off-road groups, tactical groups, people who want government, military-style communication.
That's what that is.
Yeah, it's the stuff I learned today.
I can't wait to put it to work.
I've already got my head spinning for the different tactical advantages that we're fixing to roll out.
That's the thing.
This equipment makes your team way more effective so you can do more with fewer people.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Which is really critical because we don't have enough resources on the border.
You know that.
That is a fact.
So you've got to amplify what you do have as much as possible.
We don't want to walk around out there in the field looking for a group that's already made it to its pickup point and we're not sure.
We want to be able to know and be able to send somebody up ahead to look for the same sign we're looking for to verify that.
We want to be able to have a command central to be able to send out that information.
I love the texting portion of that on the radios because when you're trying to be very quiet where you're at, Being able to send out that text as a group text or even individual text, that's nice.
That's real nice.
And you do it right off your phone.
Doesn't matter whether your phone has a signal or not.
It's running off the app, just like the app does on the Bivy.
That's nice.
Folks, again, the website, if you want to check this out for yourself, is sat123.com.
And of course, the Satellite Phone Store is a regular sponsor of my show here on brighttown.com.
You know, I'm very discerning about which companies I'm willing to...
And I don't promote a company unless I use their products myself.
In fact, what you're seeing over here on the desk is I pulled that out of my car just now because I travel with that.
And then I have family members and we also have some of our business associates here that have these devices as well.
So if there's a real emergency, I'm talking like a civil emergency, I can call my warehouse manager.
I can call my security manager.
Through all of this.
And in Texas, you know, What was it, early 2021, we had the big ice storm, took out all the cell towers, took out the power grid for a lot of people.
We had power up and down every 30 minutes.
We had like 8 minutes out of 30.
And then it was down for 22 minutes.
And these, I didn't have these at that time.
And I wish I did.
And if you had just a little bitty solar panel from us or a little backup battery and one of these guys, you don't lose power and you don't lose comms.
And those are the two things that we feel like we really excel at.
Absolutely.
Power and communications.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And without you, Mike, we wouldn't have these connections.
So just a big thank you from everyone at Satellite Phone Store to you and making these connections so we can do this type of thing.
Hey, I'm just trying to help everybody get the important things done.
And by the way, Tina just, I think, approved a second round of equipment to go to HiCap's team.
I'm not even sure.
What is that equipment?
How are you going to deploy that?
I don't even know the details.
No, I'm talking about being fortunate.
Tina's got us two push-to-talk phones That go with talking to the SAT 100s, so that we can still make phone calls out on that if we need to, to our team leads.
Each one of our team leads will have one of these.
I'll have one, and my other team lead will have one.
And then also...
Yeah, it's great.
Sorry, hi, Kyle.
Go right ahead.
Yeah, so instead of just being a dedicated radio, and I like a dedicated radio.
That means we're not messing around with phone mode or radio mode.
And this is the first step I take with people looking for satellite radio.
Yeah.
However, some key individuals need the ability also to make a satellite phone call.
No use in carrying a satellite phone and a satellite radio if you don't have to.
The Iridium 9575 push to talk allows us to boot it up in a satellite telephone mode or in a satellite radio mode.
So we can flip over and talk to these guys or flip back over and make that call out for the group.
Especially when you call the sheriff's department.
I need to get a hold of a deputy or whatever.
I can call them direct off of that.
You restart it and then you choose the mode on start?
That is correct.
It's like boot mode for a computer.
Do you want to boot up in PTT mode or do you want to boot up in satellite phone mode?
They won't do both because if you're in phone mode, you could be getting PTT transmissions and it could be messing up your phone call.
And if you're in PTT mode, they don't want you getting phone calls and missing your radio.
So they do separate it.
I see.
I think it's for good reason.
But this allows, like he said, like I said, he can switch out of PTT mode.
Call the Rangers or call somebody else.
Call some support and let them know what's going on on their cell phone or on their landline, whereas regular satellite radios cannot do that.
