When it comes to assembling equipment for a ham shack, there are about as many options as there are differing opinions about what one needs. Also, a ham shack for hobby and one for intel gathering post TEOTWAWKI is vastly different. With that said, allow me to share my experiences and background. I started fooling around with radios when I was about 10 years old. One of my dad’s best friends was an avid short-wave listener and introduced me to the hobby. I would sit in Hoyt’s den for hours listening to various overseas shortwave stations as well as occasional voice ham conversations while my mom and dad visited.
Dad bought me a small Hallicrafters shortwave receiver and strung up a long wire antenna. I was hooked! And Dad bought me my first two-way radio, an 8-channel crystal-controlled CB when I was 12. That was back in the day when you still had to have a license and callsign for CB. I still remember my dad’s call letters. There we only a few channels where you could legally talk to other stations, unlike today. While in high school I worked for one of the biggest radio and electronics stores in my hometown. I helped to install many antennas, even climbing towers.
I majored in Radio and Television Broadcasting in college and had a very successful 30-year career in radio and television news. I loved breaking news and being first to get “the facts” on the air. 18 years of my career were in television where it was my job to monitor all law enforcement, fire, and first responder frequencies in a 13-county area and be the first on the scene and on the air. I finally got my General Class ham license roughly 25 years ago, after overcoming my mental block to Morse code.
I left the media in 2002 to pursue other things that didn’t require me being on call 24/7, but my love of radio continues. Now, the skills and knowledge I have gained over the years could prove to be a way this old man can contribute to our group. Being able to hear events occurring in real time, analyzing the information and/or being able to pass that information along could be the difference between life and death. So the position of radio operator is, in my biased opinion, one of the most important jobs in the group.
So, let’s talk about monitoring. Strictly just listening to a bunch and I mean a bunch of different frequencies simultaneously. Depending on where you live this may not be possible. Over the past 10 years some larger, metro area departments have changed over to digital encryption, making it impossible for the average person to easily monitor police and fire communications. As is the case in my area, the three main police and city fire dispatch channels are still “open” for monitoring if you have a trunk tracking scanner. The local ambulance service and our county fire are digitally encrypted and without a sizeable investment in specialized equipment, unmonitorable.
The thing to keep in mind, these trunked and digital encrypted systems require computer-controlled repeater sites to function. An EMP or long-term grid failure could force these departments to revert to the old pre-digital radios which can easily be monitored.
You will also need to monitor all of the FRS, MARS, Marine and other frequency bands to make sure you gain as much intel as possible about what is happening in your area. Here is my solution to the problem.
I have 4 Radio Shack 200-channel trunk tacker scanners, 2 Bearcat programable scanners, 1 digital trunk tracker scanner (not digital encryption just digital mode.) In addition, I have two 20 channel scanning transceivers (one UHF, one VHF) programable with the outdated e-prom technology as well as a 20 channel programable, scanning Midland transceiver.
All my scanners can be set up to search for transmissions across a large portion of the frequency spectrum. If we ever get into a “situation” two of my radios will be dedicated to search mode on all the frequency spectrum for any possible traffic. Why two? Well, you will find there are a lot of “harmonics” that will lock up a scanner on a particular frequency. Computer CPUs, noisy power transformers, and many other devices including other radios operating near the scanner will cause this.
Having two separate scanners means the likelihood of them both locking on the same harmonic at the same time is reduced slightly. Eventually, you will be able to lock out all those harmonic jammed frequencies, but the name of the game is not missing even the shortest of transmissions. Also, after a TEOTWAWKI it will quickly become clear where most of the radio traffic is and you may decide to place some of those frequencies as a “Priority” channel. More on “Priority” channels later.
Do not be fooled into thinking that the more channels a scanner is capable of storing the better. During my entire 17 years in television news, I don’t think I ever had more than 50 channels programmed in any one of my 200 channel scanners and I covered 13 counties. Why? The more channels in one radio the longer time to run through them and thus you might miss an important piece of info. In my “primary” city I had three police dispatch channels to listen to in addition to city fire, county fire and our ambulance service. To ensure I never missed a call I would program the dispatch frequencies for each dispatch frequency into one of my radio’s #1 channels. Most scanners have a “Priority” channel (usually # 1). With the “Priority” button engaged any traffic on that channel would cause the scanner to immediately switch to that channel regardless of if it was locked on another frequency or scanning. That’s why I have so many radios. I also used the “banks” of channels to separate each county I needed to monitor. Due to terrain, some of the outlying counties were hard to monitor from my home county but if I was in that county, I could switch to that bank on that one radio to cut the scan time.
