JJS founder of AmRRON, American Redoubt Radio Operators Network

Join Grid Down Comms Up for another episode of The Prepping Academy. Today, JJS, founder of AmRRON (American Redoubt Radio Operators Network), joins us for an update on AmRRON's annual grid-down exercise, T-REX. A national exercise where radio operators take to the airwaves for a three-day event tracking a fictional scenario, moving welfare traffic, and pressure-testing our communications systems. We also discuss JJS's new book, Partisan Operators Volume 2, the second of his multipart series chronicling events after an attack on US soil that spirals the country into a complete grid-down. 

Partisan Operators Volume 2

https://www.amazon.com/Partisan-Operator-Journals-Back-Zero/dp/B0GXPRN8B7/ref=sr_1_1?sr=8-1

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Transcript

Announcer 0:00

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

Patrick 0:12

Hey everybody, welcome into another episode of Grid Down Comms Up on the Prepping Academy Podcast. I am excited this evening to welcome a special guest, John Jacob Schmidt of the American Readout Radio Operators Network, or AMRON. Tonight we've got a couple really cool topics to discuss. We're going to talk about his new release, the Partisan Operator Journals Volume 2, and the best and premier, at least in my opinion, Radio Exercise, the annual T-Rex or Toedica Readiness Exercise. But before we get into that, we've got a little bit of a PSA we want to bring to everybody. If you are a radio operator and you participate in the HF Persistent Presence Nets, particularly of the morning on 40 meters, 7.110 megahertz, we have a little bit of an issue going on there that we want to raise awareness of and ask you guys if you can help us out. JJS, you want to fill us in on the details of that?

JJS 1:23

Hey, good evening, and thank you for having me on. It's been a long time and it's just a pleasure to always talk to you. Yeah, you know, there is a nationwide CW traffic handling practice net that takes place in the mornings, and it has been going on for 20 years, I think. Uh forever. And there is a uh I'm trying to find it. I'm trying to find the time, but I know it's in the do you have the times of that net in front of you?

Patrick 2:00

Uh not Zulu time. I think that it runs from 7 a.m. Eastern till around 9 a.m. Eastern, but I I don't have the exact time in front of me at the moment.

JJS 2:13

Yep. I I think you're right. I I do too. And I have it here and I'm scrolling and I just can't find it, so I don't want to waste any more time. But it it is, I believe I put 7 a.m. to 10 Eastern just to give them a buffer because I think it goes till 9 or 9:30, whenever it is, that would give them plenty of room. There's no need for people to be beaconing and doing SNR requests and replies and everything else as often as is done anyway. So, but definitely if you're going to go to work and be away from your station, but you want to leave it on all day, just leave your auto reply or click that TX button to turn off your transmit so you can gather anything that happened that you've captured throughout the day, but you're you're going to be sure not to be transmitting over something while you're unattended that's that's interfering with someone else. We see this also with our nets. Well, nets are taking place. We have people that are new sending out SNR requests, and that triggers a auto reply from every other station that forgot to turn their TX off during a net. Now they might be disciplined and not transmitting because they know better, but they forgot to turn their auto reply off. And so you can have eight or nine people transmitting right on top of traffic that's being passed that's just obliterates it. So uh that comes from experience. So just general reminders periodically.

Patrick 3:49

Absolutely. You know, we we want to be the premiere and best at what we do. We need to act like that sometimes. And in this case, you know, be cognizant of that and yeah, and try not to leave your auto stuff on, particularly in that time slot.

JJS 4:08

So yeah, be professional. That's just be professional.

Patrick 4:12

Yes, absolutely. Kind of topic one for us tonight is uh a couple months ago you published a Partisan Operators Volume Two after the you released the first one, what was it, two years ago?

JJS 4:26

Oh no, the the first one was actually released in 2001, and then I think it hit Amazon in 2002. I'd have to go back and double check that. So I numerous things obstructed me from finishing or can continuing to work on volume two. That was supposed to be done within just you know months, but you know, several years later, now we have volume two finally released. But to break the pattern of waiting four years to publish the next book, volume three is already being written, it is underway and it is being released each week. And I'm actually writing ahead so there won't be any delays when those are released in the encrypted form, anyway, on the on the internet. So yeah, it's really exciting. It's been very well received and it's picking up steam across the you know, prepper, patriot, particularly the radio, people drawn toward communications, that crowd, and it's it's picking up, it's painting a picture of what we could use our communications equipment and skills in that's falls outside your traditional ham radio hobby type of the operations. So yeah, it's it's catching on.

