Ham Radio For The Apartment Prepper

I received an email from a reader who was wondering whether he could get involved with ham radio while living in an apartment.  Not knowing much about ham radio myself, I did a bit of research on my own, and contacted Mike Fletcher of the Tampa Amateur Radio Club, and was a guest at Family Survival Show not too long ago.  He graciously agreed to answer a few questions.
–What is the quickest way for a beginner to learn the basics and how much does it cost?
There are License classes given by many Ham Radio Clubs, by CERT or Red Cross groups and some local government preparedness programs. These classes are usually done over several short sessions or two or three weekend sessions.  Classes usually run from 10 to 20 hours and are often scheduled to end with an exam session where the students take the actual FCC exams for their Technician Class Amateur Radio License. The Test is $15 (+/-) and includes the FCC processing and license fees. Classes may be offered for free or there may be a small charge. The purchase of a book ($15 to $28) may be required but you keep that as a reference book for the future.
–What equipment  would you recommend for people that don’t have a lot of space and have no room for large antennas and such?  What is the ideal location within the home?
The Technician Class license gives you some operating privileges on most of the ham radio frequency bands and full privileges on the 2 meter (VHF) and 70cm (UHF) bands where most of the emergency communication for a local area will take place. The radios for these bands are mobiles mounted in your vehicle with a small (18 inch or so ) antenna on your vehicle as well as base mounted units for your desk with a small 3 to 6 foot fiberglass antenna outside a window. While these base units may not fit well in an apartment community many city bound hams primarily use a handheld walkie-talkie radio for these local channels. The radios range in cost from $100 to several hundred dollars depending on the list of features and accessories you desire.
How do these small radios cover any distance?
While ham radio can support emergency communications without infrastructure and we pride ourselves on that ability, it does not mean that we do not have infrastructure. Most areas have ham radio “Repeaters” which are installed by individual hams or clubs on building tops or towers in the community. Similar to a cell tower, these repeaters on high places receive the signal from your hand held radio and retransmit them from the high tower to other hams that you may want to talk to and then their signal is relayed back to you when they talk..
Ham radio also has a large presence in the “Short Wave” bands where we can talk to other hams around the world by bouncing a signal off of the upper layers of our atmosphere and back to earth thousands of miles away. The technician License includes a very small allocation for this world wide communication but it is there. If talking to other countries is what excites you then an upgrade to the General Class ham license would be the next step. It involves more radio theory but can usually be mastered in classes similar to those we have described.
How does someone find a school?
The best source for Amateur (Ham) Radio training and information is the local Radio Club. Search for Ham Radio in your city, call your emergency management office for CERT and Red Cross related groups, some Radio stores may have info on Ham Clubs in the area or check with www.arrl.org for an ARRL affiliated club in your town.
Our thanks for Mike Fletcher for answering the questions above.
Before you Buy Equipment
Before even considering equipment, the first step to get started is to join your local ham radio club.   They would have equipment that you can get familiar and practice on, under the supervision of a licensed operator.
If you find that you like to get more involved with ham radio, you will also be more likely to find contacts for used ham radio equipment and help you set up your own.

Source:
http://daily-survival.blogspot.com/2012/12/ham-radio-for-apartment-prepper.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FwjrD+%28Daily+Survival%29



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Consider Raising Meat Chickens

By Stephanie Dayle - Tue Dec 04, 12:10 pm

I would like to take a stab at convincing anyone who can, to  raise meat chickens.  Not so much for the sake of prepping, but for the sake of self-reliance, although, you can never go wrong learning to raise your own food as an emergency preparedness skill.

