Prepping Academy

T-REX Readiness Exercise Coming up! Grid-Down Communications

• Prepping Academy • Season 7 • Episode 22

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What happens when the grid goes down? Can you stay connected and manage in a world without power? Join me, Patrick, the National Communications Coordinator for PrepperNet, as we navigate the critical T-REX readiness exercise, a three-day grid-down communications event organized by AmRRON from July 19th to 21st. This episode offers you the chance to explore different ways to participate, whether you're just monitoring or actively involved. Discover practical tips for preparing, such as testing your survival skills, turning off your power, and practicing bug-out drills. We'll also dive into the essential equipment and software you'll need to ensure seamless participation.

I’m thrilled to introduce Beth G from PrepperNet, who brings a fresh perspective as a new radio operator participating in T-REX for the first time. Beth takes us through her journey from using GMRS repeaters to earning her technician license and mastering digital communication tools like FL Digi. Listen to her riveting experiences, including managing critical communications during a medical emergency and an unexpected plane landing while traveling. Beth’s story highlights the importance of digital communication in emergency preparedness and underscores the confidence and skills that can be built through exercises like T-REX.

Finally, we reflect on the valuable lessons learned from the T-REX exercise, from overcoming technical glitches like a Raspberry Pi crash and a laptop power supply failure to understanding the intricacies of power consumption for off-grid operations. We discuss the emotional impact of providing welfare updates during crises and the importance of continuous radio monitoring for situational awareness. Plus, don’t miss our exciting announcement about the upcoming PrepperNet Radio Show and how you can become an active part of our community on the airwaves. Tune in to gain insights and prepare yourself for the unexpected!

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Patrick:

Survive, thrive, stay alive. It's time to get prepared with the Prepping Academy podcast.

Patrick:

Hello everyone, I'm Patrick, the National Communications Coordinator for PrepperNet. I've stolen Forrest's chair here on the Prepping Academy to tell you about a communications exercise coming up on July 19th through the 21st. It is called T-REX, which stands for the End of the World as we Know it, readiness Exercise. It's a three-day grid-down communications exercise planned by Amron. Preppernet will be participating directly and indirectly with the exercise. While I can't tell you the details about the exercise, I can tell you the scenario is extremely timely given the global state of affairs. You get to choose the level at which you participate so you can customize the experience to test your skills where they are. In today's episode, I'm going to discuss how you can participate in T-Rex and bring on one of our esteemed PrepperNet members that jumped into T-Rex in 2023 as a brand new HF digital operator and hear about her experience in the exercise. Here are a few ways you can participate in the T-Rex exercise. First up, you can participate on the Amron side of things by following along with the exercise, receiving information as the scenario progresses as the scenario progresses, or requesting to become a station that is assigned traffic to inject or add to the scenario. More details will be available at amroncom for those wishing to participate on that side of things. If you aren't up to speed or aren't ready to jump into the fray on the Amron side of things, preppernet will be having their own training running alongside the Amron exercise and more specifically targeted to the needs and goals of PrepperNet. If you want to participate in the PrepperNet side of the exercise first, you can check into the PrepperNet HF Digital Nets. That will be occurring regularly during the exercise. A modified net schedule will be posted on the PrepperNet site prior to the exercise. If you don't understand what any of that is, you can get on the PrepperNetnet site and visit the Ham Academy section and learn more about HF Digital Radio by monitoring the exercise as it progresses. You can decide how you would respond to the developments if the exercise were a real scenario or real situation. Additionally, if you or any of your city group would like to participate directly with the exercise, please reach out to me, patrick, on the PrepperNetnet site sometime during the month of June and we can write you in to the PrepperNet portion of the scenario and provide some piece of traffic or other inclusion for you directly into the exercise so that you can test your skills and test your equipment.

