Speaker 1: Ham Radio Prep has a new course for MCom Emergency
Speaker 1: Communications dealing with RACS, ares, OXCOM and a few other
Speaker 1: things if you are interested in learning more about radio prepping,
Speaker 1: radio preparedness and just general radio MCom. A lot of
Speaker 1: people get into Ham Radio because of MCom, so this
Speaker 1: course is a step in the right direction. I'm looking forward.
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna end up taking this course myself. And
Speaker 1: if you are interested in this course, you can save
Speaker 1: a twenty percent discount off of the link in the
Speaker 1: description blow from this course in every other course with
Speaker 1: the coupon code of Jason twenty. Ham Radio Prep sponsors
Speaker 1: this channel, and I enjoy talking about the new products
Speaker 1: they have. So let's take a look right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm here with Jim in for BFR from Ham Radio Prep,
Speaker 1: and you guys have a new course that you want
Speaker 1: to talk about. As I understand it, and I know
Speaker 1: a little bit. James sent me an email a little
Speaker 1: bit about it, but I'm going to learn myself right now.
Speaker 1: So Jim, welcome to the channel. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: to day, and yeah you bet, let's hear what you
Speaker 1: got to say.
Speaker 2: Sure, So, new course we have at Ham Radio Prep
Speaker 2: is called Emergency Communications one oh one. And the whole
Speaker 2: idea is basically, well, it's founded in the fact that
Speaker 2: our students who take our license exams said, you know,
Speaker 2: we asked him at the end, Hey, what else do
Speaker 2: you want to learn about? And MCom was a big
Speaker 2: thing for him. So we've been putting this together. Uh.
Speaker 2: And as we started to put it together, it was
Speaker 2: really interesting too, because we would engage with MCom leaders
Speaker 2: and they were all like, yeah, we need something like this, Yeah,
Speaker 2: do something like that. Glad to hear that, And just
Speaker 2: at random, I'd be bumping into other hands they knowing like, oh, hers,
Speaker 2: you're putting together an m comcourse. That's a great idea,
Speaker 2: so nice so that it really works out well and
Speaker 2: I think there's gonna be a great demand for it.
Speaker 1: And it's ready to go now or you guys are
Speaker 1: releasing it this month in September.
Speaker 2: Ready to go now. Launched it about ten days ago, okay,
Speaker 2: and it's three parts. So we are going in with
Speaker 2: the assumption and we might be wrong, but we're running
Speaker 2: with the assumption that our license course students are going
Speaker 2: to start with this course, so they're really going to
Speaker 2: be starting from I just passed, Now what do I
Speaker 2: do kind of place, So it starts off like your
Speaker 2: experience and MCom would start off. You're going to join
Speaker 2: a group like areas or races, and they're going to
Speaker 2: do community service events. They're gonna do parades and marathons
Speaker 2: and those kinds of things. So the whole first half
Speaker 2: of the course is getting you up to speed through
Speaker 2: the scenario of we call it the big city marathon
Speaker 2: and what do you need to know to get started?
Speaker 2: Everything down to buying a radio, pushing the push to
Speaker 2: talk button, programming in a repeat, all those kind of
Speaker 2: things going on a net. All those kind of things
Speaker 2: are covered in the first half of the course to
Speaker 2: make sure that you have the real true basics on
Speaker 2: you could walk out tomorrow and be part of an event.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I get a lot of comm on some of
Speaker 1: my I have some training videos on well, there's a
Speaker 1: technician class in general class that I've done that I've
Speaker 1: recorded from a local club, and just on some other
Speaker 1: random videos here and there. I often get comments that say,
Speaker 1: you know, the licensing exam does not really teach you
Speaker 1: what to do afterwards, So it sounds like you guys
Speaker 1: are kind of sort of trying to tackle one of
Speaker 1: those at least one of those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. So last year around this time, we came
Speaker 2: out with a course called the HF Master Class, and
Speaker 2: that was people who just graduated I want to get
Speaker 2: into HF, I don't have an elmer. What are the
Speaker 2: things they need to know? And it took them through
Speaker 2: buying a radio and a power supply and attended all
Speaker 2: those kinds of things. So this does a similar thing
Speaker 2: for people who want to get into MCom. Like I said,
Speaker 2: it starts you off with that getting grounded in public
Speaker 2: service background, how to use the radio, and then it
Speaker 2: kind of moves on to looking at all of the
Speaker 2: different groups. So there's areas you think about to traditional
Speaker 2: MCom groups, right, You're going to think about aries or
Speaker 2: races or oxcom, But there's groups like Skywarn and Hurricane
Speaker 2: Watchnet and other groups. Uh Saturn is another group of
Speaker 2: the Salvation Army, and the Red Cross has their own
Speaker 2: MCom folks. So there's it's it's broader than just those
Speaker 2: three main groups. But we really spend the bulk of
Speaker 2: our time talking about the three big ones, Ares, Races,
Speaker 2: and ox COM, with the idea being that by the
Speaker 2: time you get through this, you've learned. Went through and
Speaker 2: looked at all the things that they want you to
Speaker 2: learn as a beginner, and and those things are already things.
