Advanced Comms: Take Your Setup to the Next Level

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so one of the questions we get most often around here is from people who are prepared with the basics things like a normal balafang radio and a few other things like a comp plan or something but they're looking to take their communications preparedness to the next level so today we're going to talk about some things that might help with just that so first we have a balfing repeater so if you have a 2.5 millimeter to 3.5 millimeter audio jack cable and a couple of spare bow things laying around you can actually make your own repeater from it um depending on the legality in your area this may be something you might be interested in or not but essentially how it works is how any repeater on earth works which is a radio transmits on a specific frequency is picked up by one radio is transmitted to the other radio via vox which then picks it up and transmits it on a different frequency to another radio somewhere else in the world if you get a couple of these set up and you know and a couple of extended batteries for your baffing or even a wired setup for power and things like that you can set up a pretty significant communications couple of extended batteries for your baffing or even a wired setup for power and things like that you can set up a pretty significant communications network also this doesn't work just with voice but with aprs as well if you didn't want to use a baofeng radio to dial into the repeater you can also use it with aprs if you're so inclined and to help illustrate the importance of having your own repeater let's take a look at this mock-up of a city here so let's just say for instance that you live right here and let's say that a block or two away is another taller structure such as this one right there where the star is located so if you were to put a repeater at that star location what you could do is take your handheld radio or your directional antenna and point it directly at the repeater and use barely enough power to touch the repeater so that when it is picked up by the repeater and broadcast over a wider distance you're able to get a much wider spread for your information that way all your people out there throughout the city are able to hear the repeater but not hear exactly where you're transmitting from if they're trying to direction find you so that can be very very useful e ble to hear the repeater but not hear exactly where you're transmitting from if they're trying to direction find you so that can be very very useful especially if someone comes in and is trying to direction find communications in the area to find out where like ham radio operations are occurring or from where communications are taking place uh this is very beneficial because someone who is going to have an aerial asset in order to help locate a ham radio tower well they're most likely going to find the repeater the repeater is going to be taking the taking the attention away from your actual handset transmission and this is very very useful i can remember personally spending a lot of time uh tracking insurgents in other nations and uh trying to find out exactly where they're coming from only to find out that we've been orbiting a repeater for a while so this is something that is very useful to do if you're trying to remain a little bit more covert also this helps in the world of electronic warfare and jamming so if you've checked out our other content on radio direction finding you'll have a better explanation of how jamming works but suffice it to say the short version is that jam our other content on radio direction finding you'll have a better explanation of how jamming works but suffice it to say the short version is that jamming is not an end-all be-all people tend to think that you flip a switch and everything is jammed all at one time and it can't be unjammed well that's not really true jamming is all reliant on power levels so say you're transmitting at say one watt of power to reach your repeater network and the jammer picks that up and is going to transmit on just enough power to shut you down and overcome your transmission well then if your radio can transmit can be programmed to transmit at a higher level you can boost that up to maybe two watts and of course the cycle continues until either you or the jammer gives up and has no more power left to give right so usually the jammer is going to win in this case but if you're able to stick with the least amount of power required to transmit your message you're going to be more resistant to things like jamming up next are sound powered telephones now we have a specific episode dedicated to talking about sound power and field telephones in their usage in modern war but the short version for for this sor ave a specific episode dedicated to talking about sound power and field telephones in their usage in modern war but the short version for for this sort of sort of recap primer on advanced communications is we can jump back and use a century-old technology in a modern world as the united states navy has figured out they have they learned their lesson the hard way with the attack on the uss cole and again uh in 2017 with the uss fitzgerald collision uh they use exactly the power of sound powered telephones uh telephones that rely on nothing but a wire to make that communication uh work so sound power telephones while they are an archaic technology they can most certainly most certainly be used up next our hidden slash improvised antenna and this is something that we've touched on a little bit