And it's still very slim.
I mean, this is a small form factor right here.
It's even a little smaller than the PTT, or maybe it's the same size.
It's about the same size, but it is a satellite telephone that performs as a satellite radio, so you need to treat it like a satellite telephone.
It's not going to have your tactical, rugged...
It does have an IP67 mil-spec standard rating.
Uh-huh.
But I tell you what, these ICOMs, you can sink them under muddy water, you can take a full wash in your UTV, and it's going to keep on going.
They have an aquaquake feature that shakes the water out of the speaker.
The speaker is very loud, so we see some big enhancements on satellite radio performance over the...
We've been running in our vehicle and be pouring down rain and all of us have our radios up on our plate carriers and we're running 50, 60 mile an hour on these back roads trying to get to another point ahead of another group so we can get to them.
And these things are getting poured on and rained on and we're still talking on them.
We're screaming at each other, hey, we're on our way or whatever, you know.
And at the end of the day, they bring them to me, and I'm looking, and I'm like, man, what did you do with this thing?
But it works fine.
It hasn't stopped working yet.
Can I ask you, High Cap, just a little bit off subject, but as far as the kind of people that are crossing the border...
And you know Michael Yan.
You met Michael, right?
I've had Michael here as a guest many times.
Michael Yan, he's an international war correspondent, you know, amazing guy.
He's been sending me footage of border crossings that are happening at the Gap down south, where suddenly it's all these military-aged communist Chinese men.
Are you seeing, or if you can even talk about it, I don't know, but are you seeing more Chinese now, not just like El Salvadorians and so on?
In the areas I'm covering which are known for human trafficking and people who don't want to get caught because they're very rugged areas to go through, then you have your areas where they're just coming across in droves.
You're literally seeing those groups you're talking about more in those areas that are coming across in droves.
I see.
You would think that you would see them in the others, but they haven't hit that spot yet.
Do we have other foreign groups Do you see illegal aliens coming across?
Yes, we do.
And those are usually getting captured and interrogated as far as interviewed in one way or another.
But as far as where we're seeing a larger group of them, it's in your more mainstream gaps like El Paso, Or even down Laredo or Eagle Pass area, where they come across, you see it on the news.
That's not necessarily OPSEC because you can see it in open source.
Okay.
It's, I mean, what a bizarre time that we're living in.
But, you know, thank goodness that this kind of technology solution is available to help us, you know, secure our borders, do these jobs, get emergency medical care to people when they need it.
And the thing is, you know, Satellite Phone Store has made this more affordable than normally, because normally you just have to shell out of pocket thousands of dollars for five of these phones.
Normally, but Tina's put it on a monthly plan that's more affordable.
You know, I've been working with Tina almost 10 years now, and I have to say one of the coolest things we've done is taken expensive technology that's normally only available to people that are Really, really well off.
And made it accessible to more people.
Yeah.
That's our goal.
So whether it's an extreme application like ICAPS or many others, we enjoy taking this technology and getting it in more people's hands so they can...
You hear all these great stories, ICAPS included, but so many missionaries...
Around the world.
Oh, yeah.
NGOs in the Ukraine doing medical clinics, Christian medical clinics.
The list just goes on and on and on.
Wow.
So we hear this every day and it brings us a lot of joy, you know?
I couldn't imagine doing anything else.
You know, and the other thing is that the satellite phone store routinely makes donations of equipment to first responders after hurricanes, earthquakes, you know, all kinds of natural disasters.
And Tina's smart.
She actually sets aside hardware for that purpose.
Mm-hmm.
And just to have this, like...
Secret stash.
Yeah, all I can say to that is God bless this group.
The Satellite Phone Store and all those who work in it.
Eric, you are a blessing.
And you have, through your actions and Tina's actions, has literally been a godsend.
It's a prayer come true.
We pray to God to show us ways we can use technology or what we have to serve.
So that's exactly what we're getting the opportunity to do.
Amen.
Now, you brought something else.
Is that something you can show us?
