Old school Communications

[Applejack]

They always say laughter is the best medicine. We all need that from time to time.

[Snyper708]

Originally posted by GrizzlyetteAdams View Post
(pssst.... I have no idea if Master Po ever said that 'cause I made it up; it sounded like a good idea at the time, lol.)

It's great advice no matter who gets the credit. ;)

[GrizzlyetteAdams]

Hobo language (signs) - old school communication during the Great Depression that still persists to this day (with the addition of wifi symbols)

Here is a handy dandy chart that I will be copying into my (old school paper) notebook and committing some to memory. Who knows when I might see some of these symbols, and may find it useful to know what they mean.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/All-things-HOBO-signs-and-symbols

The early 1900s were a time of displacement of over 500,000 people in the U.S. Many became Hobos and became a migrant society seeking work as they criss-crossed the country. The most common routes followed the railway lines and it was often a dangerous and meager lifestyle. Hobos communicated to one another by carving or drawing symbols on trees, post, bridges, and even houses to both offer directional guidance and warnings of what lay ahead. What follows are 60 of the most common along with the message behind them.

[tmttactical]

Hobo language (signs) - old school communication during the Great Depression that still persists to this day (with the addition of wifi symbols)

Here is a handy dandy chart that I will be copying into my (old school paper) notebook and committing some to memory. Who knows when I might see some of these symbols, and may find it useful to know what they mean.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/All-things-HOBO-signs-and-symbols

Good info as always. It is now in my files too.

[Morgan101]

Those are very interesting, Griz. Thanks for sharing.

[GrizzlyetteAdams]

Thank you both. :)

A study of the hobo signs is interesting; it's intuitive but in a street-smart kind of way. Many of the signs that are not OPSEC-sensitive are intuitive and easy to remember and follow. But the more OPSEC the situation, the more likely the signs would not make much sense to the average person who was not familiar with reading hobo symbols. In some cases, it would have an opposite meaning.

For example, the sign designated by a circle with a single slash through it would indicate to the average person to be bad, null, or void...the universal "no" symbol, but this is the true meaning of it:

Good road to follow: When leaving the path of the rails, a symbol like this could save unnecessary and unproductive routes by telling a hobo that a road or trail was a good choice and presenting opportunity.

And I like this one:

Bad: Any time a single carved or drawn (SOLID fill) round dot was displayed with another symbol, it meant “No, Bad, Do Not,” etc. In some cases a good symbol could be “corrected” if the message had changed.

So you could change the meaning by removing the solid filling (be it rocks or what not).



On that note, just a thought that I had to mitigate the possibility of the "bad guys" tampering with a critical sign: Since the ease of changing a critical sign could fall into the wrong hands that have nefarious intent, for further OPSEC a certain group or family could agree ahead of time to duplicate their signs in a certain location, such as at the base of a nearby tree, but on the side farthest away from the beaten path (and to the casual observer)...or something like that.

[Yenix]

For HAM radios, if you are a little skilled in electronics, there are few workarounds for this.

When I was around 16yo, at the time of no mobile phones, I remember we were building selective call modules for your ham stations. It as a simple module, that wakes up a radio station on a certain tone combination. Which could be used as basic caller identification. Maybe I can still find some schematics if I'll dig deep enough in my old stuff.

Encrypting communication is a whole different story. What comes to my mind that most ham stations are capable of transmitting way outside their intended frequency. In some of them, the digital ones, it was just a matter of pinning some contacts together. This was kind of a disable feature due to different laws in different countries. I remember my old Presiden Lincoln was sold with an ability to use just CB frequencies (26.565 Mhz - 27.405 Mhz), but with a little tweak, I went from 24 - 36 Mhz. Only you have to be careful to adapt the antenna for this, as you start to get more interferences and the transmitting end warms up a lot.

So I would probably use some non-public, at the time unlawful frequency, together with SSB (single side band) modulation, which will most probably be out of the understanding of most robbing armed mobs around and they will hear nothing on their stations on any channel. Sure it is not 100%, it will come close to 90 and some luck.

[Murphy]

For HAM radio, digital modes would be a good way to communicate privately. Heck, even in normal times, most people aren't able to decode the digital modes or have the software to do it.

[Yenix]

For HAM radio, digital modes would be a good way to communicate privately. Heck, even in normal times, most people aren't able to decode the digital modes or have the software to do it.

But you need computer to do this... I gets little more complex.

[jimLE]

This topic reminded me of the movie Code talker.in which it's a great movie.anyhow. It's a great idea for any family that knows a language other then whats known language(s) of their area.

https://www.google.com/search?ei=rI8...31.vd3-5pp_KFM

[Murphy]

But you need computer to do this... I gets little more complex.

Well, yes and no.. you do need a processor.. but it can be anything from a cell phone or tablet to a full blown PC or Laptop. And a lot of the higher end HF radios (Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom, etc) have the processors built right into them. I bought a Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 with a Core I5 processor just for this purpose. The touch screen is nice!

It does add a layer of complexity but its not difficult to learn at all. Its not a "skill", its more like learning to operate any other electronic toy that has lots of buttons and settings.

I learned PSK, BPSK, MFSK, RTTY, MT-63 and a few others. I can tell which mode is being used just by listening to the pattern of digital sounds. (kind of like the fax machine sound) My library has around 300 sound samples and the specs for almost every digital mode there is. From satellite transmissions to media broadcast modes and amateur radio. It allows me to listen to a signal and then browse the library to identify it. I can filter results based on signal bandwidth, frequency range, etc.

Heck, using software, one could just use CW (Morse Code) and set the character rate high enough that no human could keep up with it. I've seen people do that where my CW decoder was pulling in words almost as fast as one could type them out.

My wife was calling me Radar O'Reilly for a while when I was learning this stuff.

The other nice thing about HAM digital modes is that its very much like text messaging or email. You don't have to be at your radio to receive the message. So long as the radio and processor are set up, a message could be sent to you anytime and be waiting for you when you got back.

There are even ways to leave a message like an answering machine so when your radio detects an incoming message, it replies all by itself.

I have an all-modes ICOM base station, 2 high power mobile units, and just short of a dozen handheld radios now. Communications will be a huge advantage if things go bad. In fact, I put communications as being almost as important as food and weapons. It should be the third prep anyone makes.

[Snyper708]

No batteries required, no software problems, no programming
OLD School Communications:

https://search.aol.com/aol/image;_ylt=AwrE1xVC_TZcV8sAQkFpCWVH;_ylu=X3oDMTB0N2Noc21lBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNwaXZz?q=boy+scout+trail+signs&s_it=searchtabs&v_t=loki-tb-sb

[tmttactical]

How about Pig Latin, bet there are not many that even know what that is, much less how to speak it, simple and easy to learn. No batteries needed.