before but uh i think that this is kind of a unique situation something that the ham radio community is not necessarily equipped to handle at this particular moment so the ham radio community is very very good there's a very small subset of of ham radio operators who are operating in in protected areas or areas like hoas where you're not allowed to have an antenna up in your yard so they create radio operators who are operating in in protected areas or areas like hoas where you're not allowed to have an antenna up in your yard so they create these things called stealth antennas and those are great that's essentially what we're talking about however stealth antennas can also be a huge giveaway to activity based on a relatively new technology new is in the past 20 or so years technology that has made it very very easy to find things like radio antennas and this is the technology this is what we're talking about now i must caveat this and say that once again this is a technology that's very very um highly controlled by the us government um usually it's used used to find things like you know ieds and other troop movements and things like that but we were able to find patents on it as well as a russian company that does the same thing so we figured that we wouldn't get in too much trouble by talking about coherent change detection so coherent change detection is a synthetic aperture radar type system basically it's a very very accurate radar image an image that you can that can be taken that is so accurate that it can detect things like human footprints on dirt or things like curate radar image an image that you can that can be taken that is so accurate that it can detect things like human footprints on dirt or things like wires strung up in the air and the way it works is an aircraft or a platform flies a specific pattern in the sky over a specific area taking a bunch of these synthetic aperture radar images and a couple of weeks later or some time period later sometimes a couple of days sometimes a couple weeks they'll come back and fly the exact same pattern and what they'll do is compare the images and this is where we get things like detecting things like human footprints this is also how we detect things like missile sites being constructed or moved or or hidden areas where we can't see the camouflage but we can see the human footprints leading up to a small little hidden area things like that but it can also be used to detect someone who throws say a ham radio antenna up in a tree during an emergency so that's something to keep in mind as well is that you know you can camouflage your antenna but it's very easy to find if you have the right hardware so improvising antenna from large metal structures would probably be a better idea such as warehous s very easy to find if you have the right hardware so improvising antenna from large metal structures would probably be a better idea such as warehouses so a general rule of thumb in the ham radio world is that anything big and metal can be an antenna maybe not a good one but it can work especially if you have a good solid connection method between the antenna material and your radio and also if you have a good antenna tuner so for instance our ham radio our hf radio rigs that we have we could hook these up to the roof of a metal building like a metal roof or something like that and uh it would serve as a pretty good antenna even though it's connected to the ground we could probably use our antenna tuners to get a really good signal out of that or if nothing else a usable signal and there would be absolutely no antenna visible to say a collections method so granted this is kind of pipe dreamy in some areas you're going to have to do a lot of testing and trying out to see what will actually work but this is an option for a lot of people who might not have the capability to string up an antenna in their area or if they're worried about things like you know radar surveillance in their e who might not have the capability to string up an antenna in their area or if they're worried about things like you know radar surveillance in their area which is granted you know few and far between but it is there so we wanted to make people aware of it one of the main considerations for doing this though is making sure that one you have permission to do so and that there's no current going through whatever thing you are attaching your radio to as an antenna otherwise you might fry your antenna or something else and there's also the risk of electrocution and other safety issues which are inherent to the hand radio field so if you are going to do something like this make sure that whatever big metal material material you have is you know safe to do so and one of the things when we mention that is people automatically go to railroad tracks now railroad tracks uh even old ones such as this are usually a pretty bad idea and here's why well for one um people think that railroad tracks are just one long you know several thousand mile long depending on the track uh you know several thousand or 100 mile long piece of metal well that's really not the case railroad tracks you know depend ng depending on the track uh you know several thousand or 100 mile long piece of metal well that's really not the case railroad tracks you know depending on what area they're in and who owns the track they're going to have gaps in them those gaps are to allow the track to expand and contract you know with the heat of the summer and the cold weather in the winter time so that the tracks don't uh buckle and bow and things like that so uh railroad tracks