What Radio Do I Need?

I post a lot of radios. I mean, a LOT. That’s because I own a lot of radios. I own everything from high-end Yaesu’s and Motorola’s to the most basic Baofengs. Earlier, someone asked me about why so many different radios, so I thought we’d run through this again.

Set a guard over my mouth, Lord;
    keep watch over the door of my lips.

Psalm 141:3

How reliant are you on your cell phone on a daily basis? My guess is that you rely on it pretty heavily to stay in touch. What if that was taken away from you? How would you remain in touch? Radio is the answer.

In the NC Scout RTO Course, and in his excellent book (see above – also a link), he points out that there are three kinds of communications. The first is tactical. These are short range radios for staying in touch with your immediate team. These are inherently short range, a couple of miles with UHF or VHF handhelds, typically. You might have a vehicle radio as well to extend your range. The next is sustainment. Sustainment communications are day-to-day communications, like staying in touch with other groups in your area, arranging logistics and trade, and information gathering regionally/nationally. This could be either CB or other HF radio, or a UHF/VHF repeater network (as long as someone can power a repeater). The third type is clandestine. These are secure or secret communications that are generally encoded (such as with a one-time pad) or encrypted.

Each of these levels generally requires a different radio or style of radio.

For example, my tactical radios are Baofeng AR-152 handhelds. These are not programmed, and we would manually enter in frequencies by hand before leaving on a patrol or other mission in a tactical environment. That way, if a radio gets lost or captured (by the Chinese or a zombie biker gang, of course), no usable long-term intelligence can be gained from it (like frequencies we use).

My day-to-day standard sustainment radios are Baofeng AR-5RM’s. These are programmed with the GMRS and MURS frequencies and all my local repeaters for regional communications. I also use an Anytone 5555 II radio for 10-12 meters (it’s certainly not used on 11 meters because cutting the white wire is bad) to gather local information. I participate in several communications networks on these radios. For intelligence gathering on a national level, I use HF radios (receive only – I’m a gatherer of information, not a provider).

For clandestine communications, we generally use digital radios like either Motorola XPR 6550s, the Abbree DM-F8, or the new Baofeng DM-32. These can run encryption (only on business band with a license, of course). The side feature to these is that you can send text messages between them. Before some sad ham has a stroke, short text messages are allowed on GMRS and MURS. I had also been using some Kenwood units with FleetSync which allow the sending of up to 99 different preset text messages.

Why might a preparedness group need clandestine communications? Well, when conducting information gathering operations like a surveillance on a known opposition group or camp, when sending short messages related to on-going operations (“leaving camp now”, etc), or in a resistance to an occupation (the Chinese again). There are lots of reasons.

One guy pointed out today that using encrypted/digital radios goes against some of the things that both NC Scout and I teach. Yes, technically, but let me explain. We would never use encrypted radios from our own fixed location because this can be tracked. If we were out in the community conducting some clandestine operation, it’s perfectly safe to use the encrypted radios because we would be mobile and not at a location we would normally be able to be found at. Why is this important? Because encrypted radio traffic, even if the encryption is never broken, tells anyone who is listening that whatever you are talking about is interesting enough to be secured, so they might take an interest in finding out who you are. Never emit encrypted comms from where you sleep.

We teach these things and more in several of our classes. From NC Scout, there are the RTO (RadioTelephone Operator), Advanced RTO, and SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) courses available at the Brushbeater Store. I teach Baofeng Basics and Communications for Preparedness which you can find here on this site. Come to a class and learn. You can also click that link above to buy NC Scout’s book.

For the record, NC Scout is coming here to Camp Ponderosa and teaching RTO followed by SIGINT May 16-21. He’ll also be teaching Night Operations May 21-22. I’ll be running Community Security Operations, which includes radio stuff, May 23-25. That’s a lot of training in a one-week period.

Watch for a review of the DM-32 Radio at tacticalwisdom.locals.com, where I put out a lot more content for monthly supporters.