#213 Navigating Global Tensions and the Power of Ham Radio Communication w/Ben Townsend

What happens when communication channels falter in the face of global tensions reminiscent of the Civil War era? Join Scott Townsend and executive producer Ben Townsend as they unpack the critical role of communication during these turbulent times. Discover how to navigate the maze of biased media to seek out objective truths amid international conflicts involving China, Taiwan, Russia, and Ukraine. This episode promises to offer insights into the essence of journalism today, highlighting the struggle to discern factual reporting amidst the noise of sensationalism and various agendas, especially in an election year.

In the second half of our conversation, Ben shares his personal journey into the empowering world of ham radio. Motivated by the need to communicate without conventional infrastructure, he explores the basics of ham radio, from regional interactions to essential gear like Yaesu HF and VHF radios. Learn why ham radio is an indispensable tool in emergencies and a means to stay connected across distances. Ben invites aspiring operators to start their journey by obtaining a technician license, using resources like hamstudy.org to prepare. Tune in to see how ham radio offers a reliable communication alternative when traditional methods fail.

Chapters

• 0:00 Global Communication in Troublesome Times
• 15:25 Exploring Ham Radio Communication Basics

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Scott Townsend Show brought to you by Pizza man Productions. Hey, this is Scott Townsend, welcome back to the Scott Townsend Show. And today I have with me executive producer of the Scott Townsend Show, ben Townsend. You and I were talking the other day and it's your estimation that things are heating up around the world. I think everybody would agree with that. Things are heating up around the world. I think everybody would agree with that.

Speaker 1: 0:34

We've seen discord and disorder to the greatest extent since the Civil War and division and all that kind of stuff, and it's just nobody's there's nobody happy out there anymore. Everybody's got something to say, an opinion to throw out, and this is an election year and those are always especially fraught with tension and people trying to win other people over to something they'll never win them over to. So, uh, everything's kind of heating up. There's a boiling, boiling point. It seems like we're china into, was it taiwan? And uh, or they're talking about that, and um, of course, russia and ukraine and that's all kinds of stuff going on. So we are going to talk about communication. So, uh, when it comes to these these times, what were you thinking when you made the decision to become a ham operate radio operator?

Speaker 2: 1:51

yeah, well, I mean, I've actually wanted to do it for a long time because I like, I like I'm a technology kind of person. Um, I used to work in technology I'm presently retired, but, um, I've always had it or not always for probably like seven years, seven years. But you've gotta in order to get going with video, uh, gotta go, you gotta study.

Speaker 1: 2:30

It wasn't high on the priority and your audio is really breaking up.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Mr Technology. Yeah, I'm in the city right now. Is it any better right now?

Speaker 1: 2:52

yeah, can you move your phone around or something? Can you move it to another location, the other side of your desk, or?

Speaker 2: 3:01

yeah, let's see, I've got a better idea okay, let's do this, let's see. I've got a better idea. Okay, let's see, let's go here.

Speaker 1: 3:23

I'm going to join you from my iPad. It's on a. It's on a.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Wi-Fi? I don't know.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Wi-Fi Okay.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Okay, okay.

Speaker 1: 3:45

Cool, are you going gonna show your face?

Speaker 2: 3:49

yes, just chill out okay, all right, let's go so so I guess, yeah, I guess, the reason why I was interested in, uh, in ham radio, um, was just because I like the idea of, you know, really not needing any, any kind of infrastructure, um, you know, to communicate with other people, no people because you know we're all kind of dispersed here in oklahoma. Uh, I have a son in houston. We're in austin here. I got friends all over the place I mean texas yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Well, I got, yeah, oklahoma and texas, and then friends, you know, in different states and stuff, so anyway, so I like the idea of being able to communicate without infrastructure, so I'm not dependent on infrastructure.

Speaker 1: 4:47

Um and you think you're gonna be in a.

Speaker 2: 4:49

You think we're gonna be at a point where we aren't gonna be, can't be dependent on the infrastructure yeah, I mean, I, I think you know, just I listen to some guys who, um, they, they're, they're former military, they're intelligence officers and they're no longer in the military but they still have a like an information service for a civilian audience and they talk about you know a lot of different things you know related to how things are going domestically, how things are going internationally, and just you know, related to how things are going domestically, how things are going internationally, um, and just you know, kind of keep an eye, help people understand. You know kind of do what news used to do years ago, is report. You know what happened, uh versus look at what happened and then tell you from their perspective, kind of the how versus the what. So you know, so it's hard because you get you get somebody else's bias, um in that. And you know, I think I think news media today is, um, is probably more biased than I've ever seen it, and so it makes it difficult to understand what's actually going on. You know, I want to know what's going on, um, from an objective as objective a viewpoint as I can get, um, and then you know, kind of make my own interpretation, you know, of what happened. I don't get somebody else's interpretation of what happened with their bias a lot of bias thrown in there, a lot of agenda thrown in there, and then try to make sense of something that that's already you know. Maybe if we saw the same event, I wouldn't even see it the same way.

