Prepping 101: 150 Mile Walkie Talkie Ham Radios Send Morse from Phone – $50

Authors Paul Helinski Prepping 101

Resources:
LXWQQFY.com User Manuals
Assembled 49er w/Wifi $34.87
All 49er w/Wifi Radios (assembled & kit)
S-Rockmite Kits & Assembled w/Wifi
QRP Antenna 40 Meters $24.95 (see other listings if sold out)
Long Wire Antenna QRP 9:1 Balun Impedance Transformer $7.85
40 Meter Dipole
Crystal Packs/Pixie Switch
Original Article on Pixie/Rockmite/49er
All Prepping 101 Communications

There is nothing worse than being cut off from your family. But as we move further and further apart from each other, and rely more and more on a single technology to even speak, the chances of being cut off have become overwhelmingly probable. That is why I have contributed several articles, and now some video, on off-grid long distance communications. This is a not a simple or terribly inexpensive topic, but it is more possible than you would think to speak to someone across the country (and sometimes across the world) using a small radio from your home.

If you are what you consider a serious prepper and for communications you purchased a handheld “Ham” radio, I’m sorry to say you got taken. As I have explained in prior articles, and in the video here, those radios are great for local communications on a whole bunch of frequencies, but they are useless for long distance. Most handhelds, including the cheap and common Boefeng UV-5V, transmit UHF and VHF signals. Neither of them will bounce around the globe like traditional “Ham Radio” signals in the HF range.

The problem with real Ham radios is that they are expensive if you want power and flexibility. Please check out my prior articles for some advice on 100 watt hybrid tube/solid state radios, and lower wattage multiband radios. In general it is tough to get under a $400-$500 investment, including the antenna for multiband.

That creates a seemingly insurmountable problem if you have kids spread out hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Assuming you can even get them to take the collapse seriously, the investment and learning curve are prohibitive. So I have been on the lookout for an answer, and though my answer isn’t perfect, it does work, and it is way better than nothing.

Some time ago I covered some Chinese electronics kit radios that are still available under $20. They only send and receive Morse Code, but they will reach out to 200+ miles reliably, at all times of the day. You need a $25 antenna, a $25-$50 Morse Code key, and a battery with a connector to power them, but even then you are way under $100 per location. Those kits are still quite a find.

This week I’d like to share with you an update. Since I wrote that article a guy named LiYou from China has taken several of those circuits and updated them with a Wifi chip. The radio, which is the same genuine Ham radio broadcasting on 7.023 megahertz, sends Morse Code from an Android phone and tablet ap. The Wifi broadcasts a network. You hook your phone to it, type your message, then the ap sends the translated Morse Code through the radio over the small private network.

These radios broadcast on 7.023 megahertz, which falls outside the Technician Class license. In order to use these crystals you need the General license, which is a harder test (full of mostly useless information to actually use the radios)

These radios broadcast on 7.023 megahertz, which falls outside the Technician Class license. In order to use these crystals you need the Extra Class license, which is a hardest test (full of mostly useless information to actually use the radios). The Chinese apparently have the lower part of the 7 mhz band in their lowest license.

As you might imagine, if everyone had these radios it would get pretty muddy pretty quick out there on 7.023, but the cool thing is that even now very few people have them, and I have yet to hear any spot on Morse Code broadcasts on that frequency at all. Post collapse the airwaves in general will be empty, which has even greater implications, but I’ll get to that.

Today, in the early stages of the unraveling of our civilization, using the 7.023 frequency for any communications at all requires a license. There is actually good reason for that, and I’m not the government bootlicker type as my regular readers know. The reason is that radio transmissions have a width, or thickness, to them. Otherwise everyone could just have their own frequency, like 7.023547382456847, and the next person could have .0000000001 less or more. Real radio can’t work like that, because even a tiny width Morse Code signal has 150 kilohertz of thickness to it. Voice signals take 1500-3000 kilohertz even at low fidelity, and an FM radio station can take several megahertz in width.

Therefore frequencies are extremely limited, and that is why the governments of all countries control who is allowed to use what when. In the US private companies rent the frequencies, so it is nothing short of miraculous that Ham Radio, also called Amatuer Radio, even exists.

The Ham bands are extremely narrow, and they come with all kinds of rules that you have to know before you can get your license. There are now phone aps to learn the test questions, and there are a number of online paid courses that you can take as well. About 1/10th of the material is useful for making contacts online. It is mostly just a bar to entry, because those bands are so small and so precious to the people who use them.