Like this combination hub thing?
What is that?
Yeah, I can.
This all goes a step deeper in this, what I call, radio ecosystem.
So we started with the satellite radio telephone, and then they came out with just satellite radios.
So we'll put those out there for a second.
Push to talk.
Push to talk satellite radios.
But then we said, well, what about LTE cellular networks?
We want to do the same encrypted radio, but we want to be able to offer it to people on cellular, and we don't want it to be a $1,200 radio.
We want it to be a few hundred bucks so we can dispatch more of them.
So these actually work off of cellular networks across North America, and we blend them over to the satellite radio network.
So we could have...
50 people using the LTE radios, 10 people using the satellite radios, and they hear each other.
Whoa.
Wow, so that one, okay, this is new.
So that one talks to the Push to Talk 100s.
Correct.
Yeah, so all this is combined with...
Can we break for a second?
Well, yeah, but let me clarify.
And then, yeah, we can break and you can grab whatever you want.
But just to clarify, so let's say I run a sheriff's office and I know that some of my people are going to be in cell range most of the time.
I would give them this.
And then this is less expensive, obviously.
And they're using the cell towers.
But then they're talking to my team members who are using these, which are satellite only.
And we can even create different talk groups.
So we have like cellular talk group, satellite talk group, and then cellular sat talk group.
So that way we can keep those communications clean and isolated as we wish.
And how much do these cost, the cell tower ones?
The cell tower radios are roughly $380.
So they're still not really cheap radios, but they are made to last.
And they're also encrypted talking back to the satellite radios.
In order for all that to work though, we need a radio over IP box.
And that's what you're going to show us next?
Yeah.
Okay.
Keep rolling, guys.
He's going to grab some more hardware.
All right.
So, came back.
What we have here is a box called a ROIP box.
R-O-I-P. Radio over IP. Whoa.
Yeah.
So, what this box does, it's called the VEPG4. Victor Ekropapa 4.
This allows us to connect to a satellite radio.
And also LTE, cellular.
This allows us to bridge between satellite and cellular networks.
This can be fixed or this can be mobile.
This allows us to use it as a regular satellite radio or talk back over LTE to either one of the devices at any time.
Wait a second.
So we were just talking about this that uses cell towers, and you can define a group so that the push-to-talk satellite radios and the cell radios all work together.
What does this add on top of that?
All the different types of communications.
So in this box, we have LTE built in, cellular.
We have the ability to add satellite to it.
We have the ability just to plug in an Ethernet connection, just put it on the Internet.
We have the ability to hook up VHF, UHF radios.
Whoa.
So this allows us to bridge all forms of radio communication into one or just pick two.
We can just do cellular and satellite, which is 80% of the deployments today.
When we get into groups like Red Cross or other NGOs, they will actually take their existing radios.
They could be military Harris radios.
They could be Motorola Turbos.
They could be ICOMs, Kenwoods.
We plug that into the radio over IP box.
We plug our satellite radio into the IP box.
It has LTE built in.
And now we're able to access the interface and pick how we want to bridge these different mediums.
Wow.
And then because it's over IP, you can bridge to another box somewhere across the world.
A whole other box somewhere else.
Or even the dynamics and dimensions of where we're going into radio pretty deep here.
But for people who like radio, this is exciting because it is the first box off the shelf that's going to allow you to bridge all these different mediums of radio communication.
So a group that has a lot of investment already in legacy radio systems, maybe they're all using UHF. Don't throw them away.
Right.
You can bridge them into the new stuff and then slowly roll out the new stuff to your personality.
Even use it as a repeater to fill gaps in that existing network.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
So, Eric, the little radio on your far left there.
So that radio, amongst others, just like it.
Do you still need that box to use that between cellular and radio?
Are that...
Accents it.
The way when we activate these, you can have just these.
You can have just 10 of these if you want, and they all talk to cellular over each other.
If you want to talk cellular to satellite, we've got to go with the ROIT box.
Okay, I see.