Speaker 2: 6:28

So you know, I think you know a journalist. You know what is a journalist. A journalist is somebody who takes a journal of events, you know, and the idea, I think, is to get yourself out of it and witness something. If you're seeing a parade and you're a journalist and you're writing to an audience or you're reporting it, you want to. You want to make it so real to them from where you are, take them in, you know, to what happened at the parade, what it sounded like, what floats came by. You know all this kind of stuff without injecting yourself into it, because once you've done that, you kind of tainted the experience. You know you're either trying to sensationalize it or downplay it or whatever your agenda happens to be.

Speaker 2: 7:10

I think our media is full of agenda and bias and therefore it's really hard to know what the truth is, kind of like what's going on, and so I feel like you know, for a paid service and kind of you know, listening to, you know some people with their own you know kind of version of the news, um and you know, and also their their um prior training as military intelligence officers you know to to kind of give you um the bottom line up front, the bluff you know, and of give you um the bottom line up front, the bluff you know, and um help you understand what's going on so you can kind of make your own determination.

Speaker 2: 7:53

You can start connecting a lot of different you know, dots you know, and doing that and um draw your own conclusions. And it's fine to get somebody else's opinion, you know, and I think that's extremely valuable to get somebody else's opinion, uh, but they're also it's also extremely valuable to be able to get facts you know, like actually what happened without opinion, and I think that's what's missing from the mix. If you're turning on and watching network television, okay, what is?

Speaker 1: 8:22

what? What are you? Uh, what's this? Where are you getting this information?

Speaker 2: 8:28

so, uh, there's, there's a, um, there's a service called the early warning network. I think you can go on to early warning networkcom, um, and you can, um, you go in there and subscribe to their service, um, and it's pretty interesting because, you know, they do, they talk about what's going on, you know, within our nation. They talk about what's going on inside the Beltway, you know, in Washington, kind of like the real intense political scene at a national excuse me, national level. And they got, um, some guys who are kind of experts on, kind of in that, in that political sphere, as part of what they did as military intelligence officers, and now they're just doing it for a civilian audience. But you also have guys who are, you know, uh, former um navy officers you know, who also give you know, who also give you know, um, weigh in frequently on what's going on with our Navy, where they are, um, and some of the issues that they're having, uh, some of the hotspots around the world that they're paying attention to. So you get the domestic look, you get inside the beltway look, and you kind of get an international look, um, look at where the United States is engaging, but also what's going on internationally where the United States may not yet be engaging. So what are some of the emerging issues around the globe? So, anyway, I found it pretty informative. I like that kind of thing a means of distributing their national intelligence briefing over ham radio, which is really cool because, um, like I said earlier, you know you can get your um, you can get your reports and everything, um, aside from having to have infrastructure, uh and I don't know if we're going to have an infrastructure problem, but I do know, just from listening to these briefs that you know it's like in.

Speaker 2: 10:39

They're saying that in 2025, you know we're going to have more electrical problems. You have a lot of artificial intelligence capacity that's trying to spin up across the United States. It's incredibly energy intensive and we're taking down a lot of electrical generation infrastructure and we're not replacing it. I mean, we are losing ground on our grid capacity. That's one problem. The other problem is we're replacing a lot of that grid capacity with either wind or solar. I have nothing against wind or solar, um, but when the wind stops blowing or the sun stopped shining, or when we had the whole snowmageddon thing down here in the south a couple years ago, I mean all that stuff shut down and people were, you know, in these intense conditions and they needed, you know, when they needed energy most. They couldn't get so. So I think, I think you know, and they're saying, you know it's not going to start. They're not talking about any kind of, like you know, armageddon kind of thing. They're just talking about starting in 2025.

Speaker 2: 11:48

This, this equation of the power consumption need in the United States and the power generation capacity the equation doesn't work.

Speaker 2: 12:01

The demand is going to a place that cannot be supplied by our current infrastructure, especially as we shut down coal.

Speaker 2: 12:09

And, aside from any kind of environmental argument, which I don't really get too much into that, um, I just feel like, you know, as a utility, you know, I feel like government state government most, for the most part, but federal too, since they play in that space I think they have an obligation, you know, to make sure that we have the power we need to, you know, run a orderly society and that's that doesn't look like it's the case going forward. And so I think what they're thinking is, you know, we're going to have more brownouts um, you know, kind of enrolling blackouts in 2025. That will impact people, you know, more than it has in the past and that's probably going to continue to be the case for a number of years. They'll probably grow in intensity, you know, over the coming years, because you can't just bring a power plant online all of a sudden, and so we got to get this figured out. But in the meantime, you know, it could be a little bit of a bumpy road. So I mean, that's what I'm anticipating.

