Category: Communications & Receivers

Letter Re: Which Band is Best for an Unlicensed Handheld Transceiver?

Mr. Rawles: We would like to purchase a weather band radio, plus several walkie-talkies. We want radios that don’t need a license, for use around our house and around town, as well as for up at our cabin in the U.P. [Upper Peninsula] of Michigan, which we are stocking for a retreat. (My husband is a part-time building contractor. Last summer, we made a fairly narrow windowless utility room in the cabin “vanish” by removing its door and molding and sheetrocking it. The only entrance to the room is now via a secret door at the end of a paneled …


Letter Re: Restoring Older Shortwave Receivers

James: A note on the Zenith Trans-Oceanic [tube-type general coverage receiver]s: I’ve been collecting these and refurbishing them on bad weather days. I replace all the paper and electrolytic capacitors, check the tubes, clean them up, and tune up the coil tower with an old tube RF signal generator. The paper capacitors are very prone to failure. Then I construct a replacement battery pack using ten 9 V batteries and 5 “D” cells. I plan to make a 12 VDC charger for these that I can run off my PV panels. So far I’ve done nine of these. I am …


Letter Re: Crystal Radio Sets for TEOTWAWKI

Hi Jim, Thinking about the need to catch local/regional info during a crisis and thought of the old time crystal radio sets to pick up AM radio. Many years ago kids used to build them at home or in Boy Scouts with locally available parts. Crystal radio sets are small, easy to build, easy to use, easy to repair, [JWR Adds: and just about EMP proof, if using a chunk of Galena (or piece of graphite pencil) as the detector, versus a modern germanium diode,] and require no power to operate them! While it seems that there are a lot …


Letter Re: The Last of the $49 MURS Radios

Hi Jim, Just an FYI, the remaining stock of these units [the Kenwood handheld 2 Watt MURS transceivers] is dwindling fast. I expect the $49 special to be available for only one to two more months. I have not yet found a suitable replacement product that can be sold for less than $100 and are MURS certified. On another note, I want to pass along that the customers that have been referred from your site have been excellent folks. Its been a pleasure to deal with them and they have all prompt in their payments and very reasonable to deal …


Letter Re: Rootkit Protection for Your Computer

Jim, Here is some info on what is presently a freeware application which I can quite-honestly classify as in the “Save Your Bacon” category. (it sure saved my rump, on at least one very significant occasion.) It does its’ job, it is small, and it is freeware. My conscience would bother me no end if I kept this gem to myself; perhaps you and/or the blog might benefit from this goody. – Ben L.


Letter Re: Observations on the Recent Oklahoma Ice Storm

Jim: Well, I just got back online. I had to go up to the roof and thaw the wireless [Internet] antenna with a heat gun. It seems the ice grounds out the antenna. It was an easy fix with my heat gun for heat shrink tubing. More precipitation is on the way but colder. It will probably just be snow. We never lost power but were ready anyway. I have friends with no power and they have been without power for days and no idea when it will be back on. The further out you live, the less chance of …


Letter Re: Bosun’s Whistle for Communications

While portable radios are great for communications, I’ve had times in noisy environments where I couldn’t understand the message. Other weaknesses include the fact that they require batteries, their size, that as electronics they are susceptible to EMP, falls, and weather. Finally, they do not allow for directional finding of the other party. As such, I suggest also equipping every member of your team with a small Bosun’s whistle. These small multi-note whistles create a high pitch which can be heard above the din of a crowd. Being multi-note in capability, information can be sent (e.g. high-low for where are …


Letter Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

Jim: I finally got a gallery for pictures to the microwave relay bunker that I mentioned near Whitehall, Montana. . Most of them are self-explanatory but there may be some captioning later. Note that even the outhouse was galvanized and grounded. Mil-Spec! I culled through the photos and left mostly the ones that I thought showed the most interesting features – the high ceilings, thick walls, armored shutters,grounding wires, blueprints, commanding view, and of course the tower itself. I also checked my notes and saw that the internal area was approximately 1600’…or about 40’x40′. For those wondering how such a …


Letter Re: Pirate Radio Stations as a Post-TEOTWAWKI News Source?

Jim, Alternative news during a crisis could potentially come from unusual sources. There is thriving shortwave “pirate radio” activity in the 6.925-6.955 MHz range even during “normal” times. During weekends and especially on holidays, you can hear many pirate radio broadcasts during the late afternoons and evening. Alternative and sometime simply odd programming abound here. If a crisis occurs, this may be a good source of information as there are quite a few pirate broadcasters located all across the US. (In the UK, the pirates tend to broadcast around 6.200-6.400 MHz.) Some pirates broadcast in upper side band (USB) mode, …


Two Letters Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

Dear Jim and Family, This is in response to the article about microwave sites for survival shelters. As it happens, I spent half my summer just South of Whitehall, a couple years before I met you in [deleted for OPSEC]. I was finishing my geology degree and the geology of the area is very interesting. This is the new free mapping program through Wikipedia. It allows for annotations and contains good quality aerial photos of the terrain using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The region described around Whitehall is curious and deceptive. For one thing, there’s an active gold mine north …


Letter Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

James: Here is some info from someone who actually did go to look at one of these things with a preparedness mindset. The one that we looked at was near Whitehall, Montana. If you have a copy of Google Earth you can view it at (46.081522°,-112.115643° … and be sure to change the 3-D angle of view so you can see the terrific commanding view the place has.) The building itself had 8″ thick concrete walls. Over these walls was 4″ of foam insulation and then a layer of stucco. There were no windows but there were vents covered with …


Letter Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

Dear Mr. & Mrs Rawles, I want to thank both of you for what you are doing and for SurvivalBlog.com. I’m a 55 year old US-born male currently living in Mexico. I came back here a little over a year ago thinking that I would be here ’til further notice. The last 12 months have changed that and for a number of reasons, the majority of which are how things are changing here, have me seriously considering either moving back to the US or much further south. Survival and self sufficiency are qualities I admire and know a little about. …


Letter Re: Is Radio Direction Finding a Potential Threat for Survivalists?

Merry Christmas Jim, For added COMSEC, I strongly advise those with transceivers to leave the microphones unplugged. This is a sure way to limit giveaway radio frequency (RF) emissions. For those who have to make transmissions, for example contacting family members, the use of [highly directional] high gain multi-element “beam” (yagi) or log periodic yagi antennas at the base station would reduce the RF signature. The higher the gain a “beam” antenna has the more elements there are on the boom and therefore the narrower the signal spread will be, in degrees, off the front of the antenna. An antenna …


Letter Re: FCC Eliminates Morse Code Requirement for Ham Radio Licenses

Hi Jim and Family, I thought I would pass along a bit of news for Hams. The FCC has done away with the Morse code requirement for all U.S. Amateur Radio Licenses. The current No Code Tech license will change to include the Tech Plus license privileges. I can see advantages for knowing Morse code for communications. One thing it will punch through almost all interference and cover more distance on less power. However the FCC must have thought that the code requirement had become more of a hindrance to Hams as opposed to a benefit for each level of …


Letter Re: Is Radio Direction Finding a Potential Threat for Survivalists?

Mr. Rawles: Hey, I was just wondering what everyone with radios is planning in order to conceal the location of their transmissions from people who could potentially use the signal as a beacon to guide them right to your antenna. It might be fairly difficult to build a tracker, but I suspect there are pre-made devices to direction-find a fairly strong signal (e.g. ham radio). Thanks, – James D. JWR Replies: The only people that have effective radio direction finding (“DF“) equipment and the requisite expertise to operate it are A.) The NSA and a few other government agencies such …