That allows us to bridge the two together.
This has the same LTE guts built in as this guy.
It's already got the LTE SIM card module in it, and then we hook up a satellite radio to it, and now we're bridging satellite and cellular.
Okay, so you just have to have an antenna on this, or actually connect another sat radio?
Actually, one of these satellite radios connects over a connection cable to the box, or we can use the 100M. The 100M base radio is basically a base radio version...
Of the IC Sat 100s.
Oh.
So if you think of, I have a handheld 5 watt radio from Icon or Motorola, and then I have like maybe a 25 or 50 watt base radio installed in my truck or my rig.
This is kind of equivalent to that.
It's not made for a handheld or chest mount.
This is made to be installed in a truck, a rig, a building, a plane, or a boat.
Can that work as a repeater?
When it's plugged into the right box, yes.
Yes.
That's good.
Wow.
Okay, so now you've opened up all kinds of options to cover the entire planet and also given people ways to reduce costs if they have local cell access.
They can still use LTE tech on a cheaper radio, but then branch out with full-blown satellite radios where they need those.
It keeps going too, Mike.
There's an app you can install on your Android or iPhone or other device that allows you also to talk to this whole group.
From your phone?
From a regular phone.
Using whatever bandwidth your phone has.
Whether it's Wi-Fi.
Again, it's all about the move, shoot, communicate, Medicaid.
Now we're just doing it globally.
There's even a way you can put...
When we're active, you can have a dedicated phone number you can call into, and then you're talking to all these radios.
No way.
Yeah, so for businesses, they love this.
One person's able to call in and kind of talk to the satellites or the cellular radios.
It really goes different steps...
How deep you want to take it.
And you really kind of have to look at the whole presentation and go over the slide decks to kind of see how this fits into an organization.
But essentially, if you already have radios working in your organization, this plugs right into it.
Yeah, and I'm glad you said that because I can imagine this could be overwhelming for someone who's just maybe seen this for the first time.
Like, okay, I run, let's say, a warehouse operation like we run, and I just want radios for people on the floor.
Well, they might just go buy cheap Baofeng radios online, and they're going to work within a couple hundred yards, and they're good.
But if the warehouse gets bigger, they're going to need something else.
Or you have multiple warehouses.
Or multiple warehouses.
Different states, different countries.
Exactly.
Or you just want to add a layer of encryption around it.
Or especially oil rigs.
So a lot of energy exploration obviously takes place in out-of-the-way places.
And they don't have any infrastructure there at all.
They build their roads to get there.
So you serve a lot of oil industry folks, right?
Absolutely.
I mean, you name it, we're working with them.
And the ROIT Box has allowed us to do so much more because we can take existing radio networks, groups that already have existing radios, plug one of those radios into this guy, And now we're bridging it over to cellular.
Satellite radio, now we're bridging it over to satellite.
We're already putting together, like I said, a program mission.
And it's based off of RAPIDS, which is a rapid response, medical infrastructure, all that.
So we go into a disaster area, we set up, and the first thing that has to go up is comms.
And in the middle of nowhere.
And being able to bring that package easily, you know, not these, you know, huge boxes that we normally would have to bring, but be able to bring a small package like this and be able to set up comms that we can talk back to the U.S. and do that.
That's great.
Very popular with state, county, and municipalities.
They have a mandate, so to say, to...
To put interoperability, unified communications in their agencies that allows them to communicate from a VoIP desk phone to a cell phone to a radio.
ICOM doesn't care what you already have.
They don't care if your radio says ICOM or Kenwood or Motorola.
For a lot of our governments, they're working on the P25 radio protocol, which is a standardized protocol for LEOs and Law enforcement and others.
And this supports it as well.
So it plugs perfectly into commercial and law enforcement.
That's fantastic.
Public sector operations.
See, I'm a big fan of valuable metals like gold and silver, so I keep my eyes on mining, like mining companies.
There are nickels, a lot of lithium mining going on right now.
And I would imagine mining companies could benefit.
