Planning for a Bad Patch
We’re several days past the first week, but hello, National Preparedness Month. It’s a good time to stop what you are doing to create a plan for the disaster that could upend your life and all the lives around you. In California people know to prepare for earthquakes, and Utah is gearing up also. Floridians get ready for hurricanes, and sometimes tornadoes. Or perhaps near a forest, as we are in the Northwest, you’ll be getting out of the way of a wildfire and must be set to act in seconds. Disaster strikes in many forms: floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, extreme heat, extreme cold, and other ways.
Plan Ahead
How can you get started on a plan? Fortunately, while life is proceeding rather normally, you can access many ideas about how to form a strategy. You’ll find many resources at the Preparedness Fairs in your area. The Preparedness Expo in our part of the country is slated for the end of September. If you are not ready, I’m going to post some things that you should consider arranging while you have time. If you hunker down at home, you know the essentials: food, water, protection, and communications.
If you flee, how will you shelter away from your own roof? If you already have a go-to place, you’ll stock it. If not, then you may be hiding in a tent or put up a structure for protection. A bug-out bag sets you up with part of what you need to survive: nonperishable food and water, plus a way to purify additional water; fire for cooking, warmth, and cheering up; add a radio, flashlight and pet food as needed.
And do you know how to make a fire? You will practicably want to add a fire-starting kit to your supplies.
However, if you can foresee a long-duration crisis such as hyperinflation or societal collapse, you’re likely considering whether your money will work for you in the circumstances. After all, who has wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread as Germans needed in 1923? But that’s a topic for another blog.
How Will You Communicate?
If you have the inclination, you may build your own radio, of course. Yet it’s worth investigating PreppComm’s line of radios to prepare for dire circumstances.
With good reason, we offer “Morse Made Easy™” to our customers. In bad times, a lot of transmissions are made in Morse code, and many radios are MIA under duress. Part of the problem is the transceiver’s not being able to hear the information when the bands are rowdy. Some radios on the market have a limited capacity to decode even in adequate conditions. Frustration motivates operators to look for transceivers that will flawlessly decode on the worst of days and that make contact when infrastructure fails them. It is the technology built into the DMX and MMX that uses the ions and electrons of the ionosphere to propagate radio waves
PreppComm understands that your ability to key in Morse code may have slipped over time or that you may not have learned it. Good news! With their included keyboards, the MMX and the DMX-40 enable you to speak Morse immediately via texting, with the bonus that you will not escape learning Morse. You’ll assimilate irresistibly it as the dits and dahs roll out into words on your graphical user interface. Or if you still have access to your big rig, the MMX ZERO hooks up to it to connect you with essential communications in CW. The MMX and DMX also do this. It’s called External Mode, using a transceiver (your rig) external to the DMX or MMX.
A Fab GUI
Speaking of the GUI, here’s what one ham has to say: “Your unit is great because the screen is actually big enough to provide a good viewing area…is capable of holding a reasonable number of text lines. So many have tiny screens. It is nice to have something where I can send CW using a keyboard without a computer and see the type-ahead buffer before it it is transmitted…I also like it because I can see my actual CW speed.”
Sounds like a plug for using a PreppComm radio in stressful circumstances.
Meanwhile, we’ll remind PreppCommers that software update MMX or DMX v. 27.3 is available. This revisal corrects some bugs and adds several functions to microprogramming to support contesting. You’ll also see a new key command to toggle the backlight on and off. Let the factory know that you want our manufacturing techs to install this alteration for $50.
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