Patrick:

If you have a local group and would like to participate, t-rex is an excellent opportunity to practice sharing information that you have received from the national NETs between local group members or by practicing communications in your neighborhood, a local park or a wider area such as your county, doing a radio scavenger hunt or practicing any other skill that you identify and want to improve your group's capabilities. If your PrepperNet City group isn't participating, encourage them to. If you have enough participants, you could work together, collecting, analyzing and processing all of the information from the exercise in a way that would be beneficial to your local group. Maps, whiteboards, etc. Could be leveraged to better build an understanding of the scope and details of the scenario in the T-Rex exercise. If radio isn't your thing, you could also test your bug out capabilities by turning the power off for three days or loading up your bug out vehicle with all your gear and taking a test run to your bug out location. Turning off the radio, internet and TV, putting the cell phone in a Faraday bag to experience three days of information vacuum, or testing out some of your survival food All of these are ways that you can bring T-Rex to your own home and experience a grid down scenario to shake the bugs out, iron out the kinks and learn better how you might actually perform in a grid down situation.

Patrick:

If all of this sounds exciting and you want to get involved, here is what you will need to get started. If you do not have a general class amateur radio license or higher, you can participate by receiving the exercise using a shortwave receiver or software defined radio. You will need a shortwave receiver that is capable of doing single sideband receive, as all digital traffic is sent on the upper sideband, or USB, as your radio may indicate. You will need an antenna capable of receiving the 80 meter band or 3.5 megahertz, the 40 meter band 7 megahertz and the 20 meter band 14 megahertz. And, last but not least, you will need some free software installed on a computer that can be connected to the radio receiver. The FL Digi suite, along with the Amron custom forms, will be needed to send the digital traffic. Fl Digi is a free suite of digital radio software that can be downloaded from the W1HKJ website, that is Whiskey One, hotel, kilo, juliet, and the amroncom website, that is alpha, mike, romeo, romeo, oscar, novembercom website under the forms tab. Additionally, some users may want to monitor JS8 call, which is an additional free software intended for low bandwidth and low power communications, but the lion's share of the traffic during the exercise will be handled with the FL DigiSuite. Details on setting up and configuring FL DigiSuite are available in the HAM Academy on the PrepperNetnet site. If you have your general class amateur radio license and want to participate, you will need an HF transceiver capable of being connected to a computer with the FO DigiSuite and an antenna capable of operating in the digital portion of the 80, 40, and 20 meter bands. Frequencies and details will be available on the PrepperNetnet site and the PrepperNet SOI, which is available on the site. Additional guidance will be released prior to the exercise on net scheduling bands and other operations during the exercise.

Patrick:

If you are still with me, you may be asking why digital? Well, that's a common question and the simple answer is it is easier for most people to set up digital than it is for them to learn Morse code. Digital provides several important benefits. First, you do not need to be present at your computer to receive information. The computer can monitor all day, receiving information for you to review later. In fact, the T-REX exercise typically continues all day long and all night long, and we must sleep at some point. So having your radio able to receive that critical piece of information that comes in while you're making a sandwich can help out in the exercise and in the real world. Making a sandwich can help out in the exercise and in the real world. Second, digital or data modes are much narrower bandwidth than voice and perform much better with reduced power, off-grid stations and in less than ideal band conditions. Digital also allows us to send forward error-corrected files, ensuring an accurate copy of information from one station to another, reducing the chance of error in critical information. These are only a few of the reasons why digital is superior to voice or phone communications in our situation.

Patrick:

Don't forget our HF Digital Net on Sunday evening at 9 pm Eastern, 8 pm Central. It is an excellent opportunity to practice sending and receiving messages using the FO DigiSuite and to work the bugs out of your communication setup. More details on the weekly net are available on the PrepperNetnet site in the event posting. If you are new to digital comms, no worries, we can likely walk you through that and get you started. In fact, last week we had a new station that we were able to get the software configured and the radio running in the hour prior to net begin and they were able to check into the net and participate one hour later. Now we would like to welcome the esteemed Beth Gee to our podcast, preppernet's very own, to discuss her experience participating in T-Rex for the first time last year as a fairly new radio operator. Beth, how long had you been a radio operator when you first participated in T-Rex?

Beth G.:

Well, I'm still trying to get over the esteemed part, but that's going to be hard to live up to. So I had been a radio operator probably for a couple of years, but I had not had much digital experience. I'd had my technician license for a long time before I got my general and prior to that I was playing around with the GMRS repeaters, but had not as much HF experience and definitely not much digital.

