Receiving Digital HF -- Even if Not a Licensed Ham!

either you have comms or you don't welcome to the Amron communications video channel Amron is a patriot oriented Nationwide radio communications Network for disasters and civil defense I've recently had a new wave of correspondence with Folks at various stages of their Journey getting their emergency communications capability ities up to speed and some of them are brand new on their Journey others however have been working on Communications for months or years and still don't have adequate comms capabilities what they do have and they have in abundance is excuses in this video I'm going to take some of the most common excuses away and provide some resources to help get you up to speed on staying informed in a grid down emergency situation it doesn't matter what you plan to do or intend to do or hope to do or what you think you're going to do what matters is what you do the truth is if the grid suddenly went down tomorrow what you have today is what you'll have tomorrow and forever after that amaron already passes intelligence reports and radio traffic on a regular basis across the country throughout regions and on local Nets involving hundreds of radio operators that information is already there swirling over your head on a daily basis all you have to do is grab it and you don't have to be a member of Amron you don't need to have a ham license to receive ham radio Transmissions you don't have to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars here we're not talking about your VHF UHF walkie-talkie that falls under the Tactical local Communications category and most folks have that down we're talking about news and information that you'd be cut off from if the grid suddenly went down we take the internet and our cell phones for granted but what if that were cut off for an indefinite period of time could you get news and information from the next town the next County the next state or from two states away the first excuse in an emergency I don't care what's going on out outside my area well some might argue that their local radio communications is all they care about and don't have an interest in what's happening somewhere else or in a different part of the country why do you watch Fox News or follow Liberty daily or other news feeds of what's Happening across the country or around the world because you want to have situational awareness this helps you stay informed that desire for information would be magnified in a true grid down Emer emergency situation let's take a look at some real world examples dispelling the myth that what's happening outside your area doesn't matter the first example is the collapse of Venezuela in a shtf lessons from Venezuela article posted on Survival blog in 2014 it states lack of communications causes panic and rumors as the communications are shut down we are seeing that a sense of panic is growing no one knows if other states have surrendered and they are the last to stand at the Alamo they don't know if the government is losing either that is why it is growing difficult to differentiate between rumors and fact rumors and reports are that the government is now massacring prisoners by the dozens if not hundreds and burning the bodies some report that the Jets are bombing cities information is as vital at this point as food and water calm leader ership is needed to keep everyone from panicking or shutting down it would have been wonderful if they had prepared with a radio network that was Interstate rather than just within small cloistered groups those of you with ham equipment will be hailed as Heroes should this situation come to a theater near you and I would add that ham radio signals can be received without a license or expensive ham radio equipment transmitting is where more specialized equipment and skills are required now let's take a look at Kazakhstan in January 2022 when the country and specifically the capital Alm descended into chaos riots and looting supposedly over Rising fuel prices commercial power cell phones internet and supply lines were cut off the headlines covering the crisis read amid unrest kazak seek bread and information and there was neither to be had what most every citizen in Kazakhstan didn't know was that convoys and flights of Russian troops were on the way to help quell the uprising and to supposedly restore order what if there were foreign troops 150 Mi away headed in your direction our best guess is this is something you'd care about knowing the last example is a chemical plant explosion in Spain in 2015 with a toxic Fallout Cloud if you needed to travel from point A to point B and this event occurred on your planned route wouldn't you want to have that situational awareness so you could alter your route or avoid the affected area as opposed to blindly driving into it so what are some of the other common excuses I'm studying for my license and then I'm going to jump in and get on the air you don't have to be licensed to receive ham radio communications you only need to be licensed to transmit while you're studying for your license if something happens tomorrow or next week you'll be right where you are now in an information blackout if you're really studying for your ham license get your transceiver now if you're not in a position to get your ham radio gear then at least become capable of receiving with a shortwave radio or an SDR receiver we see folks who have no comms whatsoever who've been studying for their licenses for a year or 2 years or 3 years third excuse digital stuff just seems overly complicated I'm good with just voice Communications well fortunately it's not that complicated and there are a ton of resources available today unlike 12 years ago when we began using digital modes it's like driving a stick shift at first it seems confusing and cumbersome but after you become proficient it's as easy as anything else that you put into practice on a regular basis with just a bit of perseverance you'll be doing it without even thinking about it and unfortunately voice Communications over HF has limitations often times the band conditions are so poor it's a struggle just to have someone check into a net with their call sign much less share any other information stand 50 ft from someone with a diesel truck parked between you and the other person with the engine running on the truck then read an article from the newspaper in a manner that that he can write down everything you're saying so he can refer to it later and read it to others conversely pull out your cell phone and copy and paste the article into a text and send it to him you see the difference digital modes simply get through when voice won't of course not as fast as sending a text but it gets through when nothing else will and excuse number four I don't know anything about comms and I don't even know