Speaker 1: 13:09

So this with the ham how did you get started in the ham radio business? I mean, what, uh, if I was going to start and I told you I would, so I'm going to be, I'm going to be a hammy here pretty soon. How do you get started in ham radio? So someone out there listening wants to start up and says I agree with everything Ben just said. Hmm, I think I need to be a ham radio operator yeah, well, I mean, anybody can get a ham radio.

Speaker 2: 13:40

I mean it can be something as simple as you know something like this. You know little radio like this.

Speaker 2: 13:46

It's five watt radio um and you know people look at that and say, well, it looks like, looks like a walkie-talkie. It kind of is, but it just has greater capability, has a capability of talking to you, can use repeaters. So, for example, like on this little radio that I just showed you, I can hit a repeater 17 miles across town and so when I hit that repeater I say something to that repeater, or on this frequency, and then the repeater amplifies what I just said and it shoots out. You know, a signal that can be heard at much greater distance. You know, using repeaters, that's on a VHF, uhf radio, which is what I just showed you. Then you have high frequency radio that doesn't and VHF and UHF. It doesn't use the atmosphere to propagate, to send its signal out. It's basically line of sight HF radio where you see people, they have a house, you see a gigantic antenna. It's like what are they trying to do? Talk to Mars or something? And it's like what?

Speaker 1: 14:52

are they trying?

Speaker 2: 14:53

to talk to mars or something that's like that. Those hf rigs, radios, you know, they, they do depend on the ionosphere, so a signal goes up from where you are, your location, it can be your. Your antenna can be something as simple as a wire. You know which is what I have. It's a 73 foot long wire, but it's a wire um, and it'll send it. It'll send, you know, the hf signal. It will bounce off the atmosphere and it'll send it. It'll send, you know, the HF signal. It will bounce off the atmosphere and it will bounce back down to earth and, and that's how you know, and it just keeps bouncing back and forth, you know, between the atmosphere and the earth. And that's where you get those kinds of like extreme distances, like you can hear, into conversations with people you know on different continents, you know, let alone the united.

Speaker 2: 15:33

It's easy, you know, have conversations within the united states and I hear people all the time from california and oregon and texas and um that's the farthest you've gone or heard uh, you know, I think, uh, you know, I've heard people up in the northeast like around maine, um, but you know, also here are people from Puerto Rico and Mexico, and you know, just all over.

Speaker 2: 15:59

And I, you know, I don't have the kind of gear, like the kind of heavy duty gear, I would need to talk, you know, to Australia, like I, I can't do that with my current setup. I have the licensing to get that set up, but that's really not my interest. My interest is really more on regional communications. So, you know, know, just think about drawing a 500 mile circle, you know, around my location here in texas and that kind of gets me in communication with about 80 percent of the people that I feel like I would like to communicate with or need to communicate with, and so that's really kind of my objective. And the rig that I have very nice, it's a newer Yaesu HF model and with my antenna set up and it accomplishes that objective. If I want to talk you know they call it DXing distance communications If I want to do that, I could, but that's not my objective.

Speaker 1: 16:52

If I want to do that, I could, but that's not my objective, so would your little walkie talkie looking thing reach up here to Bartlesville?

Speaker 2: 17:00

No, no, I mean you can link repeaters, but you know, I don't. I don't think there's a big network of linked repeaters. So, basically, what repeaters do is that they'll give you the ability to communicate. I'll say within um, you know just people, as soon as I say this, somebody's gonna say oh no, you're wrong about that, but you know, I'll say uh, I'll say 40 miles.

Speaker 2: 17:27

Okay, you know, depending on how you're set up which is really nice because, like you know, especially in the event, like those people in north carolina, um, you know, they don't, they don't have cell tower coverage right now. They don't have cell tower, they don't have any communications at all or power, you know. And so what's kind of saving the day for those guys over there is that little radio. I just held up that one right there, but you know vhf radio.

Speaker 2: 17:53

Now I know it's kind of line of sight and it's a hilly terrain but, they're using it to great effect in those areas because it's their only means of communication right now. So you know that would be another scenario, a little more extreme of course, but one where you know.

Speaker 1: 18:09

We're seeing a lot more extreme going on ever since the snow, what you call the snowpocalypse or whatever it's again texas a couple years ago. Yeah, um weather, crazy weather, hurricanes, big hurricanes, you know. Seems like they're getting bigger all the time yeah, so you know.