Speaker 2: We talked about being on a net using a radio,
Speaker 2: but there are things like what does FEMA do and
Speaker 2: how do you what's about talking about the FEMA Incident
Speaker 2: Command system? Right, All three of those groups want you
Speaker 2: to know that before you get into their group and
Speaker 2: really start to do things. So we cover that u
Speaker 2: and then we went on and looked at some of
Speaker 2: the things like deployment. So people are going to go, oh,
Speaker 2: what I really want to do is when there's a hurricane,
Speaker 2: I want to get out and I want to deploy
Speaker 2: to like the Hams did to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: That's really cool, and there were twenty one Hams that
Speaker 2: went there in twenty seventeen. But we really do a
Speaker 2: whole lesson where we deep dive into what actually happened.
Speaker 2: And it starts off with the ARL going all right,
Speaker 2: we need fifty qualified Hams, and by the end of
Speaker 2: that they only got twenty one, and the twenty one
Speaker 2: that got did not have even have all the skills
Speaker 2: they wanted like win Link. So we took those lessons
Speaker 2: learned and we pulled them into the course as well.
Speaker 2: So I really feel like it's a nice well rounded
Speaker 2: Once I know this, I can go to a group,
Speaker 2: my local, whatever group that I want to work with
Speaker 2: and say, hey, I know the basics. Now what are
Speaker 2: the special things that I need to know to work
Speaker 2: in Atlanta Ares or you know, Washington State Oxcom or
Speaker 2: you know what are what's the special sauce of that,
Speaker 2: and that group won't have to teach you. Okay, go
Speaker 2: off and you know, go off and read about FEMA
Speaker 2: stuff because you already have that background.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's great. I hadn't heard that before. About
Speaker 1: the Puerto Rico thing. I had always thought, Now this
Speaker 1: was after the fact, you know, my channel was fairly
Speaker 1: small in twenty seventeen, but I always thought that that
Speaker 1: would have been an excellent time to go down there
Speaker 1: and kind of do some recordings about what Ham's do
Speaker 1: in that type of situation. Parts of the island of
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico were without power for like eight or nine months.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, and I talk about that a lot when
Speaker 1: people bring up the whole oh, why do you need
Speaker 1: a radio anymore because we have cell phones today and
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, you know, this just happened a few
Speaker 1: years ago. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous to think that,
Speaker 1: you know, your power and internet are going to be
Speaker 1: up every day. So it's it's that's an interesting topic
Speaker 1: you bring up. So I look forward to reading more
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so three big short is there that were interesting.
Speaker 2: There was we're out of Metro Atlanta and there was
Speaker 2: a Metro Atlanta ham that deployed and we were able
Speaker 2: to kind of he told his story and we were
Speaker 2: able to go through and and hear what he had
Speaker 2: to say, and they explained and he explained, Hey, you know,
Speaker 2: preparedness wasn't there. They were looking for bilingual people. That
Speaker 2: was difficult to come by. They wanted to use wind
Speaker 2: LINKNOD a lot, and not everybody had it. When they
Speaker 2: got there, they knew that there were hams on the ground,
Speaker 2: but the hams on the ground were all kind of saying, well,
Speaker 2: if something happens, we'll have the repeaters. All the power
Speaker 2: went out, all the repeaters went down, so they didn't
Speaker 2: have that backup thing. They said. Finally, we also two
Speaker 2: things to other places where we did a lot of research.