Beth G.:

So how many weeks before T-Rex did we finally get you set up with digital? I remember helping you, but I don't remember how long it was.

Patrick:

Oh wow, I have such a bad concept of time. Do you think it could have been as long as eight weeks?

Beth G.:

I think that's probably reasonable.

Patrick:

Yeah.

Beth G.:

It hadn't been that long. It wasn't more than a month or so.

Patrick:

Right, and then I had only had a few experiences on the Sunday night nets.

Beth G.:

Yeah, cause you were completely new to that and you were new to FO Digi. You hadn't used FO Digi before, even with two meters or anything like that.

Patrick:

No, I had never heard of it, so it was all new to me. And same with, like JSA call was new to me, not that we use that in T-Rex, but the whole digital world was new.

Beth G.:

We used JSA a little in T-Rex, but the lion's share of the work is with FODG. That was kind of a new experience. It was kind of exciting, I imagine, but it was also a new way of thinking. So what did you think about FODG and T-Rex and the whole concept of digital data and forms?

Patrick:

Well, once I got introduced to digital, I mean far and away love it better than voice. It solves so many problems where you can't hear, you can't understand what people are saying, it's noisy. So I was excited when I first got introduced to FL Digi. But then when you asked me to do T-Rex, I was very nervous because here was this other organization involved, amron and I had a lot of fears about what if I did it wrong? What if I named a file wrong? What if I didn't live up? Oh no, patrick has asked me to do this and I'm going to let him down. So I had a lot of anxiety kind of going into it. So I had a lot of anxiety kind of going into it. But that turned into, just like you said, more excitement and you asked I don't know if I'm jumping ahead.

Beth G.:

No, you're doing great. And the inject traffic question was really next, because you have the most difficult piece of traffic that was given to PrepperNet by Amron for T-Rex. It had several different people you had to interact with on the air and several pieces of different traffic that were associated. Could you tell me a little bit about how that went? What was it like?

Patrick:

Yeah, absolutely. So. When you first asked me about participating, I didn't realize it was going to have all those complexities and I thought and I knew it was a multi-day event, but I thought my piece was just going to be like one day, one time inject traffic once, and when I got the scenario it was really, really cool. So can I describe my piece of it just a little bit?

Beth G.:

Yes, please. It will be great for everybody to hear what it's like.

Patrick:

Okay, yeah. So I got an instruction just telling me kind of the scenario of where I, where I fit into the whole big puzzle and, uh, me living in Charlotte, uh, there was, uh, an a plane headed from, I think, alabama to Atlanta with a critical patient on board and a surgeon following him up half hour later in another plane Well, the plane never made it to Atlanta with a critical patient on board and a surgeon following him up a half hour later in another plane, well, the plane never made it to Atlanta. Where did the plane go?

Patrick:

I was well theoretically monitoring two meter nets and things like that, some of the Ares nets, and I picked up information from the Charlotte hospital that that plane had taken an emergency landing in Charlotte but the surgeon was still on the way to Atlanta. So we had to reconnect the surgeon with the patient and time was critical because this patient was in such critical condition and there were no types of comms available, no normal traditional comms, so it was all up to the radio operators. So I read this description. I'm like, wow, this is really cool but, like you said, it involved a lot of interaction and multiple pieces of traffic being interjected and watching for responses and another piece of it that made it hard is I was traveling that weekend. I don't know if you remember that.

Beth G.:

I do. That was not expected. I don't know if you remember that I do that was not expected, but it was a really cool addition just to the whole situation because it was almost like a bug out.

Patrick:

I know right. And, like I said, I didn't realize my traffic was going to be over the course of two days, and so then I'm telling you, uh-oh, patrick, to leave because I'm, I'm expected, at family members house. So it was like bugging out and up, packed up my radio, packed up my Jackery battery and and hit the road with my antenna.

Beth G.:

And, if I remember correctly, you were successful in getting traffic when that you arrived at the family members house, because we held anything that was directed to you until we saw you again and then you were able to collect it, respond, and then we were able to get it to the person it was directed to.