Patrick 5:52

It's been exciting to read them. I finished the version or person operators journals two about a month ago, I guess it was. I got it right after it was released. Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. Great story, great ride. Enjoyed the characters. It is such a cool story, and the two different storylines I just I so enjoyed. I don't want to give away too many spoilers during air podcasts. I I know I know you are working towards, you know, on three, which I've decoded those. We'll talk about that in a minute. I think that's kind of a cool, yeah, cool project.

JJS 6:31

Well, I don't I I think it would maybe for those that are that are that are new to the partisan operator journals, or maybe they're not quite sure what uh what it entails. It's essentially another dystopian novel series, like you know, we've read many of them, but in there are several that I've really liked. Of course, I started off with James Rawls, uh the Patriots, and then the Going Home series, the 299 book series, and and and they're all great, but they kind of skim over communications. So the partisan operator journals is a collapse type of an environment where we are not really ham radio operators, but civil defense radio operators. It's just a different environment. How do you take the skills that we use on a day-to-day basis as ham operators or even unlicensed radio uh type of uh systems? How would you use that differently? What would that look like? So, yeah, with book one, I took the reader to what I call zero day. That's what kicked everything off. So zero day plus one year. So it kind of rushes the reader one year after this unknown event, this thing that happened, that you you learn as you read, it kind of backfills and you you understand what's going on. And that that is very HF digital mode, uh kind of centric. It's really appeals to people that besides a interesting story, if you're not into comms, but if you are, it would really appeal to those that are into HF radio digital modes and concerned about or interested in tradecraft and encryption and things like that. With book two, I pulled it back to zero day. So the day it began, this major nationwide event started. But this time I took a different approach and the main character being a college-age girl that is a medic in the Army reserves. And suddenly she's, you know, 2,000 miles from home from anybody and everybody. She does have a radio. You know, her dad really emphasized this resonated with so many. I had so much feedback saying, Oh my gosh, I'm going to make my daughter or my son read this. I have a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, whatever. That it really drove home what, you know, is your parents, the the turmoil that parents have thinking about their kid being in this kind of a situation, being at college, you know, five states away. And so they, you know, for especially us preparedness-minded, patriotic Americans, we want to try to train these skills up in our kids, but so often they don't take it seriously. So this girl is trying to recall all of this that her father taught her, and she's trying to use this radio and figure it out and remember it all. So, yeah, she ends up meeting some very cool characters, including a ham radio operator who teaches her a lot. And so it's kind of a instructional, it it takes you through what it might look like for somebody in that situation who's learning this stuff that has equipment, but they don't have the skills, and you got somebody walking them and talking them through and showing, demonstrating how this could be used in that kind of a situation. So now in book three, it takes you to a completely different uh operating environment, a different part of the country. Now we're dealing with a group in Colorado, but uh they're a group of patriots that are part of the security detail in this small remote town. And so this is a this is basically they're going through zero day plus the first you know few weeks, just like the book two was, but they're in a different part of the country. So characters from books one and two make cameo appearances in subsequent books. So people and characters you get attached to and they they reappear. And so all of this is tying together how these different groups, different people in different parts of the country, they begin to uh network. I mean, they start touching each other, you know, throughout the story, and it's gonna get more interesting and exciting as it goes.

Patrick 11:17

That's I am very glad to hear that some of the characters make cameos because uh there's a few characters in there particularly like the young man that I guess I think it was in Idaho that's in the, you know. Oh, Phil. Yes, Phil, Phil, yes. Kind of, you know, I I I love the character and the dynamic and everything there and the situation that's going on, not just with him, but the whole situation around there.

JJS 11:43

Yeah, that was that was kind of neat to hear people reading volume two, where this girl and this ham operator, and they're they're in, you know, the southeast in Alabama and Tennessee, and Phil makes an appearance, and and so I'd read her saying, Oh, Phil, cool, yeah, you know, like, hey, I know him. Yeah, so yeah, and you'll you'll see that in book three as well.

Patrick 12:09

Cool. And and the more backstory on that was was so fun to read. It it really is. It's it's an exciting book, and I encourage everybody, if you're into this survival dystopian fiction, check it out. If you're into radio stuff and you want to learn a little more about radio stuff with that too, there's some good tips and tricks and stuff that show up in there that maybe you haven't thought about. I mean, I I will in the end of the second book, and I don't want to give away too much of a spoiler here, but the uh FM radio station that the church is running, relaying information that they got off of HF Radio was just in this circumstances surrounding that was that was cool.

