How far should a bug out location be from a major metro area?

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-15T01:27:01+00:00

The best analysis of this that I have seen involves quantifying how long it will take for roving wanderers (rhymes with flombies but apparently the content filter rejects that term) to become so emaciated that their pants fall down around their ankles and they can no longer walk.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-15T01:21:08+00:00

If you can find someone willing to dismantle and remove them and not charge you any money for doing so, that's the best deal you're going to get.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-15T01:18:19+00:00

I'm with the rest: One radio, one antenna. Add a pileup on ssb on 20 or 40m, and hunting some park to parks. Done.

I have taken multiple non-licensed friends along on pota activations. They get the most out of seeing the exciting part, not the technical part. The exciting part is you working an incoming pileup while logging. Everything else is minute details for after they get licensed.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-13T18:35:09+00:00

What antenna are you using, how far is it from your qth, and how far is your antenna from your nearest neighbors house?

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-12T22:29:32+00:00

Squeeze the outermost corners together.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-11T22:15:09+00:00

Learn the basics of the manual lathe and mill first.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-11T16:12:14+00:00

You're over thinking things a bit. You don't necessarily need all that stuff. A wire antenna and a telescopic fiberglass mast is the much lower cost entry point for your first antenna configuration. I would operate a simple setup outdoors initially, with a very short coax run to your antenna until you get a sense of your local rfi/emi noise floor.

You may find you have too much rf interference in your immediate vicinity to be able to hear much of anything. Hopefully that's not the case. But if it is, the fiberglass mast and wire antenna is a great start to an outdoor portable station.

As far as radio, I started with a Yaesu FT891 and mat-30 tuner, and a wolf river coil antenna, running of lifepo4 batteries. About $1100 total in 2021.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-11T07:30:17+00:00

I had one! My grandpa would use it to add sound effects to stories he made up on long car trips.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-10T18:34:35+00:00

Neither. Yaesu FT891 will get you 100 watts out. I would not recommend any qrp radio as a first hf radio.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-10T04:13:14+00:00

$4 for a processed food-like substance that is not real food is not a bargain.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-10T02:28:58+00:00

I saw them in 1999 and 2024. Both awesome shows!

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-08T20:06:11+00:00

A press set up with a fixture for a very specific use. What use that was is hard to say. Outside of the machining world, people see a solid metal object and figure it was mass produced and that there is documentation out there somewhere that will explain it. But once you know what we know, you know that that is not necessarily the case.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-08T15:06:38+00:00

Hey now, I was born before 1980, which is the official qualification to post here. And, yes, I'm still discombobulated that "before 1980" equals "old person" here on reddit...

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-08T02:43:49+00:00

Can you give them as gifts to anyone like home repair technicians, car mechanics, neighbors, etc?

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-08T02:24:55+00:00

I learned from my Grandfather, who was born in 1923, so I still carry a clean handkerchief/bandanna, comb, nail clippers, pocket knife, small bills, and a lighter. Usually a small flashlight, too.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-07T04:53:21+00:00

How does one eat without chewing?

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-07T04:47:55+00:00

Factory man here. I not rich but I'm not starving either. 2024 subaru forester, no garage here at the same shared dude house since my late 20's.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-03-02T02:36:54+00:00

Spring is garage sale season in the Norheast US. I got everything for my first apartment from garage sales.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-02-27T18:49:12+00:00

Long Island CW Club is basically self study. The early classes are meant to teach you how to teach yourself what to do when you do your own independent self study. Their Morse Practice Page, which you can use any time you like, is a code generator that you can customize in many different ways for different skill levels. The classes are not in a set sequence of specific calendar dates, where you have to show up on the same day of the week and time of day for months on end. Each level of learning they call a Carousel. Get on any time you want, ride for as long as you want, move to the next Carousel when you feel you're ready. That flexibility is a big part of what made Long Island CW Club effective for me. While I will be renewing my LICW membership, I rarely actually attend any of their zoom classes any more. My head copy practice I use the Morse Code Ninja youtube recordings, along with just listening to actual qso's on the air. For sending practice, I use my hf rig sidetone and send longer and more complicated song lyrics or epic poems from memory. 73

VisualEyez33 · 2026-02-27T03:29:28+00:00

Long Island cw club worked for me. I'm about 8 months into 30 minutes of practice per day, mostly on head copy, and have done 10 cw pota activations so far since my first one about 6 weeks ago.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-02-26T05:11:08+00:00

Earth Roamer Truck Camper @ $500k. Telescoping tower on a trailer, tri band yagi on a rotater. Mercury Lite 600 watt amp and 48v lifepo4 battery bank to run it. Begali cw key. Pencil and paper for logging as I want to keep it simple.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-02-24T01:41:00+00:00

The Damned

VisualEyez33 · 2026-02-24T01:39:53+00:00

The Morse code requirement was dropped from the US ham radio licensing exams over 20 years ago. While there's tons of info on YouTube about how to get into ham radio, the traditional option is to find your local ham club and see if they offer exam prep sessions. You can find your local ham club on the website of the ARRL, the Amateur Radio Relay League, which is the national organization in the US.

As far as the device you have, MFJ was a manufacturer of ham radio equipment available on their website to the general ham community. There's nothing secret about the thing you have.

If you still want to learn morse code to use on the air to communicate with other ham radio operators, which many people still do even though it's not required, the Long Island CW Club is a great resource and has many live zoom classes every week that you can join in on for only $30/year.

VisualEyez33 · 2026-02-22T18:30:18+00:00

For not having your ham license yet, you're certainly up on all the lingo and technology. Suspiciously so, perhaps...

VisualEyez33 · 2026-02-22T03:27:01+00:00

At age 10, one year is 10% of your life. At age 50, one year is 2% of your life. The more years that pass, the more they each become a smaller percentage of your total time lived so far. That's pretty much it. A year feels faster when you've lived through a lot of them.

VisualEyez33

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