are most certainly not a great idea because they they're really not a long piece of metal you'd have to go and check each specific connection and make sure that it's a good solid non-rusty or corrosive connection between each pieces of track which is going to be hard to do also even if you think that a train track is not being used or is not connected or is old chances are it's probably still going to be hooked up to what's called positive train control meaning that there is electricity flowing through both of those railroad tracks and as we've found out it is kind of a very no-no situation to go near an active railroad line as we found out by the domestic terrorism that we have seen in the pacific northwest when it comes to uh activi ion to go near an active railroad line as we found out by the domestic terrorism that we have seen in the pacific northwest when it comes to uh activists trying to either derail trains or cause a positive train control to to error and have an error there so things like that make that sort of a no-no now on the other hand what might be an option is things like bridges so a lot of bridges nowadays are not being used especially things like old defunct railroad bridges where there's no track leading up to the bridge at all and you've got just a big piece of metal there now of course you have to make sure that it's of course not being used and there's no power going through it as well there's no way for you to accidentally put power through a railroad line because that's something you most certainly do not want to do not only because it's dangerous but because it really doesn't work that well like i said railroad tracks are fairly short considering that there's gaps in them and also they're laying on the ground they're connected to the ground so you're not really going to get a good resonance and a good range out of them anyway so stuff like that is is definitely a consideration and the und so you're not really going to get a good resonance and a good range out of them anyway so stuff like that is is definitely a consideration and then moving forward into a more modern era we have things like laser communications so nasa and other space agencies for a few years now have been working on laser communication systems really ever since the 60s we've been fascinated with putting lasers into space as a communications method and we even for a time period had laser mirror reflectors on the moon so that scientists back on earth could bounce laser signals off and more precisely measure the exact distance between earth and the moon so things like that have been around for a while but lately we are seeing a lot more sort of indie articles come out about how to build laser communication systems and laser communication systems are being able to send a message along a beam of light rather than a radio signal have a very have a lot of potential upsides meaning that you could have purely directional communications communications that can't be intercepted unless you're physically between the two points and even then it's easy to do to determine interceptions so stuff like that would can't be intercepted unless you're physically between the two points and even then it's easy to do to determine interceptions so stuff like that would be very cool to develop and we're certainly working on that here at our end it can be done very cheaply it can be done a little bit more expensively but we're definitely looking into things like laser communications and also moving from space age back to some of the oldest forms of communication on earth we have tap code and morse code basically these are the most timeless and simple communications methods that we know of um and for those of you who don't know who the gentleman on the screen is this is admiral jeremiah denton admiral denton was uh he was one of the earliest pows during the vietnam war and his story is very unique in that he was as of of course being tortured daily by the north vietnamese but he was also a essentially a political prisoner since he was such a high-ranking officer but during his interrogations naval intelligence was able to determine that he had some kind of issue with his eyes when he was speaking to the japanese war correspondent who was interviewing him for propaganda purposes they noticed that he wa of issue with his eyes when he was speaking to the japanese war correspondent who was interviewing him for propaganda purposes they noticed that he was actually blinking something and actually he was blinking out a message so this is exactly what the message was so all the while he was saying that the north vietnamese were treating him nicely and that he was being well cared for he was blinking out for naval intelligence to intercept the word torture and actually his uh award post uh post his release reflected this that he blinked out a distress message in morse code at the television camera and was understood by united states naval intelligence so even though you think that morse code might be a very archaic and ancient way of communicating it is most certainly not out of date and also a more modern version of the morse code is the tap code so for anyone who is in the military and has taken a even the basic siri course they know that the tap code is a simple way of using taps instead of dots and dashes in order to convey a message using a grid as on screen here so memorizing the tap code or having a small little cutout like in your wallet or something that you can you know take a ing a grid as on screen here so memorizing the tap code or having a small little cutout like in your wallet