NPM 14: Weekly Emergency Comms Check In with Skycomm_ptt

The 14th the 14th show the 14th day national preparedness month we are still going everybody thank you for joining us today this is a big one man this one right here is one of the biggest ones of the month this address this is one of the biggest issues that preppers tend to have uh concerns that the average person tends to have and that's emergency communications and I want to real quick, before we bring on Mike Harris from Skycom PTT, I need to give you the quick backstory on Skycom PTT as it relates to PBN. This is an essential piece of sort of, you know, what are we doing over here? How did I wind up here in this position where I'm talking to you about this company? It started with a phone call from Chin. So if you are a complete noob to PBN and you have no idea... what we do here, and you've just been tuning in maybe through Instagram. Chin is the comms wizard for the Prepper Broadcasting Network. That's who he is, right? When Chin tells me what to do, what to buy, what to use, I listen. You know what I mean? He's the guy who tells me, essentially. This is the radio. And we've gone through a few different iterations of radios and things like that. Technologies have changed. He also teaches the Meshtastic class at Prepper Camp each year. He is the man in terms of prep, in terms of comms at PBN, because, you know, for me, just so you know, I'm not the comms guy. You know what I mean? I don't have, I'm not into radio frequencies. I'm not into how the radios work. I'm probably much like you where I say, I need a thing where I can press a button and maybe... move a few frequencies around and get in contact with people and learn about what's happening. I'm not the comms guy. So chin calls me up, tells me about Skycom, tells me about Mike Harris, tells me about this company, about their pop link, dual radios. Right. And, uh, of course I'm in. And then, you know, to top all that off, I go and meet Mike at Prepper camp. So Mike, Mike Harris from the owner of Skycom PTTs at Prepper camp, I meet him. We have a great interview. He's an awesome guy. And what we're going to introduce you to today is an even further benefit to the POC link radio functionality on the Skycom radios. And that is a national prepper radio network push to talk that is built for exactly what we're going to talk about today, radio check-ins. And we're going to have our own radio check-in over there, but. Instead of going on and on by myself here, let's bring Mike in, the man behind the scenes at Skycom PTT. Mike Harris, thanks so much for joining us today on National Preparedness Month live extravaganza. How are you? I'm good this morning. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I've been looking forward to this episode. I wanted to make sure we got this one right because I think that comms is... There's a lot of people out there looking for the right answer, you know, and I think a lot of them are looking for what you guys have. Well, thank you. We hope we've got the equipment and the technology to provide the needs that they have for communications. So one of the things about what you do that is a major standout outside of the radios themselves is your creation of the National Prepper Radio Network. Is that the right name for it? The Prepper National Radio Network. That is correct. Prepper National Radio Network. PNRN, folks. So why don't you tell us what that is, and then I'll tell everybody what we're going to do with it. Okay. The idea came about when we were talking to the folks about coming to Prepper Camp. They had mentioned there would be a great way if we could come up with a way for Preppers to be able to communicate within their state and also nationally with And I got to thinking about that, said, okay, let's see what we can do. Well, it took a couple of months to put the program together on the platform, but we were able to do that. And we came up with the Preppers will have six national talk groups. They'll have the Prepper National Talk Group, the Prepper International Talk Group, the Prepper National Alert Talk Group. And that's primarily for catastrophic disasters. And let's go back. probably something to the level of 9-11. Preppers would be able to go to that and exchange information with folks around the country to how they were being affected by it. There'll also be a prepper admin staff talk group that would only be limited to the staff of the prepper group. And then you've got the Skycom PTT service talk group. That means at any time you've got a problem with your radio or you have questions, instead of calling on the phone and waiting for somebody to pick the phone up, you could go straight to the talk group and holler, hey, Skycom service, and we'll answer. Somebody here will answer you. And we monitor that Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Standard Time or Central Daylight Time. And what you mean by go to these, I just want to clarify this for people. We probably got people of varying comms experience. What he means by that is using the POC functionality of the radio, which is a push to talk. So if your radio is set to one of those nets that he's talking about, which is very easy to do, you're going to have a button on the side of your radio. You're going to push that button and you're going to talk directly to that radio network. You're not going to find frequencies. You're not going to have to channel scan. You press the button and you're talking to people. And that simplicity is one of the coolest things about the POC technology. But I wanted to make sure they knew what you meant by that. Well, since