 Greetings, friends. This is Survival Doc. Today, I want to talk about communications, in particular, Helm radios. Now, I briefly discussed this topic in one of my recent videos where I talked about networking because Helm radios, of course, are going to be the primary way you're going to network with your group when the grid goes down, when there's no electricity. Alright, in this video, I'm going to go a little bit further into Helm radios and a few things that I recommend that you do. Alright, first of all, realize that when the grid goes down, alright, and there's no electricity. Now, if there is an EMP, it has been estimated that we may be without electricity for 10 years or longer before they can get all of the transformers that are going to be blown out with an EMP replaced. Alright, we don't even make these transformers in this country anymore. The waiting list is about six months when they order a transformer. Now, they have a few in stock, of course, when they're all blown, there aren't going to be nearly enough to replace them, and you can imagine how long it's going to take to get them back. Like I said, it's been estimated that we may be without electricity for 10 years. But regardless, if we're without electricity for 10 years, a year, a month, whatever, when we're without electricity, that means that our normal methods of communication are going to be down. Alright, phones are not going to work. Your cell phone probably isn't going to work. Your computer, excuse me, your computer isn't going to work. There isn't going to be any internet. Alright, the only communications you're going to get are going to be emergency communications from the government. And as you know, you can't believe anything that the government tells you. It is all lies, especially in an emergency that they probably created through a false flag in the first place. You think you're going to get the truth from them? Everything that we do after an emergency is going to depend on our ability to communicate with like-minded people or communicate with other people in our network. And Helm Radio is going to be the method of choice. According to John Moore, who is a big prepper expert, he makes his living by advising people in prepping. He has a radio show in the Republic that broadcasts the network every weekday at 6 o'clock in the morning. Alright, one thing that John Moore says is that when the crowd puts the fan, the two skills that are going to be most important, most in demand, are going to be Helm Radio skills and medical skills. Alright, I'll add a third to that and that's going to be networking skills. Alright, but Helm Radio certainly ranks up there. It's going to be very important. Now, I used to think it costs a lot of money to get into Helm Radio's. As I've gotten into it, I've learned that that is not the case. You can get an excellent radio. This is the Ball Fing Radio. You can order this at MemoZone.com for about $30. These are excellent radios. Now, one thing I learned in my Helm Radio class is that what's more important than the radio is your feed line and your antenna. You can unscrew the antenna. You can plug a cable in here. This is a little magnetic antenna that you can put on top of your vehicle, but you can also use it in your house. You can also plug in an antenna into this thing that you have on the roof of your house. It also doesn't cost a lot of money for antennas because most of the antennas that Helm Radio people use, they make themselves just by using wire and a few other accessories. Here's a good book. The antenna book has a lot of information in there about how to make your own antenna depending on what use that you want. Now, if you notice, I've got two Helm radios here. The reason for that is I have one extra one that is going to be put in storage. I'll put this in a Faraday bag, put this away in storage so that it won't be damaged by an EMP. Now, I don't know exactly what damage an EMP might do to our radios. It might not cause any damage to them at all. If it's attached to an outdoor antenna, it probably will. But regardless, these radios only cost $30. And of all the things that us Preppers are putting into storage, I think an extra $30 for an extra radio, not a bad idea. Now another thing is if we're without electricity, you want to be able to operate this thing. You want to be able to charge it. Now the chargers are AC chargers generally, plug into your normal outlet. But you can get DC chargers. These are designed, this plugs right into this charger here. This is an adapter that allows you to charge your Helm radios with a 12 volt battery like in your car. Essential item because if you're without electricity you want to be able to charge your Helm radios. I believe unless you have a very expensive electronic system with expensive thousands of dollars of batteries and thousands of dollars of solar array, which a lot of us do not have the money to go completely off grid in that fan this fashion, but it doesn't cost a lot of money just to have a simple 12 volt system. I put a couple of solar panels on my roof. Solar panels cost about $80 a piece, $10 for a charge controller, about $100 for a battery. I'd like to get a better battery, but for a starter battery, spend about $100. And I have a system that will allow me to continue using 12 volt items. I got a 12 volt charger like this for my laptop