or something that you can you know take a look at every now and then just to refresh yourself stuff like that would be very very handy and learning morse code in tap code is definitely something that if nothing else you know it's a good skill to have and then moving back more into the modern age we have things like software defined radio adsb receivers so for those of you that have been following us for a while you know that we use things like adsb exchange and flight radar 24 in order to track aircraft movements and a few of you have probably noticed by now that at least on flight radar 24 there aren't any military aircraft and that's because flight raider 24 responds to requests from the faa to block or not list certain aircraft so if you're a private citizen and you don't want your information broadcast on the flight radar 24 website you can absolutely tell the faa and the faa will remove you or tell flight radar 24 to remove you from the website you can also skip the faa and just pay flat radar 24 fee and they'll remove your aircraft or at least block it that's why when s you from the website you can also skip the faa and just pay flat radar 24 fee and they'll remove your aircraft or at least block it that's why when sometimes you'll see aircraft flying over the area and it will have nothing no data no registration no serial numbers and it will say blocked sometimes adsb exchange another competing website for flight radar 24 so they actually do show military aircraft but not all of them only the ones that are not blocked so that's something to keep in mind as well the good news is is that if you have your own um sdr you can make an adsb receiver in fact this is what ours looks like you can do it with any sdr dongle so for like 25 bucks you can hook it up to your computer run some software on it and and you'll be able to be up and running you can also do what we did which was take a raspberry pi buy a little kit on amazon or some other electronic parts store hook up a power bank to it and now you have a man portable system that works in conjunction with an app to actually display everything in your area and our area is pretty hampered by terrain but we actually get about a hundred miles radius from the uh from this adsb receiver so this is one this a and our area is pretty hampered by terrain but we actually get about a hundred miles radius from the uh from this adsb receiver so this is one this is just one of the ones we have we have smaller ones we have larger ones but this is kind of the more man-portable one you'll see a demonstration for on youtube so if you're looking to sort of skip the middle man and not pay flight reader 24 for for a subscription or if your internet might go out in times of need you can actually make your own adsb receiver connect to it with bluetooth on your phone where it's actually wi-fi connect via wi-fi on your phone smartphone and you'll be good to go you'll see all the aircraft in your area keeping with the theme of software-defined radios you can also get what's called a kerberos sdr uh and create basically a passive air search radar which is interesting um if you wanted to get into that now the kerberos sdr itself is kind of expensive at at current market value it's around 300 but all you really need are two sdr dongles and a little bit of electronics experime experience and you'll be able to create this as well and what this looks like is you're able to put these sdrs together with a couple tronics experime experience and you'll be able to create this as well and what this looks like is you're able to put these sdrs together with a couple of different antennas and you're able to see aircraft flying in the sky even if they have their transponders turned off depending on the platform you're probably not going to be able to see things like drones uh high-flying you know military drones because they have a lot of stealth characteristics you're most likely not going to be able to pick up any stealth aircraft whatsoever but you're going to be able to pick up things that don't have transponders turned on such as things like air force one in an emergency when they turn their transponder off you'll be able to find them and see them in the sky so that's kind of interesting and very useful especially considering that a lot of agencies are becoming very very aware that these flight tracking websites have a lot more data out there for the average citizen to follow so if you wanted to get into something like this you could build your own radar site and it doesn't emit any signal whatsoever it uses the signals that are already out there in the ionosphere bouncing around in it to see own radar site and it doesn't emit any signal whatsoever it uses the signals that are already out there in the ionosphere bouncing around in it to see the reflections of aircraft in the sky which is very very interesting so another thing that you could do with an str is intercept weather satellite imagery that's right the weather satellite imagery that you see on the local weather channel is actually freely and publicly available so this is not hacking or doing anything illegal these weather satellites actually broadcast in real time the image of the area in which they're flying over down to earth so if you had the right software set up which is all free by the way and you bought an rtl sdr for say less than 50 bucks or so if you were to buy one of those and set it all up you could at a certain time of day when the satellite's flying overhead it will alert you by the way when the satellite is coming overhead you could turn it on and have an auto