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Dec. 4, 2023 - Praying Medic

01:57:02

262V Off Grid Communication Featuring Desert Flashpoint

Join me for a comprehensive discussion about off-grid communication with my friend Desert Flashpoint. Desert Flashpoint Substack: https://substack.com/@desertflashpoint

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	Welcome everybody to the live stream.
	We're gonna wait for some more people to join.
	Dave, I think you are unmuted.
	I am unmuted.
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	And I remembered to Hit the record button.
	Awesome!
	Let's give it a minute and allow some people to join the live stream.
	Roger that.
	Yeah.
	And in case anybody's wondering, my minion is in her bedroom playing video games with her friends and you might hear her screaming through the doors in excitement.
	So if you wonder what the screaming is in the background, that's what it is.
	Those are screams of happiness out of gaming life, I guess.
	But yeah, I'm Desert Flashpoint.
	This is the live stream with myself and the Prairie Medic, Dave Hayes.
	We're going to talk communications, backup communications, radio, so on and so forth.
	Just allowing people the opportunity to join.
	I hope some of you brought some questions.
	We'll have a little Q&A at the end.
	In case anybody has any questions about radio or backup communications.
	I have a lot of questions.
	I hope you can answer them. - I have a lot of questions too.
	I don't know everything, but hopefully, you know, between the collective, we can figure it all out, right?
	Go ahead.
	Thank you.
	No, I just said hopefully.
	Yeah.
	Do you want to get started?
	Sure.
	Okay.
	Well, again, I'm Desert Flashpoint.
	I want to thank everybody for being here.
	This is kind of like my second or third live stream, so I'm just going to fly by the seat of my pants here.
	I'm not sticking to any particular script or anything.
	I have an outline, Dave, of what we talked about for our topic, but that's about it.
	But we're just going to jump right in here and talk a little bit about backup communications.
	One of the things I wanted to mention off the bat is that when you have your own type of backup communications, you're basically coming off of the grid communications.
	You're grid free.
	You have your own decentralized form of communication and you're an independent operator.
	And why is that important?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Why is that important?
	And the more people you have that are like you, the better, because you can talk to more people.
	It's like, you know, the early days when the World Wide Web was first coming out, you know, and the more websites you had to go to, you know, the more information, the more places and the more things you could see on the web.
	Let's get to the why, though.
	Why do you want to have backup communications?
	And Dave, do you want to answer that question first?
	Why do we want to have backup communications?
	Yeah.
	Here's, I'll give you a couple of reasons.
	Recently, the director of CISA, that's the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration, has put out warnings That both Russia and China are planning massive cyber attacks on US infrastructure.
	And talking specifically about power grids, talking about gas distribution infrastructure, talking about communications infrastructure, military installations, the head of a government cybersecurity agency is telling us that our Our enemies are planning cyber attacks on our infrastructure.
	That alone should concern people.
	If you're used to sending text messages to your friends and relatives and emailing people and shopping on Amazon and everything else we do on the internet and on our phones, that alone is one reason that can make all of that stuff go away.
	And there are other possibilities.
	You know, the federal government and the president has the right during wartime to completely shut down the Internet and take over government control of the Internet, take over telecoms, phone, email, everything.
	So there are a number of scenarios out there for large-scale Internet and phone disruptions, but it happens on a small-scale basis all the time.
	It's happened in Israel since they started their war in Hamas.
	They have lost internet service and phone service a number of times for, you know, a day or two locally.
	So, you know, what we're talking about here is having ways to communicate in the event that some kind of a crisis happens that takes away our normal way of communicating.
	Back to net control.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Those are very good reasons.
	Yeah.
	And I just want to throw out there that there's already a lot of People who live in areas of the country where there's natural disasters, where they've already implemented, you know, backup communications.
	I don't know if you know this, but during the Katrina hurricane in 2003, the communications for the National Weather Service went down, and it was ham radio operators operating on backup power that were able to get Conditions on the ground, radioed outside of the affected areas, and to get people help.
	So, ham radio in particular played a crucial role in that area, and there are people who have already thought this through because of the areas they live in, whether it's earthquake zones, tornadoes, hurricanes, so on and so forth, and they've already, you know, gone through the motions of getting licensed, and we'll get to all that.
	But, what kind of backup communications Exist in in what kind of modes are available for operating?
	Do you want to talk talk a little bit about that?
	Yeah, well, you know there's gosh you and I have been delving deep into all the different ways you can communicate Aside from just you know using text messaging on a phone and an email believe successfully I might add to successfully Yeah, so far.
	We've had pretty good success so There are a lot of different ways you can communicate in alternative ways to communicate.
	One of the most common ways that people use right now in a non-emergency way is General Mobile Radio Service, GMRS.
	And there are related ways to communicate.
	These are all, we're talking about handheld radios for the most part, although GMRS does give the option to have mobile radios you can use in your vehicle.
	But, you know, at the very shallow end of the pool, there is handheld radios that you can buy at any, you know, hardware store, any department store.
	They're inexpensive radios.
	They cost about 20 bucks.
	They're licensed under what the FCC calls FRS, Family Radio Service.
	Family Radio Service, handheld radios, operate on less than half a watt.
	They have 22 pre-programmed channels.
	A lot of people use them for very short distance communications, you know, a couple of blocks.
	Nice for going camping if, you know, you're at the campsite and your kids are going down to the lake.
	And it's, you know, five or six hundred feet away.
	You can communicate with your kids locally.
	They have a radio.
	You have a radio.
	You know, if they don't have their cell phone and you don't have cell service, it's a nice option.
	But the thing is, with FRS, they're inexpensive, no licenses required, but they have low power and very short distance.
	You're not going to be able to communicate with those radios more than about a half a mile, maybe a mile if you have Very, you know, if you have no trees and houses and buildings in the way, if you have a straight line of sight between you and the person you're talking to, you might be able to talk half a mile or even a mile.
	But generally, they have short, short range.
	And so for that, that's one reason why they're less than ideal for emergency communications.
	The other thing is, in an emergency, because those radios only have 22 channels that you're allowed to use, In an emergency, everybody who has one is going to be on their little radios, chattering away with their neighbors and friends.
	And those frequencies get jammed up pretty quickly, and you can't get a message through.
	So for those two reasons, FRS is not an ideal option for emergency communications, other than they're inexpensive and they're convenient.
	The next step up In that same vein is what I refer to as GMRS, General Mobile Radio Service.
	GMRS, same idea, actually uses the same 22 frequencies.
	These are handheld radios that, the handheld radios can be powered up to 5 watts.
	And a 5 watt handheld radio can actually get you out a couple of miles.
	If you are able to connect to a repeater, you might be able to talk to people 25, 30, 40, 50 miles away.
	Depending on the height of the repeater, depending on your location, their location, and all these different things.
	But, GMRS radios... Yeah, go ahead.
	Yeah, for those who might not know, a repeater is basically, it's like a cell phone tower for radio.
	You know, it's got an antenna, and it's got the ability to rebroadcast your message out to a wider range.
	So, you're It's similar to, like I said, a cell phone tower, but it's basically like another radio and they put them up on mountains or on buildings or on towers so that it can reach out further.
	Correct.
	So I just wanted to explain that for those who are listening who might not know what a repeater is.
	I was going to explain, but you did a better job.
	So I was going to start with just, you know, we're talking about handheld radios, which are the easiest to use.
	Yeah.
	Handheld radios generally are limited to about 5 watts.
	Some of the handheld radios claim that they put out 8 or 10 watts.
	In fact, they only put out about 6 watts max, maybe 7 watts.
	And that's kind of an irrelevant point because a 5 watt radio or a 6 watt radio isn't going to give you any, there's really no difference in the range of those radios.
	They all transmit a few miles.
	And up to like 50 miles if you're using a repeater.
	So the nice thing about GMRS is it is it's kind of a halfway point between the cheap family radio service radios and ham radio because you get a little more distance if you use it with a repeater or with with a mobile radio.
	But you don't have to take a test to get your license.
	GMRS does require an FCC license to operate.
	However, there's no test.
	So you pay your $35 to the FCC.
	They give you a license.
	They give you a call sign.
	You can then go get your handheld radios.
	You can buy a mobile radio.
	There are GMRS radios that transmit up to 50 watts.
	And if you can get an antenna up in the air, you know, on top of your house, and connect that to your 50 watt radio, you have a radio that can talk a pretty far distance.
	50, 60 miles probably.
	So these are a couple of options.
	You left out one, the best part.
	And that is?
	You can cover up to nine other family members with that GMRS license.
	I forgot to say that.
	And actually, you want to know what?
	Someone said the other day that the GMRS license not only covers you and your family, but anyone that you designate.
	Exactly.
	So you could actually have your neighborhood working on your GMRS license.
	That's right.
	And it's good for 10 years.
	Yes.
	And it's good for 10 years.
	The thing about GMRS and FRS and all of these handheld radios is they generally operate on batteries.
	They have rechargeable batteries, right?
	So if the power grid goes down, And your computer doesn't work and you can't send emails.
	Do you have backup power for your computer, for your home, for your devices?
	Your phone will work for a while in a power outage, but if the power outage is simultaneous with a loss of cell phone service or internet service, now you don't have power and you don't have internet service and you don't have phone service.
	Now you're really relying not just on battery power or a solar generator or backup gasoline generator, but you're also having to figure out, OK, what kind of communication devices do I have that work on batteries?
	Handheld radios are nice because they're battery operated.
	And if you use them wisely in a crisis, if you're not on there frantically transmitting every five minutes to anyone who can hear you, You'll actually be able to use that radio for quite a while during a crisis.
