An EASY Guide to Radios for Preppers

imagine this there is a solar flare that bombards the planet with an electromagnetic energy burst that flies all the transformers that moderate the power grid this actually happened in 1859 only then there was no power grid the difference is today 8 billion people rely on the power grid for survival in a situation like this where we rely on these transformers that are made in other countries and take months if not years to build the cellular-based communication grid as we know it could be compromised for years without a fully functioning telecommunications grid society cannot effectively rebuild itself after disaster strikes just imagine the stress of not being able to coordinate with the people you love in times of emergency this could be an absolute life or death situation we absolutely take communications for granted in the modern world this is why communication should be at the top of your priority list when it comes to emergency preparedness today we're going to discuss how radios work and what types of radios you should use for prepping let's get to it this video was sponsored by hamradioprep.com they make learning about radio amateur radio in particular especially easy using animated videos and easy to follow tutorials so if you're a visual learner like myself this is going to help you get your amateur license with ease now many people talk about if the crap hits the fan and there's no rule of law to enforce the fcc rules then you don't need a license to use your ham radio but that's akin to saying that i have this tool that i can use but i don't know how to use it but there's a very steep learning curve with ham radio and hamradioprep.com is going to make it incredibly easy ham radio also called amateur radio is the swiss army knife of radio it essentially allows you to leverage the entire radio wave spectrum in order to communicate and this will be the cell phone of the mad max world if it ever gets to that point so go to homeradioprep.com and use the coupon code in the description for a discount there was a time when just to get a message a few miles you had to literally travel on foot or on horseback or you had to pay somebody to do so you had to invest thousands of calories in time and energy just to send one communication usually in the form of a letter or a telegram today with the mere push of a button we can communicate limitless amounts of data to anybody in the world in real time most people are oblivious to how good we currently have it with our modern cellular technology and these people are not anticipating the consequences of not having these sorts of long-range calms nor will they be able to easily adapt to a world where this service is unavailable people talk about food water shelter medicine and security as being staples of preparedness but communications is absolutely the x factor that doesn't get nearly enough attention without comms supply chains break down emergency services can't function you can't communicate with your loved ones and everything goes to hell if you still don't think comms are important consider the power of one group who is invading another group from multiple flanks and has a working com system to coordinate their offensive or defensive maneuvers versus a group who has no communications whatsoever the difference between having coms and no comms is like waging a battle with firearms versus sticks and stones it's an exponential force multiplier if used properly now let's talk a bit about how radio works and which radios you should have in your comms toolbox as preppers now understanding radio can be incredibly complicated so i'm going to try to make this as simple as possible radio waves are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum and they're all around us and these can be used by humans to communicate over long distances so long as you have what's commonly referred to as a radio a radio is comprised of a transmitter a receiver and an antenna however not all radios can transmit a radio that transmits is called a transceiver a radio that only receives signals like the one that's likely pre-installed in your vehicle is called a receiver some radio waves are big and travel very far distances and others are very small and travel short distances the most important thing to remember is that long wavelengths can travel further but they can't penetrate a lot of buildings and various obstructions whereas smaller wavelengths can't travel as far but they can find their ways through obstacles and find their ways into buildings now radios are comprised of three main components the transmitter this is going to allow you to convert your speech into an electrical signal the antenna is what resonates that electric signal into a radio wave that is sent out into the world and then the receiver on the opposing end or on that same radio is going to convert the radio wave back to speech so the person that we are talking to can understand and interpret that electrical signal now if we zoom into that electromagnetic spectrum we can see that wavelengths vary from a very low frequency to a extremely high frequency the transceiver or receiver that you use is going to be tuned to utilize a specific band of this frequency spectrum so for example some receivers only receive hf communications other radios will leverage uhf or vhf cb radio uses hf mers radios use the very high frequency or vhf band frs and gmrs radios use the ultra high frequency band and ham radio is able to use all of the aforementioned bands and that's why it is the swiss army knife of radio however it should be known that depending on the laws of your country you may not be able to legally communicate on these other bands with your ham radio unless it's an emergency situation it's very likely that the fcc won't be head hunting during a zombie apocalypse now