Introducing: GhostNet
hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today I wanted to offer a bit of a peek behind the curtain and talk about a project that we're currently working on I don't usually like releasing unfinished work but this one requires a bit of user participation to be effective so I thought I would get it out in the world and now and try it out so please keep in mind that this plan is a bit rough around the edges at the moment but it will be a lot more Polished in due time this project is the ghost net so what is the ghost net this is a multi-layered Communications plan to allow radio operators to communicate with each other efficiently using a variety of data modes this plan is going to seem really complicated at first but it's really a simple way to create Global Communications networks in as simple of a way as possible hopefully this will encourage users to begin using radio more in their daily lives not just for practice but for real world information exchange we cannot hope to replace internet-based Communications on the radio but hopefully we can start siphoning off some of that so that people can start getting you know Daily News Headlines local events happening in their area basic communication stuff like that people can start relying on the internet less even though we know that radios can't totally replace the internet from our end here we cannot possibly reinvent the wheel right we're not trying to replace or step on anybody's toes when it comes to Communications plans because there's a lot of comp plans out there already but we can provide our version of a standard common plan for everyone to use over time this plan is going to change but it's a good start for now now I can already feel some eyes glazing over anytime radio stuff is mentioned I I really get it but I would urge those of you who are not super interested in radio stuff to stick with me because this ghost net is really for people like you we're not building this with a radio operator in mind we're building this with the non-radio operator in mind so don't be turned off if something goes over your head right now I promise you we will be getting back to going over the basics in due time I just thought that in the interest of time and how crazy things are going in the world we should probably get this plan out there show how useful it is and then use that as incentive to get non-radio folks involved so here's how we've got this set up so far a lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about today relies on js8 call because it is just something that is really really easy for people to use and I think that the js8 call features of this plan are going to be used more than anything else but we're again bringing other data modes into this as well that's like the bare minimum if all you want to do is just bounce into js8 call Ping a couple of people see what's up get maybe exchange a couple of headlines and then dip out that's fine after the js8 call Window we've got other kinds of transmission modes you can send when link you can send news reports via ready and stuff like that all of this takes place roughly once a week so depending on your skill level if you again just wanted to do some JSA call work that's all this is you can tune in once a week to JSA call for your region and be good if you want to do some more advanced stuff or you link up with someone on js8 call maybe a new contact someone who you haven't talked with before and you want to send them an email uh you can link up on js8 call and then after that com Windows over you'll have a chance to send them an email when it comes to talking to other continents we really want to keep the low power operator in mind the qrp operator the guy that's got just a small qrp radio a lot of Developmental radios are coming out that are very very cheap they're very very cheap transceivers and they work best on data modes in you know qrp operations kind of thing so we want to keep those people in mind and because of that it's really it's going to be really hard to maintain consistent contact between say North America and Europe any time of day for the qrp operator if you've got 100 watts to blast out fine you can make contact with Europe on js8 call very easily at any time of day pretty much but in order to make the maximum chance of success and to kind of get everybody on the same page I think the real power here is just allotting like an hour or two during the Chan during the times when long distance Communications are most likely to be successful for the qrp operator we're calling these meetups data Bridges and these are all going to be on Saturday so if you want to tune in you can tune in on Thursdays which are when our js8 call Nets are and you can also tune in on Saturday at varying times of day depending on which continent you want to talk to I know this may seem a little bit complicated so let me walk through how a ghost net meeting will work the first thing you can do is download the free PDF document the the com plan itself and you can print it out laminate it or just have it handy for reference once you have the guide in hand or really easy to reference you can find the people that you want to talk to if you want to talk to just your region then you can find the page for that and if you want to talk to another region you can find the page for that and then use those parameters and wait until the com window and then try try to make your communication depending on what kind of communication you're trying to do so before we get into the Nitty Gritty details of this plan let's talk about some of the benefits some of the pros to using this kind of system for one it's equipment friendly it's a solid plan for allowing users to have a scheduled time for linking it with locals and distant contacts whoever you wanted to talk to switching from 20 meters to 40 meters is not as easy for users with single band antennas so having two different kind of plans one for local comms and one for like long range DX kind of stuff this allows for users to use the gear that they have more efficiently I know that if I'm using a single band antenna I'm going to probably just set up for local Communications local stuff on 40 meters and just call it a day right I'm not going to