This is an update of some of our activities for the month of May, 2025.

In this post:

• tracking the trackers at anti-ICE and No Kings demonstrations
• Combat bad “protest tips” with water and things that are actually true.
• What some of our members have actually been doing
• A cool antenna tower made out of bamboo.

This post is quite a bit later in the month than we like to make them, but a lot has been happening in June so far and we honestly don’t have much to contribute other than advising everyone to stay safe, stay dangerous, and protect each other.

TRACKING THE TRACKERS

Since the ongoing anti-ICE and No Kings protests are probably what’s on most people’s minds at the moment, let’s start there. 404 Media has a pretty good article about the flight patterns of manned and unmanned aircraft during that time.

DHS Black Hawks and Military Aircraft Surveil the LA Protests

If you would like to be a part of the network that tracks and monitors flight patterns, you can build your own node with a single-board computer, an SDR dongle, and some software. Here’s one guide, but there are many others.

BAD “PROTEST TIPS” AND OVER-HYPING MESHTASTIC

there are so many bad “protest tips” flying around on social media. Probably the most important thing to know is that WATER is the only thing you should ever put in your eyes. Not Maalox, not milk, not baking soda, not any other cockamamie social media influencer crap. WATER.

The second thing, at least for us, is that Meshtastic is cool, but it’s not a miracle, and it’s more complicated than people like to make it out to be. One Instagram post made several false and conflicting claims, such as:

1. “It works in blackouts, signal jams, or shutdown zones when everything else fails or is compromised.” (why is this false? Any part of the radio spectrum can be jammed, including 433, 866, and 915 MHz. It’s not magic.)
2. “Leaves behind zero metadata.” (how do you figure? Metadata are data about data. Wherever there are data, there are metadata.)
3. “Surveillance tech isn’t built to track LoRa yet.” (Surveillance networks are literally being built out of LoRa devices right now. Namely, Amazon’s Ring cameras. Furthermore, it’s still radio. Even if it’s encrypted, it can be surveilled at least as easily as any other encrypted radio transmission.)

So yeah. Meshtastic is indeed very cool, and can be used as an encrypted communication tool, but we think hyping it up with false claims will just end up frustrating people. We don’t need to be panic-buying e-waste, we need to be learning and practicing the use of tools for autonomous communication.

WHAT HAVE WE ACTUALLY BEEN UP TO LATELY?

• Our Australian comrade is messing around with Reticulum. They have gotten the system working over Ethernet as a WiFi node, as well as transmitting data via QR codes on paper. (QR codes can store up to 3kB of data)
• A comrade in the Upper Midwest has received their Extra license. While they are slowly building up their HF capability, they are working to build local contacts and learning more, so that they can be another resource both locally and online.
• A comrade on the West Coast got their General license.
• One of our Northern European comrades has gotten pretty good at quickly deploying an End-Fed Half Wave antenna, as long as there is a tree. They can go from putting down their pack to making digital contacts in less than 10 minutes.
• A comrade in southern Appalachia is building a VHF flowerpot antenna, which is apparently a less popular antenna in the US than it is in Europe and Asia despite being quite cheap to make and very discreet.

Check out this 30 foot tower made of bamboo!

NOTE: This will likely be our last post on Blackblogs.org, as the site is shutting down July 1. We will be publishing new posts on https://anarchistrrl.noblogs.org from now on.

This is an update of some of our activities for the month of April, 2025.

• May Day
• Individual reports,
• AT&T to shut down email-SMS gateway
• The National Weather Service is being destroyed. How do we build a new one in the shell of the old?

First off, we hope you all had a lovely May Day full of rage in the streets or relaxation in the sheets, or whatever you wanted out of it! It was inspiring to see so many working people actively celebrating the holiday this week.

Moving on…

One of our European comrades has built and end-fed halfwave antenna from scratch, and has been getting a hang of the idiosyncrasies involved in that, combined with amplifiers and tuners. A few weeks ago he made a contact in Kuwait!

One comrade in the Midwest built a solar Meshtastic node. Still battling moisture ingress, but so far the device still works.

AT&T is shutting down their SMS gateway on June 17th, and other cell service providers are likely to follow. While it’s pretty rare to find an area of North America with Internet access but without cell service, it has found utility in areas struck by climate disasters – specifically by hams, but probably by others as well, even in times of calm. Luckily, an alternative has already been implemented. The down side is that users have to opt-in to this system.

The Trump administration’s mass layoffs have left large swaths of the so-called United States with a dearth of meteorologists ahead of hurricane season. Last month the state of Arkansas asked for FEMA assistance after a rash of tornadoes damaged hundreds of homes, and Trump said ‘no’.