	And battery management is an issue, as this gentleman here can attest to with his training that he's been doing over the last couple of years.
	Do you want to have anything to say about that?
	Well, you opened up a whole other dimension to this conversation, because battery power, battery backup power, is part and parcel to the radio.
	And it's absolutely critical.
	In a grid down scenario, you're going to need to have some source of power.
	So although this conversation is focused on ham radio and communications, that does play in and it is a whole separate conversation to be had.
	But it's important to know that, you know, if you're planning for a grid down scenario, which I am, I operate a lot on battery power.
	In fact, you know I've done extensive testing with solar generators this year.
	Hey man, I've been on battery power the last two weekend Sunday nets that we did at HF.
	I'm operating on my batteries now.
	I'm not using household current.
	Very good.
	Yeah, I've run washing machine... I ran my refrigerator for several months on just battery backup power and figured out, hey, I can't run my fridge and my washing machine at the same time.
	I have to Trying to figure out, you know, when I want to wash the clothes and unplug the refrigerator.
	And yeah, so I've done some very extensive testing.
	But yeah, it's important to know that if you're going to be planning for that kind of event, and you're looking at communications, you also have to take into consideration how are you going to power your radios.
	So, and being able to recharge the batteries, so on and so forth.
	That's an issue.
	You know, you and I live in Arizona where the sun shines 300 plus days a year.
	So solar is a good option for us.
	And I don't want to rap trail too far away from the backup communications issue.
	However, a radio doesn't do you any good if you can't power it.
	That's right.
	And there's ways to communicate using phones as well.
	But phones, radios, every communication device requires some source of power.
	In addition to thinking about what kind of backup communication devices do I need, you need to factor in what kind of backup power do I need to power these devices in the event that there's a power outage.
	And so, you know, you can buy inexpensive solar panels that you can sit outside in the sun, charge, you know, like a solar generator or just some of the solar panels, the smaller ones, they have charge controllers that will directly charge a mobile device.
	Or a walkie-talkie radio or other devices as well.
	That's right.
	Yeah, that's exactly right.
	I want to shift a little bit.
	We'll talk about the hand bands in a minute, the amateur radio stuff.
	But I want to ask you about satellite communications because... Ooh!
	Here's the thing because I feel like being diversified in as many forms of communication as possible is going to be absolutely important moving forward because sometimes one mode doesn't work and you have if you have something else to take its place to resort to and this ties into why it's important to have a communication plan and we'll also get to that but If you have other forms of communication, you're diversified, you can still communicate.
	Can you speak a little bit about like satellite comms in particular?
	Why that's something to look at as well?
	Yep.
	So we're going to be kind of going through a hierarchy of options for off-grid communications.
	We're going to start at the most simple, the least expensive, and then we're going to go toward ones that are a little more complex.
	Some that require licenses, some don't.
	Right.
	So Family Radio Service, FRS, the cheap and expensive radios, first option.
	GMRS, General Mobile Radio Service, is the next option up.
	Like I said, it does require a license, but it doesn't require a test.
	And you can cover your entire family with that.
	And if you have family that lives nearby within 50 miles and you have a repeater, you're good with that.
	And I want to say one thing about GMRS.
	You can go on repeaterbook.com and put in your zip code and find out if there is a GMRS repeater near you.
	There's a lot of public open access GMRS repeaters around the country.
	And if you have a GMRS repeater in your area and you can hit that, you can contact, make a connection to that repeater with the handheld radio at your house.
	And if you have neighbors and relatives that can use that repeater, You have a pretty good way to communicate in a grid-down situation.
	So I didn't want to go away from GMRS before I said that.
	So let's talk about satellite communications.
	Satellite communications is a reasonably good off-grid alternative for communications.
	Typically, over the last 15-20 years, people have used satellite phones as the way to Communicate via satellite when they're in remote areas where there's no internet, no cell phone service.
	Satellite phones are expensive.
	The data plans are expensive.
	There is a less expensive way to do it.
	And you can buy these devices that connect to like the Iridium or other satellite networks.
	And what they do is they connect by Bluetooth to your phone through a mobile app.
	And then you can send text messages on your phone.
	The messages are then transmitted through this device, a little device about the size of a pager, and the device then, if it's outside and it can't connect to the satellite, it will then send text messages over the satellite network.
	These devices are less expensive, typically between $150 and $200.
	They're sold by Zolio, they're sold by Garmin, has a couple models, and BivyStick is another one.
	So, a lot of people use these devices for backcountry hiking, kayaking, sailing.
	When they're truly off-grid, when they're out in the middle of nowhere, and they need to communicate with their loved ones at home, they can send text messages to someone who has, you know, another device and is connected to the satellite network.
	So far, so good.
	The satellite communicators work As long as the Internet is working, okay?
	I talked to a technician, a customer service representative at Zolio, and asked them, do these messages, is the pathway that they take strictly space-based, or do these messages go through ground-based Internet servers?
	And the guy said, no, they go through ground-based internet service.
	It's not completely satellite-based.
	And I said, so if we had a cyber attack where there was a widespread loss of internet service, would your service work?
	And he said, probably not.
	Wow.
	Because although when you put your satellite receiver outside, it connects to the satellite directly, That satellite is connected to ground-based Internet servers that send messages around.
	So that is the fly in the ointment with satellite communications, is it still relies on ground-based Internet servers.
	And a lot of people have this idea that Starlink is going to be the fabulous answer to all these problems, because Starlink, it's satellite-based.
	No, it's not.
	The only thing that's satellite-based with Starlink is how the end user receives their signal.
	The communications gateway, the data servers, everything else that goes with Starlink, it's all on ground-based internet service.
	So if there is a widespread loss of internet service for Cox and Comcast and everybody else, Starlink is not going to have service.
	Uh, that's just how it works.
	So on the one hand, I think if let, let me give you a scenario.
	Let's say that, um, Verizon and T-Mobile had their service disrupted for a week, but the internet is still available.
	If internet servers are not down, and if it's, if we have loose the ability for cell phone services to provide service, Satellite communications would be a viable option because satellite services use internet servers.
	They don't require cell phone service.
	On the other hand, if we lost a large number of internet servers for whatever reason, they got hacked or taken down, that would impinge the ability to use satellite communications.
	Do you remember in the beginning I said I had questions?
	Yeah.
	I'm still wondering if satellites and their ability to communicate are affected by space weather.
	And I'm also curious as to whether or not they're prone to hacking.
	Yeah, so satellite communications is highly susceptible to disruption by coronal mass ejections and solar storms.
	Whenever they do, you know, we get a like an M class, X class for sure, but even a high M class storm will knock out satellite communications temporarily.
	Interesting.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's interesting.
	Okay.
	Well, that's a lot of good information about satellite comms.
	And then if you can afford to buy a satellite phone, you're not using the terrestrial based System to make a phone call as long as the call is going to the satellite to another satellite phone But again the barrier to that would be you have to buy a plan you might have to buy the phone You know and there's there's costs associated with that and some of those phones aren't cheap.
	They're almost as much as a ham radio oh, yeah satellite phones generally start around what $1,200 and The monthly data plans are about $120 a month.
	It's not cheap to have a satellite phone.
	Zolio.
	I have a Zolio and my kids all have Zolios.
	We got them for $150 and the data plans start at $20 a month, which is pretty reasonable.
	You know, speaking of kids, I wanted to throw one more thing out there with regards to GMRS and FRS.
	So I have a set of GMRS, FRS walkie-talkies that I give to my kids for going to the park because I refuse to buy a cell phone for them for the longest time.
	And I wanted a way to communicate with them when they're just going a couple houses down or going to the neighborhood park.
	And this gets them exposed to radio.
	So I thought it was a good way to kind of Plant that seed for amateur radio for later on in life.
	Oh yeah, no, that's a great idea.
	I've been doing it for years, so it's great.
	But now the youngest has a cell phone, so we don't use it quite as often anymore.
	But I still make her take it with her, you know, when she's going somewhere around the neighborhood, just as kind of like a backup.
	Yeah.
	So I just want to give, you know, some of the others on the, on the live stream, you know, some ideas there, you know, these, these actually, I, I deploy this stuff practically in my everyday life, pretty much every day.
	Yeah, well, um, I don't know that I do, but I'm practicing a lot.
	You know, when I'm not writing books, editing books and writing emails, I am trying to be more active with my radios on UHF, VHF, HF and Arden and everything else.
	I actually brought out an antenna today that I hadn't used in a while.
	It's a vertical antenna that mounts on a tripod base, and it's got a loading coil, and it has a sectioned metal antenna and it has a sectioned metal antenna mass, sort of like the tent camping poles.
	Okay.
	That go in sections.
	Yes.
	And I put that thing up, put it on the tripod, the loading coil screws onto the tripod, and then the shock-corded metal stick is about 11 feet long and it screws onto the top of the loading coil.
	Well, the loading coil broke.
	It's made out of plastic.
	The housing is plastic.
	The threaded part that screws onto the tripod broke off.
	Wow.
	The whole thing fell over in my yard.
	And I was like, what in the world just happened?
	So I got a hold of the company and they said, yeah, we can get you another one.
	But the thing is, I hadn't used that antenna in a long time.
	And if I had not gotten out and actually try to deploy that thing, I wouldn't have known that there was going to be a failure of that part.
	Right.
	In a grid-down situation, when you can't email the company or call them, that's the wrong time to find out that you need a new part for your antenna.
	I was gonna say!
	Yeah, it's good that I dragged that thing out today.
	And I was actually, when we did our HFNet this afternoon, I was Trying to get on the air with that thing, but it does not work very well for what we're doing.