JJS 12:54

Yeah, there's gonna be more of that as well. Yeah, there's there's some very cool stuff in my mind. This is kind of like just doing a brain dump with all the stuff that's always been in my head, you know, for years, which was kind of the vision for AMRON, you know, seeing a nationwide network of Patriots and preppers where there was when this started in when Amron started in 2011, 2012, there was nothing. There, there was no GMRS wasn't even a thing. It was authorized for use, but there was no real support for it. There wasn't repeaters, there was basically ham radio and FRS, CB and MERS, and and absolutely no standardized plan for like-minded patriot prepper type of people to link up and and share intelligence and information and to inform others. And so, yeah, that's what kind of birthed it all. But there's so much more to tell. I mean, there's so many I I found that the fictional stories was the best way to demonstrate what it would actually look like, how how important communications, how vital they are when there is no commercial infrastructure even available, how how important that is. And and the tools that are available to us and how we can use them, or even modify how we use them on a day-to-day basis in a situation where people are listening in that that uh want to harm you, or people that don't want you to communicate and you still must. What do you do? You know, so this kind of demonstrates that. And that's why, you know, people have said, is this gonna be a three-book series or a five book? Or I'm like, you know, I I'm gonna go until I've exhausted every different way to show and demonstrate in a creative and interesting way how important communications are and the tools that are available and how you can use them and even modify the way we normally use them to fit different scenarios.

Patrick 15:05

That's cool. Yeah, there's so much outside of the box stuff that comes into communicating in a uh non-traditional environment. It's uh you know, it's uh having the gear does not equal proficiency, and it especially in that that circumstance.

JJS 15:22

That's another aspect that I I intended to develop in book two, but I didn't I didn't get to the way I wanted to. So that will be developed in volume three. Where people who have they don't want to get licensed, they don't want to get on the air, they don't want to be tracked, they don't want to be, you know, RDF'd, but they got all the gear because and and they don't want the government telling them that they can or can't what they can't do. So what they do is they they want comms because they know it's important. So they buy it, all the stuff that's somebody told them they should get, and they stuff it in a Faraday box until then there's an emergency and they get it out. How they everybody who is experienced in communications knows full wall they will not communicate if they don't train regularly. And including getting your ham license. Why? Because it's your training ground.

Patrick 16:19

Absolutely. Uh, and on the topic of training there, we've kind of mentioned that you can that we've received the pieces of this and the encrypted parts of this, and so maybe we ought to tell our audience a little bit about the uh project that is going on where that if you receive the Amaron Intelligence Bulletin, which is sent out uh during nets during the week, you can receive part of the password in that intelligence bulletin. And also in the net, there's a supplemental part of that. You take those two password pieces that you receive over the air, and then you can go to the AMRON.com website, download the latest uh entry of the journal, and then decrypt it using those two passwords because you know it encourages people to get on the air, it encourages people to practice.

JJS 17:18

Yeah, well, I'm gl I'm you know, I'm glad you brought that up because uh that's how it really this how that's how the partisan operator journals started. I I didn't start off saying I'm gonna write a fictional novel series on communications, you know, that it emphasizes communications. Uh this actually started as a way to uh uh renew interest in participation on our practice nets. So yeah, I I just I just started writing. I started it began with me just kind of making up a little scenario in my head and just writing a little like a 1,000-word part, the beginning of a of some story that demonstrates communications and you know it's a grid-down situation. There's a foreign military on our soil, this guy's overwatching an objective that he's been assigned to, and and suddenly this foreign military shows up, which was not expected. And so he reports it. And so what what I did is I thought, well, this is kind of a cool story. So what we did was encrypted it and posted it on the website because you cannot send encrypted text over ham radio. So what you can do though is send the password over the radio, and you can only get it by participating in the nets. Uh and so I would put it in the Amaron intelligence brief at the bottom. So people knew to grab that and then go, and that was the password for decrypting that little piece of the story, and then they could read it, and then then they couldn't wait to find out what happens next week, right? So then they tune into the nets next week, they get the Amaron intelligence brief, they grab the Vera code, and they run and unlock the next journal entry. And so that created quite a bit of excitement. And then, of course, we added a supplemental Vera code, so it's two parts where you have to get both of them, combine them, and that's the password to unlock you know that that week's journal entry. And they can learn more. The listeners can go to amron.com and just do a search in the search box for Vera code, and there's a posting that talks exactly about what all it entails, where to get like the PTE encryption program to this free, download it, and then you use that to decrypt it each week. It explains everything in there. But once this kind of took on its own life and the Varicode project turned into partisan operator journals, like this actually turning into a real story, then I thought, well, you know, there's so many people that are interested in this. They've missed so many entries because they missed the net. Or or people I I thought it'd be a great way to direct people's attention to uh, you know, off-grid unconventional communications among people that are training for it now in a way that's legal and and they're developing their skills, but how they can be a part of it. So yeah, the partisan operator journal book that went into print kind of became the you know, the advertisement for AMRONO for or for just off-grid comms, just kind of to bring people's attention to it and direct them to where they can actually do this stuff that's in the book for for real, besides the encryption.