It will be confusing for you at first, but if you have a television station in your immediate area that covers local news, call their newsroom and talk with the Assignment Manager. Call several hours before their news time or that person will not have time to talk! They might be willing to share what frequencies they monitor, and the radios needed to do so. It will help if you promise to “tip” them to anything big you happen to hear. Even better, ask if they have a single person assigned to “breaking news”. If they do you may have found a gold mine of information about monitoring in your area. I also would almost guarantee someone at your area ham club can help as well.
I would also recommend the Radio Reference website. You can type in your city, county or state and get just about every frequency assigned in your area, even private business two-way or trunked systems. An additional word on trunking before you go buy a new radio. Not all trunk systems are the same and not all radios can monitor all the different types of trunked systems. The most common that I am familiar with include: Ericsson GE , EDACS Provoice, EDACS, Motorola Type I and Type II . There are several others but I am not familiar with them. Determine which systems are being used in your area and buy your scanners accordingly.
If you live in an area that is still open and easily monitored having two, or more scanners gives you much greater ability to glean all the traffic in your area, especially if you follow my technique and have a separate radio set to priority for each of these “most important” channels. It takes some practice and getting use to, and I’ll almost guarantee you will have a headache after an hour or so of listening, especially if there is a lot going on, on multiple frequencies. You will have to train yourself to glean information from all the radios, potentially with multiple different events at the same time. Start now developing a list of frequencies in your area and find out whether it’s encrypted. I have a large three-ring notebook with plastic sleeves I keep my lists in, broken down by county. Now let’s look at our transmitting capabilities.
As a General Class ham I have two HF rigs: One of them is an old set of Drake Twins that use strictly tube technology. The other is a more modern Yaesu HF rig. I have an ICOM 32 AT Dual-Band handheld 2 Meter and 440Mhz. I also have four Baofeng radios and a Wouxun handheld. Right now, my weakest link is in the CB arena. I have two Midland handheld CB’s and a mobile 40 channel. I have a “wish list” to add a new 10 and 11 -meter CB base station and base antenna. Another Icom HF rig, another 2-Meter mobile with linear amp. I would also like to add a frequency spectrum analyzer to my shack if I ever get rich and can afford one.
While we are on the subject, I also want to discuss the advantages of using Morse code instead of voice. Remember earlier I admitted it took me 17 years to finally get my ham license due to having a mental block to the code? Trust me, I understand the daunting task of learning code. But now that I have my General Class license which I got while 13 word per minute code was required, I actually enjoy CW (code) more than I do voice.
There are several advantages that knowing Morse code could provide, post-TEOTWAWKI. First, it takes a lot less RF power to get a message through using code and a simple low-power transmitter is fairly easy to make if you have the right parts. You can also buy what hams call a QRP (low power) 20-meter CW radio for about $120. Add a dipole wire antenna and you’re on the air. Second, if you know Morse code, you have the ability to converse in a language a lot of other people do not know. Combine that with your own alphabet encryption code and it will be very hard for anyone to figure out what you’re talking about. Unfortunately, I have not been able to entice anyone in our group to learn Morse code so I am it and that is a weakness in our group. I often use this scenario as a reason to learn code. Let’s say you and your group get captured by a hostile force and are being held in earshot but out of sight of each other. You might still be able to communicate with other members of your group by whistling code or tapping it out on a pipe or wall or whatever.
Hopefully, this will help you decide what the right setup is for you and your group, do your homework, there are a lot of choices in radios, and I’d recommend buying in the middle range of the cost scale. The $120 QRP radio I mentioned will do almost as good a job as a radio that cost $500 or more that is operating on a low-power setting. Conversely, that $120 radio is not going to have the same capabilities as the $500 transceiver so decide what you need and want, then do your research and buy accordingly. I have found the folks at Ham Radio Outlet to be very knowledgeable and willing to help.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way nor being compensated to promote any product or business. My recommendations are from my personal experience as a consumer.