Ripple Effect
TAPRN is meeting on the air regularly, in both voice and digital modes. It requires a certain ‘critical mass’ before you have enough participation to draw even MORE participants to make a net stable. I am pleased to see that TAPRN is growing and that for last week we had the digital net and then at our voice net ran so long that we had TWO net controls. Now I think you voice guys are just showing-off! (GRIN!)
Back to the ‘ripple effect’. I regularly scour the internet, looking for references to key words like: “survival, prepper, survivalism, ham radio, SHTF, communication” and etc. Lately, I have been throwing the letters “TAPRN” into the search engine as well. Not surprisingly, the word is out in the prepper community that TAPRN has some radio nets operating and parenthetically, those nets are beginning to work! Naturally, there is now increased interest in TAPRN and ham radio in general for emergency communication. An interest has always been there, but there have been a lot of failures and I am certain also some q u i e t successes.

Others are encouraged by TAPRN successes and want to start nets with the groups they already know, which I always encourage and am happy to help if I have time. There are also of course the usual narrow slice of nay-sayers – some with ham radio callsigns who basically declare that ‘it won’t work’, without ever defining what ‘it’ is or under which circumstances ‘it’ is going to be ineffectual. The final category are those who say that ‘it would be better to _____’ and then they list some thoughts.
Let’s look at these basic types of posts I’ve found while searching:
1. Interested in general and might be moved to action with a little assistance.
2. Good ideas, let’s do something like it among our particular group of website friends.
3. “IT” will not work. (Don’t ask me to define ‘it’. I am not “IN” to solutions, only problems.)
4. “It would work better if____” or ‘The problem I see is_______’
Groups 1,2 & 4 are the ones who really count for me, because THEY want to take action on solving their communication wants/needs and even to do ‘it’ better – so Good For THEM! They have the right attitude to make something work. My guess is that they’re like this in other areas of their lives and prepping as well. Those who can- do! Let’s concentrate on them here at TAPRN and help where we can.
Remember though: communications wants & needs are not ‘one size fits’ all. (see Communication Layers article here)
For example: If you live in a small, rural valley filled with cattle ranchers and loggers, like I used to, then Army field phones tied to the NON-ELECTRIC cattle fencing that runs from ranch to ranch and all over the mountain sides, could connect much of the entire area with an effective and inexpensive ‘party line’. That’s just one example of solving a communications challenge with simple & robust technology.
I used to live in the mountains of Idaho in an isolated community. On a mountainside overlooking town we had a small ‘village’ of homes who were link to town using short range CB and the same worked mode for SHORT RANGE comms with the logging truck drivers who drove through some very remote areas and passed on greetings when you asked. There was 2 meter simplex and the local ham radio repeaters, some of which had solar/battery as back-up or as their ‘normal’ power, then the NVIS HF SSB radio calling frequencies, both ham and local commercial – yes, commercially available HF is still in use in remote portions of north America (and Australia). NVIS is handy because it gets into all the ‘nooks & cranies of a mountainous area.

For the really long range ‘stuff’ we hams were handy to have around. My e-mail came in either at work, because they had phone lines, or from HF radio WINLINK at the cabin. This is a life style out in the ‘hinter-boonies’ in many areas and it’s nothing new – it works there every day, so believe me, it’s ready if the infrastructure went away.
Now, if someone decided to attack some critical national infrastructure, in the scenario above, unlike living in a major eastern American city, ‘up there’ in those mountains, we’d have to hear about it on the radio to even know there was a ‘problem’ because it just would not have a lot of impact any time soon. In short – ‘it’ works without major infrastructure, commercial power, Internet central facilities or even a single congressman. (Thank God!) OBTW – long range sailors (I used to be a minor one…) communicate in a very similar manner. I just received an e-mail over radio with friends sailing near Tasmania, so I can guarantee that it works from the Tasman Sea, so it’s much easier to talk with friends and family in a three State area.
Let me close with some thoughts:
1. TAPRN is having a good effect, so let’s keep it up.
2. Other nets springing up are not a threat, they are an enhancement.
3. The MOST important net members for YOU are usually those closest to you. Mutual assistance is more difficult with distance. –but-
4. Being able to communicate outside of your area during local/regional infrastructure failure is very handy for exchanging health & welfare messages with friends & families (your own and others) This importance more-then-doubles for those who support county EOC, the Red Cross shelters &etc.
5. If your focus is a ‘Johnny Rambo versus the U.S. Government’ , full-on WAR scenario, I really have nothing encouraging to say about the odds of your survival unless you are a highly experienced Special Forces Communicator. (GOOGLE “18E”) That is a pipe dream, so let’s just hop past that.

6. Privacy in communication is actually easier and more legal than you may know. Many digital ARQ modes use file compression. A station not LINKED in full ARQ sees only garbles. Such a message is very, very difficult for the average radio person to intercept and read because unless they capture every single packet and then decompress it, it looks like garbles. Sending a compressed Word file is perfectly fine, (maybe even as a password protected file?). It’s not really CRYPTO, but then again, what are our actual needs? //Then again, if the world is in total pandemonium then passing cipher text IS like passing any other message or file.//
7. For emergencies, think MESSAGES not ‘talking’. It’s a different mind-set and efficiently passing message traffic is a skill requiring training and practice. We’ll do some of that in future, I am sure.
For now, let’s meet on air, build the network(s), discuss, test, try, twist wires, operate from field locations with EZ-up antennas, mobile radios (BTDT), adapt, train and learn what suits our needs and generally hope that we never have to use this as more than an enjoyable training tool with radio friends, and remember …
The weakest radio message, slowly received in Morse code beats
walking 500 or a thousand miles in winter, to deliver a note!”
‘See’ You On The Radio.
DE Ray …_ ._
W7ASA