as previously stated ham radio can be used to access most of the usable communications radio wave spectrum but the different radios that are available to consumers have different capabilities when it comes to transmitting and receiving different types of radio waves knowing what your needs are are going to determine what type of radio you're going to require now there's a few factors to consider when you are choosing a radio one of the biggest factors when choosing a radio is going to be the signal range and how that signal is going to succumb to interference of the surrounding environment this topic can be incredibly complicated so we're not going to go into it in great depth but as you can see in this diagram here radio wave propagation is largely affected by the frequency of the radio that you're using most over-the-counter consumer radios are going to be line of sight but as you can see from these diagrams there are other ways for radio waves to propagate other than line of sight depending on the frequency it's on the size of the antenna and of course the amount of power or watts that you're using to propagate that radio wave most handheld radios are going to have the shortest range because they have the smallest antennas and the smallest amount of power mobile stations like ones you would put in your vehicle usually have bigger antennas and more power and therefore can have greater range home base stations typically have the best range because they have the biggest antennas and the largest power supply the next big factor is going to be how easy it is to use the actual radio ham radio like i said there's a steep learning curve but there are many plug-and-play type radios although their capabilities are going to be limited the ability to communicate with emergency services is going to be a factor the overall cost is going to be a factor and the accessibility of the equipment is also going to be a factor you can walk down to walmart and buy yourself a pair of walkie talkies but how are they going to compare to something you might need to special order from a specialty shop online now frs radios are the most common types of radios that you're going to see these require no license in all of north america and probably other countries around the world but they do have an exceptionally limited range depending on the country you're in these are going to cap out at around 2 watts and they can go up to two miles although a lot of manufacturers are going to claim they can go much further but you need to understand that these are in ideal situations only if you see on a frs or what we're going to talk about next a gmrs radio a rating of 30 to 45 miles you can basically cut that down by 90 percent to get a more accurate interpretation of how far the signal is going to transmit not in all cases but in most the benefit of these is that they are plug and play and frs and as we're going to talk about gmrs radios can actually communicate with each other because they overlap in frequencies as shown here these would be useful in communicating with your own neighborhood but bear in mind there's unlimited amount of channels and anybody who has an frs radio can hear everything that you're saying on the channel that you're on so this is fully accessible to the public gmrs has numerous advantages over frs for starters you can lose a lot more power particularly in the united states where you can use up to 50 watts of power on your gmrs radio however in canada you can only use up to 2 watts in power it should be noted that you don't need a license in canada but you do need a license in the united states but the process to get a license is very simple and will cost you around 70 bucks for 10 years for this reason the higher wattage gmrs radios have become more favorable particularly amongst the over landing communities due to the higher power available and thus the extended range the only downside is that you are limited to the amount of channels that you can communicate on so don't expect a lot of privacy using frs gmrs or even cb radio like we're going to talk about another great advantage of gmrs radios is the ability to use repeaters repeaters are basically relays that allow you to drastically increase the range of your communications network you could theoretically through a system of repeaters communicate for thousands of miles and there are websites which provide info on where the repeaters are and of course you can make your own repeater for these reasons gmrs and of course ham radio which can also use repeaters are incredibly popular amongst preppers one of the most common forms of radio is cb radio this has better range at lower wattage than gm rs and it requires no license power for cb radio is limited to around 4 watts you technically can use more than four watts just not legally now because it's a lower frequency again you're getting slightly better range with cb radio you can get handheld you can get vehicle or you can get base station setups all of these are going to vary in the size of the antenna that they use and even the power output that they leverage another advantage of cb radio is that you can utilize something called single sideband propagation now i'm not going to go into great depth about this but it basically allows you to skip the signal off the ionosphere because the cb radio uses a lower frequency than gmrs or frs it enables you to bounce that wave off of the ionosphere to potentially communicate with people hundreds of miles away the only downside with single sideband is that it's not reliable because it can be greatly influenced by atmospheric or geomagnetic interference for more information on this i'll post the video in the description below now ham radios can be used to communicate with all of the aforementioned radios albeit not legally well the grid is up and of course these do