Speaker 2: Was the ARL put out a really detailed post mortem,
Speaker 2: so we were able to go through and capture their thoughts.
Speaker 2: And there was another ham that deployed out of ten
Speaker 2: See as well that was able to talk about his
Speaker 2: experience when we found the video where he explained some
Speaker 2: of his stuff as well and brought up some of
Speaker 2: these things as well. So it was really kind of nice,
Speaker 2: well rounded being able to give a good example and
Speaker 2: like I said, lessons learned here are really going to
Speaker 2: be what's in the course and really helped inform the
Speaker 2: course and how we decided to do the course design.
Speaker 1: Well, that sounds like an excellent plan. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a great idea. I'm glad you guys are doing something
Speaker 1: like that. So is it it's its own individual course,
Speaker 1: I assume like your HF masterclass.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is its own individual course. It's ninety nine
Speaker 2: bucks and for that you're going to get about five
Speaker 2: hours of video and all the which is longer than
Speaker 2: I think the master classes. I know it's longer than
Speaker 2: our licensed courses. I haven't gone back and looked between
Speaker 2: the two. But it's also got a ton of exercises
Speaker 2: and those kind of things so you're able to follow along.
Speaker 2: And we did some things like for the early part
Speaker 2: of the course. You know, we know that people are
Speaker 2: gonna want to program their radios for FM repeaters for
Speaker 2: DMR and d Star. We put together some worksheets that
Speaker 2: kind of said, here's all the things you need to
Speaker 2: do to make sure you have the information you need
Speaker 2: to gather before you go to program your radio for DMR,
Speaker 2: And we all know that's really complicated, so hopefully we're
Speaker 2: going to take some take some of the complication out.
Speaker 2: Like I said, exercise checklist, those kind of things. So
Speaker 2: we've got a go kit checklist where you just be
Speaker 2: able to download it and say, all right, you know
Speaker 2: what's the you know, what are the twenty things I
Speaker 2: need to have? And you know there's some things you
Speaker 2: think about, like, oh, I gotta have co X's, gotta
Speaker 2: have radio, gotta batteries, what about connectors and spare fuses
Speaker 2: and those kind of things, those little things as well
Speaker 2: to kind of help make sure you're you're really prepared.
Speaker 1: We have had that discussion numerous times on some live
Speaker 1: streams I've done. I'm like, just go activate parks on
Speaker 1: the Earth. You will realize what you are missing when
Speaker 1: you get out to the field and try to set up,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I don't have a B and C
Speaker 1: tow SMA connector with me or whatever the cases. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great idea having a checklist like, that's a
Speaker 1: great idea.
Speaker 2: I just tried to do that on my back deck
Speaker 2: the other day. I took my goat kit out and
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go and use one
Speaker 2: of my antennas with my go kit, and I didn't
Speaker 2: have the right it after I had to come and
Speaker 2: find him. So yeah, it's like that I had. And
Speaker 2: the other tip that we have is you know, pack
Speaker 2: everything up, make it work, then pack it up and
Speaker 2: leave it alone, and so it's ready when you're ready
Speaker 2: to go, because I'll tell on myself. Not a kind
Speaker 2: of a PoTA trip. A buddy and I went to
Speaker 2: Little Cayman Island because we wanted to activate that. We're
Speaker 2: down in the Caymans for a weekend and we got
Speaker 2: all the way out there and he left his power
Speaker 2: cord on the table in the hotel and it was
Speaker 2: a flight and a drive away. So yeah, if you
Speaker 2: could pack that stuff up when it worked, works that's
Speaker 2: really the best way to do it and make.
Speaker 1: Sure absolutely absolutely well, good good, I'm glad. How much okay,
Speaker 1: you said, it's been out for ten days. How much
Speaker 1: interest have you seen yet?
Speaker 2: We've gotten some good interest. There have been some some
Speaker 2: of our hams who have already finished the course, so
Speaker 2: so they're they're speed reading through and they're given good feedback.
Speaker 2: So happy to see that so far, and hopefully the
Speaker 2: awareness is going to really pick up as we go along.
