GhostNet Update

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground now that we've had some time to kind of get the uh ghost net project off the ground and we've had some time to play with it and and uh see how it works out in the real world I thought it would be useful to kind of circle back around and talk a little bit more about it and see uh how it's working some of the changes that we've made and what's in store for the future I understand that uh when we talk about radio stuff a lot of people just are not interested but that's okay hopefully this will be useful for a lot of you nonetheless so just starting right up front what is the ghost net well in short it's a plan that's really all it is this is a Communications plan that is intended to help ease the burden of Communications in both disaster situations but more uh for those of you who are trying to get a little bit more uh resiliency out of uh your communication standards so uh really the ghost net was developed out of one main idea and that idea is that if you don't control the wires you do not control the communication if you do not physically own the internet fiber optic cable and if you are not the internet service provider if you did not launch the satellite into space yourself your Communications can be manipulated altered shut off entirely censored by those people who did do that so you are always going to be at the mercy of a middleman right so when it comes to trying to reduce the vulnerabilities that come with that really we're talking about using radio radio is really one of the only ways that we have uh to remove the middleman and be able to have point-to-point communications over a very long distance that are also interestingly enough very hard to influence Jam so on and so forth where the ghost net comes in is that this is a plan it is quite literally just an 80% solution to get people on the same page roughly 90 95% of all Communications in a disaster or when censorship occurs you know the vast majority of the problems you're going to face is simply getting everyone on the same page right and that's really hard to do if you can't talk to someone so that's what this is is meant to do it is not inventing any new software or technology it's using pre-existing stuff to basically get everybody on the same sheet of music all at the same time that's really all it is beyond the more severe emergency use of censorship that's total or an internet blackout or something like that this is not just a prepping thing this is not just a disaster preparedness thing one of the major goals of this ghost net plan here is to make radio a lot more easy to use on a day-to-day basis so this allows us to have more resilient Communications seamlessly as easily as possible so that we don't have to go through a whole lot of effort to switch into a Communications lifestyle that is hard to do during a disaster right we all love scrolling social media on our smartphones right but what if I could tell you that you know 80% of of all the information you consume on a daily basis you can get over radio um and you can get it in such a way that literally the only way that someone can censor you is if they come and physically get you so you know that may be appealing for some people out there for other people it's you know not so much a concern uh but really this is a multi-layered uh multifaceted plan that can Scale based on what your needs are really it's all about doing something when we don't really have a whole lot out there right now there are plenty of uh ham radio clubs and groups that do kind of disaster uh preparing uh sort of communications plans and that's that's great we absolutely need those this is not meant to replace them uh this is meant to supplement what's already out there and sort of ease the burden uh of moving into more HF radio-based Communications for the average person so before we get into this uh too much uh I just wanted to let everyone know that along the bottom here there's going to be a chapter segment so that if you wanted to skip to the part that you're interested in most please please do so really I'm just trying to cram as much knowledge into this uh video as possible so this may be a little bit overwhelming for some of you who just want to kind of cut to the chase but uh for those of you who are just getting started hopefully this is a good introduction to why HF radio is really really helpful even though it's not a total solution so right to start with let's talk about uh probably the most common question that I get which is how do I put this guide together how do I uh print this out at home and how do I make what I have shown on screen here uh quite a few times and in other uh videos so um right here in on the very uh second page of the guide actually is uh printing instructions for exactly how I do this but just so that uh for everyone who prefers kind of a more visual experience let's jump back to the tabletop and I will show you exactly how I put this together uh here you know in my office so let's go ahead and jump to the desktop and we'll uh get started all right everyone so if you're going to want to create your own ghostnet plan that looks like mine here uh this is is what you're going to need uh first and foremost the most expensive thing you're going to need is a laminator uh however uh you may find that uh you don't need to get by with these and we'll talk about that in a moment the other thing you're going to need which is not pictured is obviously a printer so that you can print out uh the pages uh as per the instructions what you're also going to need is a hole punch of some kind uh your standard three ring uh hole punches will not work you're going to need like a planner hole puncher these can get kind of pricey but but you really just need the cheapest one you can find uh you're also going to need let's see here obviously pair of scissors and some laminating pouches now for this uh project here I have used the absolute cheapest things that I could find anywhere so these are just some uh generic noname uh Chinese grade 4x6 in laminating pouches 5 mil uh that's what I use and finally you're going to need some kind of binding system I prefer to use zip ties for this particular project however depending on which hole punch you use you can also uh put these in like a ride in the rain binder depending on what you wanted to do so let's go ahead and get started here so first things first is to flip on the laminator and get it warming up and obviously we have our uh ghost net Pages here now I'm working on making this a little bit more efficient so that you can get a couple of different pages out of one sheet of paper but for right now to be compatible with as many printers as possible I've had to kind of just shrink this down and put one per page this is so that when you print it on like a a garbage quality printer like what I'm actually using a very cheap printer uh the sides actually match up pretty good so uh once once you print this out the next step is to obviously cut it out so cutting it out we have to make sure that we go along the lines just like we all learned in grade school right one thing to note uh make sure that you do not cut the colored line that is all the way around the page that gray grayish line uh that is for color coding of some other projects that I'm working on so that everything will match together I know there's uh not much details about this just yet but it will come into play uh later on right now the color that I'm using for like communication stuff is kind of like a gray color so uh just making sure that all of that matches up together is ideal so just cutting along we don't have to be super accurate uh the pages are scaled so that they will fit pretty much any 4x6 laminating pouch that you have um so we don't have to be super accurate but you want to make sure that the the page actually fits within the laminating pouch so uh if you did this correctly you might find see right here you've got a little bit of um extra on the bottom but it's almost flush on this side this is because some printers are just not as accurate as others and uh the way that the uh document prints out it's just off slightly but no matter what you should be able to print this out just fine obviously the next step is to drop this bad boy in our laminating pouch now depending on which pouches you get uh you may find that it's a tighter fit than others but I just like to drop them in here if you can like justify it slightly to the right so that so that it's a little bit offset so that you have more room for your whole punches along this side but it doesn't really matter I I've made it so that even if you Center it there's not a whole lot of critical IC information along this side of the sheet so it should be fine even if you hole punch through some of the words but once you've got that done slip it into your laminating machine now like I mentioned you don't actually need a laminating machine you can buy uh the adhesive laminating pages I just like this because it's it's not that expensive and I go through hundreds of pages of laminate a lot when I'm trying to do this and some other stuff I'm working on so this actually is a pretty good investment for me even though it's just kind of you know the cheapest thing you could find on the internet but by and large you don't need this you can use the self- adhesive laminating pouches if that's all you have or if that's what you prefer I just find that with a 4x6 shape it's a little bit easier to use uh the laminating pouch of course always important to make sure that it doesn't just hang there in laminating machine otherwise it will start to deform along the bottom of the page but here we go still a little warm so we're just going to let that cool off a little bit before we ho punch it so that we don't get any kind of distortion along the hole punch now like I mentioned uh if you don't want anything if you don't want any of the other pages and you just want this one page uh this is now waterproof so uh you don't have to hold punch it you can just keep you can print off five or six of these keep them with every radio that you have or at least every HF radio that you know radio that this matters for and you're good to go uh