	It's not good for Envis, I don't think.
	I could hear you starting the net on that radio, but your signal was really, really weak.
	So anyway, I didn't want to rabbit trail too much.
	No, no, we'll talk about Envis.
	This comes to, though, an interesting point, which is it's not enough to just get a radio or two Or some device that you think you're going to be able to use in a grid-down situation.
	If you buy something, a radio, and never use it, you're not going to know what frequency to be on.
	You're not going to know how to program it.
	You're not going to know how to troubleshoot it.
	You're not going to know who to talk to on what frequency.
	You have to... If you're going to use grid-down communications, you have to practice using these devices.
	Like, just imagine...
	Just imagine if you bought a cell phone and it has a whole bunch of cool apps on it that you communicate with and you never communicate with anyone and never use those apps.
	And then three years from now you get in a situation where you suddenly have to learn how to communicate with people with a phone using apps you've never used before.
	You're not going to know what to do.
	You're not going to know how to contact people.
	There's a learning curve to everything that has to do with communications.
	And so You know, the radio systems that we're talking about, you have to, once you get the radio, you better start practice using it or you will not be able to use it in a crisis.
	So in 2008, when Obama got elected, that was me.
	I bought my first radio.
	It was like a Baofeng or something, a UV5R model.
	And I literally just put it in a box or in a backpack somewhere and didn't touch it for about 10 years, maybe.
	Maybe, well, maybe like eight years.
	I think it was like 2017 is when I got my license and I actually got that radio out and I said, okay, I'm going to learn how to use this thing now.
	And it didn't, I never knew how to use it.
	I never knew how to program it.
	I didn't know how to communicate with it.
	I knew nothing.
	So what you're describing was me when I first bought my first radio.
	And a lot of people have that expectation.
	That they're going to be able to pick up this radio and magically and suddenly know how to use it.
	You know, I have a scanner that is really difficult to use too.
	It's really hard to program.
	In fact, my dad programmed it for me because he's got the software and he has one just like it.
	To me, it's almost like a nightmare to program.
	Some of these radios are really difficult to program.
	And every time I go to reprogram a Yaesu, I'm like, okay, what am I going to use?
	Am I going to use the Yaesu software or am I going to use RT software?
	And it's like you have to relearn how to program the radio because you might only do it once or twice a year.
	Dude, I can't tell you how many times I bought a radio, programmed it, and then You know, eight months later, I realized I haven't used this radio.
	I forgot what channels are programmed.
	I want to change some of the channels.
	How do I do this?
	How did I do it before?
	What's the workflow?
	So yeah, all of that is to say, the issues are real when it comes to these radios.
	Because if you buy a radio, you can't just buy a radio.
	It's not programmed for the frequencies you're going to want to use.
	Unless, if you buy a GMRS, or an FRS radio, they have pre-set frequencies.
	You don't have to worry about programming them, but if you're going to go into amateur radio, and some of you might want to do that, you get into amateur radio where you need to get a license and take a test, then you're going to have to learn how to program radios, program in frequencies, program in repeaters, program in shifts, repeater shifts and offsets, and PL tones, and all of that gets to be very complicated.
	And there's a learning curve to it, and you're not going to learn it during a crisis, so you have to learn it ahead of time.
	Hey, can we shift real quickly to another subject related to this, which is listening only?
	During a crisis, some people are not really going to want to have a two-way radio where they're going to be talking.
	They're just going to want to know, how do I get information in an emergency?
	So, yeah, there are a number of ways that you can get information via radio during an emergency.
	One of those ways is AM or FM radio.
	In every major metropolitan area, there are a couple of AM and usually one FM station that are designated as emergency broadcast stations.
	In a crisis, in an emergency, They will shift from the regular programming and they will start carrying news and information about the crisis and they'll dedicate their airtime to just covering the news of the emergency during a crisis.
	So one good thing to do is to look on the do an Internet search for your area and find out which is the local AM or FM radio station.
	That is the designated as an emergency broadcast station in your area.
	And if you just kind of write that down on a piece of paper and keep that handy somewhere.
	If the lights go out, if communications goes down, you can at least tune to your, go in your car.
	Your truck, if you have an AM or FM radio in it, and you can at least listen there to an AM or FM broadcast and find out what's going on.
	That's so that's one way to to find out you know get to get news and information doesn't cost anything.
	It's easy.
	Anyone can do it.
	And it's it's just something to put in the back of your mind.
	Another thing to think about in that same vein is having a scanner.
	A lot of people have scanners emergency scanners.
	You can you can buy a scanner.
	You can program them for To listen to local emergency, you know, Sheriff's Department, Police Department, Fire Department, EMS.
	Yeah.
	And you can monitor your local dispatchers and get a sense of what's going on.
	Now, there's a caveat with that.
	A lot of areas have gone to trunked radio communications and encoded communications.
	And so it used to be, you know, 40 years ago, it was easy.
	You could just buy a scanner program in the local frequencies and you're good to go.
	Um, they've made it a little more difficult to actually track some of the, some agencies have gone to more sophisticated radio programming.
	So you may have to, depending on your area and what radio systems they're using, you, you, the type of scanner you need is going to vary.
	So that's a second option.
	The third option is a shortwave radio.
	Shortwave radios are really cool.
	I've got one and the shortwave radio is a listening only radio.
	You don't transmit on it.
	And what it does is it picks up radio stations around the world.
	So they usually have a long antenna.
	Most of them come with a telescoping metal antenna usually three or four feet long.
	A lot of them have a little Jack in the side where you can plug in an extension antenna, or you can just take a copper wire and wrap it around the standard antenna and take that long wire and just, you know, hang it up on the curtains in your house.
	And if you have a longer antenna for a shortwave radio, you'll be able to pick up stations better.
	Shortwave stations, most shortwave radios go down into the AM and FM bands, medium wave, long wave, short wave.
	A good one will cover the ham radio bands.
	Well if you if you spend a little bit more money you'll get a shortwave radio that has single sideband so you can listen to the ham radio bands upper and lower sideband which we transmit on.
	Again it's just listening.
	And if you're interested in having a way to monitor communications from other people radio stations around the world at least radio stations in the Western Hemisphere.
	Shortwave radio is something to consider looking into.
	They're not terribly expensive, and it's good to have one.
	Wow.
	Yeah, that's a lot of good information that I didn't even know about shortwave.
	So, that's incredible.
	By the way, you can make antennas out of a lot of different materials.
	And we could probably spend an entire day talking about antennas.
	Just antennas.
	I could spend two hours just talking about speaker wire antennas.
	Right, yeah.
	By the way folks, Dave made me a speaker wire antenna for the 80 meter band, which is an HF band, and it's on the roof of my house.
	I literally just threw it.
	I took a dog toy, I attached it to that, and I threw that dog toy over the roof of my house to get it up there.
	Got the dog toy back, fortunately.
	The dog's happy.
	But it's up there.
	Nobody can see it.
	The HOA doesn't even know it's up there, so it's great.
	I want to shift and pivot to the amateur radio bands before we run out of time.
	I want to talk about HF, VHF, HF, MESH, and then I also want to cover licensing and INVIS and a comms plan.
	Oh my gosh!
	Yeah, let's do it.
	But let's segue in with a Yagi because here's the thing.
	I mentioned there's different types of antennas.
	The antenna that comes with a lot of handheld
	What we call handy talk is your HT radio that you hold in your hand the antenna Coming off of that is is an omni directional antenna or the RF radiates in every direction But if you attach a Yagi to to that radio or any radio you can point you can focus the RF energy in in one direction or at least Get it started in one direction now.
	We'll spread out over over distance but That Yagi will enable you to communicate Better, in my opinion.
	Dave, you might be able to chime in on that.
	For instance, I'm going to just describe our experiments with radio, where I've gone out in my backyard, you've gone out in yours, and we've both gone out there with handheld Yaggies and pointed them at each other.
	As soon as we're able to get the signal dialed in, the audio is pretty darn good.
	There's some distance between us.
	I just did this last week with my dad with a handheld Yagi on 70 centimeter and he's, you know, almost 15 miles away and we're using 10 watts of power.
	Okay.
	And it was great.
	I mean, I could hear him on analog.
	Oh yeah.
	I want to talk about modes too.
	So analog versus digital, but you know, if we don't get to it all, that's fine.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so I was able to communicate with him, but as soon as you turn that Yagi away, you just get static, and the quality of the communication just goes way down into the mud right away.
	So you can dial it in, and There's something else worth mentioning here as well, with regards to the Yagi, particularly with 70 centimeters, because it's such a small wavelength, it's able to bounce around and find pathways that other wavelengths can't find.
	I think that you actually don't have a door I fly into sight with me when you communicate, so you're bouncing your signal off of another structure to get it to me, which is very interesting.
	I'm literally pointing my antenna at a house across the street!
	Which is just phenomenal, but you wouldn't know this unless you went out and tried it, and that's why these experiments are so important.
	You have to get out and actually practice your comms and see what your capabilities are.
	So, I'll send it to you, sir.
	What are your comments on this?
	Yeah, so let's talk about Yagi antennas.
	As you said, there's different types of antennas, and when I was talking about the effective transmission range of these handheld radios, With an FRS radio, you're limited to about a half a mile range on a good day.
	And FRS radios, by the way, you can't change the antennas.
	The antenna that they come with, that's what you're stuck with.
	You can't change them.
	With GMRS, with some GMRS radios, you can change the antenna.
	And like he said, a standard little rubber duck or whip antenna, you know, that's, you know, eight to 10 inches long, or maybe 13 inches long, radiates the energy, the RF radio frequency energy, in all directions.
