Off the Grid, On the Air Is Now Available
A clear, honest picture of the radio landscape and a practical path to building communications capability
When the grid goes down, when cell towers get overwhelmed, when the internet stops working, radio keeps working. It always has. That is not a prepper fantasy. It is a documented pattern that has repeated itself through every major disaster, every infrastructure failure, and every crisis where people desperately needed to reach each other and could not.
Off the Grid, On the Air is a new on-demand course designed to give you a clear, honest picture of the radio landscape and a practical path to building communications capability that does not depend on infrastructure you do not control.
The course covers every major personal radio service: FRS, GMRS, CB, and ham radio. For each one, you will learn how it works, what it costs, what it can and cannot do, and when it is the right tool for the job. There is no hype and no gear worship. Just an honest breakdown of your options so you can make informed decisions.
Beyond the 4 main radio services, the course covers mesh networking with Meshtastic and Meshcore for off-grid text communication, and Rattlegram, a free app that lets you encode and transmit short text messages over any radio you already own. Neither of these requires special hardware beyond what you probably already have or can get for under $50.
The course also covers the organizations that put radio operators to work in their communities: ARRL, RACES, ARES, and SKYWARN. If you have ever wanted to do something genuinely useful with a radio license beyond talking to strangers, these are the on-ramps.
There is a full section on how weather affects radio propagation, which matters a lot more than most new operators realize, and a section dedicated to band plans and communications planning for your household and community. Knowing how to operate a radio is one thing. Having a plan that your family and neighbors can actually follow when things go sideways is another.
The course closes with a step-by-step walkthrough of the FCC licensing process for both GMRS and ham radio, including how to create your FCC Registration Number, navigate the Universal Licensing System, and find a ham exam session. No exam is required for GMRS. The Technician ham exam has 35 questions drawn from a published pool and most people pass it with 2 to 4 weeks of casual study.
This course does not replace a licensing exam prep course. It prepares you to understand the landscape well enough to know which license to pursue, which gear to buy first, and how to build a network of people around you who can communicate when normal systems fail.
No technical background required. If you have been curious about radio but did not know where to start, this is where you start.
Off the Grid, On the Air is available now for $49.