Patrick 20:48

But yeah. It's very cool. And I encourage everybody, you know, if that's something you're interested in, you want to try it out, you don't even have to be a ham radio operator. You just have to have an HF receiver and free software. You can learn more about that on the AMRON.com website or with us at PrepperNet. We use the FLDG suite of tools as well. You can receive it. Even if you don't have a shortwave receiver, you can use a web SDR. Yeah, that might be considered cheating by some people, but it works. And it's a way to get into this and get your toes wet and figure out, you know, is this something I want to do? Yeah, that's right. So as we've talked about that, one of the other, well, the other topic I really wanted to to discuss tonight is coming up in about a month is the annual T-Rex exercise.

JJS 21:40

Yes. Yeah, the the acronym within an acronym. The T Rex is the Teotwaki readiness exercise. And Teotwaki is a is a term that James Rawls from Survival Blog coined when he wrote his book, The Patriots. In the 90s, and it's the end of the world as we know it. It's it, you know, or you can call it SHTF or the zombie apocalypse, whatever you want to call it. It's basically when the system collapses and it's permanent. It's not a hurricane that we're going to be over in a few weeks or months. It's not tornadoes. This is something catastrophic that changes our culture, our country, the landscape, the political landscape, the human landscape. That's Teotwaki. It, you know, in his mind's eye, and that's what he wrote articles about, and that's what he included in his book. So I kind of took it from that. But the T-Rex exercise actually started in 2011, when we kind of shifted from just the CH3 project to becoming Amron. That's when Amron was born. So this is the 13th annual. And if you're doing math, we did not do it the year of COVID. So this would be the 14th annual, but otherwise, this is the 13th annual Teotwaki readiness exercise where every every person, and this is not an AMR, this is put on by AMRON, it's provided by AMRORN, facilitated, planned, and everything else. But this is really for the whole Patriot Prepper community who have very rare opportunities to set a time aside to actually put your preparations to the test and go off grid, cut your internet, turn off your cell phone or your data, and communicate only using unconventional methods. The emphasis is on communications, but we have families, individuals, groups that are incorporating, they're following along with the scenario. Or, you know, I mean, it really exposes so much and including uh things in your communications like, well, I got this deep cycle battery and I was I'm gonna run that all weekend. Well, then you realize that lasted me a half a day. So you would not know that going into a real world event if you didn't put yourself in a simulated grid-down situation and really stress your system that you you think you're counting on until you do stress it and you realize, well, okay, I I ran out of power like on the third day. Okay, so this is a three-day exercise, so no problem. But you know what? If this was any longer than that, I need to buy another solar panel. I'm gonna get another 100 watt. That, you know, it and so it, like I said, it exposes those things, whether it's communications or you know, backup power or your cooking, or how many briquettes did you go through, you know, use you know, cooking with your Dutch oven, or how much propane did you go through? And so, and there are also groups, mutual aid groups or church disaster groups, uh, community groups, militias, whatever that are doing the same thing. But they're also develop, they're incorporating other training, like they're putting on a medical class Saturday morning and they're putting on land navigation, you know, that afternoon. And but in the meantime, the radio operators are rotating, you know, shifts getting information that's coming from the AMRON nets, you know, what happened next and where were the riots or this plane that crashed, or you know, this mob that's looting and pillaging, going from point to point. And it it just happens to be down the road from you. You know, what would you do if this were real? And that news headline just came, you just received that over radio. You know, who would you inform? How would you inform them? And and then you start realizing, well, if this was real, I definitely want to let so-and-so know in this town down the road, but we don't have comms with them. So after this exercise, we're gonna fix that. We're going to get on the same page and and make sure we can communicate with each other. So that's that's what it's for. And for our operators that are seasoned and experienced, uh, we learn something every year. It it exposes something every year, or uh you know, bad coax cables or things you didn't know about that or you just get better. Even if everything goes off without a hitch and everything works as planned, you just get better. You gain more experience.