Speaker 2: It's got like our other courses. I don't think people
Speaker 2: appreciate this enough. Is that it's not like a one
Speaker 2: and done thing, so you get lifetime access. So if
Speaker 2: you're if you're kind of going, wait, I wanted to
Speaker 2: do that checklist. Maybe you weren't ready to do an
Speaker 2: HF go kit when you took the course, but now
Speaker 2: you are, that's still available before you go, you download
Speaker 2: the checklist, you're ready to go. And like our other
Speaker 2: license courses, right, if you're if you take the general
Speaker 2: course and you want to know about propagation again, well
Speaker 2: you go back and look at the propagation part of
Speaker 2: the course. There's nothing to stop you from doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, have it forever does after doing the
Speaker 1: HF This is kind of this might be a little
Speaker 1: off topic after doing the HF Masterclass and now this course,
Speaker 1: and maybe you haven't been out long enough to tell yet.
Speaker 1: Do you kind of get ideas about questions people are
Speaker 1: asking about what you might do for a new course
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 2: We're always getting questions and that's good even you know,
Speaker 2: we gotta hand fast and we solicit them right. So sure,
Speaker 2: and when somebody's done with the course, we say, hey,
Speaker 2: what do you want? What do you want to learn
Speaker 2: more about? And you know it's a long list. So
Speaker 2: we were just talking a little bit about this yesterday.
Speaker 2: There's folks to say, Hey, I want to really get
Speaker 2: into satellite operating, or I want to learn Morse code.
Speaker 2: Can you put together something for Morse code? So we
Speaker 2: need to kind of start sorting through and figuring out
Speaker 2: what the next thing might be out of all those things.
Speaker 2: So we don't have a we don't have a great
Speaker 2: Now we're done with this, we're gonna go off and
Speaker 2: build something else. But what we do have is time,
Speaker 2: where in most years when we kind of have the
Speaker 2: fall to catch up. And then starting in January, we
Speaker 2: started on the revision of the license course. Well, there's
Speaker 2: no new license revision this year. It's it's it's an
Speaker 2: off year for the VEC changes, so we'll have some
Speaker 2: extra time to do some stuff. Can't tell you what
Speaker 2: that is yet because I don't think we know. Maybe
Speaker 2: James knows it, has it in the back of his head,
Speaker 2: but he hasn't told me yet. So you know, we
Speaker 2: don't know enough to really share that. But as you know,
Speaker 2: you see us at hamfests or you just see us
Speaker 2: on social media, say hey, I want to I want
Speaker 2: to do this, and we'll see if we can put
Speaker 2: something together.
Speaker 1: Well, this sounds like a great idea. I might go
Speaker 1: grab the course myself and go through it. Because you know,
Speaker 1: I have said before on a lot of videos, you know,
Speaker 1: I do these videos and tell people how to do
Speaker 1: stuff or here's how you do this, or here's how
Speaker 1: you program this ry I've said multiple times, and this
Speaker 1: is still true today and will continue to be. So
Speaker 1: I learned more then I feel like I teach because
Speaker 1: I got I was like, oh, here's a new radio, now,
Speaker 1: I got to go learn how to use that. Or
Speaker 1: here's wind link now I got to learn how to
Speaker 1: do that, or something like that, so I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: something in that course that I would be able to
Speaker 1: learn myself.
Speaker 2: I definitely refreshed myself with Windlink for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I So it's nineteen lessons and of those I
Speaker 2: am the instructor for sixteen, and then we had one
Speaker 2: is James Cribs are leading it and we put in
Speaker 2: a practical thing where we talked about the Big City
Speaker 2: Marathon and those kinds of things, and we're able to
Speaker 2: get embedded with the Peachtree road Race in Atlanta, which
Speaker 2: is the world's largest ten k sixty thousand people go
Speaker 2: on July fourth. So James and I both went out.
Speaker 2: We both recorded our experiences, so not only do we
Speaker 2: kind of learn, we got to share that immediate immediate, Hey,
Speaker 2: this happened, and this is what we're Some things went
Speaker 2: great and some things we went yeah, we probably should
Speaker 2: have done that differently next time, so that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: We also have at the end Max and four mL
Speaker 2: did a lesson. He did the wind Link lesson, which
Speaker 2: was helpful because he's better at that than I am.