you don't really need much more than that uh here on the front this is why I have this printed out so if you're in North America you just print out the North America card and then on the back you've got your data bridges for talking with the rest of the planet if you wanted to do that sort of thing obviously the guide kind of you know goes with other pages but for now if this is all you want this is you know really all you need to do and since it's all on one page you can laminate it like this and it's waterproof so now that we have this page laminated uh you can go through and do you know all the rest of them as well uh now we can hold punch so I prefer to use a six hole punch so that it lines up with some of the other uh things I'm working on and some of my right in the rain notebook binders but all we do is put it in there crunch it and we have our whole punches now let me go ahead and run through the rest of the guide right quick and I will uh show you how to bind this all together all right so now that I have printed out cut out and laminated every single page of this document now comes time to decide what you want to include uh when you bind all of this together now my personal preference is to just print it all out that way I have a uh complete guide here and I uh I don't like to uh put the pages in different orders however you may choose to do that uh sometimes I do so if you're trying to make like a smaller uh radio kit or you're trying to like tuck away some of this uh kind of important knowledge You may wish to just grab the the three main uh continent Pages you may want to take the uh Emissions Control page I'll put that together maybe the authorized emitter Matrix as well and you can put all of that together and have a smaller little little book um that's a little bit more compact now for me personally I just like to carry all of it around so that um I have kind of a general idea as to you know what people are out there using and I like the the full manual itself um another consideration that you might want to uh figure out for yourself is which Pages you want to be uh in which order now again I like to leave mine in order but since you're binding this yourself the customization is there so uh if you want to put say your continence page right up front you can do that uh if you want to leave out say the the title page and the uh printing instructions page you can leave that out too and just start with kind of like the overview again I like to leave it all together and then I'll show you what I do and how I just kind of keep mine stored in my kits uh once I get this bound up so again binding the choice is yours you can put this in a right in the rain notebook it fits perfectly in that uh you can use some uh metal rings uh which is a good option if you're trying to stack this with with a bunch of other notes that you may have uh but if you're just trying to bind this by itself what I found Works quite well are just simple zip ties so what I'm going to do is just use four zip ties I'm not going to put one in each uh of the circles here but I am going to put uh one on the top and the bottom so let's see here just run it right through now the way that I like to do this just so that it's a little bit a little less annoying for me is run it through the bottom like this so that the uh little bit that hangs Is On The Backs side so again just to show you I like to leave maybe a little bit maybe a finger width there uh just to get started one good way to make sure that you're not making your zip tie too small and just wasting a bunch of zip ties is just open it up so that it's laying flat and you see how much space you have left so I can go a couple more clicks with that one and I mean it's very simple this is basically it you just run through these like to do it a couple here in the middle you don't have to use all of these zip ties of course but you can do as many as you want okay so that's about right continuing on we just have the second from the bottom here and the last one so I really I really like the modularity of this you can really put it whichever way you want choose different kinds of options so that's kind of how I have it and then of course coming back and removing the slack from these zip ties here so there we go you can make it tighter or looser however you want it and that's how uh you can bind it together it looks decently professional like this if you just wanted to store it in your bag like this uh but what I prefer to do is is uh flip it open to the page where uh I have incident response so uh you know just Me In the Heat of the Moment I want to have uh something I can pull out of my bag and uh just look at really quickly so this is just my personal preference you may like it you may not uh but this way also keeps the heads of the uh zip ties uh kind of in the in the document itself so it's a little Slicker to get in and out of a bag or like a chest Trigg or something like that if you have it tucked away like that so again this doesn't just apply to the ghost net you could do do this with pretty much you know any document you want any little field flash card but this is you know kind of what I like to do so this is how you put it all together again you don't have to include everything uh this is just the way that I like to do it now of course you can uh print this out fit to page and if you do that on an American Printer which is 8 and 1/2 by 11 the standard standard size for that uh it will expand this uh document here so that it will of course fit it to the page and then that way you can put it inside sheet protectors in a in a classic three- ring binder and the uh and the print will be a lot larger so if you have some trouble you know reading some of this really small print or maybe maybe your printer isn't super great and some of the text is a little blurry I know format wise there's a lot of uh concerns about that uh which is why I've made uh the DPI for this uh text high enough so that you could print it out poster sized if you wanted to and you won't have any loss of resolution so yeah you can print it out whatever size you want 8 and 1 12 by 11 the full page or its original organic size here the reason again for going with such a small size is for uh really just ease of use for fitting inside notebooks that you might have like field notebooks or something like that and also tucking down inside both cargo pockets and like front or back pockets this should fit in pretty much uh every pocket that's designed to take a 4x6 object so let's jump back up and let's talk a little bit more about this document itself all right so we've gotten our ghostnet plan printed out or stored on some kind of media whatever um this will for those of you who don't like printing things out I would still recommend printing it out um this version that I'm holding right here is version 1.4 so if you're looking into the future uh there may be parts of this plan that I'm not going to talk about today but they're in the guide so uh just keep that in mind is this video is going to be on the internet forever right so um it's it's liable to change as time goes on so uh I'm not going to go over every single page of this guide you can read it yourself uh really the the first few pages here kind of explain the general concepts of what this plan is all about but for those of you who are not interested in learning all about the how and the why and the you know what ifs and all that kind of stuff all you have to do is just turn to on this version at least it's page 11 ghost net North America this is the page that you need uh if you don't look at any other page in the guide this is the one you should probably look at because this has pretty much the basis for how these C windows are laid out so for those of you who maybe don't understand um how or why radio stuff works uh one of the common things that's done in the world of radio is have a Communications window basically an hour of programming so to speak uh where you can tune in to a certain frequency at a certain time of day and engage in whatever kind of you know radio stuff you want to do so um the ghost net stuff I've noticed is this is meant to be a weekly net uh but it's also meant to be an ad hoc net so basically something happens in the world earthquake hits tsunami hits uh some kind of incident occurs around the world or something chances are if you pull out this page here and follow the uh frequency that's listed here hop on JS call the main program that we use you'll probably find someone talking about the uh disaster or incident or whatever and probably sharing information about it uh for those of you who are more uh transmit oriented so if you're a licensed amate or radio operator I guarantee you any time of day if you plug in the frequency here and you do an SNR request uh on js8 call on this frequency you're probably going to get somebody uh because there there's quite a few people around the globe using this now um it's not super big so you might not have just loads of traffic daily by far most of the traffic uh for this net is is during the weekly Nets which as of right now are uh Thursday nights for us here in North America uh so if you're you know just practicing trying to you know work around and learn how to do this stuff um that's probably when you want to to start uh tuning in so this page is probably where you want to start if you don't care about any of the other details that I'm going to talk about today for everyone else I'm guessing that the people that are uh kind of interested in in this sort of project fall into two camps uh probably the ham radio guys uh who are you know licensed ham radio operators and they've been doing this for a while and they say all right cool we've just got something else to put in our you know ham radio GO bags and and another uh net to kind of check into that's that's great that's fantastic the other Camp of people are probably people who have no idea about radio but they're starting to learn about it maybe they have a bow Fang or some other you know handheld radio uh and they're interested in learning a little bit more and they've probably seen this or they consume some of our other content here and they're interested in it but they're not on HF radio either