where to begin well we're going to help you with that right now let's let talk about how you can get your comms up to receive the message traffic news intelligence and reports that will be flying across the airwaves in a grid down disaster in fact even during normal grid up times this kind of practice and training traffic is already being sent on a daily basis Amron releases a weekly Amron intelligence brief every Monday which is then relay throughout the week over regional and local Nets taking place across the country as well as during during the daytime on what is called the persistent presence Net radio operators will often request the aib and other radio operators respond by sending it to them the aib consists of an aggregated report of real world news which may be of interest to emergency radio operators and is sent using digital mode software and stations receiving the aib can then read it print it and then distribute it locally or regionally so there are numerous regularly scheduled opportuni unities for you to practice with your equipment and hone your skills maintain proficiency by receiving Amron radio traffic on a regular basis so let's explain how you your family or your group can take advantage of these opportunities so you can stay inform now in a real grid down emergency if you don't do it now you won't in an emergency no matter how much you'll want to in this next portion we'll cover receiving the signals and how to turn these signals into usable information that you can make sense of the equipment is Affordable and the software is free and easy to use the main emphasis here is for HF or high frequency receiving you probably already have local comms covered but this will allow you to receive radio Transmissions coming from Over the Horizon also known as Beyond line of sight Communications for capturing the signals I'll cover shortwave radio receivers and SD drr receivers SDR or softwar defined radio receivers are fun and affordable and I'll get into that in just a moment but I strongly recommend if you have nothing else at least have a physical shortwave radio it's portable and useful for other things such as tuning in to local radio stations listening to shortwave radio broadcasts and will still function in that capacity without the use of a computer additionally holding the speaker to the microphone of your your smart device with a mobile app I'll discuss later allows you to receive even if your laptop becomes unusable for any number of reasons there are many choices for shortwave radios so we'll narrow it down to a few models that are popular and widely used by Amon operators and I have these myself and I'll provide links in the video description below as well as the posting at amaron docomo thing named with the same title of this video Whatever shortwave radio you acquire it must must have SSB that's single sideband receive capability in a major emergency the highest volume of information coming from outside your area will likely be from Ham Radio operators in ham radio on the HF bands they almost always use Lower Side Band or LSB for voice or upper side band USB for digital modes All Digital mode traffic is sent using upper side band all three of the recommended shortwave radios I'm going to mention are known for their superb receive capabilities and all three have SSB or single sideband the first is the teon pl 880 this one has the best fine-tuning and filtering of all three even though it's the most expensive of all three at approximately $169 it's extremely affordable by ham radio standards a similar receiver without the fine-tuning capabilities as the pl 880 is the pl 680 at $139 which also includes the am airband for tuning into aircraft on am if that's something that's of interest to you and finally the ultra portable techon PL 368 with single Side Band this is a super receiver especially for the price of $85 and the most appealing thing to me about this radio is that it uses just .5 Watts a half a watt but as they say in the radio world it's all about the antenna I've seen $500 Ham radios outperform $2,000 radios because the less expensive radio was connected to an efficient antenna compared to the much less efficient antenna that was connected to the more expensive radio these shortwave radios do come with telescoping antennas but they also have an 8 in external antenna Port an external wire antenna is a must for best results this can be any kind of stranded wire even speaker wire but get your long wire antenna outside and as high as possible if you live in an apartment then hang it out the window others who have gone before us and have done the field testing are for example Jack V3 Eed who is now a silent key which means means he's passed away uh he produced a series of tests and posted his results on ham universe.com under an article titled random wire antenna lengths these lengths were listed as the best lengths for being resonant or tunable across most all of the handband frequencies you can pause the video to write down these antenna lengths they're listed in feet select the longest length which best suits your physical location the longer of these you can use and getting your antenna as high into the air as practical for your situation the better next on the receiver list is the SDR softwar defined radio receiver this is a digital signals processor built inside of a USB dongle that you plug into your laptop they're super efficient and the dongle itself is under $35 I recommend either the r TL SDR receiver or the new alac SDR receiver I'll have links available down below the signals received from these can be decoded using the free software from airspy called sdrsharp and that's available at airspy docomo to airspy dcom and from the downloads page select software defined radio package instructions for downloading the software connecting it to your SDR dongle and setting everything up is available at rtl-sdr.com and look at their quick start guide that will also be linked but there's nothing like a video to have someone show you step by-step exactly what to do I recommend the following video linked Below in the description to the YouTube channel called the smoking ape and follow the instructions in the video titled installing rtlsdr and SDR sharp on Windows 10 made easy now once you're able to receive the signals how can you convert the incoming signal to data that you can read print and save this brings us to the second part of the video the digital mode software the very first ham radio software you should download set up and use is from the fast light digital Suite known as FL Digi it's free the the overwhelming majority of radio traffic in an emergency will be sent as various types of reports using FL Digi and the companion programs FL message and flm or flamp there's a reason for each which will be explained in another video but this combination