New Training Classes

Over the winter, I saw a number of stories about lost snowshoers, skiers, and snowmobilers, many of whom didn’t have any survival skills. Well, you all know that Tactical Wisdom is all about helping you survive. We’re going to be offering some new courses in that realm.

 “You will drink from the stream, and I will command the ravens to provide for you there.”

1 Kings 17:4

Mountain Wilderness Survival – 2 Days/$400

This course is based on the USMC Mountain Warfare Training School’s Summer Survival course, which I have attended. We will go over mountain-specific survival issues as well as general wilderness survival. There are unique challenges in a mountain environment. We’ll discuss gear selection, mountain movement, shelter building, firecraft, and various other survival topics during the two-day course. The course is going to involve movement outdoors, no matter the weather, so be ready for it.

As with all of our courses, there will be some tactical aspects, like avoiding contact and escape & evasion skills.

Winter Mountain Survival – 2 Days/$400

This variant will happen in the late fall, prepping students to survive in a mountain environment in the cold weather. Additional gear considerations, shelter training and cold weather specific movement skills over snow and ice will be covered. This course will also be mostly outdoors, but with some classroom time. This is also a two-day course.

Getting Home – 1 Day/$200

This one-day course will guide us through the first hours of a crisis. We will discuss Get Home Bags and what goes in them, communications planning and practice, map studies for getting home, and some practical exercises using tools to Get Home like a sillcock key and a poncho for shelter. We’ll talk about ways to set up your pack for efficiency. We’ll cover when to contact others for help and when to avoid all contact.

Baofeng Basics – Half Day/$100

This half-day course will go over the most basic information for using the Baofeng ( or similar) dual band UHF/VHF radios on license-free channels (relax, sad hams) for preparedness. We’ll go over the menus and settings, what they can and can’t do, how to develop a family communications plan, and discuss optimizing the radio. This course is a good precursor to take NC Scout’s outstanding “RTO Basic” course. We will not be covering SIGINT or more advanced comms, this is for the most basic users.

Communications for Preparedness – 2 Days/$400

This two-day course is designed as a supplement to the NC Scout RTO course. In this course, we’ll talk about setting up a dedicated preparedness radio plan for a group or small community, using the Camp Ponderosa infrastructure (including repeaters/CB/HF stations) to practice setting up communications for a small retreat, farm, or neighborhood. While the RTO course works on raw skills and improvised antennas, in this course we’ll be talking about operating from a fixed based and using those skills to run day to day operations. We will discuss multi-channel day-to-day comms, rather than short term, single mission tactical comms. We will cover plan set up, testing, gear, and security. It is HIGHLY recommended that you take the NC Scout RTO Course first (and possibly his SIGINT course). This course is ideal for less mobile folks who want to contribute as we will be discussing running a communcation section.

All of these courses will be listed on the schedule in the next couple of days, so stay tuned.

On a related note, if you are looking for a great way to get good quality gear at reduced prices, check out BattlBox by clicking my link below. Over the years, I’ve gotten a ton of great stuff from them and this month’s box was all about water, carrying it, purifying it, testing it, and surviving in it. My link gives you 25% off your first box.

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