licensed just yet or really they're just focused on receiving so uh for those people uh I've already created a couple of videos that help you get started so you do not have to be a licensed amateur radio technician or uh General class license holder to listen so you can absolutely get started by listening into this for free without buying anything as long as you have an internet connection that's the caveat um you can do all of this stuff all the software works over the Internet so if you follow the video that's in the description uh and and elsewhere posted uh you can definitely get started with this and check it out and see if it works for you uh for those of you who want to listen only in a more resilient manner so you realize well hey this is you know not good to rely on the internet fear not I also have another video talking about how to use uh this ghost net to receive only uh off off grid so you don't need uh any internet connection whatsoever if you want to set up a receive only setup so that you can receive traffic uh and receive the news and radio updates and stuff like that you absolutely can so you see how comprehensive this already is and we're just getting started with it so it's pretty exciting to see how far it's come and how far it's going to go so uh for those of you who are interested in some of the more I don't know reasons for why this sort of plan exists and uh why it's set up the way that it is uh the first few pages of of this ghost net plan here will will help you out quite a bit I think um you know just skimming through here the the overview page kind of talks about the the main components of this so we have uh weekly js8 call uh Nets which are kind of the main thing that people tune in for data only uh for the moment we'll get to that in a moment uh we also have the same thing but for people who have minimal gear but they want to try to reach out and touch another continent we're calling those data Bridges think of that as just another Communications window for people who want to do some long shot stuff right so that's another kind of net that uh is supported by this plan uh a third attribute of this is receive only options so from the ground up I have built this to be able to be used by people who don't have licenses who just want to receive only if you don't want to go to the hassle and the problems of uh working with HF radio uh you know licensed then receive only options are for you guys and I'm building this into every single step of this so that this is not just some ham radio club thing this is for everyone uh who wants to participate and finally something that's a little bit more advanced is the the ability for Al or automatic link establishment Communications I've put this in there for now uh with the full expectation that not very many people are going to be using it but automatic link establishment it's a very complicated well it's actually very simple but but for most people out there I would say this is probably just something that's in the near future I'm trying to Future proof this and Al uh automatic link establishment makes this entire thing obsolete so I'm trying to Future proof that by putting Al in the planet s and kind of building it building around it uh because with Al you don't need a Time window you don't need a specific frequency you just need a uh a code plug file and you're Off to the Races you don't need all this coordination because automatic link establishment handles a lot of those Communications problems automatically so just keep that in mind as you know Al is probably not for everyone just yet not a whole lot of antennas are available on the on the commercial Market that can do it just yet but again I'm future proofing this as much as I can so um yeah that's really it uh the second page here kind of talks about the overall Concepts most of the communication stuff in this is based on 40 meters on HF radio now I know I've probably already lost a lot of you out there who are not you know radio nerds and that's okay uh we'll we'll come back to that uh we'll come back and do some more basic stuff um so these initial Pages here explaining how uh a lot of this radio stuff works it may be a little bit over your head right now don't worry about it it was over my head at 1 point2 um and we can all learn about this together at a later time for now this is kind of geared towards the ham radio guys who understand what I mean when I say this is mostly on 40 MERS some of it's on 20 Metter and the reasons for that are that the two most common bands most people have antennas for them and most people can put those antennas up even in confined spaces so basically just the lowest common denominator on HF radio is 40 m and 20 m 40 M for I want to say more localized work it can be a DX band if you want to get technical about it uh you can do longrange stuff with 40 MERS but really this is more of a regional thing uh and then 20 MERS for those long shot data Bridges uh on Saturdays if you want to try to uh Reach Out And Touch another continent you're going to probably want to that on 20 M even with minimal power so that's kind of the explanation of that uh moving through some of the other concerns uh here in this book we've got the page on emergency C2 nodes and survivability now again this is something that the HF radio world doesn't really want to talk about because it's very um it's a very uncomfortable topic I will admit you know but um we live in very strange and uncertain times and uh I'm looking at this through the lens of of things like the Ukraine War uh the potential conflict in the South China Sea with regards to China and Taiwan so I'm trying to ensure survivability no matter what happens uh and sometimes that's pretty scary to think about because we don't want to think uh that you know a a hobby you know ham radio as being a hobby is something that could potentially have to deal with some pretty nefarious stuff some pretty you know bad bad things you know like you know ham radio towers being struck or taken down or you know otherwise being military targets um that's not something that the hand radio world wants to talk about it ain't on your uh it ain't on your exam when you go to get licensed but this is something we do have to think about so a lot of this content kind of crosses over between sort of like a military use of radio along with a more civilian use of radio so don't think any more uh of it than that this is just me explaining uh some of the things that you to think about even though they are um pretty nefarious to think about so you can leave these pages in or take them out whenever you print it it's up to you uh likewise another huge part of this concerns that people might have is the concept of privacy so privacy is something that is just non-existent on HF radio because for those of you who don't know there is no way to use HF radio legally without you using a license granted by the FCC so there's no like little magic um like loophole like gmrs or Ms or F FRS or some of these other things you may be familiar with if you've used a bowang radio and you've been looking into the legality of that there's nothing like that on HF radio um the only way that you're going to be able to use HF radio or at least the frequencies I've got here is if you are a licensed amateur radio operator with a general class license so uh I don't like it and because I don't like it I wrote this book uh so the architecture of privacy for this program or for this plan is really multifaceted uh unfortunately I don't like it but we have to play by the fcc's rules in the United States of America that's just kind of the way it works now everything contained in this book if we were to enter in such a situation in which the FCC is no longer a concern or if the rules change uh and somehow we get granted a lot more rights than we have right now uh everything in this book is able to be done technically by anyone there's there's no Hardware limitations uh to any of this stuff you can buy the radios even if you're unlicensed you can buy the antennas you can buy all of the gear so far there's no like you don't need to like show your licens anybody to buy anything yet um but this is kind of the way the hobby is the where you get in trouble is you have to use your call sign on the air and you have to put your call sign into the software um but in an emergency situation uh all of the software that I have chosen here will work with anything that you put in so again I cannot recommend this at all uh it's very very illegal to you know use radio without a call sign however in an emergency situation you're not going to you know on doomsday fire up your HF radio and it's a license required no all of this will work uh even if you uh suddenly find yourself not really concerned about the FCC anymore um again something that many hams don't want to talk about or even consider or or even discuss uh but this is something that really really irks me personally um because a lot of the ham radio world is very handy capped around those magic uh letters and numbers that comprise a call sign and they will deliberately handicap their software uh because it will not function unless it can you know phone home to a server and have someone verify that your call sign is real well during a disaster or an emergency situation I don't want my computer or my radio locking me out of something uh simply because the FCC which you you know doesn't exist at that point uh created some some rules so again a very contentious topic when it comes to privacy uh really there's no way to be private on HF radio you just kind of have to suck it up and kind of embrace it uh as for me personally I try to go by the the um sort of mentality of security by obscurity that's about the best you can do when there's hundreds of people talking it's hard to figure out which one's me right so you know me obviously having you know fairly uh substantial personal security concerns you know thus my very strong desire for anonymity you know it's really hard to do that on HF radio sometimes or rather all the time but in the event that [Music] um rules and regulations are no longer a factor like just just thinking you know wargaming things for a minute playing make believe Fantasy Land from saying the