Oath Keepers Utah Summit report and recommendations.

From the Desk of Paul Stramer


On Friday December 9th, Stewart Rhodes and I jumped in my Radio van and headed for Ogden Utah for a one day meeting of leaders in northern Utah. We had people from Utah, Wyoming and from as far away as California attend the 4 hour meeting and many met for dinner afterward. I must say that I really enjoyed the trip, especially being able to visit with Stewart one on one for about 24 hours of driving.

Of course many of you know that my focus in Oath Keepers is communications, and Stewart asked me to outline for you what we are recommending for gear, and training, and kind of an operational roadmap for your local groups.

I can only tell you what works for us.  I live outside of Eureka Montana about 20 miles from Stewart. North Lincoln county is a wonderful place to call home. My wife and I raised and homeschooled 8 children here, and I was a logger for 26 years here and in 4 other states including Alaska. But Eureka is where we love to be.
Here we have helped to build a rather large Amateur radio community. We have about 100 people who are monitoring our network, pretty much 24/7 / 365.  We have 4 different communities within about 25 miles in the valley, and they are all tied together with radio. Some of those are ham radio operators, some have a GMRS license, and some refuse to get a license. All are welcome. So how do we do that? How do we tie all these people together?

Community Watch using Safety Communications and Security preparations.

From the Desk of Paul Stramer
Montana Comm Leader
for Oath Keepers

Trump Can't Save America, just by the fact that he will now become the CEO of the UNITED STATES INC.  Yes he can do some things, at great peril to himself, to undo some of the damage caused by the leftists who have had the power for many years. He can do those things within minutes of being sworn in, AND THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA KNOW IT, especially those hiding inside our own government.

We are headed for some violent times, compliments of the radical leftists who call themselves "progressive" and "democratic" and other euphemisms that remind us of the radicals of the 60s who bombed buildings and killed policemen.  They are already starting their organized and pre-planned riots using their  incitement agents.  These people are really just consummate OUTLAWS.  They will stop at NOTHING to preserve their power, and their global agenda.

Without the continuous long term activity for freedom of each and every one of the people who voted for Trump, and many more people, our communities will not increase in safety. Exactly the opposite. We now need to be in a condition yellow alert all day and all night continuously to preserve peace and good order in our communities. This is what the founders had in mind anyway when they gave us the Militia model for community safety and freedom.

These leftists talk about peace, but their brand of peace is something entirely different than what we have understood.  Their brand of peace happens only when anyone who would oppose them have been eliminated or locked up, so they can no longer oppose them.

There are not enough police, military, sheriffs or any other paid "law enforcement" to help you in what you see beginning in the cities right now. The left is NOT going to stop. They know the jig is up. They know their evil is being exposed for all the world to see. They know if they don't consolidate power right now, this time around, they won't have another opportunity in America for decades if ever.

What can YOU do?

WARNING, MAJOR MOVE BY BANKS

Global Economic COLLAPSE Happening NOW as Governments Scramble to Save Financial System!

Hard assets are your only protection.

Here is my priority list.

1.  Long term food storage, and lots of it. Enough to last you for several years.
2. Water purification, or have your own water well.
3. Guns, ammo, and all related accessories, along with the proper training.
4. Communications gear and training, like ham radio.
5. Medical training along with the proper equipment and supplies.
6. A way to generate electricity, along with conditioned fuel that will last 10 years minimum.
7. Alternative ways to make electricity like solar, wind, hydro or whatever.
8. If you have all that covered, and still have some wealth to protect, then get silver.

Here are some websites you might want to look at.

Radio gear    http://www.fm2way.com
Solar power  http://www.fm2way.com/goalzero
Silver    http://www.teapartysilver.com

American Silver	Ann von Reitz	FM 2 Way Radios	Get Stem Enhance	Jury Rights Info	My Ham Station
Lincoln County Watch	Montana Blog	Paul Stramer	Fuel Preservative	Movies for one dollar	Buy Silver
Solar Power	More on Silver	Silver Snowball.com	Free Silver	Silver Movie	Silver Snowball

Communications at the Bundy ranch and future hot spots

Hi Everyone,

I have returned from the Bundy ranch, and am working on the ongoing project of setting up emergency radio communications systems for rapid deployment in situations like the Bundy family found themselves, following their stand against government tyranny.

I spent the best part of a week working for the safety of everyone at the ranch after being asked to go to Nevada by Stewart Rhodes. Stewart and the Oathkeepers organization made it possible, and I will work with them any time.

I am not disappointed at all with what we did on this first excursion to Nevada, considering the short 2 days we had to prepare.