go through the effort of setting up an entirely separate antenna just to get some DX work and if I'm going to do that I'm going to have it one radio session a week you know out of you know my busy schedule to set up for you know long range stuff so this also means that users can pick and choose how they want to participate based on the time that they have if they only want to check in on js8 call fantastic you can do that and then dip out if you only need to send a few emails to a buddy fine you can link up during the time period and do it that way if you want to schedule like a teleconference or some kind of phone call over ale there's room for that as well speaking of more advanced stuff like ale users of all experience levels can be involved js8 call is what we would consider to be the absolute Baseline for everyone on HF radio to be able to run if you can get your gear working with js8 call or even just the original like ft8 you can do pretty much everything with regards to data modes more advanced users who have multi-band antennas and compatible radios can take advantage of The Cutting Edge of Civilian HF radio automatic link establishment programs like ion 2G ale while best served to leave running 20 47 is still a relatively new addition to ham radio so picking a specific calm window allows users to test their gear and be sure that others are indeed listening but more on ale a bit later it's it's quite complicated there's also room for variation anyone can take this template and create their own localized ghost net it's easy to copy the framework if the specific times don't work for you or your group you can always adjust things to be a little bit more personalized and finally like I mentioned it is created with busy people in mind for some people working with radios is a joyful hobby but for others it's an undesirable chore since we are trying to use radio as a tool to help us stay connected in these troubling times we want to make this whole system as easy as possible some things can't be helped like band conditions sometimes you might have to stay up late into the night to send an email around the world or to get news from your local area but we really want to reduce the impact that radio operations have on our business lives some people cannot dedicate an hour every day for this but an hour a week is reasonable other people who have a bit more flexibility might be able to make three or four calm Windows per week and stay a bit more connected with other regions around the world whatever you want to do the plan hopefully has something for you at the minimum if something is going down some world event is happening that you want to know about I guarantee you somebody's gonna be on the ghost net talking about it now with all of that in mind let's jump over to the ghost net guide and go over some of the details so right here on the overview page we've got basically what I've mentioned already we've got the core parts of the program kind of highlighted weekly js8 call Nets based on the region you're in on 40 meters we've also got data bridges on 20 meters or sometimes 80 meters depending on the distance that we're trying to make for more long-range stuff and those are going to be on Saturdays we've also got receive only options for those who just want to decode ready and just want to listen in Via S8 call this is why we've been talking about receive only options lately and for users that are a little bit more capable have a little bit more equipment to kind of spare for it we've got ion 2G ale networks for kind of what we're calling right now Communications this is just due to how Ale Works there's still a com window for it you could leave all of this stuff running 24 7 if you wanted to but for right now we're just kind of sticking to specific com Windows just to kind of reduce the burden on the average user now right here on the first page I wanted to address kind of a concern that a lot of people might have which is what about my baofang what about my analog VHF UHF handheld radio for right now I'm sorry to say that these radios don't really have a place in this specific comp plan I'm working on a separate comp plan to take into account line of sight Communications this whole ghost net is really about Beyond line of sight Communications being able to talk to people that are not in your say local area when I say local on HF radio I mean within the same state as you whereas with VHF and UHF radios which need to have line of sight to function these radios are going to be really really difficult to implement into a plan like I can tell you go to this frequency at this time of day and the ghost net will be active but I can guarantee you we'll have thousands of people around the country screaming into their bowel things and they're not going to hear anybody because they're just not close enough to anybody to make it work but fear not we're going to work with what we have right so we're going to be creating a whole separate plan or some kind of operating procedure I guess for what people have like bow things and stuff so don't think that we're neglecting these for now this is really just more of a strategic kind of thing top level uh wave tops kind of thing for now moving on to the second page we've got kind of again some more Concepts kind of laid out and talking more about how we've got mostly 40 meter networks on js8 call and winlink and stuff like that but we've also got data bridges for more long-range Communications again all of this stuff can be done 24 hours a day if you have the power you don't need to wait for a calm window the only reason that the com window exists is to get kind of everybody on the same page at the same time and increase the chances for a contact to be made I can tell you that you know sitting here at my desk most of the time I've got js8 call running in the background uh just kind of listening to see what's out there and if I see something you know hey maybe I want to make contact with somebody but it's just going to be very very sparse whereas if you have a specific you know an hour a week to dedicate to it people can uh people can actually do that that's something that's feasible for people to do same thing with data Bridges it just makes it a little bit easier for people to