Bill Cooper had that entertaining way of starting off his Short Wave broadcast with that air raid siren
And BTW, it's time for patriots to be thinking of resurrecting SW broadcast as a means to get the patriot word out
The Internet should not be viewed as a rock solid platform for comms
To get feet wet, buy a GMRS radio - it's one level below SW HAM; it require a FCC license, but there is no test involved, it cost $70, but it's good for 10 years, and it applies to everyone in the household of the licensee
Now the thing that is valuable about GMRS is can get units that transmit with up to 50 watts of power, which is not shabby, but even better than that, there are lots of GMRS repeaters all over the 48 states; even your handheld GMRS unit will have a good likelihood of being able to connect to a GMRS repeater
There are GMRS repeater networks that attempt to span the 48 states - is spotty, of course - these are pretty much civic/volunteer repeaters and depend on dues-paying local clubs to keep their repeater maintained
And there is an actual nation-wide GMRS network that involves connecting a $155 device to your home Internet connection, so yeah, it's relies on the Internet, but it is a way to establish right now a nation-wide real-time communications network
Now one thing am going to work on personally is a text messaging capability for GMRS so that comms don't have to necessarily happen in real-time per the sender and recipient, as with analog voice comms; the FCC back in 2017 started allowing for text messaging over the GMRS frequencies, but no one seems to have that up and going yet.
The HAM guys have done packet radio and text messaging for many years over SW, it all faded away when the Internet came on strong and supplanted all that, but more lately there are HAMs resurrecting it and there a lot of YouTube videos on the subject
I don't think am going to try and fully implement the packet transmission stack that the SW HAM guys use, but instead will just do something simple like use analog Morse Code that is automated in its encoding/decoding by a Raspberry Pi - the new Model 400 Pi looks like could be perfect for the task of doing text messaging. The GPIO header pins will be where the modulation to the radio is connected. The Pi will take the place of a handheld mike, so to speak. The next step after that will be to get some GMRS club with a repeater to agree to allow this manner of text messaging usage of their repeater. One step at a time, though.
Here's a low-cost GMRS radio to try it out and learn the ropes: BTECH GMRS-V1 GMRS Two-Way Radio, GMRS Repeater Capable, with Dual Band Scanning Receiver (136-174.99mhz (VHF) 400-520.99mhz (UHF))
[EDIT] BTW, when listening to one of these nation-wide, repeater-based GMRS networks, they had a discussion topic of what GMRS users would like to see as new capabilities. The top requested feature was text messaging. So once the capability is implemented, don't think it will be that tough to get adoption in the GMRS communities and get to where all the GMRS repeaters allow text messaging usage.
But the FCC doesn't allow radio programming broadcast over the GMRS frequencies, so to do what Bill Cooper did will require going over to Short Wave HAM bands
Bill Cooper had that entertaining way of starting off his Short Wave broadcast with that air raid siren
And BTW, it's time for patriots to be thinking of resurrecting SW broadcast as a means to get the patriot word out
The Internet should not be viewed as a rock solid platform for comms
To get feet wet, buy a GMRS radio - it's one level below SW HAM; it require a FCC license, but there is no test involved, it cost $70, but it's good for 10 years, and it applies to everyone in the household of the licensee
Now the thing that is valuable about GMRS is can get units that transmit with up to 50 watts of power, which is not shabby, but even better than that, there are lots of GMRS repeaters all over the 48 states; even your handheld GMRS unit will have a good likelihood of being able to connect to a GMRS repeater
There are GMRS repeater networks that attempt to span the 48 states - is spotty, of course - these are pretty much civic/volunteer repeaters and depend on dues-paying local clubs to keep their repeater maintained
And there is an actual nation-wide GMRS network that involves connecting a $155 device to your home Internet connection, so yeah, it's relies on the Internet, but it is a way to establish right now a nation-wide real-time communications network
Now one thing am going to work on personally is a text messaging capability for GMRS so that comms don't have to necessarily happen in real-time per the sender and recipient, as with analog voice comms; the FCC back in 2017 started allowing for text messaging over the GMRS frequencies, but no one seems to have that up and going yet.
The HAM guys have done packet radio and text messaging for many years over SW, it all faded away when the Internet came on strong and supplanted all that, but more lately there are HAMs resurrecting it and there a lot of YouTube videos on the subject
I don't think am going to try and fully implement the packet transmission stack that the SW HAM guys use, but instead will just do something simple like use analog Morse Code that is automated in its encoding/decoding by a Raspberry Pi - the new Model 400 Pi looks like could be perfect for the task of doing text messaging. The GPIO header pins will be where the modulation to the radio is connected. The Pi will take the place of a handheld mike, so to speak. The next step after that will be to get some GMRS club with a repeater to agree to allow this manner of text messaging usage of their repeater. One step at a time, though.
Here's a low-cost GMRS radio to try it out and learn the ropes: BTECH GMRS-V1 GMRS Two-Way Radio, GMRS Repeater Capable, with Dual Band Scanning Receiver (136-174.99mhz (VHF) 400-520.99mhz (UHF))
[EDIT] BTW, when listening to one of these nation-wide, repeater-based GMRS networks, they had a discussion topic of what GMRS users would like to see as new capabilities. The top requested feature was text messaging. So once the capability is implemented, don't think it will be that tough to get adoption in the GMRS communities and get to where all the GMRS repeaters allow text messaging usage.
Bill Cooper had that entertaining way of starting off his Short Wave broadcast with that air raid siren
And BTW, it's time for patriots to be thinking of resurrecting SW broadcast as a means to get the patriot word out
The Internet should not be viewed as a rock solid platform for comms
To get feet wet, buy a GMRS radio - it's one level below SW HAM; it require a FCC license, but there is no test involved, it cost $70, but it's good for 10 years, and it applies to everyone in the household of the licensee
Now the thing that is valuable about GMRS is can get units that transmit with up to 50 watts of power, which is not shabby, but even better than that, there are lots of GMRS repeaters all over the 48 states; even your handheld GMRS unit will have a good likelihood of being able to connect to a GMRS repeater
There are GMRS repeater networks that attempt to span the 48 states - is spotty, of course - these are pretty much civic/volunteer repeaters and depend on dues-paying local clubs to keep their repeater maintained
And there is an actual nation-wide GMRS network that involves connecting a $155 device to your home Internet connection, so yeah, it's relies on the Internet, but it is a way to establish right now a nation-wide real-time communications network
Now one thing am going to work on personally is a text messaging capability for GMRS so that comms don't have to necessarily happen in real-time per the sender and recipient, as with analog voice comms; the FCC back in 2017 started allowing for text messaging over the GMRS frequencies, but no one seems to have that up and going yet.
The HAM guys have done packet radio and text messaging for many years over SW, it all faded away when the Internet came on strong and supplanted all that, but more lately there are HAMs resurrecting it and there a lot of YouTube videos on the subject
I don't think am going to try and fully implement the packet transmission stack that the SW HAM guys use, but instead will just do something simple like use analog Morse Code that is automated in its encoding/decoding by a Raspberry Pi - the new Model 400 Pi looks like could be perfect for the task of doing text messaging. The GPIO header pins will be where the modulation to the radio is connected. The Pi will take the place of a handheld mike, so to speak. The next step after that will be to get some GMRS club with a repeater to agree to allow this manner of text messaging usage of their repeater. One step at a time, though.
Here's a low-cost GMRS radio to try it out and learn the ropes: BTECH GMRS-V1 GMRS Two-Way Radio, GMRS Repeater Capable, with Dual Band Scanning Receiver (136-174.99mhz (VHF) 400-520.99mhz (UHF))