computer. Of course, the internet is likely to be down. I won't be using my laptop computer for internet if that's the case, but I might be using it for other things. I have a lot of DVDs that I can watch instructional DVDs, but it'll be nice to be able to use your laptop computer. If you have a 12 volt system, there's a lot of things you can do. You can't keep your freezer running or refrigerator running with a small system like that, but you can use it to charge up your rechargeable items like your laptop, and in particular your ham radio. Now, you have to have a license to operate a ham radio. The good news is ham radio clubs everywhere have free classes. Take a weekend class or so, do a little bit of studying, then you can take the exam and get the license. Total cost about $15, which is what it calls to take the exam and get your license. That's it. $15 for your license, $30 or so for a radio, another five or so for a few accessories, some wire for an antenna, $100 can get you into ham radio. Then if you want a simple solar system, another hundred bucks or so, or a couple of hundred bucks can get you a solar system that will allow you to keep all these batteries charged up. This is a Faraday bag. A Faraday bag protects items from EMP. This is a little charge controller. I have two of these. I have one of these in operation right now. Then I have a spare. This thing costs about $10 and it's good for a 7-amp charge controller. What you do is you take your solar panel, connect it to this, and then connect that to your batteries. What it does is it keeps your batteries charged up and it will not overcharge your battery. Once your battery is charged up, then it shuts off so you don't overcharge your battery. Another simple device costs about the same amount as a device which prevents you from over-discharging your batteries. A few simple things that you need for your solar system. It doesn't cost thousands of dollars to have a small solar system that will allow you to keep your items charged up. Lanterns, LED lights, flashlights, rechargeable flashlights, all sorts of items, rechargeable items that you can charge from a simple 12-volt system. Now I know that some preppers buy Helm radio like this. They put it in storage and then they think that when the crowd picks the fan, they're going to pull this out and they're going to start using it to communicate. Well guess what? As I found out, it takes a lot of skill and know-how to operate one of these things. It's not just a matter of turning it on and talking. Don't think that when the crowd picks the fan, you're going to pull this out and know what to do with it. You need to start using it now. That's the reason you need to take the class, you need to get a license, and then you need to start communicating with other Helm people. Then you need to get your network. Other preppers, the people who you are prepping with, people involved in your network, you need to work out a Helm network among yourselves. Now one thing that you can do with these little handheld radios is you can communicate with people at a fair distance using repeaters. What that means is rather than going from radio to radio, you just have to contact a repeater which is a tall tower somewhere and bounce off that repeater. That repeater repeats your message and sends it broadcasted out so you can communicate with someone at quite a distance. Well the problem with repeaters is they may have a battery backup which will keep them running for maybe a day or so after they lose electricity but eventually they will run out of electricity as well if they're not knocked out by the EMP. I don't think you can count on repeaters. What you need to do is you need to communicate with other Helm radio people in your group radio to radio. Now working radio to radio you are limited in the distance. That's the reason that you all need to get your Helm radios and you need to start working with them. You can put an antenna on the roof of your house. You can put all kinds of antennas including directional antennas but you need to work out a system with other preppers where you have perhaps a relay system where if you cannot communicate with everybody in your group maybe you can communicate with a person who can communicate with another person in your group and you can work out a relay system. But when the crowd hits the fan it is going to be absolutely essential that you're able to communicate with other people in your network and you're going to need some type of a phone tree type system. So you need to get all of your people involved with Helm radios. You all need to get a license and you need to work out the details right now. Don't wait until the crowd hits the fan. If you do you're going to be totally lost. What I did with my solar system I purchased a 30 watt solar panel. It's a 12 volt solar panel 30 watt to charge my 12 volt battery. You need to get a deep cycle battery. One that's designed to be drained safely. Say 50% or so. Most batteries like the ones in your car are designed to be topped off at all times. A deep cycle battery allows you to discharge or you still don't want to discharge it more than 50%. If you completely discharge a lead acid battery what you're going to do is you're going to ruin the battery. Just one complete discharge can drastically decrease the life of a battery. Now if you have the