So even the kind of “help” the federal government provides – which can sometimes be better or worse than nothing, depending on who you ask – may not be available.

Even if you are not in one of the highlighted areas of this map, this is not good news for you. This represents potential degradation of weather prediction models for areas outside the areas where meteorologists are still in an organized state, as scientists must attempt to pick up the slack. In other words, this is bad for everyone.

Here is a really great video that highlights how complex the global system is for predicting weather. Now imagine if an area the size of the United States, which is basically an entire continent in itself, suddenly produces subpar data or no data at all in some cases.

This is not to say that other prediction models would become completely inaccurate, but considering the fact that many of these models use NOAA data to inform their results it seems likely.

Make no mistake, this is an attempted mass murder of poor people – a class war crime. But the upshot is that this leaves ordinary people to take care of each other, and to help each other to survive and thrive in spite of an authoritarian regime which would gladly see us dead.

Just so we’re not all left with a useless sense of dread after reading that, here’s a list of ideas for things you can do:

• Water: Get several good water filters. Sawyer water filters are great, and still about $20. Don’t just get one for you, get some for your neighbors as well.
• Transportation: Try to keep your gas tank at least half full, and prepare it to take on passengers. Tune up your bicycle and get back on it if it’s been a while. See if there’s a volunteer bicycle co-op near you that will help you fix up an old bike, or sell you a refurbished bike at a modest cost.
• Of course, get some radios and practice using them with your friends and loved ones. Strictly in terms of localized disasters, local communications during times of disaster and recovery will probably be more useful than long-range HF communications. FRS and GMRS radios will likely be the most accessible to the average person, although an unlocked ham radio with FRS, GMRS, and other channels programmed in will give you some flexibility in a pinch.
• Consider setting up a weather sensor at your home and recording the data it collects. Contribute that data to the wider world using automated systems. We’re not being specific here because there’s a wide range of devices and ways to do this.
• Weather satellites will likely may be in orbit and continue transmitting images and data to the surface for quite a while, even if the NWS disappeared tomorrow. However, as the older LEO satellites are retired, they may be used for experiments that could not otherwise be performed while performing their critical functions. Other countries also have weather satellites in both LEO and GEO. You can learn how to receive and decode these data with a cheap SDR or other receiver.
• Take a Skywarn storm spotter training while you still can. Storm spotters observe severe weather conditions and report their findings to the NWS, often over ham radio. They help provide information about storms, which aids in issuing warnings to protect lives. Seeing as how the NWS may soon be unable to perform these critical functions, it behooves us to gain whatever skills and training we can – even though, quite frankly, building an alternative to these systems with some punks on a shoestring budget is…well, let’s not end this on a low note, shall we? Which brings us to the final suggestion, which we admittedly not really taken as of yet:
• Reach out to meteorologists – including current and former NWS employees – and see what they need. Ask for their help, even. Try to see how you can engage with each other in a spirit of mutual aid to see what you can accomplish.

P.S. Blackblogs.org has announced that they are shutting down in a couple months. So, we have migrated all past posts to anarchistrrl.noblogs.org instead. We will do the same with this and future posts until this server is shut down and we must complete the migration to Noblogs.org. We appreciate Blackblogs team’s years of service! Sad to see it go, but good on them for recognizing burnout.

73 ..

This is an update of some of our activities from the month of March, 2025.

We have updated our Contact page to include DeltaChat. This is an encrypted messaging app that uses email servers and manages PGP/GPG encryption keys locally for you. So if you have been wanting to contact us by some secure means, it’s now a lot easier.

Our comrade from Sweden has obtained their amateur radio license and has made their first contact on HF with someone in southern Europe!

Two comrades have been playing with the Radtel RT-4D. This is a DMR handheld transceiver which supports AES-256 encryption currently being sold online for about $50-$60.

They are working on a write-up as they continue to learn about the device. In short, DMR and encryption do work, but the quality of the device itself leaves something to be desired, and it’s unknown whether or not the implementation of the AES-256 standard is trustworthy.

Crimethinc released a short speculative fiction story on the 21st about some technological tools that could be used in the case of mass raids on anarchists in the US. The story mentions radio a couple of times, which got us excited. However, aside from mentioning a Baofeng radio by name, the precise methods by which PGP encrypted data could be transmitted over the air were not mentioned.

Back at the buried van, they carefully ration their laptop use, laboriously rebuilding battery charge from a damaged solar panel. They only hook up to the Baofeng radio at specific times. With email effectively banned, Ash is now running communication bursts in the region via radio. About once a week, she bikes out to random locations around the edge of the city and fires off a blast of noise over ham radio before taking off. A few drones now circle the city taking pictures, triangulating her signal each time she sends it. She’s in a race against time with them.