have an automatic system for downloading the latest weather satellite imagery to your computer all without the internet so that's kind of an interesting usage and a very a very common usage for people who have these sdrs and a little bit of uter all without the internet so that's kind of an interesting usage and a very a very common usage for people who have these sdrs and a little bit of you know technical expertise they can set this up and you can get your weather imagery uh for free from the from the satellites and up next is key wicks so for those of you who have not heard of keyworks before they've been around for a few years now and qx is a program really some software that allows you to download the entire contents of wikipedia to a hard drive and view it in places where there is no internet you can do this with pretty much any wiki wiki voyage wiktionary medical books and things like that on on there project gutenberg is also on there every book that's ever been uploaded to project gutenberg is available things like that basically the sum of human knowledge right so what you could do is using software that's on the keywords website is you could download this and flash it to a sd card then load it into a raspberry pi and once you plug and power up the raspberry pi it then becomes a wi-fi hotspot that you could connect to and view the contents of wikipedia all without using the internet which is pretty cool if y it then becomes a wi-fi hotspot that you could connect to and view the contents of wikipedia all without using the internet which is pretty cool if you wanted to set up your own little local area network and set up your little hot spot you could put it up somewhere somewhere high where people could get to it and the the latency and with even with many people connected to it's pretty it's pretty quick so even you know something as small as like say a little altoids 10 can hold the entire sum of human knowledge and be broadcasting it to everybody in the vicinity that's going to be pretty cool especially coming up with you know the rampant censorship that's already starting to come down throughout the internet with things like you know amazon's web services and cloudflare and things like that you know that infrastructure is not as exactly as secure as we thought it was going to be especially if they don't like what you say so qx allows you to put knowledge out there and you can use really any uh form of wikipedia and things like that uh so that you're not reliant on a system that might be changed so we're currently using a an image of wikipedia from late uh late last year before all so that you're not reliant on a system that might be changed so we're currently using a an image of wikipedia from late uh late last year before all the censorship stuff kicked off and before a lot of wikipedia articles got changed so um at that point in time everything seemed to be like the you know the best uh best image we could find so so that's the one we chose so you could choose any image you want and then flash it to a raspberry pi and then you could be walking around town giving people free wikipedia as you're sitting at the coffee shop or something like that so one thing that we are super stoked about is laura radio or lora radio specifically via an app called meshtastic so a lot of you have heard about us talk about things like gotenna and gotenna is a great tool it's an off-grid mesh communicator that allows you to communicate with somebody else and share a lot of data without an infrastructure being around and basically this you know bringing a smartphone and your device right here you can create your own grid and communicate when there is uh when there's no one else around so that's a really awesome feature we've implemented the gotenna devices into our own emergency icate when there is uh when there's no one else around so that's a really awesome feature we've implemented the gotenna devices into our own emergency plans and we use them pretty much daily for a lot of stuff but there are a few downsides enough downsides that we are starting to move to a system called mesh tastic now we're going to still support goten of course in our emergency communications plan but we figure there's not too many people out there that actually have the gotenna devices for a few different reasons and the main reason is the price these mesh tastic devices specifically the ttgo t beam board can cost anywhere from 25 to 35 dollars the ones we have are 25 bucks and you can get them shipped from china or any retailer such as walmart here in the states for uh pretty cheap so we are using the 915 megahertz versions of the ttgo t-beam board and they were they're working out great and as you can see um these particular versions are 35 bucks a pop but we actually got ours for 25 because we uh soldered on the um the board the led the oled display ourselves so let's talk a little bit more about this mesh tastic thing so goten is like i said are great but gotennas use uh a l led the oled display ourselves so let's talk a little bit more about this mesh tastic thing so goten is like i said are great but gotennas use uh a lot of flashy advertising and stuff to essentially come out and say they're using the mers network so the gotenna devices are essentially a small little repeater network and a little computer built in that transmits your message encrypted by the way across the mers frequencies now this is good and bad good because it's open source and you don't need a license these free these frequencies are free for anyone to use in the united states but that's also bad because