FCC doesn't exist this program will still work and you can still be anonymous on it because you know the technology is there the the the technical capability is there in the emergency event that you have to use something like that I know that a lot of people probably are not going to want to engage in a system or play around uh with a system in which their anonimity is not possible I just because I think that doesn't mean that the FCC thinks that so uh I'm not going to change the rules because there's just no way for me to do that uh but I can build the infrastructure so that one day if necessary if we're no longer concerned about these things in an extreme emergency let me just put a few more disclaimers on there uh you know to wrap things up Etc uh the technical capability is there to be to be as private as you possibly can be so enough of that I think uh moving on to uh more along the lines of like the data Bridge idea so uh on this version is page nine and uh nine and 10 uh the data Bridge concept may be a little bit hard to understand but it's basically just a weekly net for people who want to set up their antenna in such a way is to get the maximum reach for those of you who are not super spun up on the weirdness of HF radio uh you're just kind of more like either a bow thing user or you're not into radio at all or uh maybe you just got your tech license or something like that uh you have to understand that HF radio is really weird uh there's a lot of weird stuff that goes on with HF radio and it turns out that I'm speaking very broadly here and this is very debatable I know but generally speaking if you want your radio communications on HF radio to be localized around you you have to use certain kinds of antennas on certain kinds of bands at certain kind at certain times of day and in certain configurations right um so there's that likewise if you want to do more long range stuff there are different ways of setting up your antennas and certain times of day in certain bands uh certain frequencies that will allow you to do that a little bit easier so separating this out into more local Regional stuff once a week on Thursday and then your long haul stuff when you've got some time maybe on Saturday to like you know Reach Out And Touch Your or Australia or something like that that's a little easier to do because once you get set up for one it's hard to do it for for for something else so again multi-band antenna users people with really powerful radios this is a non-starter doesn't matter uh separating things out to have local stuff one day and then long range stuff another day this doesn't matter for them I'm talking about the low power guys who just get into HF radio maybe they've got a qrp radio kind of a cheaper antenna pore setup you name it this is what this is for so that's what the data bridges are for and so far we've got four we've got North America to Europe Europe to Australia Australia to the South Pacific area this is more of a local net um but you know like I said in the original explanation of the ghost net project uh this is more along the lines of me kind of frontloading some of the issues that we might be facing and those of you who live in Australia May may want to talk to other islands in the South Pacific which are local to you but in terms of HF you're a long way away you may be a thousand or 2,000 miles away uh you need your own data bridge to talk locally because things are spread out throughout the South Pacific a lot so there there's that uh then we also have North America to Australia if you want to try to make that shot now all of these are set up to be well again it's very debatable but my goal here is to set these up at times of day that are convenient for people in both continents that work normal standard working hours it sucks to have to realize that a lot of times when it comes to radio you either have to work uh really early in the morning or really really late at night uh a lot of times if you're trying to make long range stuff so that's what I'm trying to consider uh and this is something the hamradio community sometimes doesn't really do super well is set things up and schedule things uh with a working man in mind uh that's what I'm trying to do here it's not perfect due to time zone changes and daylight savings it it's it's a very much a nightmare to plan this stuff so this is the best I can do for now this will change though um minor changes here and there maybe an hour here an hour there we may flip it uh so that instead of in the morning we've got one at night and vice versa so please please bear with me me this is this is what we're working with for now when it comes to the data Bridges then of course we come to the actual plans itself now the plan for North America Europe and Australia uh these Regional plans they're all basically the same uh really it's geared so that somebody can get off work have a little bit of time to them to to themselves and then fire up their HF radio if they so choose that's what it's meant to do that's why the time is the way that it is uh and it's set up to have really if all you want to do is just fire up your HF radio when you get home from work ping a couple of people on js8 call and then punch out for the night that's fine you see how we're trying to make this as seamless as possible for the average person out there um for those of you who want to do a little bit more advanced stuff we've got four different little Comm Windows within this so after you're done with js8 call then you can do some wind link perto peer you can send some emails back and forth between each other again just a suggestion you can do whatever you want uh and then we also have R uh a radio teletype still working on this one a little bit I haven't seen anybody use it yet um but it may be useful in the future for people who just want to get the news uh so they can tune in during that time uh and kind of get the news like over the wire if you know what I'm saying that's where that name comes from right is we used to get news over the wire via teletype so this is kind of bringing back a century old technology into more modern years use uh that hopefully is as seamless as possible so more to come on that front I I know I need to talk more about ready but uh please please be patient with me uh we will be talking about that a lot more uh later and then finally uh here in the the red uh tinted uh row at the very bottom is a uh a Simplex option for voice so this is really just the emergency you know this is kind of laid out as you might imagine this is sort of laid out in a pace plan form at primary alternate contingency and emergency that's gener very Loosely how this is kind of you know oriented so just in case somebody out there is not able to make it to these first three you can hop on The Voice freak and there you go uh voice comes this is another major complaint that I get uh from the h radio guys and I I hear you guys um this is not a voice Centric plan this is all data and my reason for that I'll I'll get to uh in just a moment but really it comes down to bandwidth uh we can have hundreds of people talking at once on js8 call and some of these other data modes but you know when you have a round table net of people checking in with voice it gets you know the pileup start and it's just you know fine for contesting fine for you know playing around having fun but it's a nightmare if you're actually trying to like implement this in in daily life life so I think that's a good way to to to move into one of the new new pages which is the best practices page and on the reverse of that is the mign actors page again this is something that uh to be perfectly honest I wrote this I wrote I had I had this drafted when I published this for the first time because I absolutely knew this was going to be an issue uh and I was hoping that I wouldn't have to address this but well you know things are the way they are so uh this is my very diplomatic way of kind of outlining some of the the best practices right uh if you want to get the most out of the system uh you know the system is what you will get out of it so if you put in garbage you're going to get garbage out of it so uh really this is just some casual reminders for people again if I were to put a rules page in here like these are the rules for the net I would have no way of enforcing it this is a decentralized Communications plan I can't censor anybody I can't block anybody I can't you know invite or disinvite anybody from it it's the airwaves man I can't you know so this is really just suggestions right I can't I can't police rules anyway even if I wanted to uh but really the main things that are helpful for people to remember is check in early if you are new to this and you're trying to get some stuff around particularly those of you who transmit or or trying to transmit check in early do your um message checks do your SNR requests do your heartbeats early one or two hours before the event uh before the Comm window and you know just play around and see with it I I do this all the time usually quite often and uh this is a good way to check out your stuff so that when that window hits and everybody's tuning in particularly the receive only guys who we have no way of knowing who's listening right so by the time you get around uh to the calm window you're efficient you're you're bringing capabilities to the table and this is a good thing you're not sitting there kind of clogging the system up um by doing uh you know SNR requests or something like that so um I'm not saying that this is a huge problem but I'm saying that this might be helpful for you again these are suggestions not hard and fast rules uh we in the ham radio Community have too many rules that we make up ourselves I think sometimes but generally speaking this is a good thing to do uh sort of along the same lines is try to limit your CQ calls uh try to limit your heartbeats try to limit uh your um SNR requests during the C window because it what it does is when you have a heartbeat message go out um and someone has accidentally left their uh Auto heartbeat reply on every single radio that can hear you is going to reply and that may cut off some news traffic so that tends to happen kind of a lot and it's it's