	And that's fine if you don't know where the person is that you want to talk to.
	In that case, the radio signal goes out in all directions.
	A little bit of that signal goes north, some of it goes east, some goes west, and you have a relatively weak signal going in every direction.
	What he's talking about here, a Yagi antenna, is an antenna that has, it's basically, it's a stick.
	It's what we call it a boom.
	It has a boom that is a stick, usually about two or three feet long, and it has cross members that go across at a 90 degree angle to the direction of the boom.
	So if I take the stick and point it south, it's going to have two or three or four or five cross members secured to it that go east and west, that go 90 degrees to it.
	And what that does is It increases the gain of the antenna, or it effectively increases signal strength, both transmitting and receiving.
	So what a Yagi antenna does is, if you have a 5-watt handheld radio that, under normal circumstances, will only transmit 2 or 3 miles, if you hook a Yagi antenna to it, you might be able to transmit 10 or 15 miles.
	OK?
	And here's where it gets interesting.
	If you have family members or friends who live within 10 or 15 miles and you want to communicate with them using handheld radios, you can do it, but you have to have the right antenna.
	And so what what Desert Flashpoint and I have been doing over the last six months to a year, we've been experimenting with handheld radios and these Yagi antennas and seeing how far away we can communicate Using directional antennas rather than these standard antennas.
	And we've been able to increase our distance quite significantly.
	How far you can transmit on a radio, these types of radios we're talking about, is really dependent on the terrain.
	So if I go up on a mountaintop and he's on a mountaintop and we're 40 or 50 miles away, we can talk to each other fine on a 5 watt radio.
	Because there's nothing between us to block the signals.
	But if we're down at ground level, and we've got suburban neighborhoods, trees, houses in between, all of that stuff absorbs radio signal, and that decreases your range.
	So, if you're able, one of the things we talk about in radio is getting your antenna as high as you can.
	Getting your antenna up in the air, on a roof, on a pole of some kind, Gives you a better chance of having that signal received by somebody else.
	Whereas having it down at ground level, a lot of that signal is going to get absorbed by trees and buildings.
	And so the Yagi antenna is brilliant because it increases the gain and helps you overcome the loss of signal that typically happens to trees and buildings that are in the way.
	All right, so back to you, sir.
	Yeah, that's a pretty good explanation, actually.
	Yeah, and they make Yakis for UHF, VHF, HF, and even in your 900 megahertz, if you drive around, if you're in a suburban area, Take a look at, you know, well stations or municipal areas.
	You'll see a little antenna that the city or the county authority, you know, whoever your municipal appality is, they'll actually use these tiny little yaggies for signaling.
	It's kind of interesting.
	I drive around, I see where all the well sites are, and there's their little yaggie antenna.
	What do you want to talk about with regards to amateur radio?
	Because there's a lot to cover, and we're not going to get to it all.
	Yeah, well, you know, just kind of a basic overview, I think, of the UHF, VHF UHF.
	It would be a good starter.
	Okay.
	Let's see.
	Your tech license is going to be your intro level license in an amateur radio, and that's going to give you, like, privileges on those two bands specifically.
	And you can communicate, like you and I, we're using the Yagi's with UHF and VHF.
	Yep.
	So, in the same way that GMRS radio uses handheld radios, primarily, for people to communicate to each other, mostly using repeaters, although there's caveats to that.
	He and I communicate using handheld radios, sometimes using a standard whip antenna, sometimes we use a Yagi antenna, and sometimes we communicate with a repeater.
	There are several repeaters in the area where we live that, you know, that it's, these are, essentially it's a radio that's mounted up at a high elevation, sometimes on a tower, sometimes on top of a mountain, on a water tower, or some tall building.
	And a repeater is a radio that receives signals from other radios and then retransmits them, usually at a higher power.
	We transmit on a 5-watt radio.
	Now, the Ocotillo repeater near us retransmits, I think, at 230 watts, and it covers a large area.
	So when you get into amateur radio, into the VHF, very high frequency bands, and the UHF, ultra high frequency bands.
	We start using handheld radios more often with repeaters, although you can use them without repeaters, just using a standard antenna.
	But the use of a repeater allows you greater distance.
	Now, because we're talking about off-grid communications, we have to talk about The weakness of repeaters.
	If your radio communications plan is going to rely on a repeater, you'd better darn well know if that repeater has backup power.
	Because if you have a power grid, if you have a loss of power, if your power grid goes down, and you're used to talking on a handheld radio using a repeater all the time, and that repeater suddenly is not available because it doesn't have backup power, Then that part of your communications plan is toast.
	So Desert Flashpoint and I, we use repeaters periodically, but we're also, we're not relying on repeaters as a main part of our emergency plan.
	There are a couple of repeaters in the Phoenix area.
	Hey, Kazuko is listening!
	Hey, Kazuko!
	My friend from Japan.
	There are some repeaters in our area that have solar backup power, and many of them have battery backup power.
	But battery backup power is only going to work as long as you have a way to charge the batteries.
	If it's a gas generator or a diesel generator or some other device, how long can you keep that thing fueled?
	Oh, Jen is on here too.
	Hey, Jen.
	Um, how long can you, are those batteries able to be sustained?
	How long are they be able to charge?
	You know, one of the repeaters that we use has a solar system, a solar backup power, and that thing's been operating on solar only for what, six weeks now, seven weeks, I think?
	Yeah.
	So that is, they're still testing it.
	Yeah, they're testing it, but it's been, I think it's been on air for seven weeks, but working only on solar power.
	I think that's the only one in our area that's completely solar independent.
	I believe you are correct.
	I mean, we have all these link repeaters around the state of Arizona.
	I think this is the only one that I'm aware of that's on solar backup.
	Right.
	And most of the repeaters that are on some kind of backup power, you could reasonably assume that they're going to be on the air for a couple of days, maybe a week.
	But it's not wise to plan.
	On having a repeater for use long-term in a power grid down, if we have a grid down situation, unless that repeater is powered by solar.
	And, Mr. Desert Flashpoint, I don't know if I told you this, but I have my own GMRS repeater.
	Yeah, yeah, you've mentioned it, yeah.
	I've deployed it once on the roof of the house just to test it out.
	And that thing can be solar powered.
	If we need to set up the GMRS, Peter, I can do that.
	I've got radios to go with it.
	It's got its own solar power.
	So, going back to the UHF, VHF thing.
	In the context of emergency setting, where Internet goes down, cell phone service goes down, possibly the power grid goes down, You have to think, you know, again, how am I going to power these radios?
	UHF and VHF radios for amateur have a lot of advantages when there's power, but you're back to working with just radio to radio if you don't have a repeater.
	And so, you know, I don't know that there's actually a whole lot of advantage to amateur radio in a grid-down situation.
	If you don't have a repeater to use, you might as well just use your GMRS radio.
	Unless you're on HF.
	Because GMRS radios, you know, you could have a mobile radio that puts out 50 watts if you have the ability to power it, or a handheld radio that puts out 5 watts.
	And it's the same thing for... Yeah, go ahead.
	That's a perfect segue into HF and Invis communication.
	Because if we're on HF and it for, okay, so NVIS is N-V-I-S, Near Vertical Incident Skywave.
	I don't want to, I know that's a big term for some people.
	We're going into the deep end of the pool.
	I know, this is more of an advanced topic, but that's why hammering is so cool.
	You can do so many cool things with it.
	So what I'm talking about here is basically taking in a piece of wire And lowering it closer to the ground where it sends my radio signal straight up and bounces it off the ionosphere right back down.
	And Dave and I can communicate on HF locally using this method, just like we can communicate on UHF and VHF with our Yagis.
	Now it's a little bit different.
	You know, it's the, gosh, there's so many things going on here.
	Yeah, well, and what he's talking about here is with amateur radio, if you have your amateur, general amateur radio license, okay, so if you get your technician, the technician is the first level of amateur radio license.
	The technician license allows you to talk on the VHF and UHF radio bands, generally using handheld radios, very often using repeaters, and you have a little bit of a
	The 10 meter band which you can use but it's it's very small limited for get six meter to If you take the test for the general amateur radio general test Your general license allows you to work all of the high-frequency HF bands.
	So the 80 meter band 40 meter band 60 meters 30 meters 20 meters 17 15 12 and 10 meter band.
	Those are the those are the radio bands and that people use to talk around the world, using what some people call skip.
	But what it is, is you put up your antenna with your radio, and in that band, in frequencies between 3 MHz and 30 MHz, and that's actually the only band where the ionosphere comes into play.
	In those frequencies from 3 to 30 MHz in the HF bands, Those radio waves don't travel straight by line of sight from radio to radio.
	They travel upward, they hit the ionosphere, they skip off the ionosphere, which is 40 miles above us, and they come back down and people thousands of miles away can hear your radio transmission.
	You can talk to people, you know, from here in the United States, you can talk to people in Europe, Africa, Asia.
	Many times in the mornings here in Arizona, I'm communicating with people in Japan, China, Indonesia, Australia, because when they're still in darkness and we're getting into the wee hours of the morning, That's a really good time to communicate with people in Asia, if you're here on the West Coast of North America.
	All that is to say that with the high frequency radio bands, you can literally communicate with people around the world.
	And in a grid down situation, if you have a radio that can be powered by battery, and we both do, we can communicate with people around the world.
	As long as they have radios that can be powered by batteries, If, or if they're in it, if they, if their power grid is not down and our power grid is down, maybe they have internet service, maybe they don't.
	It's, there's this, um, a lot of unknowns, but, but the, the, the take home point of all this is with, with the internet, we are relying on some other person's infrastructure, which can be taken down.