Patrick 26:59

Absolutely. Yeah, there's uh one of the prepper net groups is planning to bug out during T-Rex and set up field stations and camp and do all kinds of stuff as a kind of a training exercise. So yeah, lots of folks doing those sorts of things. T-Rex is always exciting. I always learn something. One year I I had my Raspberry Pi die halfway through and I had to go to a backup image. And yes, it's uh there's always something. It's it's very proof that Murphy is always around. Every time. And two is one and one is none, uh, because it will come and get you absolutely without a doubt.

JJS 27:42

So but I was gonna say, you know, for the negative Nancy's or for the doubters or for the whatever you want to call them, somebody always tries to, you know, nitpick. Well, I wouldn't go out in a group. If this was real, I wouldn't be like running out and camping with a bunch of people. I'd be I'd be staying here. This is where my stuff's at. That's not the point. The point is, uh, first of all, it builds camaraderie, and you really get to know people on a different level. You do get to bounce stuff off of each other and train with each other, or and also the reality is most operators, they're not going to be sitting there at their radio, you know, three days straight like they do with T-Rex. We understand that. But you know, and often we run into this every year where people argue that, well, I'd be I've got chickens to take care of, I've got, I'd be doing gardening, I'd be doing, you know, security patrols. I wouldn't be in front of the radio. That's that's all true. But this is the emphasis is on a communications training exercise. It's a rare opportunity to train and pour all in and focus on your communications and be on every net and be monitoring and be tracking and putting your intelligence reports together on what you are receiving because because it is a communications training exercise, you're not training if you're simulating your you know that you wouldn't be at your radio. So you're off doing other stuff since you wouldn't be doing radio the whole time in a real world situation, so you're gonna intentionally not do radio, you know, to incorporate that into the realisticness about how much time you're gonna spend on the radio. Look, spend the time knowing full well you would not be in front of the radio this much, you know, 16 hours a day every day in a real world situation. But if you're not focused on communications during this, then you're missing valuable experience that that you will need that will help you when this is real. And then you won't be in front of the radio 16 hours a day in a real world situation. But for training, you know, spend some time on it. Don't just check into one net and then call it a weekend.

Patrick 30:04

I might also go so far as to say during the first you know 24 to 48 hours of some events, spending someone in your group spending 24 hours a day by their radio may actually be the reality trying to find out what happened and what is going on. Because you know, Forrest and I did a podcast on this the other day talking about some of Cell Co stuff and how that you know gardening, everybody's like, oh, I'm gonna be out gardening and doing this, that, or the other. And it's like during the first year, uh you may just want to be hunkered down and as low profile as you can possibly be and just doing security and you know, we we had a conversation about that because you know we do get we get that whole thing all the time, like you were saying, if people going, you know, well, especially at the onset, and and here's a real-world example.

JJS 30:55

The when Hurricane Helene hit, there was a ham radio club that was live streaming their repeater traffic. They had one main NCS and a couple alternatives that rotated in, but they were animals. I mean, they were like 36 hours running non-stop traffic, and a lot of it was welfare traffic, and they were trying to find the status on loved ones in these remote villages that they haven't heard from. And I'll tell you what, the radio traffic, it was all about it was like feed the cat, feed the dog, what cat, what dog? There's you know, radio. It was like everything was about comms, and you know what? Every radio operator in the area, including those on the internet that were listening to the live streaming, were pinned to it for the first several days at the beginning of this. So you you will be when there is no news, uh you cut off all your news. Well, if things are going on with Iran right now, and don't get any news at all, you're you're gonna be chomping at the bit to find out what's going on, what's the latest. So especially at the beginning. Now what once you start things do calm down after the first few days, you like, oh okay, well, I got a grip on this. All right, now I better go feed the chickens, or now I'm gonna go, you know, do whatever it is. But you're if if you're dedicated as a communicator for your group or your family, it is going to dominate the first part of a real world event because information is is key to survival. And and plus psychologically, it it becomes more craved than food in a real-world grid-down situation. People are starving for information. They want to know.

