Something very important for Patriots to remember is that every piece of gear you own is, on some timeline, a consumable. It will wear out or break. It may even be lost, stolen, captured.
2 is 1 and 1 is none.
For the Patriot in a WRoL world, when Amazon Next Day Delivery is no longer your re-supply infrastructure, and jumping online for the crash course in X or Y is no longer an option, you either have what you need and will need, or you do not.
I hope you are building redundancy into your Liberty Games preps. I hope you are building more than one location for essentials. Learn from Zoomie and don't put all your best gear in a canoe and then go down the rapids. ;)
Also, be careful not to deplete all of your resources on securing the best of the best. The first priority is to ensure you can shoot, move & communicate. Before upgrading to Cadillac-Class gear, I would suggest it is more important that you have enough gear to outfit a few buddies/new buddies with the same shoot, move & communicate necessities. Once you have the fundamentals covered, then you can focus on better gear, or more versatile gear, et cetera.
I'll be the first to admit I am a gear snob in many ways. I have been through a lot of blades in my life - from knives to swords. Today I am fortunate that I am able to own a Randall - a knife I consider to be one of the best in the world. But - I also own MANY Cold Steel GI Tantos, a few KA-BARS. These are cheaper knives (the Cold Steel GI is a simple piece of steel that is inexpensive,. and will kill a man just as dead as my Randall - and it'll work as a field knife as well.) If knives have never been your "thing" - you have no need to buy a Randall. You could buy 15 Cold Steel GIs for the same money and have 15 blades you can trust to do "knife chores" in a combat environment. You'll have many to hand out, or to squirrel away - knives can break, just like any other piece of gear.
The AnyTone TERMN-8Rs we just purchased are a good representation of this philosophy in practice. I am a complete Comms novice.- I began my martial arts training when several of our Comms experts began their radio experiences in life. I will never reach their level of knowledge, competence or ability. Nor is it my goal. I want to make sure I can communicate effectively with the people in my Tribe, and that they can do the same. I want to ensure I have sufficient skills to reach out to fellow Patriots a continent away, when needed.
The TERMN-8R suits my entry-level needs on several points: it is inexpensive, especially when you consider how many radios you'd need to buy to cover the same basic modes. It also has the Frequency Hopping capability (between TERMN-8Rs) that is essentially only available on the Motorola DTR series - a radio that is not as versatile as the AnyTone. The TERMN-8R gets me (and my Team) onto the Amateur band, while satisfying all those other needs. I can cut (or grind) my teeth on the TERMN-8R until I am ready to move up into better, more versatile gear. And when some of my Team "out-grows" the TERMN-8Rs, we can put them on a shelf for the new folks who will be coming to our camp when things get sporty.
The gear you have now is not the same gear you are likely to have at the end of the Liberty Games. The same applies with your people. Make certain you approach your role in the Liberty Games prudently, with an eye toward equipping your Team with the Shoot, Move & Communicate basics by any means necessary. Once that is covered, you can start improving your kit one item at a time.
**Note** The TERMN-8Rs are due in our shop tomorrow. Holly and I will get them all into the mail to you by Thursday.
Kerodin
III
Enemies of Liberty are ruthless. To own your Liberty, you'd better come harder than your enemies..
Alright I'll bite. Please elaborate on the Zoomie mishap. :)
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the new radios K. I am also a comm's amateur and will have to figure these out.
The III%SFA really needs to do more group buys. Being able to hit a price point is great but the standardization of equipment is essential.
Thanks, ToneDeaf. We've been considering how to best leverage the Society, and we've been thinking a lot about finding standards so as many people as possible are on the same gear. Obviously, not everyone is going to like every model/spec/widget, but I'm with you that standardization is important, at least as a guideline.
DeleteThe Society should seriously consider setting minimum standards for equipment and doing group buys in two different ranges. Using your example of the Randalls vs the cold steels, they both accomplish the same thing but people in different stages of the Patriot journey will require different levels of equipment quality/price to suit their needs yet meet that minimum standard. By being the first to clearly define and communicate these standards, the Society can set the pace that all other groups will have to keep up with.
ReplyDeleteI have been researching how all of our trailers, containers and shelters will have to meet the standards that FORCE PROVIDER (FP) has set 20 years ago. Because they had taken the initiative to define the standards, my company has to figure out how our stuff will interface with everything else out there. So it is costing us time and resources to convert our products to these standards as opposed to looking at the standards that had already been established.
How many of us wasted money buying that "Rambo" knife from the local convenience store just because it looked cool? It will accomplish the same tasks as the Randall but for how long? That money could have been put towards a Cold Steel or Ka-Bar. Damn, that's embarrassing admitting but it proves my point that standards are required.
So we can set the standards now and be the one out in front or play catch up later on. Look at what Max has done. A true innovator.
You and I are, once again, on the same page.
DeleteJust added a post on this topic. It'll be very easily knocked off the rails, but we'll see if we can get a sense of where our fellow Patriots are at on the topic. It should be a jump-off point.