You must already serve a lot of mining companies.
All day.
Really?
All day.
Yeah, I mean, they're just constantly working.
I just found more gold down here.
Don't tell anybody.
Good thing this is encrypted, man.
Put that box to the side.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And if they're hundreds of feet underground, we have solutions that run cables down and we got that radio.
Hundreds of feet below Earth in bunkers or in the bottom of hydro dams, you name it.
We are asked to make these work anywhere, whether it's in the air, on land, or under the Earth.
That's awesome.
Our job is to fix them in.
I mean, I guess the only place it's not going to work is inside a submarine under the ocean.
You got me there.
They have their own low-frequency water-penetrating broadband.
Or a floating buoy antenna.
Yeah.
That's exactly what it is.
Yeah, either they surface or they float a buoy or they use acoustics.
Yeah.
But as long as you're not in a submarine, folks, this is going to work for you.
Or you're not deep underground.
But even then, you can run cables.
So again, we started with consumer applications like just giving people the opportunity to use an affordable messenger or satellite phone for their family, for their small business, or whatever they have.
And as the company has grown and as our customers have grown and needs have grown around the world, radios just fit in perfectly to so many applications.
So that's the reason we're here sharing it today.
HiCap, thank you so much for sharing your experiences.
They help us get better.
Absolutely.
Yeah, anything else you want to add, HiCap, about...
Applying this in the real world, rough conditions?
I tell you, the projection of things to come, as all your watchers and followers know from your previous reports, this is literally something you better jump on while you can, because even from my side, outside my military circuit to my private intel stuff, we are not seeing very good stuff.
I am not trying to throw a black eye at the government.
They did it to themselves.
So we better pay attention.
And this helps us.
What we do, we're just a small group.
We're not trying to get any recognition from the things we're doing, but we do want to tell you that this equipment works when you need it to.
And that's all that matters in that statement.
And I want to add that, you know, Tina, especially at the Satellite phone store, she, during COVID, she was really smart.
She acquired a massive amount of inventory because the supply chains all broke down.
Correct.
And, you know, I don't know what ICOM supply chain looks like.
You would know better than I. Six months from there to here.
Yeah.
So they're not readily available all the time.
Well, and I know that Inmarsat and Iridium phones, I mean, they rely on circuit boards and parts and polymers and so on.
And during COVID, the whole world supply chain shut down.
And for a while, you couldn't get anything.
It was all gone.
Now, that's improved a little bit since then, right?
A little bit, yeah.
But there's still major events.
One big major event could send inventory levels back down to their lowest levels.
We try it, well, we do stock for this.
We consider ourselves one of the largest stocking, satellite, phone, radio providers in the world.
But still, our minimum on-hand quantities wouldn't last more than one or two natural disasters or a war.
Yeah, and you know, HICAP, in fact, I saw this in the German media.
The US and Ukraine are about to launch a major attack against Russia.
They're going to attack the Crimea region, which Russia has said that's going to be a tipping point for them to escalate retaliation.
I mean, we could literally, at the time we're recording this, we could be...
You know, a couple weeks or 30 days away from World War III, frankly.
Well, I can neither confirm nor deny, but I will tell you this.
Lithium mines are being targeted regularly.
Being targeted regularly.
Who's targeting the lithium?
Different entities from the China side, Russia side, all working together who had never worked together before.
Really?
Yeah.
So that's a lot of South American mines?
Yeah.
That's correct.
I've been reached out for security consulting and also teams to put teams to work.
Because lithium is the new gold because of the clean energy push and obviously batteries and electric vehicles, which are still losing money for the car manufacturers, but that's a different story.
Did you happen to see the supertanker that was carrying lithium cars over and they were in an open deck, like just...
I don't know how many were on the deck, but the salt water was hitting them.
Oh, no.
Oh, and they all went up in flames on the deck of the ship.
That kind of fire you can't put out.
It was awesome.
Oh, my goodness.
But, yeah, I mean, we live in a very unstable world right now, folks.