If you are a meat eater, like me, raising meat chickens reconnects you to your food supply and increases your level of self-reliance.  It makes you fully realize the work, the love, and the effort that goes into your food.  I understand a lot of you live in the city and can only have a limited number of chickens, if any at all, so I respect your decision to keep only laying hens if you can.  But, if you do live where it is allowed and you have the space please consider giving it a try.
All things are connected and you can fully appreciate it, when you see it, do it, and smell it first-hand.  Raising one batch of your own meat chickens will make you think twice about reaching for that hormone enriched wrapped chicken meat on the shelf.  Not because you feel sorry for it, but because for the first time you truly know that your chicken tastes like real chicken, and you may begin to wonder why that chicken on the shelf does not.  You may start to compare the life your chickens lived to those of commercially raised ones.  My meat chickens live a pampered happy life; and are not ‘easy’ to care for.  When asked by my friend, “How can you work so hard for something you are just going to kill in the end?”  My answer is, “I live in service to my animals as they will die in service to me.”
How to Begin:

Start with a small group of meat chickens – don’t worry about ordering anything fancy.  When your local feed store gets some Cornish cross chicks in go get a handful of those, if you want five chickens to put in your freezer get six or seven of them because a chick or two may die despite your best efforts that’s just the way it goes.  If they all live, you can sell extras at market price to your friends or family and recover some of your costs.  Cornish cross chicks are one of the most popular breeds to get for meat chickens, and are widely available and inexpensive.  Try to keep costs under $10 per bird (that includes the chicks, shipping, AND feed).  The cost of the chick matters; think of this not as a hobby, but to provide for yourself on a very limited budget.

There is so much negative information on the internet on this type of chicken that I often see first time meat chicken buyers skip over them.  The truth is, they are probably the easiest to raise.  Most of the problems with this type of chicken (technically it is a hybrid not a real breed) are caused by people waiting too long to butcher them and/or over feeding them.  An easy way to avoid overfeeding them is after they are several weeks old, to give them food during the day and remove it at night.  When to butcher them is purely up to you.  So if you can avoid those two pitfalls you should do really well with them.
Cornish cross birds grow fast,  so they cost less to feed them – most Cornish cross birds are ready for butchering at around 8 weeks, if you have raised them correctly.  This is usually a good couple weeks before other meat breeds are ready, and a month or two earlier (if not more) than most “dual purpose” breed birds.  This is why they eat all the time, and this is also why they are usually more cost-effective to raise.  If you wait longer to butcher you will get a bigger bird, but then you will have to deal with the problems people write about on the internet.  After you’ve raised a batch and decided that you can handle the process – then explore other breeds.
Cost:

There is very little that you will need to purchase for your birds besides plenty of food, a heat light and maybe some bedding.  You can make feeders and waterers from repurposed materials - to see an article on that click here.  You can keep your chicks in old stock tanks, or kiddie pools, and you can make a makeshift chicken pen or chicken tractor fairly cheaply.  However, in my honest opinion, free ranging these birds is over rated – these chickens are bred to grow fast off of store-bought food, not grass and bugs.  It seems to me free ranging Cornish X birds make the owners far more happy than the chickens.  When I turn mine out they never seem that interested in scratching or hunting for bugs like my layer hens and they usually follow me around in hopes I will give them food from the sack,  it’s not going to hurt them or make them “less healthy” to keep them in their pen.   Just make sure their food is of good quality and that they always have lots of clean fresh water.

Many different Uses:

When I butcher the birds I do so quickly to minimize stress.  I use a block, or a cone and I don’t make the others watch.  You can catch the blood in a bucket and add it to your garden.  You can save all the random parts, if not for you (I so love chicken hearts, livers, and gizzards – even the feet are eatable) then for your dog or cat’s food.  Their manure is scraped from the pen and composted, then later added back into the garden which will produce some of the garden scraps I will feed to the chickens next year.

When you cook one of your birds, you turn the carcass into chicken broth that will make lovely homemade soups.  The only thing left of them will be a pile of bones which you can dry in your oven or BBQ and turn into bone meal – that can also go back in the garden.  Hardly anything is wasted with each part of the process supporting something else.