Patrick 32:50

Oh, yeah. You hear stories about uh relief aid workers in Africa and war-torn countries bringing in trucks, loads of food, and relief supplies, and they get asked by everybody that comes up, hey, what's going on? What's with this, you know, that that's always a huge, huge part of that is the the blackout of information is uh just such a huge, massive thing. And yeah, I the Hurricane Helene thing is so true. I was I think my wife was very frustrated with me that weekend because I had friends in North Carolina I was trying to read, and I had three or four sources of information on and almost didn't sleep for the first three days. Uh yeah, practically slept in the ham shack. And you didn't you didn't even think about the garden once? Nope, didn't think about the garden once. Was thinking was thinking about how I could get to people I knew that needed help. Absolutely. That that is true. So is there anything you can tell us about T-Rex this year? Uh are the Maoistanis returning any any hints on the scenario?

JJS 33:51

I I think you're gonna see Maoistanis returning the the now, of course, we don't give away the scenario until you know the event. We've had several people ask, you know, uh, what's the scenario? But what we do do is we we put out this news deck the week of uh actually about a week out. So that Friday before the event, which by the way is July 24th, 25th, and 26th, starting Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern uh 9 a.m. Pacific, noon eastern, that's when you kill the switch. So it's it simulates what would happen if the all of a sudden the grid went down and you picked up your cell phone and there's no signal and you can't reach anyone, and so you jump on the internet and there's like no internet. Now you got this big fat question mark hanging over your head, right? So how do you get information? You assess your own situation first, you prepare to report by filling out a stat rep because you know this is the phones and the internet and the power don't always ever, ever go out all at once. So some something's so you want to put the word out, and and then of course, then you then you start to get other people reporting in other states, their powers out, their internet's out, they have no phone service. So then you get you begin understanding the size, the scope, the impact of this event and what all is entailed, but you still don't know exactly the details about what and why and and what is it affecting? How is it affecting society? What threats begin emerging that you would not otherwise know about without communications? What trends are beginning to develop that you definitely want to have situational awareness of? So leading up a week out, we'll begin posting these on what is it? It's uh T K TWN News. It's oh uh it's the T Rex Fake News Network. T T Fn. I I have to look again. But anyway, yeah, we begin feeding the scenario as news stories. This breaking, this just happened. You know, Maoistan ships were just spotted off the coast of Alaska. You know, what are they up to? And you know, so all these little these little breadcrumbs start falling. And if you're paying attention to the news leading up to the event, at least you have some idea that there was in the news cycle something in your brain you should be putting together that it's this is very likely related. This could be related to what we saw on the news this week. So then we have uh up to two dozen tra uh stations with preloaded traffic that are issued this traffic for to send over the radio at predesignated times and days throughout the scenario, throughout the weekend. So what this does is it enhances the storyline of the scenario, it keeps the timeline going and it and it it provides a realistic escalation or deterioration, however you want to look at it, of these events, and and you start to understand the things that have been impacted, possible causes or methods. You understand that this is this is an attack, this was intentional, and you start to learn who, what, why, where, and when as you get on the radio and you start gathering news. And then the signals centers, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and then Amaron National compile these aggregated reports from all the news that's coming in and put those out as daily executive summary, you know, news briefs, because there's no Fox News, there's no Patriot News Network, there's no all of this is like gone now. We're it's you know, the citizens now are reporting everything that they're learning uh over radio. And and then of course this triggers welfare traffic. So somebody may have an assignment, you know, if you hear of a I don't know, uh a dam breaking in such and such a town, if you receive that kind of a report over the air, you have a a brother in his family or living there and you're concerned and you want to check on them. So what they would do, that would trigger a welfare trick check that they would put together, send over the air to check on, you know, Bob Smith on 123 Elm Street in such and such Nevada, you know, can you please uh check on them? And and then other stations would reply, you know, your message was delivered, hopefully. So this is a test. This is a test, you know, is traffic going to get to where it's supposed to, or acknowledging acknowledgments going to make it back to the originating station. Are are NCS able to handle traffic fluidly and hand people off to other frequencies and coordinate the movement of traffic, especially when it starts to get intense and people are starting to chase news? And see the one thing about use the uh one and one America News Network, they get it's a one-way conversation. They get to spit it out and say, This is what happened today, have a nice evening. Well, with on being on the radio, you're spitting out the news, but then you're also bombarded with people wanting to know more. And you know, can you repeat this? And can you repeat that? And can you I didn't get all of that? Can you tell me again? And I have this piece of traffic to get from point A to point B, and could you relay it for me? So it gets to be pretty chaotic. So this is kind of we train and practice all week, I mean all year. This is like the exam. So yeah. So we get to put it all together.

