Advanced Comms: Take Your Setup to the Next Level

In this primer on advanced communications methods, we introduce little know, but crucial communications technologies that can be very useful additions to your communications plan

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[wrekced]

In the past, while living in an apartment, we tuned the drainpipe on the building and used it with our ham rigs. It worked pretty well. We were in Washington state and we got contacts in Russia and Germany.

[richardsuckerson]

This is a way better strategy than memeing about smoke signals

[mikemcdonald]

as a bored kid growing up in the country friends and i would go out to the tracks where a road would cross them at night. We would get a mag light and run down the tracks like we were a train. We also would run a wire from one side of the track to the other to make the arms come down and the lights come up stopping cars as we would run down the tracks like idiots with our mag light yelling like we were a train LOL :) Bored country kids ;)

[deejayimm]

Buried radials with a flag pole in the middle supported by a sturdy old whiskey bottle made an excellent antenna for global communication for 35 years at my dads house.

[rdsmith]

The meshtastic thing is extremely interesting. I just went down a 4 hour rabbit hole on that. Looking into building a solar powered meshtastic repeater network.

[RecreationalSniper]

I remember being a kid in the 6th grade we had a teacher that would take the notes we would pass around in class and read them out loud. One day I got the idea to learn Morris Code and I copied it down and made keys for my friends and we wrote our notes in code just dashes and dots on paper and it drove that teacher nuts and we laughed about it.

[davidburns]

I believe the Cuban people have become the masters of covert antenna building. Theirs, of course, are mainly for reception. Among my favorite favorite hacks are the use of CocaCola bottles for insulators (their shape lends itself to wires being attached) and I once saw a bicycle wheel being used as an antenna on a Canadian cod fishing trawler.

[NonyaDamnbusiness]

Fun fact: On 9-11 I was a soldier overseas in Germany. Watched the 2nd plane smash into the towers and our brigade commander instantly put the entire installation on lockdown.
We ran steel wire commo lines to every BN HQs from the switchboard in BDE HQ and used those as backup.
So yes, the old-school porkchop "tanker phones" that are part of the inventory on every main battle tank in DoD are still being used when needed.

[TyMoore]

Well done. Low power, spread spectrum, novel encryption using digital one-time pads, burst comms are hard to detect, hard to track, hard to jam, and very secure. 👍

[sithticklefingers]

It’s my understanding that ADSBXchange ignores all requests to block aircraft.

As far as military aircraft spotting with ADSB goes, fighters will pretty much never have ADSB, bombers and attack helos will sometimes show up, and transports and trainers are pretty much always have them. This isn’t a matter of their hex ID being blocked, but of the aircraft not being equipped with a 1090MHz transceiver in the first place. I can’t say what logic goes into which are equipped and which aren’t, but that is the pattern I see across the US.

It is also important to note that the military is not subject to FAA regs about keeping ADSB on inside of US airspace (like civilians are). They are probably turned on during flights through civil airspace to mitigate collision risk, but I am positive that under certain FPCON conditions that all aircraft will simply turn ADSB off.

[ParadigmUnknwn]

Some fun facts:
- In the USA, an HOA *can not* prevent you from putting up an antenna for HAM radio. You can slap a 199' tower in your front yard and they can't do a thing about it.
- Aluminum gutters can make a quite respectable antenna for HF operations if you have a good tuner (and you *need* an antenna tuner). With a good amp and tuner, significant DX ops are achievable.
- If you have a non-conductive roof (i.e. not metal or solar panels) then you can string an antenna in your attic or crawlspace.
- Don't forget about satellite repeaters on the HAM bands. Modern software tools and antenna trackers make satellite ops somewhat consistent, and it's possible with nothing more than a handheld antenna and a baofeng.

[davidhutchison]

If I may say, without being a know it all. On every USN ship I was on from 1989-1997 and again from 2002 to 2007 we always used sound powered phones, both for watch to watch communications underway and station to station. I dont think they ever stopped using them, it was just noted in lessons learned as a organic/attached C4I asset for said event. In every Damage Control Scenario, and Basic Damage Control PQS, which every sailor must qualify in, within 3 months after arriving at a new command, you must also qualify in sound powered phones and associated damage control symbology.

[LogicalNiko]

The fun thing with the simple Baofeng repeater is that with the addition of some Raspberry PI you have a networked IP repeater. Basically the two PIs act as a very long cable streaming the interconnect over the internet. You will encounter some sub-second delays in most cases, but you can then setup many-to-many repeater networks covering any reasonable distance. (I've setup a test system playing around that relayed Boston suburban transmissions back and forth to Seattle and San Antonio without a problem). The ~150-250ms total delay didn't make to much of a difference in well disciplined radio use.

[erwin]

For just receiving, I discovered while living in the back of my truck while traveling that I could connect the broken stub of an old handheld SW radio (using an alligator-clipped test lead) to the inside of my windowless aluminum canopy at night, turning the entire canopy into a really good antenna with world-wide reception.

[jeepdriver]

A couple of other ideas - using electric wire fencing to make an NVIS antenna on the HF bands. Unremarkable in rural areas. For VHF/UHF, take an unused pizza-box sized satellite TV antenna and cut slots into the dish to make a "slot antenna". Cover the slots from behind with gray spray painted cardboard and the mods could be invisible.

[robertalford]

This video is proof..you are doing the Lord's work..and this channel is golden. So much great information. Much appreciated.

[radioguy]

You can make slot antennas with old satellite dishes for any frequency above 130 mHz. The problem with using a repeater is that people get complacent and lose trak of time so if someone detects the location of the repeater they just have to listen for a while and get the input frequency then they can just start locating the individual stations who are using it while the repeater is in use.

[DeadlyDragon_]

Ill add an important device being a nanoVNA, incredibly important. Battery powered device that will help you to build a low loss antenna. SWR or standing wave ratio is RF that is reflected back into the transceiver. A high SWR will result in a reduction in power output to the radiating element of the antenna. If you are into HF mix31 torroids are also a good thing to keep in stock. These torroids are great at reducing RF noise and even common mode noise on your antenna feedline.

[craigbrewer]

One thing we got trained for on the HF 150 radio was a connector that allowed the connection to a chain link fence. It surprisingly is a good antenna for long reaching comms

[jlynch]

Thoughts on making a video on basic Comms plans? What the overall structure should look like?