My Dodge Minivan already had a scanner and a dual band FM  2 meter and 70cm radio and I had another just like it with me, that I set up at a local motel in a room that had good position that we could talk to the ranch, which was only 9 miles away.  I added a CB so I could get information from the truckers on the way down, before I left home.  I had also installed a dual band radio in Stewart's rented SUV and he was able to put that vehicle into the patrol rotation later using ham frequencies.

I had gone to the ranch on Friday shortly after I arrived, riding with another one of our crew, and gathered up those with Ham licenses, which turned out to be only two people on the whole site.  One of them is a good friend from Kalispell and he agreed to be the anchor on site with a split band operation and a dual band antenna that I had with me. We picked a location to set up that antenna and I told him I would be back the next day to do it.

That night we got the drone strike threat and an hour later my tech class ham friend showed up at the motel and said he was going on patrol.

We had been told to start up a night patrol with constant radio contact to patrol within about 25 miles in either direction from the ranch for the safety of everybody on site, and for advanced warning to get any info about what we saw out to the ranch and also out of the area however we could before any communications blackout could be put into effect. Using the dual band radios we were actually able to talk up to about 50 miles away at times depending on terrain.

I set up an antenna and dual band radio at the motel room and used a long term storage pack to run that radio so it couldn't be shut down by turning off the electric power in the room.  That radio was easily able to talk to our patrols because it's output was around 70 watts, and we used one 65 watt mobile, a dual band 50 watt mobile,  and some dual band handhelds with external antennas to do a once per hour radio check to make sure everyone was alright and still patrolling.  We did this from Friday night through Tuesday night, all night long from about 9 PM until about 5 AM each night.  During the day I used an  HF rig I had borrowed from WR7DW and a vertical antenna on my van to contact W4SVS in Florida, and WR7DW , and also K7BIR in Montana and several times we were able to all be on the same frequency simultaneously to maintain a signal path.

On HF during the day we used 14.345 on 20 meters, and later in the night we would switch to 80 at  3.838 .   We could vary the frequency as needed to get around interference, and the whole system worked quite well considering. We were able to maintain contact at all times and the patrol operators had some short range encrypted units to use between each other if they had to stop and should they get separated by a few hundred feet. These worked out to over a mile very well.

To see the whole band plan we are using see this document.

http://www.lincolncountywatch.org/emergencycommplan030614.pdf

Here is our local band plan for the Eureka and Kalispell area.

http://www.lincolncountywatch.org/frequencies.pdf

Our obvious big deficit was having enough people with at least a tech class license to go on patrol, and we could have done a much better job if we could have had a few more high power mobile dual band radios for the vehicle, but I stayed with a Kenwood TM281 65 watt unit because they are low cost, have pretty good power, and it's what I could get on short notice, and the biggest reason is that it's so efficient that most any cigarette lighter socket will allow full power operation at 65 watts. We used magnet mount dual band antennas so we could switch the radios from vehicle to vehicle quickly to increase our transparency to the public.  We even equipped our handheld dual band radios with magnet mount external antennas and increased their range dramatically.

So much for what we did.   Now for what we could do given a little time and some money for preparations.

The ideal situation would be to have a communications crew, all with ham licenses, which could be composed of mostly tech class guys, along with at least two or three guys with General or Extra class licenses.  These guys would travel with several comm units consisting of one or two mobile vans with all band capabilities, and a few vehicles with patrol FM capabilities.  With a little more prep, we could set up a mobile command center in a travel trailer that could be pulled by any big pickup with a 2 " ball hitch to a site within about 10 or so miles of the center of action, and set up in a matter of a couple of hours. This trailer would have all band HF, VHF, UHF and digital capabilities including wireless internet to encrypted internet pier 2 pier secure data and chat, and digital HF single side band digital com on the ham bands. 

Ideally we could use a bumper pull 24 or 26 foot travel trailer with rear bedroom and a front dinette. The front dinette could be converted to permanent ham shack and the rear bedroom could be used by an off duty general or extra class ham for sleep so we could run a triple rotating shift 24/7.

This trailer would be comm HQ and a place where vehicle radios and handheld radios would be put in rotation for patrols, (checked in and checked out) and could be located off site in some higher location if possible.  It would have the capability of talking nation wide and world wide. This could serve as the communications hub for any operation around which we could run one or two vans with like capabilities using various spots on higher ground to back up these long range comms, and to relay from patrols to the trailer if the need arises. The trailer should have back up power including solar panels and a generator and storage batteries to be able to run the trailer and the radio gear during any power outage for extended periods. With the right planing we could equip this trailer with a big power amp, and a crank up tower that could swing a 3 element beam. While in Nevada I was able to talk repeatedly to Florida and Montana with only 100 watts and a vertical antenna, but 500 or 1000 watts would guarantee very solid HF communications almost regardless of band conditions. We can just switch bands and crank up the power to get the job done as needed. The beam antenna would amplify both incoming and outgoing signals for maximum range and effectiveness.

I have already talked to my Extra class buddies here in Eureka, and I am sure if we had some kind of trailer to work with we could set this up in a couple of weeks or three, assuming we had about 10 grand to put into the radio and power part of the project.  While in Nevada my whole station was solar powered.

If you have any ideas to add to this feel free to jump in.  We would like to finish our preparations with the comm van first and then pick up a few more radios for other vehicles for FM dual band operation.

If anyone reading this has any questions please feel free. None of this is set in stone, and any time you get a bunch of ham radio guys in a room together you are going to have lots of good ideas floating around.

If you would like to contribute to just the radio communications part of this project you can send donations to my PayPal account at the following email address:

pstramer@eurekadsl.net    Please make a note in the box as   Radio Project

For Checks, make them out to:

SLC Distributing

PO Box 116

Eureka MT 59917    put Radio Project in the memo line

or you can call us with your credit or debit card at 800 889 2839

Two more things. 

1.  In over 30 years of patriot activity I have NEVER asked outright for any kind of donation for my own projects or anything else for that matter, but this is very important, and the safety of the patriots at these kinds of activities may well depend more on communications than anything.

You will probably never hear of me asking for money again after this project is completed, but we can and will get this job done one way or another, and depending on what the rogue government does this project could be ongoing for a long time.

2.  Everything we did and will do is and was perfectly lawful and according to FCC regulations for Ham Radio in safety and emergency communications protocol and will be kept that way regardless of what other patriots do with their radios. We will NOT give agents of government any excuses to persecute us for trying to help people who are literally in the crosshairs of tyrannical government agents.

Donations will be used strictly for the communications project and are not tax deductible.

My time is voluntary and the funds go to purchase radio gear or power products and related equipment only.

At your service,

Paul Stramer KC7MEZ   800 889 2839   pstramer@eurekadsl.net     Look up my ham station on http://www.qrz.com/db/KC7MEZ

Announcing new models and lower prices on handheld radios

We have some real values on brand new models that do both the business band and the

ham bands. They are all dual band and work all the repeaters as well as emergency services

and scan the bands.

These are some of the best prices we have seen on handheld radios anywhere,

and we will program up to 10 channels for your area to get you started and no extra charge.

Custom programming is also available.

You won't believe the new low, low prices on these radios, just in time for getting prepared.

http://www.fm2way.com/newradios.htm

Paul Stramer KC7MEZ
SLC Distributing
PO Box 116
Eureka MT 59917
800 889 2839
pstramer@eurekadsl.net

Emergency Communications - What you should do now to prepare

As a comment to an article written by Brandon Smith and Stewart Rhodes on the Oathkeepers website I would like to submit the following. Here is their article:
http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2012/05/16/economic-alert-if-you%e2%80%99re-not-worried-yet%e2%80%a6you-should-be/

I would like to comment and give some references about the communications aspect of becoming prepared for what this article warns us about.

As many of you know, I am in the communications business full time and have been for over 19 years now. I am also a general class amateur and a volunteer examiner for ham radio licensing. Here in Eureka we have been adding new ham radio operators at a steady pace for over 3 years because of the looming crisis the above article lays out.

I have always insisted that the FCC rules from the very beginning have been designed for emergency and safety communications and allow licensed ham radio operators to do things that others can not do. That includes operating out of band, or with otherwise prohibited power when people's lives and property are in danger.

To back that up I present here a letter from the ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League) that clarifies this issue per the FCC rules.  http://www.lincolncountywatch.org/hamguidelines.pdf

Notice that I said "licensed amateurs". There is a reason for requiring that radio operators be licensed to operate on the ham bands and in emergencies.

Ham radio can be either a tremendous asset or it can be a big liability, depending on whether you know what you are doing, or not. By that I mean that a bunch of people who don't know what they are doing can create so much interference with orderly communications protocals that the frequency becomes a hodgepodge of chatter and unusable noise. For evidence of that just tune in the CB band. It can also mean that people can become endangered by the very communications that are purposed to help them save the lives and property they were trying to benefit.

There is no excuse for anyone not getting their ham license. The license is free, the study course cost only about $30, and the test materials cost only $5 - $12 in most places. The test is multiple choice. On the techinican class test there are only 35 questions, and you can get 9 wrong and still pass the test. There is no longer any reqirement on any ham test to learn morse code. We have given the techinicans test to people as young as 8 years with good results.

For a great place to study for your ham license examination use the interactive software at http://www.hamtestonline.com

At this point I always get the same question. Why should I trade in a right for a privelege, and why would I want to let government know who I am? Let me try to answer.

First, radio waves do NOT respect any borders. They go where they will. You can argue that government should not be involved in making rules about radio saying that it's "not in the US constitution". There are a couple of things about that. One is that it IS in the US Constitution that government must protect our borders. That includes invasion. Radio waves can be used to invade also. I believe that it is within the relm of government constitutionally to protect AMERICA'S INVENTION of radio from invasion and incursion by ANY foreign power, and to that end there are treaties with other countries involving the allocation of frequencies and usage of those that are rightly entered into by the FCC.

The second point is this. You don't want to unnecessarily twist the tiger's tail. People do that with the driver's license VS the right to travel, and some end up in jail for a while, when there are much more important issues to fight about. The same applies here. I don't see any licensed hams going to jail because they want to use radio in and emergency.

The third is about staying under the radar where federal agencies are concearned. Guess what. There are almost one MILLION licensed hams just in the US alone. That, friends is good cover, and cover enough for the purpose of preparedness. What are they going to do? Do you think they could try to make criminals of all those hams with the stoke of a pen, and if they did, do you think they could physically enforce that? On the contrary, they would be way in over their heads, and they know it.

If you want to find any ham radio operator that has a license just do a search here with your zip code. http://www.qrz.com
Go study, and when the interactive software says to schedule your test look up some local hams with the qrz.com site link and ask them when the next test will be and where. The rest of this will deal with what to do after you have your license. You don't have to have the callsign to own the right equipment, or to listen to what is going on out on the ham bands. You do need it when you push the transmit button.

What kind of radio should you buy?
To start with you will need a handheld dual band FM transceiver that covers at least the 2 meter and the 70 CM bands. And it would be best if that radio was also type accepted by the FCC to cover the business bands just above both of those bands. Band refers to a group of frequencies designated by the FCC for certain purposes.

The 2 meter ham band covers 144 - 148 Mhz (that is megahertz, or million cycles per second) The business band above that is the VHF business band and covers 150 - 174 Mhz.

Correspondingly there are two bands on UHF also. The ham band is 70cm (centimeters) from 430 - 450 Mhz, and the business band above that at 450 - 470 Mhz. All these frequencies (bands of frequencies) can be covered by ONE radio. We recommend and are using the Wouxun KG-UV2D which fills all these requirements. Find it here: http://www.fm2way.com/fmhand.htm
 
You will be very pleasantly surprised at how well these small radios perform. I have talked up to 10 miles with just a handheld, to another handheld, and much further to a base, mobile, or repeater.

What is a repeater? It's a radio that is located at a very advantageous location like the top of a mountain, that listens on one frequency, and instantly transmits what it hears on another higher or lower frequency, live and in real time. That allows you to extend your range up to the footprint of that particular repeater. Most of our repeaters are either solar powered or have a battery back up system that will allow them to stay on the air for weeks during an emergency. Some of our repeaters have a footprint of up to 150 miles or more.

All of these handheld units use FM modulation. Modulation is the method of putting an intelligence on the signal that can be converted back to audio so you can hear what the guy on the other end is saying. FM is frequency modulation, or varying the frequency of the signal a very little bit so a detector in the receiver of the listening radio can re-create sound. FM is very impervious to noise, and to other weaker signals, so it's usually either pretty clear, or it's not there so it can be heard.

That makes for very quiet radio operation with little interference from things like alternators in a vehicle, or power lines, like you would hear on CB.

Groups of hams can monitor several frequencies at the same time by using a feature called SCAN which rotates around several channels (with a different frequency in each channel) and when someone talks on one of the channels being monitored the scan stops and locks on that channel. At that point if you want to continue on that conversation you can press an exit key or touch the transmit button and the radio stays on that channel. When you are done listening you can start up the scan again and monitor all again.

Suffice it to say that with proper training, and the right equipment, you will be a big asset to your community and the safety and well being of your neighbors as well as your family in any emergency. To that end I hope you will ask lots of questions about Ham radio, and here is the phone number you can call to get personal attention to those questions. 800 889 2839

Paul Stramer   http://www.fm2way.com/
Commo for Oathkeepers.