they're free for everybody to use in the united states and in our area merge frequencies are heavily used so you might see some interference uh we haven't really had too much of an issue with that um but as far as we can tell but it is a potential right a lot of people possess battlefang radios that can transmit on mers those are the baofeng radios are the de facto you know america the radio of america now and they can transmit homers and a lot of groups are using mers to get around having to buy a license so goten is the same way well the mesh tastic devices are a little diffe mers and a lot of groups are using mers to get around having to buy a license so goten is the same way well the mesh tastic devices are a little different in that these mers frequencies make for not so great of a range it's essentially just vhf radio so in our particular area you know range is subjective right range is going to be different for everybody but we get depending on where we're at one to six miles direct line of sight in our specific area which is you know southeastern united states coastal region more of a woodland type environment so that's something that's not super super great and this has to do with the power that the gotenna can put out the fact that you can't add on an external antenna little things like this add up to to make it basically a fixed system if you buy the gotenna you cannot upgrade it or scale it at all also they're very expensive very very expensive so depending on sales tax in your area you could be paying upwards of a hundred dollars per device to have a gotenna and um you have to buy them in packs of two you can't just say oh well you know you can join our group or you gonna get one you know get another family member on the on the on the system of two you can't just say oh well you know you can join our group or you gonna get one you know get another family member on the on the on the system it doesn't work like that you have to buy at least two they don't sell them in packs of one which is kind of a kind of a bummer so you're ended up you're you're ending up spending two hundred dollars and potentially an extra hundred dollars that you don't need depending on how many family members you have and other people in your group so that's kind of a bummer the mesh tastic device is like i said pretty much better in every possible way it's of course encrypted with the same encryption that the gotenna devices use but it's actually got a longer range the it's still line of sight but from what we've been able to tell for whatever reason we've gotten significantly better range and that's because we're putting better antennas on them the antennas on these devices are plug and play you could hook it up to a a 100 foot tall tower or you could hook it up to the little rubber ducky that comes with the board either way you're going to get a better range than from the gotenna because you can mount the antenna somewhere else other than the d s with the board either way you're going to get a better range than from the gotenna because you can mount the antenna somewhere else other than the device you know if you're wanting to run one of these bad boys on your like your plate carrier or something like that you could run the antenna using an antenna relocation kit to somewhere else so just where it's a little bit better to transmit from and because of this alone we think this is really the sole factor is that we're getting 10 plus miles from these devices simply because the antenna is upgradable it's using a little bit less power than the gotenna but it's actually ranges is much uh much more significant and theoretically a lot of people especially in europe where these sort of have a stronger basin here in the states people are regularly getting 30 miles out of these uh these devices so there's that also it's easily scalable just like you can replace the antenna you can replace the battery which is great because one of the things that we personally run into with the gotenna is that the battery runs out after about 24 hours and we have to sit there and charge it via a power bank which is fine for most people but you know a s that the battery runs out after about 24 hours and we have to sit there and charge it via a power bank which is fine for most people but you know a power bank is is something that is going to get a lot of use so power bank for us is is used to charge things like camera batteries you know surveillance equipment mobile phones and things like that i don't need another device that have to charge via usb well the meshtastic device you don't need a usb you can just swap the battery out so it takes a normal 18650 battery which is what a lot of tactical flashlights nowadays take so if if push comes to shove you could take the battery out of your flashlight and swap it over to your communications method that modularity is completely invaluable to us because it's uh it's it's such a scalable and modular system also it uses far less power than the gotenna device the gotenna device we're getting about 24 hours before it's completely dead in the water whereas from the lora device depending on how much we use it we can get from a few days to as much as a week now of course your message latency is going to go up so you're not going to get messages instantly like you would with the gotenna but y uch as a week now of course your message latency is going to go up so you're not going to get messages instantly like you would with the gotenna but your device can communicate for several several days as much as a week and like i said you can also solder on additional 