Last night my local internet provider, Spectrum, had a major outage (no phone, internet or cable tv - I don’t own a tv). I don’t have cell coverage at home so my choice was to get on my ham radios and figure out if anything bigger was going on. Nope, just locally failed equipment, restored in four hours.
How would you react to a prolonged internet outage? How would you find out if it is bugout time? How would you know where it is safe to go? Getting a ham license is easy (no morse code requirement) and equipment is cheap. If you look you will find many frens discussing ongoing events…
I’ve been licensed since 1972 and am pretty well prepped for whatever happens.
Plan ahead.
Sure, go ahead. In the USA the FCC is the final authority but you’ve got to mess up real bad before they do anything. Ham volunteers monitor the airwaves and report folks operating out of their license class or causing severe interference. It can take years to get prosecuted. Also, you would need some way of identifying yourself - a callsign - issued by a government. This isn’t CB radio. I also have GMRS radios in faraday cages staged in many bugout locations. My adult children have the same. Technically you require a license for those too ($60 for ten years) but few bother. Part of my bugout kit is a portable repeater, encrypted, and setup for my family only. All live within 15 miles and we test the setup 2X a year.
Good luck to you!
cheers! appreciate all the info