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