get all of their gear set up uh for a long range transmission if they've got a very small low powered rig moving on down to emergency C2 nodes we're kind of keeping in mind a lot of the stuff that we've learned so far about like warlord comms right the cool cool term that's come out lately we want to be able to have capabilities when it's a very desperate situation right I think it's very hard to assume that people are going to be able to hop on this ghost net when you know their house is burned down or something like that but we want to make sure that that's a possibility if if people are able to do it so these are just some thoughts on setting up emergency like command and control nodes or like emergency talk when the situation is quite quite desperate again this this might change as I figure out way better ways of rewording stuff but moving on down to the survivability uh page on the on the reverse side of that one this kind of points out some of the stuff that we have to give up if we're if we're looking for survivability I know that a lot of hams are going to look at this and say well this is just a simple con plan right this is really nothing new and that's true there's really nothing that's majorly new here right uh the only major difference here is that this is not being run or associated with any kind of agency right this is just a plan for people to use without being tied to a reporting agency we've already learned unfortunately throughout a few disasters that have happened lately how radios have become kind of weaponized to some degree regarding how they've been told to shut down or how they've not been allowed to turn on repeaters or stuff like that and you know the traditional ham role of being involved with stuff like Aries or Mars well you know we're finding out that it's it's a it's gotten complicated now you know it's not just as simple as a crisis happens and people show up to use their radios for good anymore because there's a lot of agencies that don't want that to happen unfortunately so again this this page just kind of highlights some of the problems that we're going to be dealing with as we're trying to create something that is more survivable than you know us here nobody's going to live forever and we want to make sure that this plan can serve as a good like guide for uh for for anyone out there regardless of what targeting may occur sort of along those same lines we've got kind of an architecture of privacy set up like this this ghost net here can fill a lot of different roles and here at the bottom of this page I've got kind of like the circles of trust look kind of laid out as they pertain to like radio communications I think most people are going to have a trusted sphere of people people like that they share a house with people that you live with immediate family stuff like that then you've got like a semi-trusted sphere of maybe like co-workers that you don't know super well uh you know they know your real name and they they probably may know your phone number but they don't know like your social security number or something like that uh and then you've got your public sphere of just total random strangers that you may uh contact now of course ham radio a lot of times is going to be in the public sphere right because call signs are very public and you can look up anybody's legit call sign due to the FCC not allowing anybody to have any sort of privacy whatsoever so uh we've got to keep this in mind and as we can see here the the kind of purple icons show where the ghost net can really be plugged into any one of these depending on how the situation goes technically as long as the FCC exists js8 call is not going to be private however if something happens in the FCC is no longer a concern anymore then we can actually use it we can actually use it in very alternative ways I'll just say that so so again the the ghost net here is kind of a multi-layered thing where you can use it however you want to you can use it uh in amongst people that you know people that you don't know and people that you sort of know right so there's many different ways of using the ghost net using the umbrella of the ghost net to kind of get your stuff done right so up next I've got kind of a what's the point page which is meant to sort of drive home some of these points uh just in case people aren't picking up what I'm putting down if you know what I mean but the key takeaway for this page is that hey things are pretty freaking serious now and uh there's a lot of people that realize this and they're getting invested in radios now that HF technology is getting a lot cheaper you can get a lot of you know developmental uh transceivers for very very cheap and you can get on HF radio and work some data modes using very little power and be very difficult to Direction find and because of this we've got to do better we cannot use like a prepper frequency plan from the 1990s we've got to do better voice comms as far as I'm concerned are very much a kind of like a dying art I I don't want to discount them entirely because there's just sometimes you cannot beat you know a human talking to another human being you know using verbal speech to get a point across right there's just no way to to replicate that in some situations however for 90 of all Communications on Earth can be done with text right so data modes are kind of the way forward and this page kind of hopefully outlines that next up we have our data Bridge overview and again this page is kind of Unfinished because we've got uh four data Bridges right now but there will probably be more added as people around the globe get interested the reason for breaking things out this way and not just having a 24-hour radio bridge is because again low power operators need the best chance of success if they're going to try to make contact with somebody they need to dang well know somebody's going to be listening during that time frame so if you're trying to talk from North America to Europe here's kind of an overview of how to do it same with Europe to Australia and Australia to the South Pacific and North America to Australia that's going to be probably the hardest one to to make happen as sort of a side note the extra data Bridge there for Australia to the South Pacific this