	And we have no control over that.
	With cell phone service, we're relying on someone else's infrastructure.
	We have no control over that.
	It can be gone and we have no say and no warning.
	With radio, you have total control over the infrastructure.
	If you have batteries, if you have a solar panel, if you have your radios and your antenna, no one can shut you up.
	You can get on the air and talk anytime you want.
	That's right.
	And so, the beauty of that is, if you have radios, you have control over the infrastructure.
	Now, going back to ENVIS, Near Vertical Incident Skyway.
	Normally, talking on these low frequencies, 3 MHz, 7 MHz, 10 MHz, they're very low frequencies.
	Normally, you're going to be talking to people across the country or in another country, in Canada or Mexico or over in Europe.
	Most of us ham radio operators, we want our antennas as high as they can be.
	Put that thing up on a 60 foot tower.
	Better yet, put up a 200 foot tower and get that antenna as high as it can go.
	Amateur radio operators generally want their antennas as high as possible.
	But we have recently been using a technique called near vertical incident skyway, where if you put your antenna very low to the ground, instead of Your radio signal taking off at, let's say, a 30-degree angle to the ionosphere, skipping and coming down thousands of miles away.
	Your signal goes straight up to the ionosphere, comes back down maybe 20 miles from your home or 30 miles from your home, and you're then talking to and listening to people in your county and city.
	And so he and I have been doing this weekly on-air meeting for like a couple of months.
	Where we have a certain frequency that we use, 7.275 megahertz.
	It's, we do it at the same time every day.
	It's always on Sunday and it's always at 3.30.
	And we've been talking to dozens of people.
	Yeah, we've been talking to dozens of people around the state on this, using this, this technique where we can communicate with people locally on a on a radio system that's really designed to talk to people interstate or internationally.
	And I'll land it there.
	Yeah, we've connected Northern Arizona and Southern Arizona all the way to Tucson.
	And Nevada, too.
	Oh, yeah, that's right.
	We did have that one station from Nevada.
	So I'm gonna circle back like a Jen Psaki press conference here.
	- Hey, you're gonna be a great week. - So we've tested and tested and tested and practiced and practiced and practiced.
	And we're licensed and we've basically pushed the boundaries of communications.
	And we're doing this prior to the stuff hitting the fan because when the stuff hits the fan, you don't wanna be doing any of this.
	You want to know what your capabilities are already.
	And I want to emphasize that's why a communications plan is so important to have because if you know what your capabilities are, you will have, you'll be able to write a better plan.
	And so you'll know, okay, if it happens, I can use UHF.
	Well, actually my plan, I plan to use the repeaters first because those are going to be the first to go down most likely.
	So they're going to run out of power and they're not going to work after the first week or so.
	So, after the first week, then I just go to the next item on my list, whether it's UHF, VHF, Simplex, HF, MESH.
	We didn't even talk about MESH, that's a whole other 10 words.
	No, hey, let me jump in here real quick and tell you about MESH testing.
	Okay.
	Alright, so... You don't even need a license!
	Yeah, there's another way to communicate, which is actually very cool.
	And it doesn't require a license.
	Right.
	So anyone can use it.
	And the devices are relatively inexpensive to purchase.
	It uses a couple of devices, one of which is a very low power radio that is referred to as LORA, L-O-R-A, which is an acronym for low power radio.
	Right.
	So the LORA device is a low power radio.
	It's basically not much more than a very small printed circuit board that has a low-power radio transmitter on it, a silicon chip with some software, a USB charging port, an antenna port, and a little LCD screen.
	And that's about it.
	It's this very little thing.
	Mine fits in the palm of my hand.
	Yeah, they're small.
	They're like Yeah, inch wide and maybe three inches long.
	And you can you can buy them on eBay for about 30 bucks.
	What these what these low power radios do is they connect to your phone using the Meshtastic mobile app.
	So you download the Meshtastic app to your phone.
	And you turn on the Bluetooth on your phone.
	And the radio then connects to your phone by a Bluetooth And the radio then is able to send a signal to other people on the Meshtastic app.
	You essentially create a network.
	If you have let's say you have two of these little radios in your house and you have two phones or a phone and a tablet.
	You install the app on both of them.
	You have two of these radios.
	You power them up and then you can then you can shut off shut off the Your cell phone service and shut off your Wi-Fi.
	You can shut down all of your communications.
	Just leave your Bluetooth enabled.
	And what you'll be able to do is you'll be able to send text messages back and forth from phone to phone using these low power radios.
	Right.
	On the mobile app there's a screen where you can compose text messages and send them via radio.
	And They have actually a very long range that you can send them.
	I was doing some testing a couple months ago, and I've got a friend who lives in North Phoenix up near Usery Pass.
	He's at an elevated position up near the mountain pass.
	And I went 23 miles south of his location, and I had one of these little radios.
	I've got one at his place up on his roof on a tower.
	And I've got, I have another one that I was taking with me in my Jeep.
	I drove 23 miles south of his house, up on a little ridge where we, where I could see Usury Pass, where, where he lives.
	And I was successfully able to transmit text messages using these little low power radios that transmit on about a quarter of a watt.
	So Meshtastic in these lower radios are inexpensive.
	There's no license.
	The network is encrypted, so your text messages that you send back and forth are encrypted.
	If you can get these devices deployed at a suitable height above ground, where the antennas can talk to each other, these things have a pretty good range.
	I don't know what the effective range is.
	I suspect it's probably over 40 or 50 miles if you have clear, no obstructions between the radios.
	But that is something else to look into.
	Hey, Dave.
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	So could you... I just want to play devil's advocate here.
	If, say, you had a flagpole, like at a church or maybe in your yard, could you raise this device up high enough to communicate or provide coverage so that others could connect to it?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	The radio that I have, I have one of these radios and it's actually, I put it inside of a waterproof enclosure and it's up on the roof of my house.
	This little antenna sticking up and it's secured in a place on top of my house at about 20 feet above ground.
	And how do you power it?
	Yeah, it is powered with a solar panel.
	I actually purchased this radio.
	It came with a solar panel.
	And it came inside of a waterproof enclosure.
	Right.
	So I paid a little bit more for it.
	It's a little over $100.
	But it has a radio.
	It's in a waterproof enclosure.
	It's got the mounting brackets to mount it outside.
	And it comes with a solar panel.
	So I've had this thing running up on the roof of my house now for about three or four months.
	And it is connected to another radio exactly like it.
	On my friend's house up at Usury Pass, 10 miles north of me.
	He's got my friend.
	He's an amateur radio guy.
	He's got a tower on the roof of his house.
	And he has a bunch of radio antennas on there.
	And he was nice enough to let me put one of my little mesh-tastic devices up there.
	And he's actually connected to it.
	He has a radio.
	He's connected to that device.
	And we have a network.
	So his phone has the app on it.
	And he's got a radio down in his house that's connected to the radio that's on the roof of his house.
	So there's two nodes.
	We're talking about a mesh network.
	A mesh network is a network where you have nodes, communication nodes, essentially radios that just communicate with each other.
	The radio he has down in his house connects, communicates to the radio that's up on top of his antenna tower on the roof of his house, which I put up there, and it also has a solar panel.
	That radio connects to the radio on top of my house, 10 miles away, and then I have another radio in my house, in my office, that's connected to a phone, a backup phone that I've got.
	So I can communicate with that friend of mine.
	We could lose power, we could lose internet, lose cell phone service, and we have two of these little low-power radios deployed at elevation, where we can We have a line of communication that is basically impervious.
	We can send encrypted text messages to each other and anyone else in the Phoenix area who wants to connect to his that node up on top of his house at 1600 feet above sea level.
	They could join that network and they could join our communications.
	We could all text each other back and forth.
	And Mr. Desert Flashpoint You briefly were able to connect to that node and you're 20 miles away, I think?
	18.
	18 miles away.
	Out of my five attempts, I connected three times.
	And you put your antenna up on the elevator position?
	It was on my flagpole, bouncing around in the wind.
	Yeah.
	We need to find out a permanent way to connect that radio to the But that's just another option.
	It's just another option for off-grid communications.
	And this is nice because people are used to sending text messages.
	This uses your phone, it uses a mobile app, a low-power radio, and it sends encrypted text messages.
	I mean, if you can make a deal like that work, it's a good way to go.
	Well, I'm going to add one more thing to all that wonderful information you just shared.
	These devices use the 900 megahertz frequency band, and you know what else uses that?
	Traffic lights, well monitoring stations, weather stations.
	The probability that the FCC or the federal government will shut down amateur radio is greater than the possibility that they'll shut down the 900 megahertz frequencies.
	Yeah, there's a lot of municipalities that use those 900 MHz frequencies, and a lot of the ham radio guys were very surprised that I was able to get the kind of range that I did using these LoRa radios, because there's so much noise on the 900 MHz spectrum, but they work.
	You can transmit long distances with them.
	And you can attach a Yagi to them.
	And you could attach a Yagi to it if you needed to.
	Or a directional, a directional antenna.
	A directional antenna of some kind.
	Yeah.
	Although you don't really need to.
	You don't really need to.
	No, but it, you know, I've looked into that just to help because, you know, there is some distance between myself and that location on the tower.
	But when I did those experiments a few months ago or however long ago it was, And connected three out of the five times.
	I thought, yeah, maybe I don't need to do that.
	But yeah, you need a permanent location.
	Can I make a cheesy plug for my next book?
	Oh, go ahead.
	Denise is sitting behind me.
	She is working on the interior file for my next book, which is going to be a book about emergency preparedness and off-grid communications.
