Ham Radio and Prepping
Ham Radio, Prepping, and Apples and Oranges
On April 28, 2025, the whole of Spain went dark. Depending on which country you are reading this from, it might not surprise you at all, but here it was a sudden jolt. For most people, something like this was not on the radar. And yet we had been warned: this past Christmas the power grid was also on the brink of collapse, but few wanted to see it.
By April, on the mainland, the sun is already beating down hard. Renewable generation was flying along like a moped rolling downhill with wet brakes: unstoppable.
When they unplugged us
The blackout caught me in front of the screen. I thought the breakers had tripped. I was annoyed, obviously, because I did not know whether I had saved what I was working on. I went to the panel, checked everything was fine, stepped out onto the landing: no light anywhere. It was a gorgeous day; from the balcony everything looked normal. I live in a small village — do not ask me how many people, not even the census knows for sure — and here even the one traffic light I can remember was replaced years ago by a roundabout. Everything runs on stop and yield signs.
The beeping of an alarm made me think it was not just my building. Confident it would only be a few minutes, I hooked my CB rig up to one of the batteries I keep around. Jackpot: I normally have a background noise floor of S7, but this time there was nothing. The electromagnetic silence was total, like being up a mountain. Ideal for picking up distant signals.
Starting to get informed
After 20 minutes, I switched on my Quansheng UV-K5, the popular Chinese walkie with an FM radio. I knew right away: the blackout was on a large scale.
After a good while listening and hopping between stations on the dial, I still could not make out anything clear about what was going on.
And this is where the beef starts.
People also started idolizing the radio stations as if they were the last bastion of reliable information.
Spoiler: they were not.
The radio stations’ sorry showing
Two hours after the blackout, it did not matter which station you tuned to: none of them had a clue. They would not confirm whether the blackout was total, partial, national, European… nothing. Four hours in, they were throwing out random figures, many of them false: a cyberattack, a fire in France, a helicopter crashing into a power line…
Of course, the situation was not the same in a little village like mine as in Madrid or Barcelona, where without traffic lights it turns to chaos. Here it was very quiet, and I had intermittent mobile coverage but practically all afternoon, enough to talk on WhatsApp or Telegram and find out what was happening elsewhere.
Didn’t the radio stations have any phone service to call colleagues in France or Portugal and ask whether they had power?
As entertainment, fine. As a source of information, pitiful.
The myth of the miracle walkie
From that day on, the internet filled up with instant experts in telecoms and prepping, urging everyone to buy Chinese walkies and get their amateur radio license.
The Quansheng is a dual-band V/UHF transceiver. Useful? If you are lucky with repeaters. From my valley I cannot reach a single one, and there are no active operators in my area, so in that respect my walkie is a paperweight.
Some gurus tell you to use a dual-band walkie on PMR. Say you have a Baofeng, 5 W, the trendy antenna, everything maxed out, and you lean out of your first-floor window. Well, I am sorry to tell you that you will not do much better than someone with an approved PMR radio on the sixth-floor terrace of your building.
The LoRa and Meshtastic hype
Content about Meshtastic and LoRa is booming too. There is even a community mesh-network project that has grown enormously lately.
My take? For talking to 3 or 4 nearby friends it is great, but not much more. And what really grates on me about it is that this network is being built using devices that operate on 868 MHz.
The biggest LoRa networks right now are probably Helium and APRS. The latter is a free network made up mainly of radio amateurs, and it operates on 433 MHz. So the devices on one network are not compatible with the other.
In a disaster, radio amateurs could turn their APRS nodes into Meshtastic nodes, but since they use different frequencies, that option is off the table.
I have two LoRa devices, and on the day of the blackout they were completely useless.
And CB? The savior?
With CB it was a different story. With no interference, doing radio should be a joy. But propagation was closed. Only in the mid-afternoon did I talk to a friend in the Canary Islands: they had power there, but no internet.
And that was it. Nothing more. Maybe on lower frequencies I would have had more luck, but I doubt it would have changed much.
Effectiveness scorecard
| Medio | Resultado |
|---|---|
| Walkie bibanda | 0 contactos, desinformación desde cadenas de radio comercial |
| Meshtastic | 0 contactos, nada de información |
| Radio CB | 1 contacto, información sobre la situación en Canarias |
| Teléfono móvil | Múltiples contactos, info útil y rápida desde toda la península |
My recommendation for preppers
If you are purely into prepping, my advice is to buy a pair of PMR walkies. They are not bad at all for emergencies and they cost little.
But if you really want to stay connected, what seems to be working best lately is a Starlink connection. It might suit you better than a Baofeng.
And if you want a license that is actually useful in extreme situations… get a firearms license and buy a gun.
Personally, getting an amateur radio license with no interest beyond “being prepared just in case” is a waste of time and money.
“Radioaficionado” or “radio aficionado”?
Spanish is a very rich language that most of us do not make the most of. It has one term, though, that can cause confusion: radioaficionado, which comes from radio aficionado (“radio fan”) but means something else: a licensed person who transmits and receives private radio messages using frequency bands set administratively.
It should not be confused with someone who is simply a fan of the world of radio.
To be a radioaficionado (a licensed amateur) you have to pass exams and pay fees. To be a “radio fan” all you need is enthusiasm and curiosity.
Where to start?
If you have just gotten interested in the world of radio waves and have zero knowledge, my advice is to start by buying an SDR. An RTL dongle with a decent antenna will run you about €80–90, and with just that you will have plenty to discover, investigate and keep yourself entertained.
You will be able to listen to just about everything, get familiar with the band plan, transmission modes, signal types and endless possibilities.
From there, to the next level
If the SDR shows you how fascinating the world of radio is and you feel like you want more, then yes, you can consider getting an operator’s license.
Although my advice — of course — is to bring a CB into your life. With a removable antenna in the window, or on the car if you have to, it does not matter, but make sure it has sidebands (USB/LSB). You will have plenty of time to improve your station later; it is part of the learning curve.
Between researching setups, antennas, propagation and on-air activity, you will have spent a good long while enjoying yourself and learning.
CB as a way in
CB radio is excellent for what it is meant for today: direct communication between stations over short distances. If your setup is halfway decent, the range will probably beat any 5 W walkie-talkie.
And CB is the real gateway to amateur radio. Fill a room with hams and ask everyone who started out on CB to raise their hand. It will look like a Bon Jovi concert.
What blows my mind most about CB is ionospheric skip. Being able to talk to people who live 14,000 km away with no infrastructure beyond your rig and your antenna is la crème de la crème.
Digital modes
On the Citizens’ Band you can also experiment with something very important in modern amateur radio: digital modes. They are here to stay.
As a generational changing of the guard takes place in amateur radio, digital modes are taking on a bigger role.
For example, JS8Call lets you send messages over a mesh network to almost any corner of the world. It does not have Meshtastic’s hype, but it has enormous potential.
Step by step, and enjoying it
Once you have experimented with CB, if you feel this is your thing, then yes: get your amateur radio license and widen your technical horizons. It is like buying the DLC for a video game.
That way you will avoid getting a bad impression of amateur radio, and you will not end up with a license and no idea where to begin, feeling overwhelmed.
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