Raising your own food teaches children AND adults many lessons, some that would be invaluable during a long-term emergency.  It teaches you nothing ever works right the first try and it teaches you humility and how to adapt.  It teaches you responsibility and the true value of a meal.  It also teaches you compassion and to be thankful for even little things, and it teaches you that even the most trusted dog can benefit from a good fence.  Meat chickens are time-consuming and just like anything else, nothing is free, and good things come with hard work.  My Hubby and I work full-time jobs last year, and we were still able to raise a small batch of 25 and get them butchered, so maybe you can too.  This winter, start thinking about what you may need to accommodate a small batch of meat chickens in the spring.  Acquire and make things slowly so you get best prices on materials, then, when February comes around and you hear that familiar peeping sound in your local feed and farm supply stores, you’ll be ready.

Source:
http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2012/12/consider-raising-meat-chickens.html

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TEOTWAWKI, The Golden Horde

Consider something for a moment. Think about a significant, life-as-we-know-it altering event, sometimes called TEOTWAWKI.

The End of the World as We Know It

It could be a massive power outage caused by a natural or manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that affects at least 1/2 of the nation. Maybe it’s a major seismic event along the New Madrid fault that severs the U.S. in two, disrupting cross-country transportation for years. Or perhaps it’s a financial event where the economic house of cards comes tumbling down in a matter of days.
Whatever the event that you choose to imagine, it’s safe to assume that the government at all levels will be overwhelmed. Emergency personnel will try their best but they’ll be unable to provide timely assistance to those who need it. Communications will be sporadic. People will search for the promised help that doesn’t arrive.
Since most people are ill-prepared for such an event, many will scramble to figure out what to do. Many will panic. Others will begin looting to scrounge what they can to survive. Still others will turn on unsuspecting people, preying on their vulnerability, simply taking what they want.
After a short while, people will flee the cities, realizing that the life that they’ve come to love – the nightlife, the daily trips to restaurants or markets, the gourmet shoppes – cannot be supported without massive external inputs. Food cannot be brought in, sewage cannot be pumped out, water cannot be purified. Life is simply unsustainable for millions of people densely crammed into a relatively small area.
So they flee, looking for food, for shelter, for help. Or for someone to take these things from.
Some may be what we’d call bad people. Those that enjoy harming others. When the rule of law is nowhere to be found, they’ll have their fun. Others will be good people at the end of their ropes. They’ll have hungry kids to feed and no way to do it. Desperate, they justify things that they never thought themselves capable.

The Golden Horde

That’s the “Golden Horde” you’ve heard about. A mass exodus of millions of people fleeing the city, turning to the country where, they believe, food abounds. And once they arrive, they’ll stop at nothing to feed and take care of themselves.
Originally the Golden Horde referred to the Mongol Armies of the 13th century that conquered territories from Northeast Asia to Eastern Europe to Siberia to the Black Sea. They eventually controlled over 2.3 million square miles. They were known for vicious raids and sometimes complete massacres of civilian populations.
I first came across the modern use of the term on a SurvivalBlog post some years ago. Since then, I’ve seen the concept played out in many apocalyptic works of fiction. It’s a dire situation now matter how it was portrayed.

What To Do?

So, why do I mention this? Of what value is this to the prepper or homesteader?
Laura and I prepare for many different types of events. We prepare for emergencies that will only affect our family such as the loss of a job. We prepare for community, local, regional, national, and even global events.
The Golden Horde is a very real possibility for some disaster scenarios. So, it’s wise to not only be aware of it but to also make plans for it.
If you’re in the city, make plans to get out. Make backup plans for when your primary plan falls through. And don’t stop there. Have multiple backup plans. Know where you’ll go, how you’ll get there, etc. What will you do if you cannot get to where you’re going?
If you already live in a rural area. Expect a mass exodus of hungry, scared, and desperate people. They may knock on your door. Or they may just begin taking what you have. Plan your response ahead of time. Will you share your supplies? Will you take them in? Will you send the away. What will you do if you cannot stay where you are? Where will you go?
It pays to be prepared.