	And all of the things that we've talked about on this Livestream are going to be covered in depth in that book.
	Nice.
	And there's going to be other modes of communication we didn't talk about that I'll mention.
	And I guess very, very specific examples and instructions about how to use certain equipment.
	I even talk about Nextel Direct Talk in one chapter and how that's kind of a nice little way to communicate if you A lot of people don't know about that.
	So that book will be coming out in a few weeks, hopefully.
	Very good.
	Yeah, I had Nextel on my list.
	I just didn't get around to it.
	Yeah, there's, we've only scratched the surface.
	I mean, there is so much to cover.
	So little time.
	I want to, I just wanted to say that, you know, it's again, I'm going to come back to the communications plan.
	Why am I going to come back to that?
	Well, because the whole point of this is you want to have information.
	You want to have, you want to be able to gather information.
	You want to be able to interpret or decipher the information and make informed decisions based off of what you know.
	And what we're creating here, what we've created is we've created a way to communicate locally.
	You and me, you know, and some others, other operators out there.
	We've been able to communicate or expand that circle and communicate on a statewide basis.
	And then we've also, you and I, we're both ham radio operators with the ability to reach around the world.
	So we can gather information on multiple tiers, nationwide, worldwide, and locally.
	And then we can relay that information.
	We can communicate that to friends, family, loved ones.
	And then we can make decisions based off of that information.
	Without the ability to gather that we're really going to be lost and I really fear that a lot of people are just not going to have the ability to gather information when things get really bad and that's going to be kind of dangerous.
	So, you know, it's just that's that's another reason why I wanted to do the live stream is to try to communicate this information, what our knowledge, our cumulative knowledge to others and share that with other people who are interested in taking the our cumulative knowledge to others and share that with other people who are interested in taking the And you don't necessarily have to go and get your ham radio license per se.
	But if you're if you, you know, if you have your GMRS license or if you have a MeshTastic, that's great.
	At least start thinking about how you're going to communicate when things start to get kind of dicey in the future.
	Because I think regardless of, you know, where you come from on the political spectrum or how much you pay attention to world events, I think it's pretty much cast in stone right now that we're going to have some hard times ahead of us.
	I don't know if you agree with that, Dave, but I think that it's important.
	I think I think it's better than 50 50.
	Right.
	So I just.
	So I'm interested in helping others and sharing what we know.
	And do you want to take just a few questions?
	And if anybody has them, you want to open the live stream up to anybody who's got questions about radio stations?
	We can go to the hands and see if anybody wants to raise their hand and ask questions.
	Okay.
	Does anybody have any questions for us?
	Kathleen Armstrong has her hand up and she wants to speak.
	Let's see.
	I don't have the ability to unmute her.
	You'd have to unmute her.
	There she is.
	I think I... Yep, thank you.
	I'm unmuted.
	How many people, how much of the country do you think is prepared for alternative communication per se.
	Dave?
	How many licensed hams are there?
	Is there about a million?
	There's about a million licensed hams in the U.S.
	That's a small percentage, obviously.
	You know, interestingly, there was a recent survey that was done That showed that 33% of Americans are taking some steps to prepare for a disaster, whether it's storing water, storing food.
	One third of Americans are prepping in some way.
	I would say the number of people who are prepared for communications emergencies, probably less than 5%, probably less than 1% actually.
	Yeah.
	It's not difficult to, you know, go to the store, buy some cans of chili and spam and, you know, put 20 or 30 gallons of water aside.
	Easy to do.
	And people should do that.
	But communications is a whole nother issue.
	And a lot of people don't really want to believe that they could ever lose communications.
	Look, we did not start the information war.
	But we are in an information war.
	We're in, you know, we're going to have to use fifth generation warfare tactics.
	You know, we've been using social media for, successfully for, you know, seven or eight years to fight this information war.
	But it's, I believe it's going to bleed over into the radio domain at some point.
	And we're going to then have to shift tactics and come up with strategies and tactics to fight that information war in the radio domain.
	Yes.
	and use whatever we have at our disposal to ultimately win the information for. - Yeah, well yeah, and it's like, they keep coming after us, And we, we, okay, we say, all right, let's write a communications plan that's set aside some food and water, ammo, whatever.
	And then they just keep coming after us.
	And then we say, okay, well, let's, let's, let's develop the next part of our preps and communications.
	And, and then they just keep coming after us.
	At some point we need to make them stop.
	We need, we need to stand and we need to push back.
	Because I'm not going to keep living my life on my heels, watching my kids get older and then hand this problem down to them someday.
	Well, that's not what I want to do.
	Yeah.
	The goal of war is victory, but the goal of victory is occupation.
	And once we win this information war, we can then occupy the territory that we won and change the rules, change the terms and conditions.
	And hopefully end this information war.
	Once we win it and we are in a position of power again, like the founders of the country wanted us to be, we can then dictate the terms to them.
	Well said.
	Is there anybody else who has any questions for either myself or Dave related to radio?
	You can raise your hand up.
	Yeah, if you're able to raise your hand or any hands up.
	All right, Kevin, I unmuted you.
	Kevin, you may have to hit the mute button on your phone to unmute yourself.
	There we are.
	Can you hear me now?
	Yeah, we can hear you.
	All right, guys.
	Hey, I just want to say, hey, I don't have a question.
	I think I started down my amateur radio Road the same time as Dave did, roughly.
	I've been following you for a little while.
	I'm up here in the Four Corners area.
	Okay.
	And I would encourage people, get your tech license, get your first license.
	There's apps out there to help you study if you're not tech savvy.
	I got my tech license, got my Bofang cheap radio, and I learned to program a local repeater.
	And the first call I made on that repeater, the guy who answered was the coordinator for my local MCOM group, which is Voice and Interest in Ham Radio.
	Did he become your Elmer?
	Say again?
	Did he become your Elmer?
	Well, yeah, he's my Elmer by default, for sure.
	Absolutely.
	So your first call, you got in touch with the local emergency radio coordinator?
	Yep, he's my local Northwest New Mexico MCOM group coordinator.
	This was about a year ago.
	And so, and that was my interest, right?
	So now I am actually a member of the Northwest New Mexico MCOM group.
	I'm probably the least knowledgeable member, but I'm a member.
	That's awesome.
	I'm glad to hear that you've jumped in and you're taking this seriously and you're getting yourself up the learning curve.
	You're not going to regret it.
	And I would add, I don't plan to get into the HF world.
	And here's the thing.
	I don't have HF gear, so I can't talk to people around the world.
	But I can talk to people in my MCOM group that can.
	So I have availability of that information.
	Exactly.
	Yeah, I see it the same way.
	I know ham radio operators who are able to Talk many more Fars than I can talk.
	Because I live in an HOA, I can't put a radio antenna 60 feet up in the air.
	It's not practical.
	So I don't regularly talk to people in Europe and Africa.
	I can get a signal reports from those people, but getting a voice communication is a little tricky.
	But I know ham radio operators who can talk to people in virtually any country of the world.
	Because I know them, and I can communicate with them, they can give me information, they can give you information, and we can then disseminate that information, our family, friends, and circle of influence, and that's how it works.
	That's right.
	Hey guys, I appreciate you doing this.
	I'll hop off the line.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Kevin.
	Thanks, Kevin.
	All right.
	Anybody else have a follow-up?
	Yeah, there's a couple.
	Let's go to Michelle.
	Let me see.
	I'm not sure if she was first or not, but Trying to enable her.
	All right.
	I think you're unmuted, Michelle.
	Hi, can you hear me?
	Yes.
	Okay, so I had never heard of the Meshtastic app before, or anything related to that, and I wondered if you might consider dedicating like a whole show to that?
	Yeah, we could do that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, there's MeshTastic.
	We could do a dedicated live stream, Mr. Desert Flashpoint, if you want to, on mesh communications as a whole.
	We could talk about Arden Mesh and we could also talk about MeshTastic.
	But yeah, I would be willing to do it.
	It's a fascinating area.
	It's a big opportunity.
	Like I said, it's inexpensive.
	It doesn't require a license.
	You can send encrypted text messages.
	And for people who are looking for a way to communicate locally with friends and family, I think it's a good option.
	So I'd totally be willing to do a live stream on that.
	I would say, yeah.
	Dave, this is your wheelhouse.
	You know a lot more about this than I do.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, I'm riding your coattails on it.
	I would say, yeah, let's do it.
	With the holidays coming up, though, I think maybe after the first of the year would be the best time for me.
	But we can talk about that between us.
	Yeah.
	And just to let you know, in my book that's coming out, and it'll be out hopefully in a week or two, there's an entire chapter on Mishtastic that explains how to get the radios set up, how to deploy them, what the best practices are.
	So if nothing else, you'll have that chapter.
	You know, who knows?
	Maybe I'll just do a live stream in the next day or two.
	Yeah, there you go.
	There are some ham radio operators who are very tech savvy, and they've basically invented this entire thing.
	Yeah, well, we're actually friends with the guy who writes all of the information on the Arden Mesh website.
	Arden is another thing.
	It's a ham radio version of mesh networking, and it's very complex, and we're not going to go into it in this broadcast, but we're friends with the guy who writes all the curriculum.
	He and Desert Flashpoint and I don't have a lot of technical ability when it comes to those things.
	We know people who do have technical abilities and are able to save us a lot of headaches.
	So yeah, we're happy to pass along whatever information we can.
	Okay, great.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Michelle.
	Does anybody else?
	I thought I saw somebody else with another with their hand.
	Sherry, was that you?
	Oh, no, it's Rachel.
	Rachel has her hand up.
	Okay, Rachel, you are unmuted.