okay uh I would also recommend uh I think I mentioned it in this block uh to also just turn off automatic replies uh during the C window and then you know turn it back on after or before but you know during the window we're trying to be as lean and mean as we can and uh sometimes that helps a little bit um because everybody gets kind of annoyed you know when you're sitting there you're trying to decode a really long news report uh that's many minutes long and you know somebody hits SNR and there goes your radio you know you reply and then you miss a chunk of of the message so um it's just a a point in the system I'm sure there will be upgrades made uh in time to make this a little bit uh obsolete but uh hopefully that's just kind of a good best practice for now um and then sort of along the same lines is just be mindful of those out there who are um running low power rigs you know I've seen you know uh kind of a lot of people and there's there's no there's no it's no one's fault um it's just a nature of radio is that you tend to transmit much further than you can receive uh think about that for a minute you you always tend to transmit a lot more than you can than you receive so you may or more often than not are probably going to be stepping on somebody and transmitting over top of a low a weaker power station so um if you have you know one of those you know 100 watt rigs out there and you're and you're cranking out an awful lot of power whatever the maximum limit is on data modes uh just be mindful you know if you kind of hear if you got a super sensitive receive antenna uh and you hear somebody from a long way off you know maybe you can try to help them out a little bit maybe give them an SNR request or SNR report back um you know just kind of help work with our low powerered guys out there uh because the low powered radios are where the new guys are going to be because we've got all these new uh HF radios that are coming Market that our qrp radios are very low power um and you know the new guys are may maybe not have the best antenna as well or the best in placed antenna you know some of the guys who've been around and been ham for a long time you've got really nice antennas way up in the sky you know really big radiating elements and some of the new guys are just working from a park you know because they live in an apartment and they're having to do the best they can so just be mindful you know of people out there who who may not have uh the the punch uh that some of the bigger stations have so that's basically it um and then finally here I'm really trying to be really really polite um by kind of understanding uh that there are cultural problems within ham radio is a hobby uh which are kind of off-putting a lot of times to the people who are new to the Hobby uh and they're trying to get you know set up with with HF radio um and and you know it's changing for the better you know I I always want to be very very optimistic um now I don't want to say that to to off-put anyone uh by any means but we do have to acknowledge it and and unfortunately uh this comes in with the next page with malign actors so again I've had to address some kind of specific concerns that I've noticed you know you know at a certain point I've just kind of got to call a spade a spade right and I've seen some really really super bad behavior from a lot of um radio hams very intentionally and um it's not just like a mistake or something so there are many I created this page as a way of reminding some of the new folks out there that there are ways with messing with people on ham radio that are I well it's questionable whether they're legal or not but there's plenty of ways for for people to take advantage of other people on ham radio uh without people kind of knowing about it right and I I don't want to you know uh throw accusations at any one group out there or anything um I have seen a few clubs do some of these things um most of the time it's just individual users who happen to be uh members of like a larger club or something like that uh and I'm not saying that it's it's everyone doing it uh but I I found some really tricky really really sneaky stuff so um one of the things I noticed was poaching uh and this this is you know tends to be you know something nobody really talks talks about like look it's perfectly fine to like want to expand you know your club or organization or something like that but I've caught some pretty devious behavior from people and one of the things that I I caught uh several times it's not just from one person either it's from several people is uh what people would do is they'll hop on js8 call during the Comm window and then just Spam the SNR requests and they'll uh tie up uh the the ghost net and what they'll do is they'll just fire off a message uh to to basically anyone who's listening and say oh hey you know uh the ghost Net's really really busy it seems kind of crowded why don't you come over here to my frequency and there you go see now you start to get away from kind of the intent now people can do what they want um I'm sure that the this this plan here I mean you look the last page of this document so far is a draft so that you can duplicate this and create your own program how ever uh unfortunately sometimes you see people doing this uh as a way of making money and uh trying to recruit people into a paid club or a paid Network that's not what this is about this is not free advertising um for people out there and I've I've seen that happen quite a lot so I had to put this in there you know I'm sorry if this kind of offends anybody out there but it's a problem and I had to address it so uh again you know things that just kind of add up or U you know Ham's kind of bullying people off their own frequency uh I have been bullied off of my own network more times that I can count by somebody who clearly hears me because I sent them an SNR request and they repli to me and they can absolutely hear me and they're trying to talk over me uh and they're trying to transmit you know suddenly no one's talking then suddenly they've got to pick the exact spot in the waterfall that I'm trying to uh send a news report on so I've seen that and it it does happen um I've also seen uh people try to poach people from the ghostnet into um uh using unique software uh and proprietary tools that sound like they're super great uh I'm not going to I'm not going to mention names of course but I've seen this uh where there's a few thirdparty applications you can use which are are pretty good uh unfortunately they're also a great way of getting everyone to use a common format so you start sending news reports using a common format over js8 call and there's someone out there listening to you taking your words taking your report and then putting it in a paid email newslist I've seen this like you think that I'm making this up but man I I I I've seen it and I've actually because uh I was uh the one the one that I have in mind I was a paid member uh of this particular like email distribution list and I got it and I thought hey where did I see that report before and I go back and check my logs and there you go look at that somebody actually pulled a news report from the ghost net and are charging people money behind a pay wall for it so you know you think you hear at all but again this is just a a very diplomatically worded reminder that not everybody in radio is super nice and as radio becomes more and more popular you're going to have more malign actors uh try to use radio for their own uh particular uh reasons now I really did debate on whether or not to put this page in here and I really have debated whether or not I should talk about this stuff uh because it's very off-putting it's very scary to think about if you're trying to think of you know using you know ghostnet as like a news tool you may think oh wow wow I didn't know there was this much you know you know back and forth you know I didn't know there was this much drama with it well well you know the ham radio Community is full of drama for one and actually I'm very thankful for it I'm really thankful for when somebody tries to jam me intentionally you know um even though that's not allowed and they're using their real you know their own call sign um and somebody tries to jam me and it's like dude that's not cool um but I'm I'm actually kind of glad when I have these adversarial things happen uh because it really helps keep in in perspective uh the stakes that we're dealing with here for one but it also helps us uh sharpen our tools right and become a little bit better so you know it allows us to jump around on the waterfall switch modes uh switch our antenna propagation up a little bit so we have a different propagation signature uh and we're coming from a different direction or something like that so there's a lot of different ways that these little nitpicking you know High School drama uh of things that go on on ham radio these are actually I think good for the growth of the system because we can adapt to it and I would rather adapt to a sad ham out there trying to cause some problems I'd rather adapt to that than a nation state military asset like in Ukraine or something that's trying to hunt me down you know so again crawl walk run right and this is allows us to get out of that crawl phase into the walk phase um without potentially dealing with things like you know artillery in Ukraine so again for every negative there is a positive and this is that positive we can learn and grow and adapt because of that so I think that's very very helpful sort of along those lines uh you may have uh found this to be a little bit helpful is uh the pages that we have here on emissions control again a very hotly debated Topic in the radio world um and there's a lot of really bad information out there uh when it comes to uh this stuff that will get you killed right you know hey the military's been thinking about this for a long time and they've got a pretty good manual so I just kind of transpose the US Marine Corps um mcon sop here but I also added in green uh the text that uh is a little bit more applicable to the ham radio or civilian use right so um that will probably get changed or adapted over time but uh the reason that I kind of had