I’ve seen a lot of people posting questions about ham radio lately. Most of these questions resemble “what’s the best amateur radio to get for prepping?” or “Are the Baofeng radios good for preppers?”. Most hams will answer that question with a frustrating and uninformative answer…”that depends”. That’s not really an inaccurate answer, but the problem is that they are looking at the questions from a ham radio point of view, and not a prepping one. Let’s instead take a look at it from a task oriented point of view.
First thing first, if you take the Basic Amateur Radio Course, you will get all the answers you need to either implement your radio plan right away, or at least have the knowledge to figure one out.
Let’s look at it from the most popular prepping tasks involving radio:
LISTENING TO EMERGENCY SERVICES:
You really don’t need ham radio for this. If you won’t ever need to talk to anyone else, then just get a good scanner. Uniden makes a bunch of them with various features. A few features to look for are Close Call which will automatically change to a frequency being used in your immediate area. Another feature to look for may be trunked scanning or P25 capabilities. More and more emergency services are switching to this type of technology. Radioreference.com will tell you if the emergency services in your are are indeed using them.
KEEPING IN TOUCH ON THE FARM/HOMESTEAD/GROUP RETREAT
Depending on the size of area you need to cover, and the topography, FRS/GMRS radios from Walmart or sporting goods stores may do the trick.
The problem here may be the very limited power output of these radios. Most handheld ham radios will offer at least five watts and have better range. An upgraded antenna will also help improve range.
Mobile (car mounted) radios will offer twenty or so watts and more and can be mounted in any vehicle that has a 12 volt power source such as ATVs, Tractors, etc. Mobile radios can also be used as permanent stations in your home with a 12 volt power adaptor, or run with a small solar setup. You can mix and match handheld and mobile radios, with any combination of brands, so long as they are all for the same radio band.
KEEPING IN TOUCH WITHIN LOCAL URBAN OR SUBURBAN AREA
Most likely you will need some power output to do this. I would recommend mobile radios if you have the power source from a vehicle. If not, a good quality handheld with the highest watts you can find MIGHT do the trick. A lot will depend on the terrain between you and “home”.
KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH OTHERS WITHIN YOUR REGION
This is where all that technical knowledge you get from a course will come in handy as the answer isn’t just about what radio to get, but what antenna you are using. It is entirely possible that a good mobile radio will serve your needs, but more than likely you will need an HF radio and an NVIS antenna. An NVIS (Near Vertical Incidence Skywave) sends a signal almost straight up to the atmosphere which reflects it almost straight back down. The range of these antenna setups is several hundred kilometers. Most other antennas will get you out much further, in the thousands of kilometers range, but will not cover the closer ranges of an NVIS antenna. NVIS is know to work well on low wattage, five watts or less may be all you need.
KEEPING IN TOUCH ACROSS THE COUNTRY OR ACROSS THE WORLD
Finding out what is going on in another country or even continent can come in handy for worldwide disasters such as a global pandemic. This will require a good quality HF radio putting out at least a hundred watts. You will also need to get an antenna as high up in the air as possible.
In any case, if you need amateur radio for your communications plan, I can’t stress enough how much taking a course will help.