you brought that up, let's go and interject the fact that all transmissions have 256-bit AES encryption. So that means nobody can intercept your transmission, and nobody's going to hear it except for the folks that are on your talk group. That talk group that you're on are the only people that will be able to hear it. So that's a strong technology. point there that we like to bring out. And speaking of talk groups, this might be interesting to the PBN family. Many of you know the Azure Force, and the Azure Force set up their talk group a couple weekends ago with the help of Chin, some Virginia preppers here. You guys know them. Dave Jones, the NBC guy, the cohort up there on the mountain that we do all the fun prepper challenge things all the time, which we haven't done this year. Those are easy to set up as well. But yeah, go ahead. You continue. Just wanted to give everybody a peek into that side of it so that they know other people on PBN are using these Skycom radios also. Right. So what we did, we divided the United States into 10 regions. So when you get a radio on the Prepper National Radio Network, you'll get the six national talk groups. And then you'll get the region that you live in, which includes your state. You get the region, the state. And then we give you the opportunity to set up two team talk groups and two personal or family talk groups. So you can have that capability. Now, excluding the six national talk groups, all the other talk groups will allow you to have up to 100 contacts in those talk groups. The national talk groups are set up to do more than that, you know, naturally, because there's going to be more than 100 people nationally. So.... The system itself, we are Skycom PTT is underwriting the club, the administrative cost of the platform, um, in order for them to get this off the ground. We want the preppers to be able to use this, uh, at no charge to them. Um, we appreciate that. Well, we believe in your, we believe in the, in the, the effort there and the calls. Okay. And, uh, we want to support them all we can, and Chin was a driving force in putting this together. Him and Rick came up with the idea, and when they threw it out there, I said, let me see what we can do with that, so like I said, it took us a couple of months to figure it out and put it together, but we've got it done, and I think when you and I talked earlier, we've got 37 folks on the Prepper National Radio Network, and they're in seven different states. Wow. Can we put it to the test real quick? Sure. We have a little something in store for everybody. Because I wanted to show exactly how the POC works. So we're going to do a radio check with the radio that I have, the G2 UHF. This guy is a POC link and a GMRS radio here. And we're going to buzz... Someone special out there waiting on a radio check-in, so let's see what we can do here. Radio check. Thank you, Chin, checking in. We got Mike Harris here on the live broadcast. I appreciate you, my man. What are you, are you like in my house or something? You sound loud and clear, sir. Important to mention that Chin is in Tennessee right now. I am in Richmond, Virginia. And like I said, as this, as I push this button, I'm getting contact to him all the way down there. So Chin's up. Thank you so much for your help, sir. We're going to let you go. Copy that. That's what we're trying to do, guys. I don't know. That's exactly what we're trying to do for you in terms of something's happened. We want to check in with the PrepperNet group and see if anybody else is seeing something, if anybody else is doing something, if anybody else needs help, try to reach out to get help, those kinds of things. And what I'm going to commit to here, Mike, is I want to get on that PrepperNetwork each Sunday night at 9 p.m., and we're going to do our radio check-in over there. So all the guys who have radios at PBN currently, everybody we can, we can, uh, convinced to get Skycom radios on that net. Also, anybody you want to send out information to Mike and tell them that we're going to do a prep a radio check-in on Sundays. That's our goal to build that sort of, to build a place where people can get the reps in on the radio and get real comfortable turning it on, checking in, you know, and that kind of thing. So, uh, Hopefully, we can build a big group base of people over there who are using radios regularly. And then should something ever happen, they're ready to do it. So that'll be, like I said, guys, that'll be Sunday. That'll be 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Every Sunday. We're going to do it every Sunday. It's quick. It's not going to be a big show or anything. We're all going to check in. In fact, the layout that I'd like to do, Mike, if you tell me what you think about this, I'd like to do, obviously, a radio check. Name. Location. Broadly. And then bring a dad joke. Bring a good dad joke to share with the group, and then you're out of there. So radio check, name, location, dad joke, and then you're out. You know your radio is working. We heard you. You heard us. And that's simple. And we'll all do that radio check in round robin and go back to our day and know that we've got an emergency comm solution outside of the cell phone and that type of thing. And that's just one piece of the radios, right? Right. I retired from the state of Tennessee. I was the emergency communications manager for the entire state. And my job was really important when we had a disaster or state emergency. It was my responsibility to make sure everybody could communicate from the federal level to the state level to the local level and even to the NGOs. I