to copy and paste this directly from the Marine Corp is because that is the doctrine that is approved that is what the US military uses uh so I wanted to have that verbatim in here but I also wanted to add my own thoughts because a lot of it isn't applicable to the hand radio Community or you know more civilian use so uh grein words are mine and uh this is the format for that same thing with the reducing emissions page uh and sort of along the same lines um the authorized emitter Matrix page again these are suggestions right this is not like a rule or a mandate or anything this is just a good way to get people to thinking about it because as far as I know uh thinking about emissions control and ham radio is is not done like it's it's a hobby right why would you need to potentially have to worry about your radio causing an air strike on your location well you know ham radio The Hobby World you don't have to worry about that but I want to start getting people to think along these lines uh because ham radio is such a powerful tool that you know in the event of a contingent situation breaking out or something bad happening uh ham radio is definitely worthy of uh being targeted by varying kinds of uh actors so again just suggestions I've got a a dedicated video on Emissions Control you can check that out um I will probably be doing some more videos on some of this other stuff as well uh just because I needed an extra page uh to fill I have right now what is it page 22 Readiness conditions um again this doesn't really apply uh so much but I wanted to have that on there along with the mop conditions just because that's helpful to have uh you know in your pocket if you're going to print it out next up is the page which I like to leave open uh as if I'm storing this in my uh kits I like to leave this as the front page and this is the basic incident response page again I have a whole dedicated video explaining this I won't go into detail here um but that's that's that and then on the back of course is all of the things that you can monitor during a an incident right uh just just as kind of like the very quick explanation is look when something happens in the world or in the United States chances are it's not going to happen where you are at right like think about it for instance like 911 911 was an event that shook the world right uh however basically no one was there except for people who lived in New York City 911 did not really immediately affect anyone else in the nation except for those in New York City now of course you know Airlines were grounded Nationwide we had all kinds of alerts and everybody was put on alert and all kinds of stuff but by and large everyone in America was scared and alone in their homes uh and this uh basic incident response page is a is an attempt to mitigate that so that when a nationwide event occurs doesn't have to be you know a line1 style incident hopefully we don't have any more of those um but if something happens Nationwide that is like so absolutely ground breaking like I don't know maybe a national airspace incursion or an airspace violation or some kind of foreign military asset you know on us soil or something like that you know chances are you're probably not going to be where that location you know where that incident is taking place but with HF radio you might be able to talk to some who is so that's really what the uh incident response page is all about it's basically just kind of trying to think about using uh very roughly the uh incident command system uh way of thinking to to start uh allowing people to have something to do during a crisis where they they have the ability to to start helping move information or something like that that but they're not part of a club they don't want to be part of a club uh they don't want to um really start talking about issues that have to go through a governmental approval process you know sometimes um me personally I I will expand on this greatly when I actually cover the IC System more in depth uh along with the concepts of civil defense but for now just think of this as kind of a stop Gap way of having something to do uh rather than sitting there and having nothing to do if you are not uh directly affected by a disaster but something's going on so uh this is just a very very brief stop Gap solution for that and then sort of wrapping things up with some of the final Pages here we have uh a little bit of troubleshooting documentation Now js8 call has a really good help guide within the actual program uh but I find that just having a quick quick guide to help you remind yourself to uh check whether your audio settings are good to go um I will make this better I can assure you um but for now this is just kind of I've got um and then moving into some of the more some of the other platforms we have like ion 2G uh this is another uh page that helps you remind remind you how to set it up uh and then of course the uh Al frequency list again I haven't put too much effort into this so far this right here it say even on the page it says working draft this is a working draft um when I get this a little bit more fleshed out and a little bit better planned uh Al will will will be a pretty good rockar component to this plan uh for now though I've just got just a few frequencies that you can bounce between uh until I can get a good solid code plug worked up because um I'm trying to find frequencies that aren't in use I'm trying to not step on anybody's toes I'm doing the due diligence to make sure that this you know is as least burdensome as possible and it's not easy a lot of times Al because very few people want to use it right now because it's a developing technology but in due time there will be a code plug available that you could download and just plug in and you won't need any of this uh but for now you're going to have to manually plug in the freaks uh until uh I can verify that this works in most regions in most places at most times without stepping on anyone's toes almost an impossible feet but that's what I'm trying to do um I don't have to do that I don't suppose I could just say just use these freaks but I'm really trying to to not uh you know step on other people's work so this is kind of a way to do that and then uh finally some some documentation on some more you know receive only options and some of the stuff that you may uh need I will again flesh this out and make this a lot better in due time this is just what we're starting with for now and then finally of course the last page is is a draft so that you if you want to come up with your own ghost net plan for your own local group or club or whatever you can do that absolutely um and uh go from there but for now the common meeting place is here and this is kind of uh how the plan works so again nothing groundbreaking nothing super super smart or you know super clever it's just a common meeting point uh that we can all kind of meet at and uh exchange some messages and most importantly uh aside from the weekly use I found great use in using this during contingent situations like we've had so far two major Nationwide uh Internet outages or cellular outages and I've been able to you know look at my phone and say oh I don't have any signal what's going on oh my internet's down what's going on and I hop on js8 call and look at that I've got about half a dozen people talking about it and and their cell phone uh their cell phones are not working so again this is a great uh stop gap for uh more everyday use it's also good for emergencies it's also good for things that aren't quite emergencies you know that are more like hey I need to take a few minutes at lunch and check this out you know I'm not going to leave work um but I have to I've got to take some some time so I'll head out to my car in the parking lot and check things out for a second uh that's really what this is is kind of about that sort of Bridging the Gap between you know scrolling Facebook all day and you know um setting up your hamshack uh for your disaster doomsday you know preparedness kind of thing so that's what this is really all about now obviously there is much room for improvement please do not think that I think that this is like the greatest thing since sliced bread is not uh it's what we've got and we will eventually make it better with time uh but for now let me go ahead and bring up um some of uh the concerns or really just complaints people may have regarding the system so um even though it's probably kind of distasteful uh let me just be brutally honest for a second a lot of the feedback I've gotten on this has been pretty negative um and I'm not really taking it to heart uh because I think that the majority of the negativity that I've heard from uh ham radio guys regarding this is really because they're not trying they're not they don't understand it they don't know what this is about uh they think because they can only think in terms of their local club and their local Nets they don't understand what this is trying to do um and I don't have any ill will towards people who think that way I you know I've gotten a lot of nasty emails from a lot of hams uh on this uh project um but it there's nothing illegal about it it's all perfectly above board and all good to go there's nothing nefarious about it either um and yet uh the resistance to anything that's slightly new is is pretty strong in the ham radio community so um please don't think that this is um that I'm you know offended by this you know it's just the way that it is I'm very well acquainted with how the ham radio Community works and a lot of you guys out there what I'm talking about um but uh I just want to make it abundantly clear to everyone that you know these cultural issues I mentioned like every every so often it just kind of comes out and you know it's it's really um it's unfortunate but hey you know I'm I'm focused on moving forward here and not kind of getting bogged down in all the negativity uh sometimes so just just as kind of a uh a little bit of a brief disclaimer there that um I know that this has a lot of use I know that this is good and I will continue developing it but I also uh there also a lot of people out there that do not like the stuff that I do so but you know all of that aside