Long Distance Communications with HAM Radio

My dear friends, I wish I could rewind the clock for you all back to at least 2016 when the United States completely lost interest in prepping. The orange haired man was going to drain the swamp and exit it’s creatures from their dominion over our tiny little fleeting lives.

Oh well. Today I’m going to try to get you up to speed on something that may or may not matter to you. Communications.

Perhaps you have kids who live a thousand miles away. Perhaps you have a bugout place 100 miles away from your home. And perhaps you feel like you just want to know “what’s going on out there” once the house of cards comes down. How many movies have we all watched where someone lived decades in a pure survival environment, only to eventually figure out that just outside their hovel there were people living normally.

At this point, late in the prepping game, you have probably heard of “HAM” radio. HAM is small list of bandwidth spaces that are available to properly licensed amateurs. To get the license, you have to study the correct answers to the potential questions, and take from one to three tests, depending on what you expect to accomplish. There are a lot of free phone apps to help you study, and I prefer the one where they only show you the answers. There are also books, and Ham Test Online that is very good.

I am not yet licensed myself, after several years of learning, because it has not been a priority for me. Once things come down, nobody is going to be ratting you out for going on without a license, and I really don’t need to put myself on yet one more list. Beware though. If you want to go on there and talk, get licensed. Because even with what is called a QRP radio 10 watts or under, you will be able to be heard for hundreds of miles, and there are people obsessed with catching violators via triangulation, which is pretty easy with modern software. You can listen all you want with no license, and you will be amazed if you follow my advice below and get the right stuff. I got Japan and Germany the first time I turned on the radio.

The HAM Scam

As with all topics prepping, HAM radio is fraught with a ton of online misinformation propagated by new people in the space who became Youtube experts without any real research. I have covered communications for years on Prepping 101, begging people to slow down and understand what you need to buy, and more importantly, what not to buy. My advice from the original article on how to save a ton on a working 100 watt radio is still valid today, and though the prices spiked after my article on them, they are back down today.

What you absolutely do not want to start with is a handset radio, whether a name brand Yaesu/Icom, or a budget Chinese Boefeng. Hand held radios use a band in the VHF and/or UHF ranges, and are not good than more than a few hundred yards in my experience, in a suburban or city environment. And even out in the woods in flat Florida, no more than about 1/2 mile. And that’s pushing it. In my neighborhood a handheld doesn’t even make it to the next street, with both radios at street level.

Handheld radios are meant to be used with a “repeater.” That is a high altitude re-broadcast setup that is run by most local radio clubs. They rent space up on a cell tower to run a repeater, which gives you roughly the same range as radios used by police and fire. Without the repeater, permission to use it, and of course electricity to the repeater, handheld radios are completely useless for anything other than very short range inter-team communications.

For long range, you have to move to the “HF” band, which stands for High Frequency. All of bands fall within the 1.5 to 30 megahertz range. They are not CB radios, and the term “short wave” technically includes frequencies outside of this range.

HF radios, even very low powered ones, can easily reach out to 150 miles or so with a reasonably correct antenna. I have even covered some very expensive radios that send and receive Morse code only. And I even found some that use an Android app to send and receive, so you don’t even have to know Morse code.

The larger radios, 50 watts and more, coupled with the right antenna will easily reach Europe and Asia on the right day, in the right band. HAMS usually refer to their band slices as “meters,” meaning the number meters wide that one cycle of frequency measures. So the 7 megahertz slice is 40 meters. The 7 and 14 mhz slices are the easiest to use, and work at night during most times of the year all over. At 150 miles, most of the bands will work all the time.

Bandwidth can be a hard thing to understand at first. Radio signals are not infinitely divisible. So if you are broadcasting at 7.023 mhz, you have essentially stomped out that frequency for everyone who can hear you, with a lot of overlap on each side. For that reason, for HF radios, you will be using upper sideband or lower sideband, and the choice is largely based on what is popular in that slice. Nonetheless, when you are on 7.023 as your center frequency, someone will not be able to use 7.024, or, in practice, anything close at all.

That is why cellphones have their own methodology. All of our phones work pretty much on the same frequency, and the towers decode the signals from one another. Radio frequencies are very expensive, and controlled by all the governments of the world. The amateur frequencies differ slightly from country to country, but mostly they are close. An American with a 1,500 watt station (the legal limit) and a giant tower antenna will clean that frequency out worldwide, so it would be pointless for them to not agree.

Before you rush out and buy an HF rig, you have to understand the the antenna is much more important than the radio with HF. With just about any HF radio, you’ll have the 20 meter and 40 meter bands available, and they will most likely get as far as you need, even a very low wattage $150 DIY. If you read my prior articles and watch the videos, I went down a lane that few people entertain. It is to get more wattage for less money buying old radios.

My grandfather was a HAM, but I don’t think I ever heard him say anything, so he probably either had just a receiver, or he just didn’t have a license. His radio, like all the radios of the generations who have been passing on, went into an estate sale and it was picked up by yet another HAM, who probably is also now dead from the murderous hospitals during covid, or the shots.

There are a lot of preppers out here now, but only a tiny fraction of them understand true long distance HAM radio, so the radios really are still cheap. I am a fan of the Yeasu FT-101 series. It is part tube, part transistor, and without any tuneup at all will probably be more than any prepper will ever need. I also have some Kenwood 520 era radios, and every one I have tested works fine, though sometimes the dial is a bit off the correct frequency. All of these old radios can be bought for under $400 including a much more expensive shipping these days. And there are newer all transistor radios as well, from Yeasu, TenTec and others.