18650 batteries in a battery holder and that would work just as fine also the software on board the mesh tastic is open source that is a huge thing for us because we're able to make sure that the community thrives and and grows whereas the gotenna stuff is not really open source it's um it's heavily controlled by the makers of gotenna and there are you know we're dependent on them for software releases whereas the mesh tactic if the main people making the mesh tastic updates and things like that if they go out of business or if they stop making updates the code's out there so somebody else can can take up that torch but really the biggest feature is that it's 35 per unit um or in our case 25 right now they're around 25 dollars but in the the worst case they're 35 so we'll stick with 35. so you can buy really three times as many or four times as many uh device these laura devices as one single gotenna so you can eithe ll stick with 35. so you can buy really three times as many or four times as many uh device these laura devices as one single gotenna so you can either buy one gotenna well really you can't buy one go tenant like i said they only are sold in packs of two so you're talking about buying potentially eight of these mesh tastic devices or two of the gotenna devices so i think that you know that cost factor alone makes it very uh makes it very appealing also the fact that in the united states the frequency that they use is 915 megahertz 915 megahertz that's very important because most handheld radios cannot transmit on 915 megahertz and this is a very special frequency that's also allocated for uh usage free to the public so you don't need a license to use these not at all as long as you stay on 915 megahertz in the united states in other countries it's different but here we're using 915 and you don't need a license to use it and also most handheld radios most radios in general can't pick it up so that's also very very useful it doesn't it's not going to stop your government surveillance and stuff like that but considering these are using essentially burst communications low power burst s not going to stop your government surveillance and stuff like that but considering these are using essentially burst communications low power burst communications on a frequency that's not normally monitored that can be a huge boon to security as well one thing to remember though is that the mesh tastic system is more or less in the beta stage you're going to have to have some technical proficiency you're going to have a little bit of experience and you're going to have to put in a decent amount of work whereas the gotenna devices you buy them online you charge them up you connect to the app and you're done well the meshtastic requires a little bit more work than that not much if you can buy these right now i think for ali on aliexpress or alibaba or whatever the website is called you can buy a a ttgo board with the screen already soldered on it with uh the battery connector already on it and it's going to already have the software installed on it so really all you have to do is when you get it screw the antenna on it and put a battery in it and you're done so if you're willing to do that this might be an option for it you don't need to be a sort of you know expert with electroni ery in it and you're done so if you're willing to do that this might be an option for it you don't need to be a sort of you know expert with electronics to be able to to use one of these devices you could if you wanted if you wanted to spend you know a few dollars less per device you could solder the screen on yourself and you could install the software yourself but right now for around 35 bucks you can get the whole kit where all you got to do is pop in a battery and the antenna so that's something that's pretty easy to do and it's something that we are definitely investing in for the future and the reason we're investing in this for the future is that this is no joke a huge deal these devices are definitely going to be around for a long time in fact one company uh created the fossa sat one a mini cubesat that was actually put into orbit around the fall of 2019 fall winter 2019 and it actually was able to while while it was up there uh be able to communicate with substations back on earth for quite a long period of time and it was able to relay messages as well so uh this is something that is definitely developing people are able to do this like they spent the company that did thi le to relay messages as well so uh this is something that is definitely developing people are able to do this like they spent the company that did this spent thirty thousand dollars ten thousand dollars on the device and thirty thousand dollar twenty thousand dollars on this seat on board the uh the rocket and they were able to put their satellite into orbit this is amazing and this is all done via crowdfunding so someone who is able to create this infrastructure might be able to create something that's more global one day of course this is really just a sort of early alpha phase of things but it shows that the interest is there and the proof of concept works so we expect to see a lot more of these in the future perhaps to include some more more commercial ventures as well and finally we have to talk about something that's not necessarily communications related but is definitely an advanced topic what we're calling the clueless operator effect now when an emergency happens we have to assume that there will be people out there with radios and other communications methods they might have their own radios