is me kind of getting ahead of the curve with regards to geopolitical issues that may be taking place in the Pacific Theater if you know what I mean Australia is kind of the the front line when it comes to information exchange throughout the South Pacific if a prolonged conflict were to break out between China and you know Taiwan or something like that some kind of situation in the South Pacific Australia is going to be mightily concerned about that understandably so with that in mind I've created a whole data bridge and taking into account the fact that the South Pacific is a pretty big region on the earth and I think that they need their own data bridge for Australians to communicate with say like the Philippines or something like that uh they need that dedicated data Bridge just kind of we're kind of front loading the effort now to kind of get that out of the way right so moving on down we've got the ghost net schedule at a glance which is uh for Thursday and Saturday again we've got Thursday are the local 40 meter Nets and Saturday are the long range data Bridges so if you've got some spare time on a Thursday or Saturday you can you can check the time and maybe hit one of these calm Windows anybody who's capable can join into any of these calm Windows if they want to make some Communications right maybe even service some relays I don't know during the like the long range Halls you know people can kind of set up the the things that they want to do so yeah this is just a good way to kind of look and see at a glance what time of day it is and you know if you've got some spare time again the times for these specific Windows may change uh we're still trying to figure out if there are any other like larger Nets or some kind of you know random data bursts that are going to go through and uh make it really hard to send Communications during these time frames so again you know I can only look at things from my very small part of the world most of the people who've who've tested this out for us already are here in the United States or in North America so trying to communicate around the world is a little bit a little bit difficult especially when we try to try to work our com Windows around interference right so just keep in mind that we may have to shift these communications Windows based on interference or other Nets or something like that so um just just remember that as we move forward up next we get to the ghost net North America page now this if there's one page you're going to print out at home this should be the page this and the reverse side of it because this outlines what's going to go on every Thursday night and at what times so as we can see here the the top layer in the green we've got the js8 call Window note that it is not on the main js8 call frequency this is on an alternative frequency you don't have to use js8 call on the main js8 call calling frequencies so we've shifted it off of the main calling frequencies because uh it's probably going to generate a lot of traffic and we don't want to step on anybody's toes right so uh this is uh what you're what you're going to want to go for 7.105 for now again this may change but one of the cool things about js8 call in particular and one of the reasons why js8 call it seems like a simple program but it is such a powerful group messaging tool is that it allows you to create groups using the at symbol and then a group name which means I can hop on js8 call at this frequency during this time window and click uh you know put like at ghost net in my message and anybody who is following that tag will get an alert on their screen this makes it super easy to weed out any other Communications that are not part of ghost net stuff and more importantly if you have a subgroup so like you wanted to have a ghost net for your state or for your country or for your region depending on where you're at in the world you could absolutely do that and you would only get notifications if somebody is pinging you again if we're going to go big with this we need to prepare for potentially thousands of people to be on ghost net at the same time now js8 called by its very nature makes it very easy to separate out Communications and make sure that nobody is stepping on somebody else but for those of you who are receiving only it makes it easy for you to say all right this guy is in this state this uh guys talking about this event in this region it makes it very very easy so that you're not just on you know one channel you're able to differentiate out and have if your antenna is good enough or if you're using a good enough web SDR you can hear a lot of different states going at it and sharing information all at the exact same time without stepping on anybody that is awesome because you can have multiple news reports from multiple areas being put out a lot of people talking about local events battle tracking stuff and all kinds of cool stuff and uh nobody's really stepping on on each other so that's a really great way to use the organizational features within js8 call to monitor multiple Networks to keep things simple for the uh the next half hour in this com window is going to be for when link peer-to-peer as you guys know I've mentioned it many many times uh win link I am not a fan of when using the winlink telnet I don't I just personally don't like sending an email through someone else's server because I think that you know as winlink has a certain uh benefits to it I think the reason that they set things up that way is so that when link can serve as a way to get a message outside of like a power outage Zone to an area that has power and then use that to send an email using the regular internet I'm just not a fan of that I don't like the way the architecture is set up and this is just my personal preference but anybody with any kind of power whatsoever can say you know what this email does not get to go through the internet so they can shut that down based on call sign alone I don't want to have that potential so peer-to-peer is kind of the way forward using winlink to send an email from one computer and radio to another computer and radio with no infrastructure in between as we all know if you don't own the wires you don't own the communications and if you're using someone