This noise is encrypted, of course, and decrypted via private keys now shared by a wider set of anarchist survivors. Each communication burst includes the time of the next burst, though not the place. Jake and Ethan connect their radio to a program on their laptop each time, waiting to read and decrypt.

Most nights, it’s just news from the wider world, ferried in via underground networks. Warnings of systematic sweeps planned for certain neighborhoods or local highways being closed by militias.

But one night, it’s something new.

It would be unreasonable to expect the author to go into all the boring details of how this would work in a short story meant to illustrate to the reader what’s possible. And in fact, like other tactics and technologies in this story – it does work and it is possible. Check out our post on the NBEMS for an example of how something like this could be done. However, some of the dimension we think is missing from the story is how complex, slow, and just…fiddly all this can be.

It really does take practice. If something like the scenario the story presents is something you are concerned about, and you believe that the tactics and technologies presented could at least help combat those problems, then it is extremely important to plan, coordinate, and practice before things get that bad.

If we don’t catch you on the bands, you’ll hear from us next month.

In solidarity, and with love and rage

73

This is an update of some of our activities for the month of February 2025.

We have been joined by new comrades from North Carolina and Sweden this month. The first has obtained their Technician and General license, and the other is working on the Swedish Amateur Radio Operator’s License.

One comrade’s EFRW antenna is finally back up after being knocked down by hurricane force winds.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has developed a very interesting tool called Rayhunter. They describe it as an “IMSI catcher catcher”. IMSI catchers (a.k.a. cell-site simulators [CSS] or Stingrays) are fake cell towers used by police to collect cellphone traffic by simulating a legitimate cellphone tower that phones would automatically connect to, thus eliminating the need for police to obtain a warrant for the same data from cellphone carriers. It will be interesting, once the data comes in, to see how prevalent the use of CSS really are.

Creating a Drone Based Synthetic Aperture Radar is now within reach for anyone with about 800 EUR and a lot of time on their hands.

So while it really hasn’t been a good month generally for people in the US who actually attempt to provide a basic level of service to their fellow humans, February has at least shown some promise for low-cost counter-surveillance technology.

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

Some of us have been studying for our Technician and General class licenses, and tinkering with Meshtastic solar nodes.

One of us had a couple of OLIVIA contacts on the 20 meter band. Olivia and other similar “keyboard-to-keyboard” modes are interesting because you see the other person’s message come in one letter at a time, and you can immediately start composing your reply while the message is still coming in, and even continue editing the latter part of your reply while the first part of your reply is still being transmitted. So it’s synchronous (e.g. IM or verbal conversation) in some ways, and asynchronous (e.g. sending a letter or an email) in others. It’s an unusual way to communicate, but really easy to get into a groove once you get used to it.

Verotelecom has released an updated firmware for the VR-N76 HT, which unlocks the Bluetooth KISS TNC and allows the use of applications like APRSdroid and Winlink instead of Verotelecom’s proprietary Android application. Relatedly, a clone of this handheld has been released by BTech for a few dollars cheaper, called the Btech UV-Pro. VGC’s (Verotelecom’s) firmware appear to be 100% compatible with this device.

Winter Field Day is coming up on January 25th, and the way it’s going, many of us may actually have winter conditions to practice in who usually don’t. We’ll see how that goes.

Other than that, it’s a new year. It’s also 107 days until May Day.

This is an update of some of our activities for the month of January, 2025.

January was a hell of a year, especially for those of us on Turtle Island, but also for those of us who cannot escape the foreign policies of the so-called “United States”.

It somehow seems old-hat to say that we’re dealing with an overt fascist takeover here. It’s almost too obvious to be meaningful anymore. But despair is what’s expected of us, so instead we must act on plans if we have them, and develop plans if we don’t. Find your people if you haven’t.

(video) The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Organizing – Anark

Steps are being taken by many to remedy the situation. Some of us know each other and some don’t, and that’s fine. There are a lot of different kinds of work that need to be done.

(podcast) It Could Happen Here: About That Nazi Salute

It seems we can barely catch a breath between crises anymore. While people in southern Appalachia will continue to struggle with the effects of Hurricane Helene for years to come, a significant chunk of occupied Tongva territory so-called “Los Angeles” has been decimated by fire.

https://www.icqpodcast.com/news/2025/1/26/ham-radio-operators-serving-during-california-firestorms

Here are a few little things we’ve done this month:

• Racked up a small handful of contacts on Winter Field Day. The 100Ah battery box handled the 24hr contest fairly well.