The nice thing is that the traditional Ham bands do work worldwide. It was an accident actually. The comparatively low frequency bands were considered inferior when the frequencies were originally divided up. It was later that radio operators learned about the skip that occurs in frequencies under 30 megahertz. The waves bounce off of a layer in the ionosphere, and each skip is roughly 2,700 miles. Multiple skips are very common during the night under periods of sunspot activity. From South Florida I get contacts from all over the country, and I’ve heard signals regularly from Europe, Japan, and even Australia.

As I have explained in my prior articles, there are dozens of antenna designs, but you do need a good antenna regardless of the power of your radio. The stations that you’ll hear from Italy generally are broadcasting at least 100 watts, if not the legal limit of 1,500 watts for Amatuer radios, and they generally use a large “Yagi” style antenna on a tower.

That makes our little 3 watt 49er and wire antenna seem lame, but you’d be surprised at how common worldwide contacts are with tiny rigs like this. A 1/2 wave dipole, like I have linked to above, hung about 1/4 wave above the ground, which for 7mhz is about 30 feet, is right up in the top of antenna designs. If you plan to use a few bands, I have found that a folded dipole, only slightly more expensive is extremely reliable for receiving worldwide contacts. Generally if you can hear them, they’ll be able to hear you.

In a future update I may get into switching crystals to access other bands, and other frequencies inside the 40 meter band. For the former you would need either other antenna lengths, or a multiband type of antenna. For the latter you could just use the same antenna. Of course after the collapse all the frequencies will be open without the license police, so you could put any crystal under 30mhz if you want it to bounce off of the ionosphere do a distant friend or family member. I have linked above to a guy who has bundles of common Ham frequencies, and he makes a board called the Pixie switch specifically designed to incorporate several crystals into these little radios. You can find dozens of other frequencies on Ebay, because many ICs and microprocessors also need them to stabilize certain signals within their circuits (including Arduino), so they are common.

The phone ap for these radios is currently only available for Android, but he is working towards a PC version soon, and possibly an IOS version the near future. As you can see from the video, these is a bug in the ap that freezes it, but this doesn’t seem to effect the useful function of sending a text string as Morse Code. You just have to kill and relaunch the ap after you use it each time. It also has a manual key built in if you want to dot dot dash dash yourself. I think the bottom panel is for decoding incoming Morse Code, but like all the other computer and phone decoders I have tried, it doesn’t work. You’ll have to practice writing down Morse Code message to decode after.

My goal in writing this column is to open up the possibilities. For me, that has meant envisioning the day that the lights go out for good, that the supermarket is stripped clean, and that our days of easy worldwide communication disappear forever. It is possible to be among those who are somewhat ready for the system to collapse, who can eat at least for a while, drink clean water, have lights and cooking, and who can contact family living far away who also have hopefully brought some foresight into the money they have today. You will remember this article, whether you took action or not, when that day arrives.

It may seem like all of these words and videos available today will be here tomorrow, but you should remember that the internet is not tangible. These words do not exist, as soon as I write them. They are ones and zeros on a hard drive. In order for you to read them, not only do our servers and your computer need electricity. There are also countless routers in between us, and hard communication lines that could be damaged by war or sabotage. And only a handful of companies control whether the internet is turned “on” or “off,” but few people understand this.

It is a fallacy that the internet will survive the collapse. The original design was specifically built for resiliency and decentralized control, but nobody at the time envisioned what the internet has become today. Take advantage of this resource, and that fact that I can experiment with low cost long distance communication, and share this experience with you, for free. This isn’t infotainment.

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  • Paul January 11, 2023, 7:56 pm

    As a ham for over 25yrs,can attest to the fact that this is a reliable mode for communications. 40 meters is good for daytime qso’s,and other bands good too.

  • Ti February 10, 2020, 3:37 pm

    40 meter band(7 mHz) can travel. Morse code isn’t hard. In a survival situation, this is known as force multiplier. Paul is telling ya this isn’t time for complaining, time to get ready.

  • Rob February 10, 2020, 11:29 am

    Great article and video. You should do more HAM articles and video’s? Do you have a supplier or link to that 50 Watt “all band” amplifier at around 13 minutes 50 seconds in the video?
    Keep up the good work!

  • Dumbo February 17, 2019, 7:50 am

    The Pixie can be keyed with an average cock at speeds of up to 16wpm!