Patrick 40:20

It's the uh the Super Bowl of uh radio preparedness or something like that. All right. So very cool. One of the one of the great exercises. I don't think there's anybody else that does an exercise of this scale. I know of a few statewide exercises, things like that, but as far as a national exercise, there there is no other exercise that comes, frankly, even close. And I, you know, a couple years ago, I remember uh some piece of exercise flash traffic that uh initiated on the east coast and made it all the way to, I think it was you on the west coast in less than 15 minutes. Uh I believe it. Just incredible examples of how quickly information can move over radio without using any infrastructure. Um total encouragement to to those you know that are out there looking at communications and going, you know, a lot of these things you can't do by yourself, but if you start building a team now, you know, that's the beauty of AMROM. That's the beauty of Prepper Net. That's you know the beauty of building those connections and relationships now and training together with people, you know who to reach out to or who may be able to help or who may be able to have information on those sorts of things is such a critical aspect of this.

JJS 41:46

Well, it it it does, and it it takes time to build that. So, you know, when should I start? Yesterday. You know, start now. And look, we've been doing this since 2012. Don't think, well, it's too late now. I've you know coming late to the party and no, start now because people thought when Russia invaded Ukraine, you know, here we go, World War III, and now it's been five years. But people that started five years ago are now five-year experienced radio operators who now, just like me or anyone else has been in this from the beginning. If I got if I have to get a piece of traffic from here to Florida, I can immediately think of five people I know could get traffic to another five people that I know in that region. Because over time you've built up the network and operators that you begin building a rapport with and you start understanding, oh, this guy's got a good station. I could get this to him. You know, I know he can reach Virginia because I've seen the discussions on our Amaron channels and stuff. So that you, you know, this takes time. Start now.

Patrick 42:57

Absolutely. And, you know, we've used that a lot of us still uh use that when traveling, or we have family members or that kind of thing that maybe aren't radio operators. But if something happens, you know, we build those networks, go, hey, if something happens, can I send you a message via radio and can you get it to, you know, my my father or my daughter or whatever that's in the same town as you? And you know, uh or maybe they're a technician and they don't have HF capabilities, but maybe you could get it to them over two-meter radio or you know, absolutely those sorts of things, you know, build those networks. The more people you have in your network, the better. Yes.

JJS 43:35

And you know, the You know, interesting too, talking about the the size and the scale of this type of an exercise and nobody else doing it. The the only the only other entities that I've seen do a scenario based exercise like this are at the government level. And this was really reinforced during the Cascadia Rising exercise for the Cascadia. Subduction zone, big 9.0 earthquake that all the scientists are predicting along the Pacific Northwest off the coast, and how devastating that will be. So they did a big exercise, which included the military, the National Guard, state level, county EOCs, even all the way down to Northern California and British Columbia, all of these entities working together. And so I was reaching out to several of our Amaron members who are involved in Aries or their local ham clubs and at the county. Even those who worked at the EOC at the county were benched. They were basically told citizens, if we need you, we'll let you know. But otherwise, this was a government communications exercise. And of course, briefings that came out from some legislators that I know said that in their briefing, they said they identified the number one failure point in their ability to respond to this type of an earthquake is communications. Communications was an abysmal failure. And they're not using ham radio operators or the citizen rates because it's turned into continuity of government instead of civil defense. So now there are some, you know, the cert programs and you know, they're trying to revive that, but they cannot handle communications on this scale at the cert level. They're they're digging through rubble, trying to identify bodies with FRS radios. You know, so yeah, we we've got to train, and there's the government's training and and we're not for these types of major disasters.

Patrick 45:43

Well, and kind of on the government training side of this and just the individual scale of this, uh, this is kind of adjacent to T-Rex, because I know we've talked about this related to T-Rex on some side channels and uh and other things, but when it comes to disasters, when it comes to emergencies, when it comes to a lot of government communications, there's a ton of discussion on Starlink because Starlink, oh, it's going to replace HF radio, you don't need a license, it's faster, it's better. Yeah, but it's not. It's right. But I, you know, what what are your thoughts on that as far as what you've seen? I mean, I've seen it work great in a disaster, but I've also seen some issues, and I know there are emerging threats in a man-made disaster, shall we say, uh, situation that may impact Starlink. So it's not time to sell your HF radio just yet.