and communication stuff or they may have found somebody else's but they may not ios and other communications methods they might have their own radios and communication stuff or they may have found somebody else's but they may not be an expert they may not have the basic skills right chances are if they have their own radios they probably don't know how to use them as well as say you or i do especially in an emergency when you're going to be stressed and fatigued and you're not going to be able to remember things right due to the fog of war right and chances are they're most likely not going to be able to program their own radios by hand they're probably you might also run into people who have nothing to do with radios they know nothing about radios except for what they see on tv or in video games we're also going to have to assume that there's going to be a lot of people out there that despite purchasing say like a balafang radio on amazon they probably don't have the ability to charge their radio's batteries so they're not going to be able to talk to you for very long chances are and also we have to assume that there might be people out there that don't have the ability to transmit but they can hear blind transmissions right that's why most of our communicati there might be people out there that don't have the ability to transmit but they can hear blind transmissions right that's why most of our communications plan like our comp plan or com card is really one-way communications we're going to be able to give people information in a very quick and concise manner so that they can hook up with us later right and this requires a very specific set of skills you know communications must be clear and concise this is something that is challenging even in the the ham radio community when it comes to emergency preparedness and stuff we also have to think about the ability to teach a lot of skills very quickly very clearly and over the radio in a short amount of time right so for someone who might not know how to work their radio right we might have to troubleshoot things and ask them questions and try to figure out why their radio isn't necessarily working while we still have the chance to contact them so really a simple industrial grade contingency heavy plan will be very very helpful not just for novices who have like the clueless operators right but for you know experts who might forget things during you know in the fog of war after a disaster novices who have like the clueless operators right but for you know experts who might forget things during you know in the fog of war after a disaster where you're going to be you know chances are you're going to be very tired you're going to be stressed you're going to you know be working in a field that's probably not your expertise stuff like that is is uh all reduces capability so a plan ahead of time helps to reduce that impact so something like say our sound powered telephones the sound power telephone is one of the simplest communications uh things on the earth right but even then it still requires just a tiny bit of instruction like this is where you push to talk you push this button for to ring the other telephone and if your phone's not working make sure the wires are connected see that little bit of communication right there if i were to write that down and put that in a little booklet or a little you know laminated index card and zip tie that to the phone that would be very instrumental to somebody who might come across it you know in the night or in the dark in an emergency situation it might be very very helpful especially when when we're talking about things like ham you know in the night or in the dark in an emergency situation it might be very very helpful especially when when we're talking about things like ham radios which are not easy to understand for those of us who aren't in the comms world right so a lot of us basically we know how to work a walkie-talkie and we don't really know anything about propagation you know tunneling the i you know ionosphere stuff like that that's a hard concept for people to grasp and it's going to be impossible to teach somebody in a stressful environment so yeah hopefully this was all helpful this is just a first episode of many on our advanced communications methods that you can use to increase your capabilities beyond just the basic stuff right i think we're finding out by now with all the mass censorship out there in the world that we're having to create our own infrastructure in a lot of cases and we're having to get smart on topics that previously we've had the luxury of not uh not relying on so right now we're trying to increase capabilities for everyone and bring good information to everybody's communications plan so once again hopefully this was helpful drop us a some comments below if you have any e and bring good information to everybody's communications plan so once again hopefully this was helpful drop us a some comments below if you have anything else to add or if there's any other topic that you'd like us to cover we'll check it out and see what we can do about it and also make sure that odds are that the youtube channel you're watching this on will probably be banned in the future so if you are watching this video watch it also on lbry lbry is our open source peer-to-peer decentralized system that allows us to bring content to anybody that wants it regardless of whether an isp or a server wants us to so make sure to get out there and check that stuff out and we will see you next time but until then always remember to find the shade as to actual out