uh and in the interest of of growing and making this better uh over time I'm not perfect and there are definitely some ways of improving this so uh but one of the concerns that a lot of people have that's a genuine concern is privacy you know like I mentioned before um there's there's like no way to be private on ham radio uh when it comes to HF radio now there are ways that you can be a little bit more um privacy minded and secure and things like that on on things like gmrs or you know Ms and F FRS and things like that you can you can be a little bit a little bit uh more privacy-minded on HF radio though you're pretty much toast there is no encryption available whatsoever even if it well first of all encryption on HF is not legal okay so there's that but there's also no technical ability for it to even happen so okay for instance a lot of the new Chinese radios that are coming out even some like pretty big named you know handheld radios like DMR radios uh they support encryption they do is it legal to use them in this way no uh but it's there so if you wanted to go through the code plug and you know kind of look at your programming software it's there uh you it's there the technical ability is there is it legal depends on how you're using it but for the most part no encryption is legal in some regards with regards to VHF and UHF coms but to my knowledge there is absolutely no way to use encryption on HF radio legally technically you could do it there is nothing physically or technologically stopping you from doing doing a onetime pad message and putting that in js8 call the technical ability is there is it legal no so that's a huge problem uh because it's not like you can pull up your icon you know IC 705 or something like that and then go through the programming software and find like a privacy tone tab or a uh enhanced security tab or something like that it just doesn't exist on on HF radio so uh companies are not even trying to like sneakily like sneak that encryption in like they are on handheld VHF UHF radios and then of course like the third-party market like Motorola handhelds right uh most of those are capable of encryption either Hardware encryption or software encryption and how you use them is how they're legal or not legal you'd have to really look into each specific use case but most of the time the physical Hardware that you can buy is good to go uh it's technically possible even though it's legally not in many cases but on HF radio there's no Hardware uh as far as I know there's there's really no way of reliably getting an HF radio that does Hardware encryption or even supports it in any form of fashion now as time goes on and as we get more sketchy Chinese radios and sketchy Russian radios that are SDR based you know softwar defined radios I bet you that's going to start making a making its uh appearance but for now it's just not there so even if you wanted to even if you weren't worried about the FCC anymore you really couldn't do that you know um when it comes to VHF UHF different story um you can literally own and possess technically you can own and possess the same exact Motorola radio that's being used in a war zone right now and you know you you have the same technical capability as a nation state you can adapt your radio to a wartime standard very very easily you can't adapt any commercial HF radio that I know of to a military wartime standard it's just they're just completely different Technologies so that's a problem privacy is a problem lacking encryption is a problem uh I can't do anything about that the law is the law or rather the regulation is the regulation and you know unless somebody's got some Deep Pockets out there and wants to sue the FCC for freedom of speech violations I'm sorry I can't help you with privacy and regulations and the stuff like that so this plan does the best it can to take that into account and still have a little bit of middle ground right you know security by obscurity or or things like that um so yeah that's that's all I have with regards to to that kind of concern you know I wish I had a solution solution but I just don't I I just don't have any solutions for that right now another big concern that people have and this is a legitimate concern uh is the disorganization uh it is pretty hectic if you hop on there on js8 call and during a Comm Window Man signals are flying everywhere everybody's talking to random people all kinds of random stuff's happening it's like 4chan on the airwaves uh the problem with this is that it's not efficient it's not really an efficient medium exchange that's why I just have this list of suggestions uh because there is no net control you have to remember this system is coordinated but it is not centralized this is a decentralized system there is no one person uh sitting here controlling who talks and who doesn't talk like I am just like all of you out there even though this is my own plan I have no control over it right so this is something that we're just going to have to deal with for now is that yeah having no net control having no list of users there's no there's no master list of everybody who's on it there's no Club this is not an organization this is not uh a club kind of thing this is just a bunch of randos on the internet who are trying to kind of bridge that gap between reality and the internet right so you know when we're talking about stuff like that it just means that it's going to be hectic it's going to be just dis organized you're going to have um you know people who you disagree with uh you're going to have people who um maybe not agree with your world view on it a lot of times but um I guess you can say this is exactly what real true Free Speech looks like in a truly uncensorable uh atmosphere right again the only way that uh that someone can shut down a user on JSA call is to physically come get them uh or to jam them in some way but even then JSA call is pretty resistant to jamming as we kind of have found out uh in some regards of course it's not a total solution but man it's better than nothing um so again I know it's going to be disorganized I hear this complaint constantly that's the point it's supposed to be because the very minute that you start adding in a hierarchy or organization boom that right there is where you start introducing vulnerabilities so allowing a more autonomous a more you know decentralized network is pretty helpful in in my opinion because it just means that it's more resilient in the long run another concern that I that I get all the time and people kind of want to see me add this in is more support for voice Communications uh or uh VHF UHF options so uh people who have have uh a bow Fang and that's all they have they they want to get on on the action too um now right now there's not a good way to do that because uh VHF and UHF radio is very different it behaves totally differently so uh it's really hard to bring in a VHF UHF system to an HF system and have it all work together there are some ways to make that work and I am working on those uh it just takes a lot of work um really I think when it comes to most VHF UHF users the biggest problem is their line of sight only so I I could absolutely have a page in this ghost net plan here and I could say all right on doomsday everybody go to this frequency and that be it uh there are a few prepper plans out there that have that kind of mentality and that is perfectly fine that that that's okay however I have to think strategically okay uh I have to think in terms of well I'm maybe trying to manage or coordinate several thousand people all within line of sight of me doing the same thing so one single frequency one single like fire up your bow thing on doomsday kind of frequency it's just not efficient it's fact it's so inefficient that it's not worth doing just yet I would absolutely much rather have um just the standard you know guys who are just using the standard bow thing I would rather have those guys have a receive only setup and be able to receive the news and receive information and then use their line of sight radios more locally you know more team to team kind of small unit kind of things I'd rather that kind of stay that way than having a national you know Simplex frequency for a line of sight radio that doesn't make a lot of sense to me uh but I'm still working on it uh mostly from the perspective of adding in mesh tastic I know a lot of people out there have started using mesh tastic there has been an explosion of use of mesh tastic in Europe in the UK right around London uh it has gotten super popular uh and for good reason um again it's not a total solution I know there are haters out there who just hate it no matter what and that's that's fine uh it does have its vulnerabilities and downsides just like literally everything on Earth but I think that there's enough value with mesh tastic and because technically it's line of sight but because it's a mesh system you can really have Beyond line of sight or BS capability there and I think that that feature makes it useful enough to put in the ghost net plan now I'm trying to figure out how to do that in such a way that's actually useful um and and helpful uh can put a shared encryption code out there so that everybody can just plug this in like as a m ghostnet main Channel they could plug this into their mesh tastic and once they have that encryption code they can just run that as an additional channel uh in their mesh tastic app and if someone's in range good if someone's not in range they won't they won't hear anything uh but again I'm still working out the logistical intricacies of that because you know I'm trying to create a plan that's potentially going to involve many thousands of people and it's not exactly as simple as getting on the same page sometimes sometimes the system itself has limitations so I'm still working through mesh tastic but I feel fairly confident that mesh tastic will be included in this in the future but again you'll probably see another video uh explaining that when the time comes so that's pretty much it um however there is one more uh kind of issue slash group of questions that I get uh that I really wanted to kind of squeeze into this into this video as well and that is gear recommendations