Source:
http://daily-survival.blogspot.com/2012/12/what-is-golden-horde.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FwjrD+%28Daily+Survival%29


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Vatican Calls for World Government and a New World Order

New World Order?

The leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, has called for the establishment of World Government and a New World Order.

In a speech made at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on Monday December 3 2012, the Pope called for the “construction of a world community, with a corresponding authority,” to serve the “common good of the human family”.

As a means of defending global peace and justice, the pope’s vision for the establishment of World Government and a New World Order is supposedly not to create a new superpower, but a new governing body that offers to those (politicians) who are responsible for making decisions, criteria for judgment and practical guidelines.
The Pope was quoted as saying:

"The proposed body (World Government) would not be a superpower, concentrated in the hands of a few, which would dominate all peoples, exploiting the weakest."

The Pope also described his vision as a “moral force” or moral authority that has the “power to influence in accordance with reason, that is, a participatory authority, limited by law in its jurisdiction.”

These latest remarks made by the Pope and the Catholic Church come as no surprise considering that in 2010 the Catholic Church sought the establishment of a new Central World Bank that would be responsible for regulating the global financial industry and the international money supply.
It was reported that the Vatican sought “a supranational authority” which would have worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide and control global economic policies and decisions.
China’s new push for closer ties with Russia, the growing intrusions from the United Nations with regards to control of the Internet and the latest remarks made by the Catholic Church all point to a new world order that will set in stone a path the world may not be able to recover from.

PVC Projects

FREE PVC PROJECT PLANS, IDEAS & SOLUTIONS

Source
http://homesteadsurvival.blogspot.com/2012/12/free-pvc-project-plans-ideas-solutions.html

“Doomsday Prepper” Raided By Police, FBI After Criticizing Obama

A “doomsday prepper” in a rural area of Maryland became a target for police and the FBI after he told an undercover cop that he was “very irritated” about Barack Obama’s re-election, sparking an investigation that eventually led to 46-year-old Terry Porter being thrown in prison and having his home raided by 150 armed officers.

The series of events began when an anonymous person contacted state police in early November claiming Porter was “getting crazier and crazier” and had been stockpiling “machine gun-style firearms” at his home in Sharpsburg. The police followed up by sending an undercover officer to Porter’s home pretending to be a potential customer for his welding business.

According to a charging document filed in Washington County District Court, Porter “openly admitted to being a prepper” (as if this was an illegal act in and of itself) and said that he was “very irritated” about the recent presidential election. Porter had also invested in an underground bomb shelter and had installed surveillance cameras on his property.

Once the investigation into Porter began, police discovered that he had a 1992 felony drug conviction and was therefore barred from owning firearms. On Thursday last week, no less than 150 armed and militarized police and FBI agents in the guise of tactical assault teams descended on Porter’s house as if they were confronting a terrorist cell. The raid also included helicopters, SWAT crews, armored vehicles and even excavation equipment.

Porter was absent at the time of the raid but turned himself in the next morning at Hagerstown Barrack.

After the raid, the claim that Porter was stockpiling “10-15 machine gun-style firearms” was demolished when police uncovered “four shotguns, a .30-30-caliber rifle and two .22-caliber rifles,” hardly a deadly mass arsenal.

It is important to stress that Porter’s possession of guns merely provided a justification for the police raid and came to light only after authorities began to investigate him over his anti-Obama statements.

As the Intel Hub highlights, “The fact that 20 years before he had a drug conviction enabled the FBI to carry out a raid they would have never even considered if it wasn’t for the fact that they knew that the man was preparing and was distrustful of the government. To say the raid was simply for illegal possession of firearms is to ignore all the facts of this horrific story.”

Porter’s neighbors expressed their fury at the needless expense of the raid, noting that Porter was a trustworthy man who did not pose any kind of violent threat.

“It was ridiculous for (the man), who would not hurt another person for anything. Unless you would attack him, he’s not going to go after anyone,” said 35-year-old Heather Hamilton who lived around the corner from Porter, adding that the whole episode was “a big waste of taxpayer money.”