Search Ebay for HF Transceiver and it will be begin to walk you down the path of everything that is currently out there. You will see brand new rigs like the Xiegu G90, which is 20 watts, and plenty of Yeasu, Icom and other brands where prices can stretch into the thousands. In my experience, if you find a seller who has great feedback, and they say “it lights up” or “this is from an estate and assumed to work,” it works perfectly most likely. It was unplugged when the guy kicked off, and sold off without any investigation. If the guy had a pile of radios he kept for parts, or some that didn’t work, those are usually not in the main area of the HAM shack, and are thrown away. Nobody wants to sell something on Ebay or otherwise, that may come back to them. The cherry stuff is what you will find for sale, generally. There are obvious exceptions.

Antenna is Everything with HF

The antenna is what makes HF difficult. I have tried small and portable antennas, but they just don’t reach out the way a real HF antenna does. Again, for 150 miles, any antenna built for HF will work.

That includes a bare wire, believe it or not. It is called an end fed dipole, and they work really well, without even using an antenna tuner. If you are thinking a QRP radio, ten watts or under, the choices are numerous, or you can make it yourself. Ideally you should use a “balun,” which is effectively a transformer, to match the impedance of the wire to the impedance of the radio. A simple antenna like this one gives you the lengths of wire you would cut for the individual bands.

Going up in wattage, your antenna choices do not change. You just need thicker components, and that green QRP one says it can handle 100 watts. There are a ton of antennas made for the 100 watt range. And you can keep it really simple on Ebay stores like this one, and just put the stuff away for a seriously rainy day. And many many antennas are made for multiple bands. The same length of wire will be a 1/2 wave at 20 meters, and 1/4 wave at 40 meters, and an 1/8 wave at 80 meters, etc. Don’t get overwhelmed with your choices. An antenna that is solid at 20 and 40 will get you a long way to figure out what is going on in the world, and is plenty good for contacting family once the cell service goes down. 10, 12 and 15 meters are the others commonly used, but don’t worry about 80 meters really. The antennas are very long.

If you don’t have 60′ of space between trees, or you don’t have trees, a vertical may be your best choice, and the products are much more sparse If you see verticals with a coil at the bottom, they seem to work ok. But I recently found a popular Youtuber who makes what he calls the DX Commander, and I got a couple, one meant to be stationary and one portable. They are roughly $239 each, and shipped directly from the UK. He seems to have an extremely good understanding of the physics of what works, and he supplies you will enough wire to place a good deal of radial wires at the base of the antenna to isolate it from the ground, and give the signal something to “push against.” I have no stake in any of these products and am not an affiliate in any way.

Please don’t take this as the absolute best solution for you. The kit requires that you clip your own wire lengths and crimp the ends on, and you do have to assemble the poll as well. I just think it is a good option for people who don’t have what to hang an antenna on. He says in several videos that for receiving, a tuned dipole might have a slight edge, but for transmitting his DX Commander wins out.

For anything but a single wire with a balun, you should get an antenna tuner. there are dial ones and automatic ones, and some radios have one built in, though I don’t suggest that you rely upon them. An antenna tuner reduces what is called the “standing wave ratio” which is much more important on transmit than it is on receive.

I am partial to the “folded dipole” as it was the first thing I tried, and it worked right away for me, listening of course. They tend to be more expensive, but can cover a lot of bands with one installation. Now that I found the DX Commander, I think Callum’s rig is a better choice for most of us, though antennas like this one I still find attractive, and you don’t have to build anything yourself.

If you have the distance, and the trees, the “military” antenna for 6-80 meters is the G5RV. It is over 100′ feet long, and is basically just a dipole. You do need an antenna tuner, but the default configuration works fantastic, and the MFJ offering, and some others on Ebay, are quite durable for years of use. The military actually uses a lot of bare wire antennas, but the G5RV is more of a standard that does it all.

None of the dipoles need to be up high. That is probably the best benefit of them. Some work as an inverted V, so you only need one pole in the middle, and maybe 50′ of coax to both get to the radio and the top of the post in the middle. The G5RV sometimes comes with ladder line to the middle, so you can plug in your coax at ground level. Make sure you have the right connector. A BNC radio does not fit an SO-239/259, and you will need an adapter. Make sure you make all of your outdoor connections waterproof or performance will quickly deteriorate.

More than anything, don’t get wound up with all of your choices. HAM radio is an endless stream of knowledge and learning, and surprisingly there are new developments in both radio tech and antenna tech all the time. It is incredibly fun brain food for the nerds among us. But functionally HAM hasn’t changed all that much. I used to sit with my grandfather over 40 years ago and listen to people speaking Japanese. And he probably had a small vertical on the roof.

There are many more topics on communications in Prepping 101. If you want to just listen, look into the RTL-SDR stuff. It is cheap, and with the right antennas for the right types of signals, works just as good as any real HAM radio, but for the most part you can’t transmit (though there are exceptions). Using regular old Windows software you can watch wide swaths of bandwidth for spike signals, and they are very easy to home in on when you see them. There are many different grades, and pricepoints, so do your homework. I have all of this stuff and i wish I had the time to review it all, but I just don’t.

Like anything else, the important thing is just go get the stuff and try it when you don’t need it. I usually say ten years early is better than one day late, but I think we all realize that 10 years out isn’t happening now. Shit could pop off any day, and it is starting to do so worldwide. Late does not always mean too late. Get going.