of software will allow you to receive the majority of all the information being shared across the network it's available in multiple platforms at w 1H kj.com download FLD Digi FL message and flamp then download the Amron custom forms from the Amron Amron forms page or you can click the link on the description you'll see a link to the instructions for downloading and installing the custom forms so they'll open up in your FL message program this is what formats the raw data that you'll receive receive into an easily readable printable report read the instructions for downloading importing and installing custom forms I'll go into more setup details in the next video to get you set up optimally for receiving traffic from Amron operators we also have resources at Amron docomo a posting with several embedded videos for downloading installing using FLD Digi FL message flamp at FLD Digi tutorial videos you will need an audio patch cable with an 8in mail plug on each end on one end plug the cable into the headphone out Jack of your shortwave radio on the other end you will plug into the microphone in of your laptop this is what brings the audio signal you're receiving into the FL Digi software for decoding many newer laptops don't have a microphone in Jack if this is the case then you'll need to purchase a USB audio adapter which has a microphone and headphone jack and this is the recommended setup for receiving digital mode Transmissions next let's talk about and FL message APK the Android FL message application another simple way for you to receive and decode digital mode Communications is with the smart device app called a dfl MSG or Android FL message it's also free simply by holding the microphone of your smartphone to the speaker of your shortwave radio you can receive and decode signals sent using FL Digi NFL message it can be downloaded at w1h kj.com files slf lmsg once again a link will be provided Below in this video description the very first thing you should do is download the quick start guide PDF take your time and carefully follow the setup instructions after you download and setup amfl message save yourself a lot of headache by reading through the users manual at the time of this video a&f message is up to version 1.5.0 the custom forms will need to be downloaded so Amon traffic you receive will be properly formatted and much easier to save and read you would follow the same download instructions mentioned earlier in the video just like you did for your laptop computer the only difference is that you would connect your phone to your laptop to copy the custom HTML forms to your phone paste them in two places in your nbems folder by going to your phone's folder directory and paste the forms into nbm's display play forms folder and your nbems entry forms folder we'll make a video in the future covering step-by-step details on how to set up and use a andf message but you'll find it to be fairly intuitive especially if you're using to receive and display traffic that you've intercepted from the Nets the users manual that you download will get you off and running and using the app in minutes however we still encourage using the full lap top version of FL Digi FL message and flamp as the Android version has some serious limitations it will not decode compressed flamp files being sent flamp will look like several hash lines of gibberish uncompressed flamp files can be read in raw form when you receive them in a andf message but it's extremely difficult to make practical use of the information in its raw form so while this is a great digital mode tool it should be viewed as a backup and for limited use at least until the developer or someone else makes a flamp mobile app available and finally where and when to tune in there are several ways the best way to ensure you tune in on the right frequency at the right time is to get a copy of the Amron signals operating instructions which covers the schedules for both training and real world activation schedules the SOI is available at has a digital PDF download for only $8 at the readout gear store which is linked below but don't let not having a copy of the SOI hold you back the aib is sent out every Monday on the 20 meter band and the 40 meter band the posting you see pictured here will also be linked below which gives the times modes and frequencies because the transmission spans multiple time zones and is wide distribution traffic intended for for the Nationwide Network the times are listed in Zulu time also known as UTC there are numerous online resources for converting Zulu time to your local time and write those times down keep them with your radio along with the aib transmission schedule set an alarm to remind you of upcoming schedules these are all great practice opportunities a white paper is posted at Amron and the FL Digi waterfall location all frequencies are upper side band additionally we operate a persistent presence net which means there's someone on the air pretty much anytime during the daytime you'll often see stations relaying the AI to others upon request throughout the day and evening if you leave your radio on and the software running you're likely to catch the radio traffic even if you're away from the radio and finally our regularly scheduled Nets are also opportunities to catch radio traffic being passed along over the Nets those are listed under the Nets tab on the website for other postings with setup guidance using digital modes you can go to the website and simply type digital in the search box including embedded audio files of practice messages for you to experiment with we've witnessed folks with zero radio experience follow these steps and soon after getting their equipment and setting up the software they were receiving message traffic being sent across the network seeing that your station works now and working out any bugs will ensure a high degree of confidence your overall Communications plan that provides Peace of Mind knowing that it works and that it will work for you in a real world grid down situation but only if you do it now I'm John Jacob Schmidt from Amron subscribe and like and share it with others if you found this video helpful and stay tuned for the next one now get your CS up up

Channel: AmRRON

Views: 5,084

Keywords: Prepper communications, shtf comms, FLDIGI, FLAMP, FLMSG, Shortwave Radio, SWR, Grid down comms, Emcomms, Disaster preparedness, HF Digital Modes, AmRRON, Ham Radio, Amateur Radio, cyber attack, terror attack, emp, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, SDR Receiver, Software Defined Radio, High Frequency Communications, HF Radio, Emergency Communications, NVIS, patriots, doomsday, WW3, WWIII, Russia China War, Civil Defense, Family Preparedness, preparedness plan

Id: YFOiOeEHAGA

Length: 23min 59sec (1439 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2024