  • BillyBob November 7, 2016, 7:48 am

    27mhz CB with an amp & 102\” whip or G5RV in a tall tree / common freq. / = In the event of an emergency ANYTHING GOES !

  • lawrence spinner October 12, 2016, 3:58 pm

    What do you think about satellite phones as a backup for long distance communication?

    • Paul Helinski October 12, 2016, 8:21 pm

      I have no idea who owns or controls the network. With Ham radios all you need is 12 volts and an antenna. Nobody else has to be involved.

  • Mark Timblin October 10, 2016, 10:37 pm

    As an extra class amateur radio license holder AI4HO, there are plenty of sights where you can download computer program that will not only decode but some programs will actually be able send code perfectly. There are inexpensive boxes just to be as simple as possible for this. These boxes alng with some equally inexpensive cables will allow you to connect it all to to the rado and your laptop, even an older laptop with windows xp would work very well. With it you can use any and all of the “digital” which Morse code is,.
    With the cost of some older rigs that are all solid state prices are good you can get a very high mid class rig in the $500 range, more for the newer stuff. Yes, the tech level license will et you on the air, even the sub bands on 40 meters 7.0 mHz to 7.3 mHz with the code portion below 7.1 mHz . Being tone deaf, for me code is difficult at best, almost impossible at worst, I doubt seriously if I wil ever use code again, I enjoy it or used to, but even trying to tune my rig to the incoming signal also known as BFO beat frequency oscillation. I still cannot make heads or tails, I could when I took my general test could send/receive at 15 wpm which is pretty decent or pathetic to some 15 words a minute don’t bother me. Shouldn’t matter mostly it doesn’t. However you know how people get, nuff said.
    I believe that ham radio will become a “new” technology once again, once it is found out that you can bounce signals off the moon back to earth, or work satellites, so many different and just plain fun. You want low power off the grid, SWEET, you want a base rig and an 800 watt or larger amplifier a tower with a big beam antenna and rotator….go for it. Me got a great set up with a 50′ tower and a beam on top, run a 600 watt solid state amp instead of a tube amp, have been actively enjoying ham radio for 16-17 years licensed for 22-23 years now. I prep as I go, and what I can afford at the time. Just went through Matthew and got our power back today, Christ I’m tired….good evening all!

  • John Bibb October 10, 2016, 7:31 pm

    ***
    Something seems wrong with the required bandwidths in this article. For interrupted CW Morse Code type pulses the required bandwidth is roughly 1 / pulse width. For example–for a 1 millisecond wide “CW” pulse–it would be a 1 KHZ or 1000 Hz. bandwidth requirement.
    ***
    Normal AM radio channels are 10 KHZ (10000 HZ) wide and the carrier frequencies are spaced 10 KHZ apart. In the same broadcast area every other channel is used to provide a 10 KHZ guard band between adjacent stations. Since this is a carrier + upper sideband + lower sideband waveform the highest sound frequency that can modulate the signal is 5 KHZ.
    ***
    The necessary bandwidth for the FM signals seems very wide also. Possibly confusion between KHZ and MHZ?
    ***
    John Bibb
    ***

    • Paul Helinski October 11, 2016, 8:58 am

      Why don’t you stop speculating and get the SDR bug from my other article? Then you can see the actual bandwidth of modern WFM, and CW. A CW signal can be thinned down to 100hz, but is generally not over 500hz.

    • BK September 26, 2019, 2:04 am

      Signal bandwidth is proportional to the frequency bandwidth. At AM broadcast frequencies, the bandwidth allotted is 10KHZ, and gets wider as the frequency increases. At 140 MHZ, a signal is allotted either 600, or 1200 KHZ depending on the service using the frequency. At 450 MHZ the width is increased to 5 MHZ. Dedicated Channels also have a ‘guard band’ on each side. Ham band frequencies do not have the guard bands between users.
      The Amateur tests are not just to sort out and decrease the number of users as suggested, but it is best to STUDY the license requirements to understand the the rules and operation of radio equipment. This also helps you to learn how to maintain your equipment and antenna systems. And if you are a prepper, this would be very important!
      73′