had to make sure that they had contact also with the local or the state. But the point I wanted to make was we had a saying, if you're not communicating, you're just camping out. I like that. Because that's the case for a lot of preppers now, today. You know what I mean? We went in the direction of nothing wrong with ham radio, but we all powered in the direction of ham radio. And it was like diving into a 12-foot pool and you didn't know how to swim. You know what I mean? If you weren't into comms, that's exactly what it was. All of a sudden, you're in over your head. What do I buy? I got to learn this book. I got to take this test. I got to pay this money. I don't know what I'm doing and I don't even know what I'm getting out of it. And that's what I love about the POC technology. Well, that's what I like about a lot of these. Like mine is, you know, the dual POC and GMRS. And I think GMRS is a lot easier to deal with, a lot easier to get licensed for, a lot easier to learn, you know, less frequency bands and all that. So it's yeah, it's you guys have changed the world. And I say that not just Skycom, but collectively, the comms world has changed so much because of companies like yours that have come along and made it more accessible, easier, one device doing multiple things. And it's just, you know, it's a big deal for us. We've been trying to establish that easy secondary comms or even emergency comms option. Right. And I would like to explain to everybody also, there is no one magic bullet out there. That is the truth. Yeah. You need to, in your communications toolbox, this just needs to be another tool that you put in that toolbox. You need to have redundancy backups to the backup. Okay. But this is just another tool to put in your toolbox. Yeah. That's a great way to look at it. That's a great way to look at it. And when you're building out your pace plans, guys, you know, it's like everything else in prepping. It's personal, right? It comes down to what's going to work for you and your family. But, In terms of going from zero to something, I think the POC technology can really help you with that because all of a sudden you have the biggest step, I think, and you can speak to this, Mike, because you're a professional and I'm just pretending over here, but the biggest step in a comms, like getting into comms, is what can I do to get the radio in my hand more often? If you'd never played with a radio before, if you'd never had a radio, you don't have any background in using radios, I always felt like I'd buy certain things and I'd never touch them. And I'd say, well, I have a thing that everybody says is a good thing to have, but I don't ever use it. So from a comm standpoint, I'm no more prepared now than I was before I had the thing, in my opinion. But with something that you put your hands on and use, it just seems like the pock works. The weekly check-in will work. It will get your radio in your hand. Maybe you'll take it even further from there, and that's all I can hope for. You know? Right. Well, I'd like to encourage people, feel free to go to the Skycom service talk group. It was a call. Uh, we have people that call us, you know, uh, there, we have a customer, a lady in Texas that calls every week just to talk. There's nothing wrong with the radio. She just wants to talk to us. And, uh, we, you know, we take the time to do that. We want to talk to the customers and, uh, So feel free to give us a call. Just go to that talk group and holler Skycom service and somebody will come back to you. Now it might not always be me. There are four other people here in the office. And, uh, if I'm out, somebody else will answer, but, uh, just, uh, feel free to give us a call. Yeah. I'll keep mine on too on the prepper net. You never know. You might get ahold of me if you catch me at the right time, but, uh, Right down there on Instagram, all you guys who are live with us on Instagram, you'll see a ShopSkycom link. The ShopSkycom link down there, that'll take you right to Chin's page. Chin has a bunch of selected products. It'll take you right to Chin's page. Anything you buy there, he'll get commission on. We're going to set the same thing up for us here at PBN, but Just so you know, that link right there will get you there. We have another link in the Rumble Live. If you're with us over on Rumble, use that link. My radio, the radio that I use today, the radio that I just pinged Chin with from Richmond, Virginia to Tennessee with one push of a button is the GT Ultra High Frequency Dual Mode POC radio, the hybrid two-way, and that has POC link and also GMRS radio built into it. Any. Before we go, I know we're getting a little close, but before we go, is there a radio that you would recommend out of your guys' inventory that's a good starter radio? Something that comes to mind, like this is the one you want to get if you've never touched a radio before, that kind of thing. Well, I would recommend if they didn't, If they didn't want the GMRS, the UHF feature, they could buy the Geo Plus. That's a good starter radio. It's rugged. Matter of fact, I carry one of those. I can stick it in my pocket, put it on my sun visor. It's not a heavy radio, but it is rugged. And the battery lasts like four or five days under normal use. So it's a great radio. If you're looking for the GMRS feature, the G2 is the most rugged radio that we have for that feature. We do have two other radios that offer that feature. Uh, one is an eight watt and one is a 10 watt. And I'm going to tell you being in radio all my life, uh, or the biggest part of my life, anything you can talk to with 10 Watts, you can talk