Friend and neighbor Doug Bigelow said he “would feel safe leaving his kids with the man,” and that he was “Surprised at what was going on” because Porter lived his life “on the “straight and narrow.”

“Taxpayers should be outraged at this over-zealous reaction to what we now learn is a man who simply feared for a crisis coming to America (don’t we all!) and had become a “doomsday prepper ” —-in addition to having a neighbor with a grudge who likely turned him in,” writes Ann Corcoran.

“It is true that Porter had a 20-year-old drug conviction on his record but apparently had no subsequent run-ins with the law. He is legally not allowed to own a gun so he does have a legal problem, but that doesn’t justify the cost and scope of this massive operation.”
We have previously documented the fact that so-called “preppers,” who given the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy should be being lauded by the authorities as a good example to other Americans, are now being treated as terrorists.
Flyers aimed at Military Surplus stores produced under the auspices of the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism project earlier this year characterized bulk buying of food – a staple of prepper behavior - as a potential terrorist activity.
Earlier this year we also reported on the case of David Sarti, who was featured in National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers show. Sarti visited his doctor complaining of chest pains, only to have the doctor later commit him to a psychiatric ward and alert authorities, before Sarti was declared “mentally defective” and put on an FBI list that stripped him of his second amendment rights.

Source
http://preppercentral.com/?p=3193

Government Issues Statement Debunking End of the World: “Just Rumors”

Government Issues Statement Debunking End of the World: “Just Rumors”

With the purported 2012 Mayan Apocalypse calculated to take place on December 21st rapidly approaching, thousands of letters have poured into government agencies like NASA from citizens concerned about the end of the world.

Doomsday fears surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar, a possible collision with a mystery “Planet X” theorized by some researchers, and pole shift popularized in the Hollywood movie 2012, have forced the government to issue a rebuttal debunking the claims at their USA.gov web site:

Scary Rumors about the World Ending in 2012 Are Just Rumors
False rumors about the end of the world in 2012 have been commonplace on the Internet for some time. Many of these rumors involve the Mayan calendar ending in 2012 (it won’t), a comet causing catastrophic effects (definitely not), a hidden planet sneaking up and colliding with us(no and no), and many others.
The world will not end on December 21, 2012, or any day in 2012.
Unfortunately, these rumors have many people frightened, especially children. NASA has received thousands of letters concerned about the end of the world. David Morrison, a planetary astronomer and senior scientist for NASA who answers questions from the public about astrobiology, says, “At least a once a week I get a message from a young person ― as young as 11 ― who says they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday.”
According to NASA, the old mystery-planet-collision rumor year was 2003, but when 2004 arrived safely, the rumors changed to 2012.
So what end-of-the-world year will the rumor mill make up next?

NASA scientists have set up a dedicated questions and answers page to quell panic surrounding a variety of theories and rumors that include:

• End of the World
• ‘Prediction’ Origins
• Mayan Calendar
• Total Blackout
• Planetary Alignment
• Nibiru/Planet X/Eris
• Polar Shift
• Meteor Strike
• Solar Storms