Patrick:

Yeah, exactly Because initially I think the first piece of traffic when I was still at home, I saw someone report that we're missing this plane. It hasn't arrived in Atlantic. If anybody has any information, let us know. And then I interjected traffic. My first piece that I put in was that, yes, I'm in communication with the Ares operator and we know he's at Charlotte. So I put that out there so that the people waiting on that traffic would then know where the plane was. And then we had to find Dr Smith, the surgeon. So that took another piece of traffic.

Patrick:

But by then I was on the road heading to my family member's house. So I got set up. I got back on FL Digi, I let people know I was back on and then there was traffic waiting for me to pass on to me. So I thought that was. You know, that was interesting. And I didn't know how all these pieces played together and how, how you look for traffic, how traffic finds you, because operators will work. I have one I printed out just to remember everything where I had um, they were trying to reach me, and one operator reached out to another operator and said please help ensure that this message reaches me. And so somehow that worked and it did reach me.

Beth G.:

That's so cool and that's one of the really cool things about testing our communications ability working with other operators in an exercise like T-Rex is it gives us the chance to see how, especially if somebody has to go on the move, somebody's leaving, somebody has a situation, other folks can look out for things and hold it for them and help make sure that that stuff gets where it's supposed to be. And that's part of the community of radio operators that you build, and if something happens, you really have that community to help out.

Patrick:

Exactly. And as that was happening and I realized I was connecting with the other operators, kind of that little bit of fear I had of messing up or doing things wrong just kind of went away. The forms were easy to fill out. It was very well explained. Each line of the form there's an explanation that says you know, this is what this means. So I did. Maybe you held my hand a little bit on the first one, but after that I gained my confidence on the whole thing.

Beth G.:

Getting the traffic filled out for the exercise in the exercise format takes just A little bit of paying attention, but it's not hard. So the next question I have on the list was T-Rex what you expected.

Patrick:

It was more interesting than I expected. But I also wasn't sure what my expectations were because I didn't even listen in on T-Rex in previous years, which I would highly encourage. Anyone even with a receive only kind of shortwave setup is just to listen and watch the traffic. So because I had never done that, I wasn't sure what to expect. But what I loved about it is all the moving pieces and my little piece was just one tiny piece of the big exercise and I got to see it play into the larger exercise and that was just. It kind of blew me away.

Beth G.:

It is such a good simulation of what a real world national event might be like. We've never really had anything to compare it to, especially with the technology we have today, but it's a great simulation. With that, all of us have some great successes, some great failures. I had a Pi crash, completely burned. I had to rebuild the image in the middle of T-Rex a few years ago. So things happen, we learn about our gear. This past year I had a power supply quit on my laptop. Had to come up with a workaround for that in the middle of the exercise. So what are some of your successes and failures during this one? What did you learn about your gear?

Patrick:

Well, I learned that things do suck power a lot more than I thought they did, especially actually my laptop, lot more than I thought they did, especially actually my laptop. And at that last year I was using the Microsoft Surface Pro and I was just a little surprised at how quickly that battery ran dead. I had my Jackery but I was powering my radio off. That had to recharge the Surface Pro and then on the drive to my family member's house I plugged the Jackery into my car lighter to get there. So I think I didn't understand power consumption as much and I've tried to remedy that now over the last year and I've got some different gear in place for that. Successes were, I would say. The whole exercise went off fine. I felt good at the end because I think JJS or someone had said you know good job and I was like shoo but just building. My success is the building, is that I've built my confidence in the whole thing.

Beth G.:

That's great, and a number of operators did comment that they were really impressed with how well that you did just as a new person and that confidence builder is a huge thing. With doing this and especially doing what you did Taking gear, going to the field, not just staying at the home station you say, hey, I've done this, so that's one less thing that I've got to worry about. If there is a real situation, it's not completely foreign. I'm not trying to figure out how to make my gear work. I kind of have that down and I can depend on it while I'm worrying about all the other things that I haven't figured out yet. And the power thing that's a huge thing that people underestimate. Being off grid for communications is not hard, but a lot of people do underestimate even not just communications but charging batteries, running their refrigerator, doing all kinds of things just how much power it takes, because we're used to plugging into the wall, having an unlimited supply and we don't think about it.