	Oh, wait, hold on.
	There you go.
	Now you are.
	Just hold down the button at the bottom.
	Or tap the button.
	Yeah, tap the mute button.
	You should be able to speak now.
	Are you there?
	Yeah, I can hear you.
	Okay, great.
	First of all, I got late onto the broadcast, so I'm sorry if this has been covered, but I have a couple questions.
	One, what do you think this is going to look like?
	What are we going to be communicating?
	I see people over here.
	This is a danger zone.
	This is what the president said.
	This is the dream I had.
	What do you think it's going to look like in two?
	How do you think CB might be factored in there?
	Is there like, because even though, yeah, go ahead.
	Yes.
	No, just even though you can't go far with the CB, the people who are using them are often going far.
	Yeah.
	Uh, well, if you know me, you know, I'm going to be talking about my dreams.
	Well, yeah, but more, I was just wondering, what do you think it's going to look like, you know?
	Yeah, that's, that's actually a very good question.
	In my book that's coming out, I do actually have a little bit of information on CB radios.
	We didn't get a chance to talk about it on this live stream, but, you know, I think a lot of people will be using CB radios.
	Again, no license, short distance, you know, you can talk five or 10 miles.
	Um, if you have a base radio with a good antenna, you know, maybe 30 or 40 miles.
	Um, yeah, I think CB is going to have a significant role to play for people.
	Uh, if and when we lose, uh, communications.
	Um, what is it going to look like?
	Gosh, man, that is a really good question.
	Um, yeah, it depends on the scenario.
	Like it's going to be, it's going to be completely different if, for example, The United States ends up on the receiving end of a nuclear strike by Russia or Iran.
	If we end up with a significant terrorist attack, something along the level of 9-11 or Pearl Harbor or even worse, then what the communications looks like then is it's going to be
	Very, very, a lot of panicked, frantic people trying to find out what the bloody hell is going on, especially if the attack coincides with a loss of cell phone or internet service.
	You're going to have a lot of people putting out rumors, innuendo, half-true information, some true information.
	So there's going to be this desire for people to want to know what's really happening.
	What is Washington DC doing?
	What's happening in Europe?
	Are they under attack?
	Are their friends in Florida?
	What's happening to them?
	So it's going to be, there's going to be a frantic desire for people to want to know what's going on in this part of the country, in this part of the world.
	And people who are on radio, especially amateur radio operators who have the ability to talk internationally, Those people are going to be in high demand, and I anticipate what it'll look like is the amateur radio operators that can communicate internationally will be gathering information from other people in other countries, talking to people in France and Germany and Japan and South Africa.
	Aggregating the information and then filtering that information down to local Radio operators who can then transmit that information to their local communities, local sphere of influence, whether it's person to person or over radio.
	You know, I would like to say, I think it's going to be a very neat and concise and well-oiled machine, but it's not.
	It's going to be chaos, I think.
	You know, and if it's just, if it's just a, let's say a cyber attack where we lose internet and cell phone service without A military attack.
	I think the peace of it and the franticness of it is going to be less than if there was an actual war, a military attack.
	But again, a little hard to paint an accurate picture of what that's going to look like.
	A lot of us are having dreams where God is showing us things that are coming.
	I've had a lot of prophetic dreams Power outages, internet outages, cell phone disruptions.
	That's why I'm doing all this stuff.
	And I don't get a lot of information about what it's going to look like during the storm, during the power outage, internet outage.
	What I get is a lot of information where God is showing me, I want you to learn how to use this radio system.
	And when you're done with that, I want you to learn how to use this radio system.
	When you're done with that, I've got another project for you.
	So God has been preparing me to get up to speed on a lot of different communication systems.
	What that crisis looks like, you know, when it hits is really hard.
	Dave, if I may jump in here.
	Yeah.
	There are examples around the world, both present and past.
	If you look at South Africa and how that's somewhat descended into chaos and what they're doing to people.
	I think it would be important to be able to communicate across town.
	Like if I were able to pick up a radio and tell you, hey, there's something going on in my neighborhood.
	I need to get out of here.
	I'm coming to you.
	I think that would be a good use of the radio and, you know, or to be able to warn people about what's going on in certain areas.
	I think it depends a little bit on where you live too.
	If you live in a blue city, I hate to say this, but you know, places like Austin or Los Angeles or Portland, Seattle, New York, I think those places are going to be affected a lot more than some of the other, you know, rural communities, but it just depends.
	It really depends.
	And there's no real way of knowing what the future is going to bring us.
	But having the ability to communicate and having the tools to communicate, and among other things, you know, and prepping and all the things that go with that, will put you in a better position to mitigate whatever circumstances come your way.
	Yeah, Rachel, I wanted to add one more thing.
	In my book that's going to be coming out on preparedness and off-grid communications, I actually have a chapter that's dedicated to explaining if you need to communicate someone in your neighborhood or in your city or in your county or state or nationwide, what different modes of communications with different devices are good for doing that kind of communications.
	Because your question is.
	What does this look like in a crisis?
	It's going to look different because within the neighborhood, we want to communicate with people about what's happening locally.
	Is your neighborhood safe?
	Is it being overrun by, you know, Mexican cartels?
	What's happening citywide?
	What's the situation with water?
	You know, if you lose your water distribution, you lose the power grid.
	Areas of the city are safe to travel in, what areas of the state are safe to travel in, which ones are not.
	There's going to be a need to communicate with people at the local level, city, state, nationwide.
	And that all has to happen simultaneously, unfortunately, which means people are going to be very busy.
	If we have a situation like this happen, just think it's not just going to be Local, citywide, you know, or just in your states.
	There's multiple regions that we all have to think about getting information from and there's different ways to do that.
	Are you all going to have like a method of operation or a scheduled time to do an update?
	Yes, we already have one.
	Okay.
	Yes, so right now Right now.
	Desert Flashpoint and I and some people in the Phoenix area, we are meeting weekly on Sundays at 3.30 local time.
	And we have a what's called a NET, which is an on-air meeting where we do updates and check in.
	It's an organized NET.
	You call in with your call sign and your name and what city you're in.
	And if you have any news and information, any updates to provide, you can do that.
	Right now, that is a weekly event on a certain frequency at a certain time and happens every week.
	And there's a lot of people around the world who do these nets that are pre-programmed meetings every week at the same time on the same frequency.
	We're looking at expanding that and maybe doing that on some other frequencies.
	But in a crisis, in a grid down situation, crisis, war, whatever happens, we would turn that net into an emergency communications group where people would be able to just go to that frequency and Would it stay on Sundays at 3.30?
	Maybe not.
	That frequency may get blown up.
	Maybe a lot of other traffic on that frequency.
	It's a little hard to predict what's going to happen in a crisis.
	Is our frequency even going to be open?
	Would we switch it to a daily communication thing at a certain time?
	Not sure about that yet.
	And I will say this.
	And I haven't talked about this with anyone, Rachel, so I'm going to tell you about it.
	And everybody else who's listening.
	In the last month or two, God has been giving me dreams about FM radio broadcasting.
	And I think, I'm not exactly sure where this is going, but in addition to all the other stuff that God has me doing, I think in the future, I'm going to be on a local FM radio station in some capacity, doing some kind of broadcast on a local FM station.
	I've had four or five dreams now that sort of hint that God wants me to look into that.
	So I don't have a frequency.
	I don't have a station yet.
	I think that at some point, though, I might get connected to someone who has an opportunity for me to give out, put out a message on FM radio, which should be easy for anyone to listen to.
	What do you think is the likelihood of getting a license, Paul?
	I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about that.
	Like, cause they don't like what you're saying.
	Uh, oh my gosh, man, Rachel has all the hot questions today.
	Well, I mean, it's one of the reasons why I was wondering about CD because Well, you know, again, we come back to this issue of censorship.
	You know, they kicked me off of YouTube, they kicked me off of Facebook, kicked me off of Twitter.
	You know, I've been censored as much as anybody out there on social media.
	And there's a reason why they're censoring us.
	They don't want us putting out our messages.
	And this information war, like I said, I think it's going to bleed over into the radio domain, because if they If they manage to shut down the internet and shut down cell service, they know we're going to take to the airwaves and we're going to start putting our messages out on the radio.
	And I've had some dreams where in these dreams, I saw the FCC restricting our ability to transmit on certain frequencies and harassing us during our radio transmissions and sort of jamming our transmissions.
	So I anticipate that The information warfare is going to bleed over into the radio realm, and I'm preparing for it.
	God is already giving me ideas and plans and strategies about how to get around the continued attempts to shut us up.
	And I don't have a clear picture of what that looks like yet.
	I can say I think that the opposition is going to continue to hit us, and it's going to bleed over into the radio spectrum.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I would, you know, she, I think, see, here's what I wanted to say about CB.
	It was on my list of, you know, what kind of backup communications exist here.
	It has a place.
	I don't, I don't, I don't want to say that it doesn't.
	It's just like any other form of radio, though, where it has its limitations, it has its benefits, pros and cons are associated with that form of communication.
	The 11 meter band It doesn't require a license, but you're going to have, if you have a CB radio and you're communicating with others, you might have people on there who get on the CB radio, just like they always have, and just jam up the frequency with a bunch of nonsense that you don't care about.
	it's not relevant to what's going on or they might, you know, they're not going to have the radio discipline, I guess, is what I'm getting at here to communicate nicely because they're not licensed because all they've known is 11, you know, CB.
	And if that's your only form of communication and you're not getting the information from the CB radio that you need, I would encourage you to plan now to have a couple other backups. I would encourage you to plan now to have a I mean, CB might be worth having and monitoring.