money, the batteries you want to, if you have a large solar array for your house, the batteries that you want to use are zap work batteries and what those are is they're nickel alkaline batteries. Unlike lead acid batteries which last maybe 10 years or so, a nickel alkaline battery will last a lifetime. You can discharge it completely without ruining the battery. But they are very expensive to get a full system will cost you maybe a couple of thousand dollars. For our use on a limited budget we're just stuck with the lead acid batteries. But you do want to get a deep cycle battery. You still don't want to discharge it beyond 50%. That's the reason that you want an over discharge protector. And what an over discharge protector does is it allows you to discharge the battery just to a certain point and then it shuts it off. And then you cannot use the battery until it's charged back up again through your solar panels. Now like I said a 12 volt 30 watt solar panel, I hooked it up to my charge controller, to my battery. Alright I like the system so well I said and the solar panels were so affordable that I got another 30 watt solar panel. And in the picture that I'll show you, here these are 230 watt solar panels hooked up in parallel. And the solar panels are to make the frame to hold my solar panels. I use metal shelving pieces. These are reused legs from a metal shelf unit that I put together with stainless steel nuts and bolts. These are the two panels side by side on my roof. These are 12 volt panels. They're connected in parallel, which keeps the voltage at 12 volts connected in parallel. For a total of 60 watts, very, very effectively very quickly keep a 12 volt battery or a couple of 12 volt batteries connected in parallel charged up. What I did once I got this system completely worked out. Then I completely disassembled it. I took the solar panels, I boxed them back up and I put them away because I have these just for an emergency and I'm waiting until we're without electricity and then I can pull these out in a matter of an hour so I can have this system back up. But by taking it off the roof it's protected from hell storms or other type of storms or for EMPs. As a matter of fact the boxes that I have that the solar panels came in, I lined with aluminum foil and made my own Faraday boxes to protect these panels from an EMP. Here's the box that one of my solar panels came in. I used glue and glued aluminum foil to the inside of the box. You don't want the solar panel to come in contact with the foil so you use the padding or plastic bag around your solar panel. Alright so if an EMP occurs I've got everything ready to put up. Alright now what about my batteries? You have to keep the batteries topped off. So what I did was I had the charge controller that I used on my solar panel I connected to a simple 12 volt transformer. So in other words a transformer that plugs into the AC outlet takes the place of my solar panels that I had on the roof and the transformer keeps the batteries topped off. The batteries are ready to go. So if we lose electricity I've got my 12 volt batteries ready to go. I can charge all of my devices until I get the solar panels back up. Take me an hour to get the solar panels back up because I've got everything I need already in place. Hour the panels are back up the battery is operational and I'm back in business again. Like I said with this simple system I'm not going to run a refrigerator. I'm not going to run my freezer but I'm just going to have a power supply to where I won't rely on kerosene lanterns. I won't have to rely on candles. I have several LED lanterns. I have a whole storage rechargeable nickel cadmium. Not nickel cadmium but metal hydride. The newer type of rechargeable batteries. I've got a bunch of those and I keep them in my refrigerator. I take them out. Make sure they're topped off every six months or so. I take them out and charge them up. Make sure they're topped off and put them back in the refrigerator to keep the storage life. Here is a nice battery charger. Put your battery charge for batteries at one time. Any size DC AA AAA batteries. This has an adapter that plugs into it that you can plug into your AC outlet. However this is 12 volt. I got this one for reason and that is it is 12 volt. I do have the wiring that I can plug from my 12 volt battery into this and I can keep all of my nickel. Not my nickel but my metal hydride batteries. I can keep them all charged up with this charger right here. Before the crowd fits the fan I can use AC to keep them topped off. When the crowd fits the fan and I no longer have AC I can operate this thing with my 12 volt battery. With my rechargeable batteries I have LED lanterns that I can keep operational. I can keep my radios operational. I can keep my computer operational. There are a lot of things I can't eat in my house with it. I've got wood burning stove for that. I can't keep my food refrigerated. I've got food preservation techniques like dehydration and stuff like that that I use to preserve my food that don't require electricity. But it does allow me to keep my electronic devices including my flashlights, my lanterns and my radios operational for an indefinite amount of time once the grid goes down. No matter how long the grid is down. This is Survival Doc reminding you to be prepared or be prepared to be pleased.