require a license the reason why it's called amateur radio is because it's not commercial and it's for the purpose of communicating from one person to another these are essentially the holy grail of radio these have the most power and they have the longest range theoretically leveraging a system of repeaters that are scattered throughout north america you can essentially communicate with anybody in the country and communicate with countries around the world and unlike the spotty and unreliable connections that you're going to get with cb radio using single sideband have radio is going to allow you to have sustained transmissions when leveraging more sophisticated antennas higher power and the ability to tap into repeaters to relay your message along the way it's the only option where you can listen and talk to emergency services there's a much wider range of frequencies as i previously indicated why ham radio is so superior is that in the acute phase of a disaster it's very likely that there's going to be a lot of people using the aforementioned radios the frs the gmrs the mers and the cb radio it's very likely that if you live in an urban area there's going to be a lot of interference there's going to be a lot of people trying to communicate on those channels ham radio provides a much wider array of frequencies and not as many people have them because again these are usually special order items that aren't available at your local walmart ham radios can leverage high frequency radio waves which are the best in an shtf situation because they're going to allow you to communicate hundreds of miles potentially not with your run-of-the-mill handheld balfing radio but if you have a base station or even if you have a mobile station if you want more information on that once again go to hamradioprep.com and i'll also say that survival tech nord he has a wealth of knowledge on this topic and i would strongly encourage you to go and subscribe to his channel now our talk would not be complete without talking about fm am and shortwave and weatherband receivers now a receiver cannot transmit information it's still good to have in my opinion a shortwave radio that has weatherband because this is going to provide you with information from emergency services and it's also going to provide you with a long range comms from other places around the world shortwave can pick up signals from hundreds if not thousands of miles away under the right conditions and if the grid is down in your country yet you're still trying to figure out what's going on in the world you may be able to pick up transmissions from across the globe now a thing we never talked about here are wireless mesh networks like the ones used in the gotenna mesh system these actually run on the same frequency that mers utilizes but we're gonna have to save that for another day because this video is likely already complicated enough now the question is what radio is right for you personally i would get the entire suite of radios if you can afford it get yourself some handheld balfing radios don't just get one if you have a lot of family members get yourself a few and make sure you have them programmed to talk on the same frequency but remember you need a license to actually transmit on these radios you can listen but you cannot transmit legally without a license now in a crisis situation you can legally use your baofeng radio to signal for help in that instance you are allowed to use the radio to transmit but under no other circumstances are you allowed to use that now if the grid goes down and there's no rule of law i don't think you're going to be at the top of the fcc's priority list but if you want to effectively know how to use these tools it's very important that you go in the very least take the course from hamradioprep.com and that is going to enable you to actually be able to take the test and in the very least you're going to be able to easily learn about the material learn how the radios work and learn all of the various nomenclature associated with the practice my own personal setup is such that i have a mobile cb radio single sideband system in my vehicle i also have a pair of gmrs radios and a pair of baufen radios just in case a mad max situation presents itself currently i don't have my ham radio license i'm working through the material on hamradioprep.com and that's been incredibly helpful in helping me to comprehend how we can leverage the radio wave spectrum in order to communicate so go check out that link in the comments section below and i hope that you found this video useful if you have any questions please leave them in the comment section below and i'm likely going to commission my friend survival tech nord to hopefully help me answer some of those questions because i'm certainly not going to have all of the answers but we'll do our best to make sure that you are squared away and prepared thanks for watching guys don't forget to like comment subscribe if you enjoyed this video canadian peppero the best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at canadianpreparedness.com your one stop shop for premium high quality brand name products that have been tried and tested by myself and other youtube gear reviewers my subscribers save 10 off by using the coupon code survival prepper all one word in all caps

Channel: Canadian Prepper

Views: 243,186

Rating: 4.9170628 out of 5

Keywords: doomsday preppers, bug out bag, WROL, doomsday, prepper, preppers, preparedness, collapse, survival, SHTF, grid down, economic collapse, end of the world TEOTWAKI, survive zombie apocalypse, zombie apocalypse, survivalism, survivor, post-apocalypse, radio, prepping radio, ham radio, amateur radio, beginners radio, radio easy to understand, survival radio, gmrs, frs, HAM, cb

Id: iePiL9kSkR0

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021