Patrick:

Right, and I know you're used to having a persistent presence and keeping your radios on all the time, and that was new to me because I'm usually on a net and then shortly after turn my radio off, so I was a lot more clueless on that kind of power consumption.

Beth G.:

That's a huge thing operating 24-7. Mm-hmm. It takes more power. But you also probably noticed during T-Rex the amount of traffic, the amount of stuff that gets moved and for people who are listening, that when I say traffic I'm speaking of messages directed, welfare traffic, things associated with the scenario, not like being stuck in a traffic jam downtown. So not everybody gets that terminology, especially if you're not a radio person. So much stuff gets moved outside of N of nets that you may miss out on if you're not monitoring all the time, because even if it's not directed to you, you may gain some situational awareness from hearing it, even if someone has a scheduled window to meet with somebody outside of a net to get a message across.

Patrick:

Right. In fact, in the exercise, one of the last things we did was the family had gotten word through a radio operator that they were trying to find out the status of their loved one, and so my instructions were to try to work with that family and decide what means we were going to use to communicate, let's say, off the main channel. So we could have chosen JSA call. We could have chosen you know, we had the leeway to choose how we wanted to choose. So then eventually I was able to give them the welfare check, tell them their loved one was alive and had survived surgery. And you just think in real life how amazing that would have been real life.

Beth G.:

How amazing that would have been. Absolutely we don't realize what it would be like not to have any information at all about loved ones that are away at school, live in another state, maybe they were traveling for work. You know, we see all these prepper fantasy books and movies where it's about the person that gets stuck away from home and spends months trying to get back, and we don't really see as much of the other side of what's going on, with a family wondering where they are. Having that ability to, you know, get a message within a reasonable amount of time.

Patrick:

Right, yeah, I think my message is something like your loved one is in good spirits and doing well.

Beth G.:

Yeah, and that's not much, but it's enough.

Patrick:

Yes, I think, if I can add one more thing to, maybe the difficulty is that because I didn't really know what the digital modes were, I had very little experience, so I didn't realize that sometimes you can pass things in a different mode. And we were having a lot of noise, I think, when you were trying to get some things to me and we ended up with one of the MFSK modes and we had to try a couple of different ones, and we ended up with one of the MFSK modes and we had to try a couple of different ones. That too was a learning experience, and you just kind of just take a deep breath and really, you know, analyze what's going on. Luckily, you had the know-how to know what mode's going to work best in this scenario.

Beth G.:

So I think as radio operators we grow in that knowledge over time. If I remember correctly, I think there was a sunbot at some point during T-Rex. That really made things difficult.

Patrick:

I think you're right. I do remember that, yep.

Beth G.:

I think we ended up having to use several low-speed modes just to try to get through Sunday, trying to get the final X sum, the executive summary of what had gone on in the exercise which was issued in Idaho, back to the East Coast, and that was a challenge because the van conditions were so bad. Would you do it again? Are you planning to do it again?

Patrick:

I'm absolutely planning to do it again. I'm looking forward to it. I'm not traveling that weekend, so it'll be different. I'll be able to watch for the traffic and spend more time with my radio on. I'm super psyched about it. I don't know yet if I will be picked to interject traffic or not, but regardless, I still plan to watch the whole thing play out.

Beth G.:

That's awesome. Do you have your power situation worked out or you're still going to be rocking the Jackery?

Patrick:

I have a Jackery and a Bluetti now.

Beth G.:

Cool yeah, have you tested them to make sure that they don't cause RF noise?

Patrick:

Oh no, I have not tested the Bluetti with my radio. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said that.

Beth G.:

Now you have homework.

Patrick:

Okay, I'll do that. I have until July.

Beth G.:

Yep, you got another month and a couple weeks Okay, so would you recommend, or who would you recommend, participating in T-Rex?