else's infrastructure such as a win link node uh that's not a good way to set up emergency communications in my opinion you can use it as much as you want fine if it works it works but don't put all your eggs in one basket so we've got the win link peer-to-peer frequency listed now again one person or rather two people are going to be using this frequency to conduct handshakes and send peer-to-peer messages so this is just like the main frequency for it I don't foresee this getting a whole lot of use but maybe it would I don't know I've made it the same as the js8 call window so that hopefully you can actually see it in the heartbeat section see a little bit of bleed over there in the heartbeat section of js8 call to see oh someone is is now sending a win link message you may step on a few heartbeats here and there but it's a good way for people who might stay on js8 call all for like a whole hour you know a lot of people don't want to stay on JSA call for just 30 minutes they might want to dedicate an hour to it but if they see a win-link message being sent in their js8 call waterfall they might say hey let me go check that out and see uh see who's sending that email so that's kind of the reason for keeping the same frequency moving down to the next window which is ready radio teletype right that old school classic I'm going to have probably several videos talking specifically about ready but uh ritty is a fantastic mode uh it's one of the I think it is technically the first Digital radio mode Maybe I'm Wrong on that but anyway this is a 30 minute time frame for users to gain experience with ready in due time I would hope that the community really takes this and runs with it because right now ready is basically dead except for contesting I Envision a day in the future when the average person out there can turn on a receiver of some sort and decode ready news reports regularly like thank can tune in like a submarine in the Atlantic during World War II and get the news headlines from around the world I think that would be super super cool like I've mentioned before riddy is absolutely perfect for sending out our wire reports literally the only thing holding me back from doing that is the legality but the technology works it's easy to do but the fcc's regulations on what constitutes broadcasting versus amateur use and the fact that there is zero way of Legally transmitting without eliminating privacy using a licensed call sign you know both of these reasons are why we're not transmitting wire reports on ready just yet but hey if the missiles start flying and we don't have to worry about the FCC or sad hands anymore uh you know where I'll be and finally the last window is going to be just a a hopefully mostly silent window uh just in case somebody has some kind of emergency right like I mentioned before I don't want to rely on voice so much at all because this just turns into a rag chewing session and the the ghost Net's not about that we're about information exchange so if somebody has an emergency or needs to make some kind of communication or relay something you can't beat human voice for getting that communication across but we don't want to rely on it as like a crutch or be potentially identified by it right so we want to allow for its usage and we don't want to discount it right because a lot of people out there are capable of of simple voice transmissions on HF radio but we don't want it to be a main thing so uh We've allowed a frequency and a com window for that just in case it's needed and on the back side of this page we have the data Bridges so if you are in North America these are the two data bridges that you can use um depending on the time of day they're kind of laid out very very similar so we've got basically just a simple js8 callnet and an ion 2G ale com window if you wanted to use that a whole hour for js8 and a whole hour for ale if you had that capability again ale is going to make a lot of this plan irrelevant hopefully by the time ale becomes a major thing on HF radio we don't need bands we don't need frequencies we just need a time of day to turn it on that's how Ale Works ale is going to be able to choose the frequency that best Works to make the communication happen so getting that time period nailed down now is going to be helpful for when ale becomes a much more common thing in the future so again the data bridges are all about efficiency making sure that people are in the right place at the right time with the right antenna on the right frequency to make these communications more likely to happen again if you've got enough power this is all irrelevant if you've got enough power you can just blast out any time of day you want and make these comps happen but again we're working with the lowest common denominator it does not matter if you've got a hundred thousand dollars worth of gear in your ham Shack if you cannot communicate with the masses so we're trying to keep the masses in in mind people who don't have thousands of dollars to spend on HF radio stuff maybe they can afford a 65 transceiver right so we're trying to keep those folks in mind and this comp plan is duplicated for Europe and for Australia so we've got basically the same thing if you're in Europe This is the card you use and again here are your data Bridges same thing with Australia this is what you guys have got and the same data Bridges now of course the times are changed uh to be more convenient for The Working Man right we want to keep people who are working standard business hours uh connected we want to make it so that people can get off work have some time to themselves and you know casually fire up js8 call on a Thursday night that's how we want to make things set up right so we've got that set up for Europe and for Australia now again the Europe group is not going to be talking to the American group and the American group's not going to be talking to the Australian group except on hopefully Saturdays when people have a lot more uh incentive and some free time to make those calm Windows happen for instance for me at least if I want to maintain contact with Australia I've got to get up at like five in the morning uh to make the to make it actually happen uh so that's not gonna be possible during the week uh because