Speaker 2: 18:30

Back to your question, though you were asking how do you get ham? You don't have to be licensed to get a ham radio, you just have to be licensed to hit that transmit button so you can listen all you want. And there's a lot of value actually in just listening without license. But you know, you kind of have to learn how to use the equipment, how you know the various frequency ranges that that are available to you, depending on what kind of rig you get um. But you know. So once you do that, it's really about you know passing your test.

Speaker 2: 19:04

There's basically three levels you can get. The first level is technician, which allows you to talk on that little radio I just showed you. It allows you to communicate on vhf and uhf, primarily two meters also, but um. And then there's a general class, which is which is where I am that allows me to also use those hf bounds. It's bands that skip off the um, the ionosphere, back to earth, and does that kind of, you know, back and forth, skip propagation, um. So that that's that's what I'm doing to you know, to be able to get out in a 500 mile circle. So it's about you can get the equipment you can start, you know, studying for that those exams, take the exams and you can start transmitting and learning how to use it right the

Speaker 1: 19:51

line's really knocking me out there. So what tip would you give listeners who are wanting to start out? Based on your experience, what would you recommend? Uh?

Speaker 2: 20:08

what's your interest in ham?

Speaker 1: 20:09

radio.

Speaker 2: 20:10

Yeah, what's one tip you'd give to other beginners starting in ham radio um, well, I really think you know, get, get your radio as you're starting, because you know I think it's helpful to turn it on, listen to it and kind of like, learn how to use it. Whether or not you can transmit or not, that's a different thing, but it kind of makes it a little more real to you. There's all kinds of study courses. You know you can get a book. Um, you can get a book. Uh, you know, go through study guide to go through. You can go on to like ham studyorg, just on the internet and study for free. You know.

Speaker 2: 20:44

And basically you know they'll have 20, they'll have all these chapters like for your technician license you need to cover. So I think it's 22 chapters. There's about 20 questions per chapter that are in those study guides and when you go take the test, the test is made up of 35 of all those questions, 20 per chapter, so 450 questions, whatever it is right. But those 35 questions are taken directly from those study guides and you know verbatim is the question, the range of answers that are possible. So you know it's, it's pretty attainable, it's, it's a little bit of a pain but it's attainable, you know, for people if they really want to do it's, it's pretty attainable. It's it's a little bit of a pain, but it's attainable for people if they really want to do it. It's not that hard, you just you know, you can do it.

Speaker 2: 21:24

You know, if somebody just want to do it in the evenings and spend an hour an evening you know, kind of studying for it, I bet you could get it done and get your technician license in a week.

Speaker 1: 21:34

Yeah, what uh wrapping this thing up? What is, uh what? I forgot to ask you what you had for breakfast this morning uh, I had, uh, two eggs and a couple of blueberry waffles what kind of syrup?

Speaker 2: 22:00

uh, it is a? Uh organic maple syrup that janet buys. It's great slap sap jack.

Speaker 1: 22:08

I think you can get it at uh heb here yeah, well, as we wrap it up, any final what's your? What last words? How would you want to wrap this up for those listening about learning about ham radio operation and your, your journey here? What, what would you say?

Speaker 2: 22:32

I mean, if you're, if people are interested, you know, I think it's, it's worthwhile, you know, to do Some people really enjoy it. There's a lot of the older crowd on ham radio but there is a younger set also and as I sit here, at 59 years old.

Speaker 2: 22:54

I'm probably one of the younger people on ham radio, but there are people under 30, 20, 30s, 40s that are on ham radio. So it's not exactly my hobby. You know I have a use case for it. It's not that I don't enjoy it, because you know there's aspects of it that I do enjoy. I wouldn't say it's my hobby. It serves a purpose.

Speaker 1: 23:16

Would you call yourself a prepper?

Speaker 2: 23:20

Forward thinker there you go forward thinker yeah you know, if you, if you want to get into local communications, kind of like what's going on locally, it's like bartlesville, for example you can go on to bartlesville on to uh, do a web search and you can look at the ham radio club in bartlesville.

Speaker 2: 23:37

They've got a looks like a great radio club there in bartlesville you can learn how to talk with other people there and you know that they're they're talking on the radio is really kind of building up their skill set to to make sure that they stay current with how to use it. So there's value in that, um. So yeah, it's, it can be fun. You know, it's the kind of thing you can wade into um or you can like dive into and get over your head. So it's really how you use it. But I would recommend it.

Speaker 1: 24:05

All right. All right, with that recommendation, we've got to go, ben, thanks for joining us today and come back and see us again sometime.

Speaker 2: 24:13

Will do See you.

Speaker 1: 24:14

All right. Well for Ben Townsend. This is Scott Townsend. Thanks for listening to the Scott Townsend Show. Have a great day, everything's going to be all right and we'll talk to you later. The Scott Townsend Show is a Dietz-O-Man production. For more episodes, visit the Scott Townsend Show YouTube channel, listen on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.