JJS 46:36

Well, we could ask the Iranians, the Iranian people, how how well completely depending on Starlink only worked out for them. Starlink is a beautiful thing, and I have I have Starlink and I have a Starlink Mini. That's part of my deploy kit. That's my link to the outside world from a you know remote mountainous area. Uh however, where I live, there's some steep, deep, mountainous, rugged regimes where you are kind of pinned between a river and the mountainside and a straight up mountain almost. There's no there's there's no pointing it to the north to get to a sat, you know, a uh satellite. You know, you you're being blocked. There are they're very reliable systems, and I I rely on them, but I also have a backup. HF communications can't be beat. It dep we need to be self-reliant and have communications that rely on no other infrastructure or entity right now. Musk is well, he's he's a good guy, right? But I don't know, the the way I'm seeing things shift in the world and sh leaders in the world shifting, their attitudes could change real quick. And a time is coming and I expect this, you know, from a Christian perspective, reading the Bible, there's coming a time when Christians are gonna be hated and hunted. And using Starlink is probably gonna be, I don't want him communicating, flip the switch on that. Yeah, let's shut them off. W we don't know, uh not to mention China and Russia are developing weapons systems specifically designed to target Starlink because they see them as a national security threat. Because we are use that as part of our command and control. So eventually uh if you rely only on Starlink, you're setting yourself to be shocked one day when you realize that it's not there and it was always supposed to be there and now it's not, and that was my plan. That was my plan A. And you don't have a plan B or a plan C. Or someone chooses that they don't want you to communicate. You know, if they're in charge of the system, you don't get to if you're in charge of your radio and your buddy is in charge of his, there is no infrastructure to fail between you or to approve of your talking to each other or or taking it out because uh your government's also using it. And so with HF, you have so much more lateral movement and freedom and independence to be able to communicate for over the horizon beyond line of sight communications. There's you've got to put HF at the highest level of priorities on your communications list.

Patrick 49:38

Absolutely. Right, you know, it it doesn't replace everything else. Well, is there anything else you want to add to our discussion tonight? Anything you need that you're working on you want to share, Amron University, anything like that before we uh wrap this one up?

JJS 49:59

Boy, we are working on so many things right now, and and I'm trying to get the most timely information out on the Aron uh YouTube channel. So if folks would go to YouTube or Rumble and look up Amron and subscribe, then you're gonna stay up on the latest things that we're covering. Like right now, Meshcore is taking off like a wildfire. And so I began introducing Mesh Core for it's the most simple simplistic method of being able to communicate for most people because all it requires is a cell phone with no cell phone service, no internet, but it is community supported with these nodes that are being put up everywhere. And it allows you to send texts and it creates a mesh, a relay mesh. Literally, I I've been sending texts uh 20, 40, 60 miles, not direct, but going through these mesh repeater nodes that are rapidly being put up all across the country in communities and and where I live, it it's a continuous discussion about but we're gonna start talking about you know incorporating mesh core into our communications plan. Uh, we just had wildfires come through. We had some serious storms come through two weeks ago. There was a lot of information the citizens were sharing that you could get on the internet as well, but if the internet goes down and cell phones go down, these continue. They're self-contained, battery-operated, solar powered, and you connect to your personal node through Bluetooth on your phone, and you're texting people all around your community in your region. And so that's one thing. We're another another thing I'll be announcing this Friday, a new project that we are developing that ties in the BTEC UV Pro and Mesh Core and all of that into a very powerful tool. So there's yeah, there's a lot, a lot going on. And and mostly YouTube is the main outlet to get that out to the most amount of people in the most timely way with step-by-step instructions on how to get set up and and incorporate this into your own comms plan yourself.

Patrick 52:27

Excellent, excellent. Yeah, I've you have inspired me to look back at Meshcore. Uh Meshtastic did not turn out well in a lot of ways, and I kind of gave up on that after, particularly Hurricane Helene. And now it's looking like Meshcore may have solved some of those problems. So I need to give that a second, second try again. Well, as always, it was uh excellent to have you on the show. I appreciate you uh spending an hour with us here to talk about what's going on in Ron and T-Rex world. And of course, you are always welcome back. Anytime you want to join us on the Prepping Academy here, uh we would love to have you. Sure appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Great talking to you. God bless. Great talking to you, 7-3, and we will uh catch you soon. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Prepping Academy Podcast. If you'd like to learn more or hear more from me, you can check me out at Griddown Comms Up on YouTube. You can also find JJS at AMron.com and radiofree readout.com for his podcast, as well as the AMron Academy on YouTube. If you're interested in the Partisan Operators Journals, you can find those on Amazon and on his website. This is Griddown Comms Up for the Prepping Academy.

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