	I have a CB radio.
	I don't use it.
	I've taken it down the road a couple of times, but, and I've thought about hooking it up, but there just isn't a lot of activity on CB in my area.
	Your area might be different.
	You might have a whole bunch of people on CB.
	Hey, move out of the sticks.
	What about what?
	I said move out of the sticks.
	Move out of the sticks.
	So, I mean, it has its place.
	I think that it has potential.
	You might be able to, it just depends.
	So, but I'm all for diversification of communication.
	This is why I have so many ways of communicating because if one isn't working for me, I can move on to the next in my communications plan.
	And if I have 10 different ways of communicating and something might not work right now and I move on to something else, maybe that other form of communication will open up in the future.
	And the one that I'm using now might not or may stop working.
	So I can I can always switch to another mode of communication.
	We didn't even touch the surface of digital versus.
	Yeah, because that's a whole nother layer and dimension to the communications.
	It's another way to secure your comms.
	It's another... I mean, digital has benefits where, you know, basically if I'm communicating to you on a digital frequency or in a digital mode on, like, say UHF, somebody with just an analog radio is just going to hear a bunch of static noise.
	So, it's not exactly secure communication, but everybody out there with a UV5R Baofeng radio is going to be left in the dust when you and me are communicating in digital.
	If we're on a frequency on the HF spectrum, where people would normally transmit using lower sideband as a mode, and if we decided to transmit using FM or AM as our mode, They would hear a bunch of noise.
	They would not hear what we're saying.
	So there's ways to make communication less susceptible to eavesdropping.
	Communication security, ComSec, is something that we're very much interested in pursuing.
	Yeah, frequency hopping, the whole bit, yeah.
	On ComSec, that's a whole other dimension.
	And see, the ham radio license and the world of radio is going to open that door for anybody who's interested.
	And there's so much to learn.
	But don't be intimidated by it, because this information is going to help you.
	There are people who are licensed hams who want to help you.
	I mean, they're in abundance, right Dave?
	Kevin got on the air his very first time and he found a guy who's very knowledgeable and who became his mentor, right?
	Yeah.
	I would be remiss if I didn't say this.
	In nearly every town across the country, there is an amateur radio club.
	Yes.
	And if you're interested in learning grid down communications, learning about amateur radio, Contact your local amateur radio club.
	They should have a website.
	Email them and start bugging them and say, hey, I'm a newbie.
	I don't know anything about this stuff, but I think I need to learn about this stuff.
	They probably have on-air meetings.
	They may have in-person meetings.
	They will have someone who will take you under their wing and show you the ropes and get you up to speed.
	Who knows?
	You might find somebody who has a ton of extra radios and they'll just give you a bunch of gear for free and then teach you how to use it i have i have several friends who actually contacted their local amateur radio club and the and the ham ham operators are just gave them gear to use until they had money to buy their own stuff oh dave dave um our friend um with the with the local emergency communications group
	uh by the way we need to pay attention to time here because that net is starting soon see dave and i are going to go practice our comms in a couple hours um We have our practice every Sunday night.
	There is a high school student who recently joined the club and they gave her a radio.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	They gave her a mobile rig.
	It was a nice radio.
	I have a few spare radios in my stash, and whoever is in my immediate circle, if we have a grid down situation, they're going to get a free radio.
	So, I'll just say that.
	Well, the bottom line is, there's a lot of radio operators who are paying attention Maybe not all of them, but many of them know what's going on, they're like-minded, they have concerns, and all they need is a frequency, a battery, a radio, and an antenna, and maybe a time to meet.
	That's it.
	Yep.
	And that's what we've created with the HFNET, is we've given operators a place to meet and And I would encourage anybody listening to this who is an amateur radio operator, or if you want to become one, Get organized.
	That's what we're doing is we're organizing locally.
	And we're just meeting up on the radio, practicing.
	But we have that time and place.
	And you can do the same.
	It's that simple.
	And it's not a huge time investment.
	It's not a huge... I mean, yeah, you and I have kind of spent some money on radios and that sort of thing.
	Unfortunately if you want to get on HF there is a little bit of a cost in there but to get on UHF and VHF now you don't really have to spend a whole lot of money and you can make homemade antennas that'll get you on the air like Yagi's and that sort of thing where you can communicate over you know 10-20 miles on very low power as long as you got a line of sight where those two antennas can see each other and there's not a lot of obstructions and even if there are
	Like you said earlier, Dave, you literally point your Yagi at the house across the street.
	And somehow I'm talking to you.
	Yes.
	So you can start and just take baby steps and do a piecemeal like I've done it.
	I did not go out and buy an HF radio as soon as I got my license.
	I could not afford it.
	So I started with a $35 or $25 You know, Baofeng, 5 watt radio, and I just worked my way up from there.
	Did you have any closing comments?
	I think we covered a lot of material here tonight.
	Yeah, covered a lot.
	More than I thought we'd cover, but it's all good.
	You know, I don't have a whole lot of closing comments other than if you have questions, comments, suggestions, You can email me through my website, pragmatic.com.
	My email address is admin at pragmatic.com.
	You can also post questions in the Telegram channel if you have questions.
	I do have an amateur radio Telegram channel.
	It's for amateur radio and GMRS and anything related to radio.
	If you have questions, comments, whatever, just do a search on Telegram.
	And you can find my Ham Radio and GMRS channel.
	Jump in there, join the channel, and post your questions or whatever.
	So we're always available to help people, you know, get up the learning curve.
	Yeah, and you can post questions in the chat of my channel.
	You can reach me at DesertFlashpoint, all one word, at Protonmail.com.
	Again, that's DesertFlashpoint at Protonmail.com or, you know, Email Dave.
	I know he likes to answer emails.
	I love answering emails.
	That's my favorite thing to do in the morning.
	You're retired.
	I have a day job.
	I am not retired.
	I work as an author.
	That's true.
	You do.
	You know what I did?
	You know what I did the week of Thanksgiving?
	What's that?
	Denise and I worked on the book every single day the week of Thanksgiving.
	We didn't have any friends and family over the entire week.
	I set my own schedule, but that's because I'm self-employed.
	That's true.
	I work as an author.
	I'm retired from the ambulance gig, but I still work.
	I stand corrected.
	I sit corrected.
	I'm sitting right now.
	Thank you for correcting me.
	I answer my emails.
	If anybody wants to email me, I will answer.
	I'm just not as good as you are.
	I will just throw that out there.
	So the best way to reach me is just in the chat with the Telegram channel.
	Or call him on the Occatio Repeater anytime.
	Yeah.
	So, well, I guess that's pretty much it.
	I just want to thank everybody who is here and thank those who asked questions for your questions.
	Is there anything you wanted to add?
	This is pretty much it, Dave.
	I think we're done.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you for, you know, helping me do the live stream.
	I think we provided everybody some, a lot of good information and we barely scratched the surface.
	I mean, there's, there's a lot more you can do and I just want to just leave you with this final thought.
	You know, we, we practice our communications and we test our communications and it's fun.
	Okay, this is supposed to be fun.
	I know we're talking about, you know, stuff hitting the fan and grid down, but don't forget the fun in your mental preparedness.
	If you're not mentally prepared for what, you know, some of the things that we might have, you know, coming our way in the future, Then you might be in more trouble than you think.
	You gotta take a break from some things.
	You gotta have some fun from time to time.
	Radio is also fun.
	So if you're hiking, take a radio with you.
	Driving around the city, put your mobile rig in the car, see what repeaters you can hit and drive around and have some fun with it too.
	So I think it's really important to have that aspect included in what we're talking about here.
	So thank you everybody.
	I did think of something that I wanted to say to add at the end here.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I'll leave you with the closing comment.
	All right.
	This is a very, very important point that I want everyone to think about.
	If you take nothing else away from this conversation that we've had, just think about this.
	When you're planning for any kind of a disaster, Whether it's a hurricane, a tornado, you know, a grid down situation or communications disruption.
	Whenever you're doing any planning for a disaster, don't do anything out of fear.
	Fear is not supposed to be your motivating force.
	If you are doing anything out of fear, you're doing it out of the wrong motive.
	Don't do anything.
	Don't purchase anything.
	Don't, uh, you know, Because that emotion of fear is generally something that is being driven by the kingdom of darkness.
	God's kingdom, the kingdom of light, is a kingdom that works on faith and hope.
	And what I would ask you to do is, if you're concerned about issues that are coming in the future, concerned about potential disasters, ask God what you should prepare for specifically.
	God can give you specific instructions what to purchase what you need and what you don't need.
	Let God instruct you on all of these issues and don't just resist the temptation to fall into fear.
	Have faith.
	God has a plan.
	God knows what he's doing.
	We may have some rough days ahead but God has a redemptive purpose for what he's doing and I would just encourage you to trust God, lean on God, and consider this.
	If you're not able to purchase enough spam to feed your neighborhood, enough water to feed, you know, your city, God can supernaturally provide whatever you need.
	Whatever you lack, God is able to provide it.
	So, you know, just lean into God, let him guide you, and You'll go, you'll go through whatever, any crisis with your head screwed on straight and you'll be a person of peace and hope that people can look to.
	You'll be a resource that others can turn to for help rather than being a victim.
	And I'm going to land it there.
	Amen.
	Wow.
	You gave me an epiphany.
	You said God is a kingdom of light and radio is part of the spectrum of light.
	That's true.
	So thank you, Dave.
	I appreciate everything you've done.
	Thank you for being here.
	Thank you everybody for joining the live stream.
	That's all we have for you for tonight.
	So until next time, you guys all take care.
	God bless you all.

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