Meshtastic is gaining popularity faster than I had ever thought. It is a great way to send messages to people off-grid or with no cell or internet service. You can build your own (check this post) or you can buy one already built on different sites.
This can be trickier than people think. They see people do it on TV shows like Naked and Afraid and think that they can do it. The key to starting a fire with a ferro rod is dry tinder and small dry twigs, and dry larger branches. Also, air as the flint ignites the tinder is critical. If your fire starting kit has magnesium on it, it makes it a bit easier, but not necessarily easy.
People think I am crazy, but if I have a soda can, some chocolate, and a rag or even a T-shirt, I can start a fire. The can should be made of aluminum and the bottom should be aluminum and not coated with paint or a plastic overlay. In a nutshell, this is a way to build a parabolic fire starter.
The most interesting configuration whether you are doing SOTA (Summit On The Air) or POTA (Parks On The Air), or setting up a base camp communication station, is using a Solar Powered Battery Bank with your ham radio gear.
GMRS is a great way to communicate at distance for basecamp or survival situations. With the right radio, you should be able to communicate in the right terrain for about a 10 mile distance. With access to a repeater, that can be extended further. With linked repeaters, that can go across state lines and in some cases, multiple states. If you have made the decision to own a GMRS radio, whether it is an HT (handheld transceiver) or a mobile unit, there are some fundamental things you need to know.
You can do this with any watch, analog or digital, if it has hour and minute hands. You can recreate hour and minute hands with twigs or stones, but the watch is very helpful. The method described here only works in the northern hemisphere. You will also need a watch that is set correctly (doesn’t have to be exact but should be accurate within a couple of minutes).
There are a lot of acronyms for everything these days, and it would be nice to have a place to go to find ones specific to a category, in this case, communications.
Download the area you are hiking by doing the following
I have seen so many people get turned around and they spend hours finding where they are, how off course they have become, and have to setup a make shift camp before they get to their destination. Most people think that their cell phone or GPS units will get them to their destination, until there is a failure of those items in one way or another, and they go off course, and now they are lost.
Building a Meshtastic transceiver for sending text messages without cell service and/or internet access is a good way to provide communication for your group in camp or survival situation to check in or communicate with your team. The range between two people is somewhat limited, but in an open area, it can go quite far (records are greater than 150 miles). I have tested them for over 1 mile where one device is in a home surrounded by antennas, metal, etc., and the other device outdoors with buildings and walls that limit the distance you can communicate. In the open, I easily got 10 miles.
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