NASA and the government have taken extraordinary steps to assuage the feelings of fear surrounding potentially life-ending “global killer” events.
Widespread blackouts resulting from solar storms, for example, are of particular concern among many individuals researching potentially devastating scenarios. A detailed 2010 report from the Center for Security Policy found that a wide-spread national level blackout for extended periods of time would leave some 90% of Americans dead within one year should it come to pass. In this case, the public’s fears stemmed from numerous reports warning of powerful solar storms that may hit earth in late 2012 through 2014 during the Sun’s peak solar cycle, as well as from anagency-wide preparedness alert issued by NASA head Charles Bolden which warned employees to think about and prepare for attacks “from outside forces.”
Though NASA claims their organization is not predicting such a blackout and that there is nothing to be concerned about regarding the peak of the sun’s solar cycle over the next couple years, they are actively building a solar shield to protect against massive flares from the sun and have created detailed preparedness plans in the event such a scenario unfolds, leaving many wondering what is actually being discussed behind closed doors.
Moreover, further confusion and distrust stems from NASA’s claims of the impossibility of events such as pole shifts and meteor strikes.
Though pole shifts have clearly occurred in the past, as evidenced by this NASA report, and are likely in progress right now, the NASA debunking page claims, “as far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth – scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.”
Likewise, NASA says they have ”determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs,” in Earth’s vicinity, yet they and the US government are actively preparing for ex-planetary threats such as asteroids.
The government has gone to great lengths to let us know that there are no potential threats on the horizon, but they have invested tens of of billions of dollar into preparedness strategies that include bunkers, food supplies and continuity of government contingencies just in case.
While we are hard-pressed to believe the world will end on December 21, 2012, or even in 2013, nothing is outside of the realm of possibility. Obviously, the government has determined that utilizing billions of dollars at the taxpayer’s expense to build backup plans is a worthwhile investment, which suggests that officials at the top of the homeland security food chain are more paranoid then anyone else.
Curiously, though they are not necessarily traditional end-of-the-world Armageddon scenarios, there is very little discussion and much denial about the possibility of an economic collapse, an elite takeover of the global population through centralized governance, implementation of martial law, and the potential for World War III to go hot, yet the government seems to be fully involved in planning for such activities as well.
Perhaps those who take it upon themselves to research these far-from-equilibrium possibilities are a bit paranoid.
However, with government transparency being as opaque as it’s ever been, the people have been left with no choice but to be suspicious of official stories and paranoid about their government’s activities.

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com

Aslo:

http://preppercentral.com/?p=3180

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Verizon Seeking Plans To Spy On You

Verizon Seeks to Spy on Your Private Conversations: THEY WANT TO MONITOR YOU IN YOUR OWN HOME!

It’s no secret that pretty much anything we say and do is probably monitored by someone at some level. Americans have slowly given up their right to privacy in favor of modern convenience and technology. Although most Americans seem blissfully in favor of giving up their privacy, up until now most would probably object to someone listening in on their private conversations at home.
If Verizon has their way, that may soon change:
If Verizon has their way, the once thought private sanctuary of your home may not be private for much longer. Verizon has applied for a patent to bug your home through what they’re calling “access devices” in order to better target you with their advertisements.
The Patent looks to introduce smart cable boxes, smart phones and DVR boxes that would be able to monitor everything you do. The access devices would become self-aware and listen for everything from fights with your spouse, to private pillow talk in order to serve up targeted ads.
If that doesn’t creep you out, the words from their patent should:

FROM THEIR PATENT APPLICATION:
To illustrate, an exemplary ambient action may include the user eating, exercising, laughing, reading, sleeping, talking, singing, humming, cleaning, playing a musical instrument, performing any other suitable action, and/or engaging in any other physical activity during the presentation of the media content. In certain examples, the ambient action may include an interaction by the user with another user (e.g., another user physically located in the same room as the user).
To illustrate, the ambient action may include the user talking to, cuddling with, fighting with, wrestling with, playing a game with, competing with, and/or otherwise interacting with the other user.
In further examples, the ambient action may include the user interacting with a separate media content access device (e.g., a media content access device separate from the media content access device presenting the media content). For example, the ambient action may include the user interacting with a mobile device (e.g., a mobile phone device, a tablet computer, a laptop computer, etc.) during the presentation of a media content program by a set-top box (“STB”) device.

How long will Americans allow themselves to become lab rats for these companies? Not only does this cross the line from privacy into the realm of downright creepy, but how long will it take for the government to demand access to these private conversations?
With the growing symbiotic relationship between these tech companies and the federal government, it’s highly likely that all of this information will eventually find its way into the hands of some bureaucrat in the federal government. After last weeks attempt by the United States Senate to access your private email and social media conversations, I don’t think it’s a far leap to think they would go after your private conversations at home.

Source