      • KB1KXJ February 10, 2020, 2:34 pm

        Nicely explained

  • Frank Henrikson October 10, 2016, 2:57 pm

    Just was sent your program

  • MarkPA October 10, 2016, 11:50 am

    Interesting thread; nevertheless, I have my doubts about Morse code; and, I have a suggestion.
    I have a General class ham license and I learned Morse code as a young teen. It’s not something that I want to re-learn; especially for the contingency purpose of an EOTWAWKI. If the Morse-to-text applications don’t work reliably (not even when the Morse code being received is machine generated) then I don’t see Morse as viable.
    It may be more realistic to pursue a cheap RTTY implementation. Radio-tele-type is a well established technology. It ought to be much easier to read than Morse. (I won’t bother with the details as to why.) The software to read RTTY should be much simpler than that for Morse.
    In an EOTWAWKI situation I acknowledge that I’d like to be able to learn that my kids, 150 miles away, are OK. However, that has no survival value. I couldn’t help them nor they help me. Being able to communicate with collaborators 1 or 5 or 15 miles away would be much more valuable. VHF/UHF voice is viable for these ranges; but you need line-of-sight. That requires an antenna tower, or some equivalent (hills). There is also an OpSec issue; a collaborator really wouldn’t want to announce over an open channel that he has potable water to share.
    Enter RTTY; this is a mode of communication that lends itself to easy encryption. You are sending a text message that could easily be encrypted on the send side and encrypted on the receive side.

    • Ed October 10, 2016, 7:23 pm

      As to CW vs RTTY…….may I remind you of the use of CW in WWII by aircraft ops and spies. OK–so it’s dated tech…..right. However, when I converse on CW with the same guy or guys for a period of time–if they aren’t using a keyboard or a keyer–I know who is sending before he even identifies himself. Everyone’s “fist” is different. It’s like a fingerprint. The Nazis tried to feed disinformation to the Brits with captured equipment (and dead spies) but the receiving op would know that the guy on the other end was a kraut. Well…….can anyone think that this ability might stand one in good stead in the days to come? I was first licensed in 1959. I now hold an Extra Class license which required a 20 word per minute Morse test. I have never had to “re-learn” Morse Code–even to take the test after having been off the air for years. When it hits the fan—-CW is what will work where nothing else will.

      • Rich K. December 16, 2016, 10:46 am

        I have an Extra class license as well, which I earned earlier this year. I was one of the last bunch who had to take the 5WPM test to upgrade to General – and after my upgrade from Tech I never used CW again. Just not my preferred mode of communication, and I have forgotten most of it. However, I have a little device I can plug into my transceiver: the K1EL K42 keyer-reader. Output goes to the key jack, input from the audio output on the transceiver, and you can plug in a standard PS2 computer keyboard. Sends Morse code as you type on the keyboard, and incoming signal is translated on the LCD screen. The K42 is set up to run on a 9V battery (can also be run on 12V if I change out a resistor on the circuit board).

      • KB1KXJ February 10, 2020, 2:37 pm

        Very true, when noise is the worst CW is the best way to transmit intelligence.

  • Bill Farrell October 10, 2016, 11:38 am

    You also need a Ham (amateur) Radio license issued by the FCC to transmit on any of these frequencies. Failure to be licensed is a violation of US laws and International agreements and these people get really, really TESTY when people don’t play by their rules.

    • AmericanPatriot77 October 10, 2016, 1:18 pm

      Bill-this may be true about the HAM License, but for $40 bucks and 2 hours of study you can get your “Tech” level HAM license and then are ready to go. This morse code add on if the perfect set-up for emergency use. Most military and LE agencies don’t use this or even have the capabilities for “morse code” anymore. This is another KEY component to your “prepping” needs and emergency “bug out bag” equipment. The group i’m associated with use the BAOFENG UV-5R and also the 8 watt version for our commo needs and S&R also. This is a great add on to your commo needs. The MSRS radio system is a great back-up to the HAM radio as well. I carry a HAM radio, CB, and a MSRS base station in my jeep at all times just to have a fail safe back-up system ready at all times.

      • Phil October 10, 2016, 9:55 pm

        MSRS? Not familiar. Is it a new name for MURS or GMRS/FRS? Thanks!!!

    • muleskinner October 10, 2016, 10:02 pm

      Yeah, I don’t think the federal government is going to be a big concern if the poop hits the fan…unless you’re fighting them…

    • Rich K. December 16, 2016, 10:50 am

      In a SHTF situation, anything goes. Yes, I have a license and I deplore people who operate on the ham frequencies without one (most of them are “lids” with no manners or etiquette), including “freebanders” and CBers with “splatter boxes” that bleed over into the ham bands. However, it is even written into the FCC regulations that in an emergency ANY mode of communication can be used by ANYONE (even getting on police frequencies), in an effort to save lives.

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