you know if you're already up and up and about doing other stuff but on a Saturday that might be possible if if you uh if you want so you know for me again for Europe the Comm window for Europe is going to be for me tuning in at around I think two in the afternoon so I can't do that during the week but you know during a weekend that's that's going to be possible so that's one of the main reasons for for separating out these data Bridges it's because uh if you want to have the best chance of success at hitting a different continent you've got to get up really early or stay up really late a lot of times to make these uh comms happen so you want to have your difficult shots to be made on the weekend where you can take a nap or something and you you can work around it you're not held down to a standard you know work day up next we've got a slightly different card which is talking about basic incident response a lot of people these days uh want to know what to do they want some kind of sop standard operating procedure right and this is kind of our quick stab at it from a Communications perspective basically something happens in the world something significant that is going to affect you personally maybe not for your local area but for maybe a region or something like that you can pick up this card and know what to do so basically this is just a quick reminder for you know taking care of your physical security first then start establishing Communications determine who's on the network who's on ghost net who's who's going to be uh talking and working this issue start putting together a talk and working through you know various staff functions then of course keeping in mind how the situation is going to change we can't always drop everything we're doing to track some world event so keeping that in mind and then you know what to do afterwards to improve your incident response through ghost net for next time and then on the back of that card are just a reminder of all of the intelligence collection methods that you can use second imit comment mazzant human and ocent all the different tools you can have to improve your intelligence collection capability just a quick little reminder up next we've got kind of a placeholder I've got a world time zone chart which I'm going to replace with a map that uh I'm making myself and on the back of that we've got kind of a platform overview explaining kind of like the the pros and cons of things like JSA call ion2g wind link and meshtastic now as many of you noted meshtastic is not part of this plan yet but it will be I'm working on making that happen uh we've just got to do a little bit more testing uh before we we dive back into meshtastic I know a lot of people think meshtastic is dead far from it meshtastic is has come Leaps and Bounds since we talked about it a couple of years ago so uh there's going to be more to come on on that very very soon up next we have document detailing how to set up ion 2G and configure things just a quick quick reminder guide ion 2G is not the easiest thing to learn as a beginner it's it's Leaps and Bounds better than anything that was out there prior but ion 2G is still a little bit complicated uh for for beginners to use so this is just kind of a quick guide to remind you as to how to set it up and then on the back are the frequency lists for the ghost net um I'm tempted to say ignore this for now because we're still working on the frequencies uh this document should have to go with it the config file uh so that you could load the configuration right into ion 2G and you wouldn't have to manually put any of these in I'm still working on it so these frequencies are probably going to change uh so yeah don't don't uh don't pay too much attention to this for now and then moving on to what I know a lot of people are going to be have questions on receive only options so this is just a very quick quick reference guide I'm of a reminder for people who might want to be setting up a receive only setup again this is going to have its own dedicated video just like we have already done with setting up listen only js8 call and then finally on the last page here we have a very crude last ditch receive only options thing basically if all you've got is a simple shortwave receiver here's what you can listen to and here are the best practices to get the most out of it during a crisis yeah I'm going to be expanding this quite a bit this is going to be changed quite a bit again this is a working product this is a working document and you know this is what you get when you when you're releasing something that is not exactly finished there's going to be a lot of changes so this is the plan as it stands now keeping all of this in mind now that we've kind of gone over the dirty details of this let's talk about some of the downsides some of the cons to this program to the to this plan here for one it's nothing new it's basically just a plan to use pre-established software um this isn't really a con on I guess but if you're expecting this to be some magical high-tech system you're going to be disappointed at its core ghost net is simply a predetermined set of frequencies and times of day which increase the potential for people to actually communicate and not just randomly blast out Transmissions to whoever's out there another con like I've mentioned before is that this since this is on HF for the most part you're going to need a license as long as the FCC exists this is going to be a concern however the system will function in an emergency just fine there are no Hardware locks that prevent unlicensed users from transmitting of course we are required by FCC regulations to mention that unlicensed Transmissions or against FCC regulations so I begrudgingly have to put this disclaimer in there but if the FCC no longer exists anybody with an appropriate radio can easily transition to this system another con is that for now a lot of people are going to be left out with data Bridges connecting large pop population centers individual users who fall between regions are bound to feel left out until we can specify more regions more data Bridges but fear not if you don't fall exactly within a region you can tune into the closest one for you another con is that was the many different