Category: Communications & Receivers

Letter: Ham Radio conspiracy?

Hugh, I am not sure if this guys tinfoil hat is on tight enough. I have been a Ham operator and ARES member for five years and never knew I was taken over by DHS or worked for them. – Mike HJL Responds: This is a subject that has been circulating on the Internet for several months now, and it’s probably time to address it. The problem stems mostly from the DHS and FEMA surrounding the circumstances on 9/11. In the 1970’s, Amateur Radio had reached its peak and had begun the long slow slide to oblivion. While the service …


Does the Number of the Beast Have an Area Code?, by CTS

[Editor’s Comment: SurvivalBlog does not endorse the concept of the “number of the beast” being associated with any form of technology; however, the information presented in this article is of import to anyone who is concerned about the collection of private information and government oversight.] Listen carefully. I’m about to tell you something that they don’t want you to hear. I’m also about to tell you something that you most likely don’t want to hear, so you may want to sit down for this. You don’t need your cell phone. There I said it. You may say, “but they are …


Protecting Both Tube and Transistor HF Communications Equipment From E1 EMP Pulse- Part 2, by PrepperDoc

Transistor / QRP Equipment The solutions shown so far may not adequately protect computer-based software-defined radios, hybrid transistorized-vacuum tube radios, or fully solid-state QRP or low-power stations, or transistorized shortwave radios. These radios will need to use protection that clamps at a much lower voltage than 700 volts! While transistor transmitters may use power amplifier transistors that may have breakdown voltages in the scores to hundreds of volts, the input circuitry of many QRP transistorized receivers will likely be fried with voltages well under 100 volts. There are a couple of solutions that can offer lower-voltage clamping more appropriate to …


Protecting Both Tube and Transistor HF Communications Equipment From E1 EMP Pulse – Part 1, by PrepperDoc

Introduction and Tube Radios Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is a serious national threat with growing public awareness. A high-altitude atomic/nuclear explosion sends electrons plowing through the earth’s magnetic field lines and thus generates powerful radio waves that impact the earth below the explosion within a radius of many hundreds to thousands of miles. The peak field strength is immense, on the order of 50 kilovolts per meter, and covers a very broad frequency spectrum, from very low frequencies, past 100 MHz; but the first wave (named E1) is evanescent, over in a mere microsecond or so. There are additional, slower incident …


Letter: Ham Radio Classes

Hello James, and Hugh, and readers I just finished teaching my second Ham radio class for this year, with four licensees in each– two general and two tech. I teach general and tech at the same time, with emphasis on tech, and I encourage extra study on the general with questions and instruction for each being answered for each class. My classes usually go for 10 or 12 Saturday mornings 0900-1200 or until we exhaust the teacher, whichever comes first. I just found out last Tuesday that I have seven more students who want me to teach another class. Whew! …


Letter Re: Digital Security

The writer of Digital Security Part 1 had a lot of interesting and relevant things to say on the topic. One thing I would ask him and the rest of SurvivalBlog readers to take into account is that although Firefox is a very functional browser and one of the best, their leadership espouses some rather un-Christian principles, even to the point of expelling members of their leadership who made a stand for morality. I have switched to a Firefox emulator called Pale Moon, which functions just like Firefox but without the moral equivalence. –JT


Letter Re: Communications In Dark Times, by J.B.

Hugh, Independent communication is really important. First thing you observe when you go to an ARRL local meeting is the intelligent, charitable, genuine nature of the people involved. Second, the information that the Technician License test preparation material contains is laterally applicable to other prepping activities if you want a deeper understanding of what is around you and what you have to accomplish. An example is the information about direct current (DC) electricity used in radios and generated by solar power systems. Alternatively, learning about repeaters and their positions and coverage make you very aware of your surroundings. You also …


Letter Re: Digital Security

HJL, Where TrueCrypt left off, VeraCrypt has picked up the baton. (It has the exact same interface, same features with improvements made behind the scenes.) The TrueCrypt letter specifically said that there “May still be unresolved security issues…” They didn’t say it wasn’t secure. They were quite vague. They were in the middle of an audit and quit before the results came out. VeraCrypt takes the results of the audit and appeared to correct some of the very minor issues. I was impressed by how few they are (i.e., increasing some iterations from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands), …


Letter Re: Digital Security

Hello from Russia! This Friday, SurvivalBlog mentioned “Digital Security- Part 2, by Dakota”. As a computer specialist and a paranoiac, I must warn you about two things. Bitmessage is absolutely secure. (I mean that nobody can read an encrypted message or find the sender or recipient or fact of communication between them.) But the price of this fact is too high and is a security hole by itself: Bitmessage client sends your message to every other client. What does it mean? In reality, every client would receive all the traffic the system creates. If, say, every one of 100 users …


Digital Security- Part 2, by Dakota

Secure Email (continued) Public key encryption works like this: you have two keys– a public key and a private key. Your public key is just that; it’s something you share with the public. Think of it as more of a padlock though. When someone wants to send you an email, they lock it with this padlock. No one along the way can see what’s inside the email (not even your email provider). When you want to read the email you use your private key just like you would use a literal key to unlock, or rather decrypt, the message. Your …


Digital Security- Part 1, by Dakota

Before we begin, note that the title is a bit of a misnomer. Digital security is mostly nonexistent. When computers took off, security was never a concern, so they are inherently insecure. I will do my best to help you secure your computer as much as possible. The point isn’t to make your computer invulnerable to attack. That’s impossible. However, just like your survival retreat security, the goal is to make yourself such a hard target that hackers or the government move on to lower hanging fruit. Again, nothing in here will make you immune to the NSA. They have …


Letter Re: Comment on Communications by J. B.

Greetings, Morse code is still encouraged and is definitely a useful skill. He also mentions ARES. In addition, there is another group of emergency communication volunteers, RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service), which is called into action in the case of a major emergency. If interested, I would encourage an Internet search for more information. By and large, his article is very useful. – S.S.


Letter Re: Communications in Dark Times

HJL, I want to point out one thing J.B. might have overlooked. Part 97 of the FCC’s rules governing Amateur Radio allow the government to suspend privileges in an emergency. While they can’t turn off the airwaves, there are things they can do: Monitor the airwaves. (It’s difficult to cover them all, but possible.) Jam signals in popular frequencies (if not all). Arrest violators. Turn off at least some if not all repeaters. (Our county’s repeaters are partially funded by our EOC. All employees of the EOC are amateur operators, and they can control all of our county’s repeaters.) Intimidate …


Communications In Dark Times, by J.B.

We all take our glorious electronic communicators for granted today. Got a problem? Search the web. Driving to work and realize you forgot to mail an important bill? Call home and ask your family to drop it off at the post office for you. Need directions? Just ask your phone. What if you suddenly lost the use of these wondrous conveniences? Who hasn’t experienced this at some point? Poor signal strength, cell towers under maintenance, power outages, and more can take your connectivity offline. The more we rely on these amazing conveniences daily, the more annoyed we are when they …


Letter Re: Google Almighty

HJL, Do I speak blasphemy? Do I speak heresy against the almighty, all-knowing, all-seeing Google? Yes, I do and proudly proclaim my disgust with Google and their we-know-better-than-you mindset. In fact, they have accumulated so enormously and stupendously much data that they have concluded they know everything, and since they know everything they can decide what you should know and what you should not know. That’s right. Google has decided to filter the search results it presents to you in the name of Internet quality, and I can’t argue that they do not have a right to do this, but …