Patrick:

Well, I recommend, even for those who are just using shortwave radios, like I said earlier. Just I wished that I had listened in and just received the files and watched what was happening. So, even if you know very little other than how to set up your shortwave, and we are providing more instructions for that oh and aside, we're going to have a net coming up the Sunday night net that you always do, and I am going to have two different shortwave radios out in my backyard with FL Digi testing, you know, getting the files that you pass on Sunday nights. So I definitely recommend anybody at that level or any level, just just watch, watch the action happen, or any level, just watch.

Beth G.:

Watch the action happen. Can we expect a report on the PrepperNetnet?

Patrick:

no-transcript. Yes, I hope to even maybe film a little bit of it and show what it looks like coming across the screen, and I'm going to use a Texan PL368 and an ATS25.

Beth G.:

Cool.

Patrick:

And you know I actually haven't. I've used them with JSA call. I haven't full up set them up with FL Digi, and so I'll test our instructions and hopefully everybody will be able to do that.

Beth G.:

That's awesome. I used my TechSun PL360 a couple years ago at Heritage Life Skills to copy one of the Amron nets on Friday night with an Android tablet connected to it.

Patrick:

Yes, oh. So that brings up a good point, Patrick. People could be preparing for this T-Rex by listening in on Amron Nets or PrepperNet Nets, right?

Beth G.:

That's absolutely correct. You can check on the PrepperNetnet site in the events section for the net times and frequencies if you'd like to come out and participate. And if you're interested in the Amron nets you can check on their website as well for net scheduling.

Patrick:

Yeah, I think that's great practice. So you're not, so you can do some of your learning curve before you even hit T-Rex. So you can do some of your learning curve before you even hit T-Rex.

Beth G.:

Yeah, I wouldn't go into T-Rex unprepared, especially on the Amarant side of things. They actually go dark, don't participate or provide really any help or anything. It's truly a grid down simulation. We're a little less hardcore at PrepperNet as we want people to learn, so we encourage people to try to do it on their own. But if you have a technical question then we'll try to help you out.

Patrick:

Yeah, I want to. I really want to emphasize that because it's a very safe learning environment and no one's going to you know, no one's going to snap your head off if you make a mistake. They're going to work with you, they're going to answer your questions. Never make you feel stupid, never make you feel silly for asking any question. That's been my experience with all the PepperNet comms people and my experience with T-Rex was that I knew Patrick was there. I think I definitely, like I said, leaned on you for that first traffic as I was a little nervous about some of the things in it. But I mean, it's a very safe learning environment.

Beth G.:

Well, thank you, we try to make it that way. We want people to feel like they can come in and learn and learn some skills and take them back to their family and friends and groups and that kind of thing and become better prepared. And I can't help but bring this up. I got to bring this up on the podcast. If you participate and you catch all of the traffic, every year one of our operators in North Carolina I will not mention his name creates a piece of traffic in which something happens to Forrest. Every year Forrest gets smoked somehow.

Patrick:

Forrest has a very tragic life every year at T-Rex. Yes, so if you participate, catch all the PrepperNet traffic, you'll get to find out what creative way that the North Carolina guys come up with to do away with forest.

Beth G.:

He's a good sport about it too. He is Well. Thank you, beth, for giving me 25 minutes or so of your time to talk about T-Rex and your experience and all of that kind of thing. Do you have any final thoughts or anything that you want to give our audience before we shut it down for the day?

Patrick:

I mean, I would just hope to encourage everybody to not only participate in T-Rex, because you're going to learn and grow from it, but also just get more involved in PrepperNet comms and especially after you get your general license, you can get on the Zello comms and especially after you get your general license, you can get on the Zello comms channel and you will just you will grow exponentially in your knowledge. So I just don't be afraid, just jump in.

Beth G.:

Awesome. Well, with that said, we look forward to seeing you on the air, hopefully before T-Rex, if not during T-Rex. Remember you can find more information about PrepperNet comms at the PrepperNetnet site. If you want to learn more, you can check out the Ham Academy on PrepperNetnet and if you have questions, there's plenty of us there willing to help. 7-3, and we will see you on the air 73.

Patrick:

Thanks for listening to the Prepping Academy podcast. Preppers unite at wwwpreppingacademycom.