to it with five Watts. So, um, it's not a, it's not, uh, that big a deal to get the 10 watt radio, but some folks like to have the power and, uh, it's, uh, and we're willing to sell it to them if that's what they want. So, uh, Anyway, I would recommend the Geo and the G2 would be my two recommendations, depending on your needs and requirements. What we got up right now, guys, this is the Geo Plus that you're looking at. And as you can see, it's a nice small radio, compact, hits with the push-to-talk technology if you want. This actually is probably what's going to wind up in my kids' hands. This is probably going to be the... the option now that I'm with Skycom to go with the children's backup communications because... when it comes to kids, I mean, that's just... And this doesn't even have to be... To put one of these in a kid's backpack or for a kid to have access to one of these when they're at school or something like that, it doesn't have to be the end of the world for them to click that thing and tell you what's going on. And also, here's another... Go ahead, Mike. You tell them. I was going to say we're starting to see that a lot, that parents are buying these for their kids instead of giving them a cell phone. They're giving them the geo here because it keeps them off the Internet and they can talk to their parents or if their friends buy them. We've had a couple of cases where one parent bought it for their kids and then three more parents in the neighborhood wanted to buy them for their kids so they could talk back and forth. And you kind of create a kids network for them to where they can talk. But it's a rugged little radio, you know, and the school says you can't have a phone, but they don't say anything about a POC radio. And these things are small. You can put it in a pencil bag. Nobody would even know your kid had it, to be honest with you. And we're at that point. So just personal, the 15-year-old's got a cell phone, of course. That happened because of sixth or seventh grade, something like that. But my youngest son is getting to that age. He's going to be going into middle school soon. And that's sort of my thought process is keep the cell phone away from a little longer. Give him the Skycom so that he doesn't have that thing, right? Well, Mike, anything we missed? Anything we want to touch on before we call the show here? I know we inundated people with information. I know. It's like we took a fire hose and we hit them with a fire hose there on information. No, we're looking forward to working with you. yeah, we're looking forward to working with the prepper network. And if there's anything we can do, they come up with ideas or something they want to implement. Give us a call. We'll try, we'll try to do it. Uh, uh, we will, um, there's nothing off the table. We'll look at it and see if we can do it. And if we can, we will. And, uh, we will, um, we'll be coming out with some new radios in, um, March of next year. Uh, some pretty neat things they got coming. Um, and it's, um, we're excited about it. And, uh, They've only shown us pictures. So great. Uh, they've only showed us picture of the new things that are coming. We haven't actually seen the unit and, uh, but, uh, we're hoping to see that after the first of the year, uh, before we, uh, we start carrying them, we want to try them out and make sure they do what they say they do. But, uh, once again, we're looking forward to working with y'all and anything we can do, just give us a call either on the phone or on the radio. Beautiful. Well, we're going to start this thing guys, like I mentioned, So put it in your back pocket. I'll mention it more as we get to the end of the end of the week, because Sunday night, 9 p.m. Eastern, I'm going to do a radio check in on this Prepper National Radio Network. And this is going to be our home to do our to get our reps on our Parklink radios and to get our reps as a as a emergency comms group here on check in. So be sure to join me over there. Get your Skycom radio now. Use the links. We've got links all over the place. If not, reach out to me and I'll get you a link. If you want to know exactly which one I have, I can remind you of that also. But that's the goal here. That's step number one. We want to get a radio in your hand. We want to get you doing the things every single week so that you come to rely on this radio and understand how to use this thing. Because that's, you know, that's how we get you a backup plan outside of your cell phone. Cell phone goes dead. You don't want to be staring at it. Okay. What now? You know? But, Mike, I appreciate you, man. Oh, go ahead, please. Yeah, I was going to say that my wife and I, we don't even talk to each other on the cell phone. We use our POC radio. Yeah, I think there's something to that. I mean, it's just so much quicker. You don't have to dial a number. It's just push the button and talk. Yeah, I like it. I like it. And it's encrypted on top of all of that. Yeah, your cell phone's not encrypted. People think, oh, my cell phone's secret. No, it's not. Trust me. And Mike's the guy to trust. He's got a bit of a background in emergency comms. Well, Mike, I appreciate you, man. Like I said, once that new website's up and running, we'll bring you on. We'll take a look at that. And much more to come from the folks at Skycom PTT. You guys have been awesome. You guys have been a true blessing to PBN. And we look forward to big things. Thank you. So do we. And thank you for having me on this morning. Yeah, no problem. All right, folks. No more excuses. Get your emergency comms. 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