• One of us obtained a new ATS-20+ receiver, which is a nice little Arduino Nano-based AM/FM/SSB receiver available for about $30-$40 that seems very hackable. (No link for this, as there are a number of sellers from various websites.) Paired with a small passive magnetic loop antenna, it’s quite easy and fun to do some SWLing in the woods.

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

Some of us have been studying for our Technician and General class licenses, and tinkering with Meshtastic solar nodes.

One of us had a couple of OLIVIA contacts on the 20 meter band. Olivia and other similar “keyboard-to-keyboard” modes are interesting because you see the other person’s message come in one letter at a time, and you can immediately start composing your reply while the message is still coming in, and even continue editing the latter part of your reply while the first part of your reply is still being transmitted. So it’s synchronous (e.g. IM or verbal conversation) in some ways, and asynchronous (e.g. sending a letter or an email) in others. It’s an unusual way to communicate, but really easy to get into a groove once you get used to it.

Verotelecom has released an updated firmware for the VR-N76 HT, which unlocks the Bluetooth KISS TNC and allows the use of applications like APRSdroid and Winlink instead of Verotelecom’s proprietary Android application. Relatedly, a clone of this handheld has been released by BTech for a few dollars cheaper, called the Btech UV-Pro. VGC’s (Verotelecom’s) firmware appear to be 100% compatible with this device.

Winter Field Day is coming up on January 25th, and the way it’s going, many of us may actually have winter conditions to practice in who usually don’t. We’ll see how that goes.

Other than that, it’s a new year. It’s also 107 days until May Day.

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

One of us talked to a mutual aid group about ham radio. About 50 people were in attendance. Recorded audio of the talk is being edited.

A member from the Great Lakes region passed their Technician’s exam.

Blackblogs.org went down for about a week in November. These things happen even to the best of services. But due to a perceived increase in instability of IT infrastructure across the wider Internet, we have decided to mirror this site on anarchistrrl.noblogs.org. We may also mirror the site in some Smolweb form such as Gemini or a BBS as well, but mostly just for fun.

Crimethinc has an excellent article on an Anarchist response to hurricane Helene. Excerpt about radio below:

Radios, especially ham radios, are another important means of communication that should be arranged in advance with people who already know how to use them. Our mountainous terrain limits the distance that radios can broadcast, but it would still have been helpful if we had possessed ham radios.

https://crimethinc.com/2024/11/13/after-the-hurricane-anarchist-disaster-response-in-appalachia

That ridiculous looking 42.5 inch collapsible antenna sold by Abbree is actually pretty good, at least for RX. This makes sense as it’s approximately 1/2 wave on the 2 meter band.

This is an update of some of our activities for the month of October, 2024. (Originally published on anarchistrrl.blackblogs.org on Nov. 7, 2024)

A demo was held at an Anarchist book fair where we made voice contact with a comrade about 950 miles (~1529 KM) away on the 20 meter band.

We have been joined by new comrades from Australia, northern Europe, the East coast, Southeast, upper-Midwest, and West coast of the so-called “United States”. Among these comrades are people connected with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. We are forming plans to share knowledge and resources in the near future.

Archive.org was hacked and came back online 12 days later. 31M user accounts and hashed passwords were stolen. This was a pretty considerable disruption to many online activities, including the ability to archive news articles, political commentary, and to fact check claims about – among many other things – Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.

And while this didn’t happen in October, obviously most of us woke up yesterday morning to find that Donald Trump had been elected to be the next president of the so-called “United States”. Whether you voted or not, and regardless of your feelings about the opposition, now is yet again – and still, as always – the time to prepare, and to protect and uplift one another.

Use Signal, use Tor. Build community, grow food, train up, get comms. We protect us.

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”

Shevek, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Leguin

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

A demo was held at an Anarchist book fair where we made voice contact with a comrade about 950 miles (~1529 KM) away on the 20 meter band.

We have been joined by new comrades from Australia, northern Europe, the East coast, Southeast, upper-Midwest, and West coast of the so-called “United States”. Among these comrades are people connected with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. We are forming plans to share knowledge and resources in the near future.

Archive.org was hacked and came back online 12 days later. 31M user accounts and hashed passwords were stolen. This was a pretty considerable disruption to many online activities, including the ability to archive news articles, political commentary, and to fact check claims about – among many other things – Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.

And while this didn’t happen in October, obviously most of us woke up yesterday morning to find that Donald Trump had been elected to be the next president of the so-called “United States”. Whether you voted or not, and regardless of your feelings about the opposition, now is yet again – and still, as always – the time to prepare, and to protect and uplift one another.

Use Signal, use Tor. Build community, grow food, train up, get comms. We protect us.

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”

Shevek, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Leguin