I mean, I don't have to tell you, if you're watching this, you already know that.
Look at all the guests that we have, the interviews that we do with experts all around the world.
In uncertain times when you can't count on the supply chain or the infrastructure, you need a backup plan.
And what I've chosen and what HiCap here has chosen for his team and all the thousands of customers you work with, Eric, is these push-and-talk radios, satellite radios, the bivvy sticks, the InMarsat, the Iridium phones.
These items absolutely work.
They can allow you to reach a loved one or a family member When everything else is down and your family's freaking out, like, are you alive?
Are you still there?
You can call them.
Yeah, I'm still here, we're good.
This is life-saving text.
So just go to sat123.com and, you know, can they talk to you or who are they going to reach there?
Yeah, you can.
I know you're busy.
It probably won't reach me, but you can try and I'll be happy to get to as many people as possible.
We have teams we've trained.
I've trained to help people set this up properly and not buy more or less than what is what's needed for their application.
So, So they can describe what they want to do and your team will tell them sort of what's the best solution for that.
Everybody enjoys doing it just as much as I do at the company, yeah.
We all love that part of the job is listening, figuring out what the application is, and then seeing how we can help.
And we have something just about for everybody, wherever you're at.
Yeah, for sure.
All right.
Well, that's it, folks.
I want to thank HICAP here for taking time out of your schedule to join us here.
And please come back and give us your real-world stories of how you're using this equipment close to the border and border operations or elsewhere around the world.
Yeah, soon be elsewhere.
Okay.
Keep us posted.
And Eric, it's a pleasure to be able to meet you in person finally after all these years.
And thank you for bringing all this gear and showing people what this is all about and for helping people get squared away.
Never thought I'd be sitting here with you, but I have to say it's been a real joy listening to the stories, working with you, getting this into the hands of people that really need it.
It's been a lot of fun.
I've spoken to a lot of myself, so it's been a real life-changing experience working with your audience and the groups of people out there.
Which office are you based out of?
Sarasota, Florida.
Oh, okay.
So you had that hurricane that came through not long ago.
We did.
And a lot of the local law enforcement and responders were using our satellite radios because radio towers are knocked down or down or unavailable or they're jammed or they're saturated.
So, yeah, there's a lot of applications for that stuff.
You know, look, the world is not going to run out of emergencies, that's for sure.
So you're going to have lots of applications for this.
You too, HiCat.
They're not going to secure the border.
So you're never going to be out of a job.
Yeah, we say we're not out of a job, that's for sure.
There's always going to be someone or some other disaster happening, but thanks to solutions like this, we all have at least one more backup plan that can help us.
And of course, have your backup food supply, have your backup monetary system, whatever that is for you, backup comms, backup emergency medicine, off-grid medicine, shelter.
Make sure you can survive when the systems go down because as we're seeing now, three bank collapses in the United States A bank collapse in Europe just happened.
Credit Suisse.
The world is becoming a more fragile place.
Were you going to add something?
No, you're good.
Okay.
You weren't a bondholder on Credit Suisse, were you?
No.
Oh, good.
Because you would have been just wiped out.
That's correct.
Okay, good.
Stay out of the Credit Suisse bonds, in case you're wondering.
Bank bonds just went to zero.
No backup plan for those bondholders.
But don't forget, the U.S. is bailing them out.
Oh, I know.
I saw that.
The Fed has opened this liquidity window for other banks in other countries.
It's pretty wild, man.
I have no business.
Yeah, I mean, this is a relatively calm and easy show because we're talking about solutions.
You should join some of our other shows where we're talking about all the problems in the world.
It's like getting blackpilled all day long.
It's crazy, but hey, thank you all for watching.
Of course, I'm Mike Adams, brighttown.com, and visit our sponsor, satellite phone store, sat123.com, and put this to good use.
Help keep our world free as much as you can.
Thanks for watching today.
Thank you, Eric.
Thank you.
Thank you, HiCap.
You bet.
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