so this is again a huge question that I get all the time what radio do I need to buy what do I need to buy to make this work well uh I'm going to have a full-blown uh series on this I think at some point uh right now I'm kind of working through some of the options and I'm trying to get set up so that I can actually film some of the stuff for you guys uh but for right now in the interest of having everything kind of compact in the same video let me briefly run down some of the options that you have now there are two main Avenues of approach when it comes to the ghost net and the gear that you might want uh the first one is the receive only crowd uh for those guys uh they're going to be just receiving traffic and they just maybe want to kind of dip their toe into HF radio maybe they've got a bow thing but they don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a system that they may or may not be able to get to work and that they're going to have to go get a license for so no matter where you're at I would very strongly recommend you starting with receive only uh you can do it for free uh but there's also some minimal gear that you might need if you want to do this more off- grid you can absolutely have a sub $100 setup uh to receive not just ghostnet traffic but really any Digital radio traffic uh that you can have set up and you'll be good to go on that front right that's completely off- grid and and you're all good to go so uh you can absolutely do that check out the two videos that I mentioned so far there will probably be more uh videos on this topic but I've got two for now uh of how to get this setup for free start there and and then check out the off-grid uh video as well if you want a more resilient robust like actually usable in an emergency uh kind of setup but the first one kind of gets gets your your feet wet with how all of this stuff works and gets you acquainted with the software that you need now if you've done that already and you've got a good receive only setup and you start want to getting to move into the transmitting side of things there's a couple of different routes you can go uh depending on what you want to do now I would really not recommend anyone to buy thousands of dollars of HF radio equipment just to get on my little plan here like I'm not that important uh this is not that useful yet um but you may want to invest in HF radio technology because of where it's going uh and the work that other people are doing as well you there are plenty of of great clubs out there that do some good work there's a lot of uh different stuff out there not just the the small kind of project I've got going here there's other stuff as well so don't buy it just because you're W to get on the ghost net uh but because you're trying to you know kind of improve the community uh through multiple Avenues at once now when it comes to transmitting for those of you who want to go down the transmitting route you've got what I generally consider well I guess the community does too uh considers to be three main Avenues of approach there too uh you've got the light and fast uh the ultra portable kind of arrangements you've got the sort of uh semi-mobile or mobile I said setups and then you have fixed base stations so like for fixed positions depending on which philosophy of radio that you personally agree with you are going to want to buy different gear based on that so there is no one radio to rule them all uh every radio has different pluses and minuses uh and I will get into some specific models when I talk about uh which which way to go but just know that there are uh there are qrp radios which I personally prefer qrp radios uh low power compact light and fast that's that's the camp that I'm in but I also like to Branch out into the mobile radio uh sort of Arena the kind of uh manpack radio uh culture which is great I think that's very very useful there's a lot of uh there's a lot of power there and I think that's a good route to go down if you uh prescribe to that kind of philosophy uh likewise what I don't really have a whole lot of experience with and I don't really um ascribed to is the base station concept this is where Ham Radio mostly is um most I think ham radio guys have base stations now uh that's changing because mobile radios and portable radios uh are becoming a lot lighter faster cheaper so on and so forth but I I just personally don't uh like the whole base station uh idea I do like the ability to set up kind of like a portable talk if need be but I always want that Mobility uh because you know I think that one of the great strengths that we have as you know American citizens is mobility uh we have the ability to move light and fast pretty much lighter and faster than anybody else uh so I think that's a very good skill to have and a very good capability to kind of invest in so uh you're not going to catch me with a gigantic you know 100 watt uh base station unit but you might you might see me uh with a mobile radio or a portable one so um that's kind of the the Avenues approach you can go down um depending on what you want to do you you may also want to go down the uh resident antenna route or the nonresident antenna route and depending on your again philosophy you may want to choose one over the other uh I personally am a resident guy I like resident antennas because they offer some benefits that multi-band antennas do not um I've talked about this a little bit in I think our spy radio video uh but I I can kind of expand on this at a later time but again this stuff is very expensive so when you invest in a radio you're probably going to want to do so uh keeping in mind which antenna philosophy you want to invest in as well because your antenna is probably going to run you a couple hundred bucks if you want a good commercially uh made one if you want to make one yourself you could do it for cheaper but not for not by much because wire is expensive now uh and the parts you need are kind of expensive so even if you make your own uh that isn't really like weatherproof or super reliable uh it's still going to be kind of expensive and depending on which antenna you may want to build or buy depends on whether or not you want to be resident or non-resident if you're not if you are using a resonant antenna you're going to have to have an antenna that is capable of doing multiband you know at least 20 M and at least 40 m at least for the ghost net um so when you stick with resonant antennas you're going to have to have an antenna for the specific band that you want to operate on if you are trying to do non-resident antennas that's fine you can just use a random piece of wire as a matter of fact one of the most common non-resident antennas is a random wire antenna however you need to buy or have a radio that has a tuner uh so that you can tune the radio it's not really for tuning the antenna it's for tuning the radio to have a good match to work with that random piece of wire the reason that I mentioned this is because they're very expensive even the cheapest ones are hundreds of dollars uh and you know if you want to get a radio that has an internal tuner uh that would probably be preferable but again you know using a tuner you're not going to be able to do stuff like uh Al uh really you're going to have to use resident ATT tenance for that but again I know I'm probably speaking Greek to many of you out there who aren't super into this stuff um and you know the more complicated we get with this the fewer and fewer people that this applies to right um but that's okay we're we're all learning together right everyone uh everyone learns together and you know we all have to start somewhere so uh rest assured I'm going to have a lot more content out there that that kind of breaks things down a little more simply but uh there are plenty of resources on YouTube there are a lot of great channels out there uh doing some really awesome stuff with ham radio a lot more than I could ever do so um if you want to get into some of this more uh in-depth stuff uh start there right start some of these other bigger channels right but for now I think that this kind of gets us off on on a good footing um I'm I'm really pleased with how the project has turned out so far uh I really think that it's I think we're on to something here you know it's not perfect but I I really do think we're on to something here and uh this could be a very good way of ensuring resiliency with Communications that are you know just provide another option for people so I know this is a kind of a long- winded way to talk about what is supposed to be a very simple project but hopefully this this does shed a little bit more light on uh what's being worked on and the stuff that that we're doing and and uh I really hope that um this project can grow and and uh really help out a lot of people out there um it's not perfect I don't think it will ever be anything but a stop Gap solution until more software more technology better radios get built uh but for now it's a good foot in the door it's a good start and it is a very reliable and useful tool to have in your toolbox so I think that's probably the the most I say about it for now um but again we'll see what the future brings and we'll see how we can really put this system to the test so uh thank you all for your hard work uh in in helping get this off the ground thank you all for participating and contributing and and thank you all for spreading the word almost all uh of of the stuff that we do here is By Word of Mouth um I think for very obvious reasons the you know algorithms that be don't really want to push this content to to a lot of people so um most of the the traffic and visibility we get on pretty much all of our content and even projects like the ghost net is through word of mouth so thank you for all of that it really does help so thank you all for your support over the years I really do appreciate that uh I would not be here today uh doing any of this stuff without the support of of all of you so thank you for your support thanks for helping get this project off the ground and thank you for continuing to to try to help your community however you can so thank you all for watching and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade