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September Update

This is an update of some of our activities for the month of September, 2024.

This month started off uneventful, but it sure didn’t end that way.

At the top of many peoples’ minds right now are of course the people impacted by Hurricane Helene. Rather than try to write something to try and jam this situation into a ham-radio-shaped narrative, we’ll just re-post some links to mutual aid disaster relief efforts you can donate to and/or get involved with however you can, as well as some interesting stories we’ve seen come up in our feeds.

Hurricane Helene Mutual Aid Links:

– https://opencollective.com/tallahassee-food-not-bombs
– https://secure.givelively.org/donate/american-humanist-association-tallahassee-fl/hot-food-not-bombs-collaboration
– https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/mutual-aid-disaster-relief
– https://www.patreon.com/trianglemutualaid
– https://opencollective.com/clt-fnb

*More links for donation at: https://itsgoingdown.org/mutual-aid-hurricane-helene/

Disaster Compassion is Real in North Carolina – Article by Margaret Killjoy

It Could Happen Here (podcast) – Disaster Relief, Survival & Hurricane Helene

K4SWL has been posting about his experience of the hurricane and recovery in Western North Carolina here: https://qrper.com/2024/09/aftermath/

AI6YR as always, has been posting a lot of great information on the hurricane and recovery efforts.

We have witnessed, both on HF and web SDR, folks in affected areas relaying traffic for loved ones through radio operators who in areas that were not hit and still have electricity and working phones.

Screenshot of an Instagram post from Meshtastic. It says: We wish to express our deepest sympathies for everyone impacted by Hurricane Helene. Our hearts go out to all those affected , and we hope for the well-being of everyone during this difficult time. <br> To our community, we ask that you refrain from responding to posts about the situation with comments like “this is why you need Meshtastic.” While we understand the value of our platform, these types of comments can come across as opportunistic and may not be helpful at this moment. <br> Instead, let’s focus on supporting those in need right now. There will be a time to educate others about Meshtastic, but for now, compassion and direct support are most important. Thank you for your understanding. –Meshtastic

IF this event has motivated you to prepare for disasters by getting into ham radio and/or other autonomous communications technology and techniques, that’s cool. Here are a few things to check out.

  • The Baofeng UV-9R seems like a nice and cheap handheld radio. It’s waterproof and charges via USB-C, which are both good and useful features. You can find it on that site where everybody buys all their shit. Once you get the radio, program it with FRS, GMRS and MURS frequencies.
  • Go to hamstudy.org to study for the ham radio license exams. It’s free. They really have made much simpler what used to be a pretty daunting bureaucratic process.
  • If you’d like to study with a book, do that. There are a lot of good ones out there. Your local library probably has one.
  • Take a look at our zine. It’s not a study guide, but it’s got a lot of information in there if your just curious what ham radio is all about.
  • Contact us! Seriously. We like talking about this stuff and we want to help anarchists get on the air.

In other news: On September 17 and 18, thousands of handheld pagers and hundreds of handy-talkies exploded simultaneously in an Israeli attack. As of September 22, several people had died including 2 children, and thousands were injured. We’ll leave exact numbers to the journalists, as there are likely to be fluctuations and discrepancies in reporting.

Initial suspicions were that the Israeli government somehow remotely caused the batteries in these devices to explode. This is quite obviously not what happened. The devices were intercepted by the Israeli government at some point en route to Lebanon and were filled with explosives.

The Israeli government has been committing war crimes and genocide before this attack (and before October 7, 2023), and now the mind is boggled even further by people who still believe this kind of behavior is justified.

Just to be clear: No borders. No nations. Nobody gets an ethnostate. Period.

Should you worry about this type of supply-chain attack?

Short answer: No, probably not.

Longer answer: No, probably not. But you can probably open up your radio with a screwdriver to check on that sort of thing. But basically, no.

As for what we’ve been up to:

  • winterizing our antennas
  • a little bit of POTA
  • voice contact between comrades from the East coast to the Midwest
  • building a solar generator
  • printing zines

Catch you down the log. 73s and Solidarity.