plans things can get pretty confusing hopefully we can mitigate this by creating a guide like like we have so far that's going to allow users to Simply pick the region they live in and go from there on each card there are clear instructions for communicating within the region as well as other regions around the world a major con that I've kind of talked about already is that there are no VHF or UHF options only catering to the HF radio crowd is very limiting I understand this the ham radio Community is pretty small to begin with and the people on HF radio is even smaller it requires a higher level license and the equipment is really expensive so a lot of people get priced out or limited if they just got their tech license like I mentioned before do not worry we are thinking about a more Universal plan for VHF and UHF as well a more Universal plan is it's going to be really hard to do for VHF and UHF um because it's it's really needs to be made at a local level based on the local topography and what people have in a local area which is why I'm hesitant to do it and I certainly don't want to include it in the ghost net which is more strategic I mean it would it would take a long time and and actually be I think quite limiting because then we'd have thousands of different com plans I mean even if I were to do one for each state that's still 50 different com plants we've got to track and maintain uh eyes on so for now I think we're just going to have to stick with more strategic Communications for the ghost net and we'll we'll come back to VHF and UHF uh in a bit another con that people might mention is there are no voice modes that are standard right it doesn't include voice this is really just a data only thing I understand that voice Nets are extremely common and people who enjoy longer conversations are not likely to enjoy the ghost net too much but we have to keep in mind like I mentioned already that this is not for rag chewing this is a tool and even though it's a bit more difficult and it requires you know having a computer digital modes are the future of radio there's a reason why so many of our fellow ham radio content creators have focused on digital modes quite a lot it's not just the new hotness digital modes like ft8 js8 VAR AC or even winlink and ion 2G these tools are here to stay because they are efficient and fast of course we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket and just do only digital stuff we want to allow for standard you know SSB voice and even stuff like CW we want to allow for these valuable tools because of how Universal they are I don't want to be banging out CW every day to spread news stories around but I do want to practice it occasionally and definitely have it in an emergency I've had a lot of you feel the same way about your favorite radio mode so we want to provide that opportunity for those that want it another con that I briefly mentioned earlier is that content from from us and me directly is going to be very difficult to do so you're not going to hear anything directly from me on it for now with privacy a major major concern for myself and others it would not be a swell idea for me to link my official real world name to the S2 project however we still have to play by the fcc's rules so a security by obscurity approach is really all we've got so my own Transmissions when I'm on it myself using my you know real name and stuff like that my Transmissions will simply blend in with all of you this this means that I can't tell you to tune in to X frequency at a certain time and hear me read the news I just I can't do that unless uh an event occurs that's so bad that the FCC and you know all sad hams no longer are a fact which is extremely unlikely to ever happen I desperately want to one day be able to say buy this radio download this calm plan and you'll be able to hear me no matter what I want to start putting out wire reports in the same way but we have to start with baby steps while we're thinking about how to make this happen and one of the best baby steps we can offer is simply a time and place for many of us to link up chat for a bit test our gear check our antennas and stuff and if we have the desire to exchange information here and there this may sound simple but it's a little bit complicated because there is again no net control there's no one person in charge no single point of failure and no single point of intelligence collection it's going to be way more disorganized this way I know this is probably going to be the only ham radio network that doesn't have a net control but this ensures the survivability of the network you can't cut the head off the snake if the snake has no head to begin with right when creating a long-term Communications plan we have to account for the net being able to continue even if we are not able to participate I'm not going to live forever so I would hope that in the event of my unexpected absence the ghost net can continue or at least be a good first step towards maintaining comms should the worst happen in a slightly more likely scenario since the ghost net is going to be comprised of many calm plans all taking place at multiple times of day I can't dedicate eight hours of my life to sitting on JSA call but I can hit my local network and maybe an overseas data Bridge once a week so in my personal absence if I'm not there the net is already there for people to use if they want over time I'm sure we'll all get a bit more acquainted on certain com plans and as time goes on we can start sharing responsibilities for more complex projects and that's really what this is all about the ghost net is at minimum A Simple Communications plan but it's also a way for us to grow together learn from each other and honestly get a little bit of reassurance I know it may sound a bit silly but whenever I turn on js8 call and I see that ghost net tag I know that there's somebody else out there in the real world that is on the same page as me it's one thing to talk to someone on the internet but when you are able to do something physical with your hands and see the benefit of your work it's really motivating because when you see that ghost net tag you know that whatever happens somebody will always be there ready to fight in the shade together