Speaker 2: And then he also did a lesson on batteries or
Speaker 2: on off grid power. So it's just some basics on
Speaker 2: batteries and how do you calculate how much you need
Speaker 2: to have for battery capacity if you want to go
Speaker 2: to a park and sit for six hours or have
Speaker 2: a twenty four hour go kid or those kind of things.
Speaker 2: So we've got that in there as well. And then
Speaker 2: we put in a lesson on kind of family communications.
Speaker 2: So let's say power goes out, the grid goes down,
Speaker 2: you need to talk to your family at home. Well,
Speaker 2: you may have a ham radio license, but they probably don't.
Speaker 2: So how are you doing that and when are you
Speaker 2: doing that? And what are the tools and how are
Speaker 2: you getting information when that stuff goes down. So we've
Speaker 2: got a whole lesson that talks about that as well.
Speaker 2: So there's some personal preparedness things to go along, because
Speaker 2: you can't deploy to Puerto Rico for three weeks unless
Speaker 2: you know your family's okay at the same time, right right, Oh,
Speaker 2: you've got to have you got to have both to
Speaker 2: really do that. So that's why we think it's a
Speaker 2: good compliment to include in the course as well. So
Speaker 2: we're excited.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's great. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing
Speaker 1: how it works out for you guys, and like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm may go grab it myself and go through some
Speaker 1: things and interested to learn that type of thing myself.
Speaker 1: The Puerto Rico you kind of sold me on it
Speaker 1: when you started to talking about Puerto Rico, because I've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about that in videos about how you
Speaker 1: know it's not just you know, people think preparedness is
Speaker 1: all about zombie apocalypse or some country invading the USA,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, no, no. Natural disasters happen every day, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. So it's that level of preparedness
Speaker 1: also that's very important. I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: people kind of overlook absolutely. I think it made a
Speaker 1: really terrific case study. We spend It's one of our
Speaker 1: longest lessons too. We spend about twenty minutes on that topic.
Speaker 1: Usually we try and go for ten twelve minute lessons.
Speaker 1: We spent twenty minutes just on that topic because it's
Speaker 1: so important and it's so interesting for people who wanted
Speaker 1: to who want to.
Speaker 2: Do these kind of things. So there's some experiences in
Speaker 2: there of people who are on the ground that you'll
Speaker 2: be able to find out about, and I think it
Speaker 2: will show you why you need to a build a kit,
Speaker 2: build your skills, practice your skills, those kinds of things,
Speaker 2: right because and that's another thing we reinforce and I
Speaker 2: don't know if we do it enough, but you need
Speaker 2: to keep practicing. You need to take that go kit
Speaker 2: out barely often. And I said in the course virtually verbatim,
Speaker 2: is if I'm going to have an MCom person who's
Speaker 2: going to deploy an HF, I probably want them to
Speaker 2: be a poet a person because there's so much out
Speaker 2: there right now and they've got that experience of hey,
Speaker 2: I can be set up in twenty minutes somewhere be
Speaker 2: on HF and send them messages via voice or data
Speaker 2: or you know however they like to do it, and
Speaker 2: that's a big part of the skills you're gonna need.
Speaker 1: Totally. Yep, I completely agree with that. So good. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you guys had done this. Thank you
Speaker 1: for taking the time today to come and talk to
Speaker 1: us about it. I will put a link for those watching.
Speaker 1: I'll put a link in the description blow directly to
Speaker 1: this course. And I think does my discount apply to that.
Speaker 2: I think it does, yes, James said. I asked and
Speaker 2: James said, if you use your discount, people will get
Speaker 2: the riek.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, So Jason twenty for twenty percent off
Speaker 1: of this course and all the other stuff that Hanmrado
Speaker 1: Prep advertises and has available in their packages. Jim, thank
Speaker 1: you for your time today, man, My pleasure anytime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really good and I look forward to seeing
Speaker 1: how it works for you guys.
Speaker 2: Great and look forward to getting your feedback on it
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Totally absolutely yeah, thanks a lot, Jason.
Speaker 2: Thanks