Prepper Camp 2025: The Ultimate Off-Grid Weekend Guide

Augason Farms
Support the podcast. Click on my affiliate link and use coupon code PODCASTPREP for 10% discount! 

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We're heading to Prepper Camp 2025 in Saluda, North Carolina, for a weekend packed with essential survival skills despite forecasted rain. Excitement is building for classes on ham radio, mesh communications, drone usage, blacksmithing, cast iron restoration, and many more critical preparedness topics.

• Prepper Camp runs Friday through Sunday with a full schedule of classes each day
• Weather forecasts show rain throughout the weekend with hurricane activity turning away from the coast
• Most classes are taught once daily, allowing flexibility to catch sessions despite schedule conflicts
• Testing new gear including Starlink satellite internet with the roaming package that can be paused when not needed
• Bringing a Renergy 400-watt solar blanket to test solar power collection despite expected overcast conditions
• Run Hide Fight podcast reached a wide audience with Australia now the second highest country for downloads
• First affiliate commission received from Augason Farms using the podcast's discount code

Please share the podcast and leave a review - it really helps the podcast gain traction on different platforms!

Augason Farms
Support the podcast. Click on my affiliate link and use coupon code PODCASTPREP for 10% discount!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Podcast Introduction
• 0:48 Prepper Camp Weekend Preparations
• 2:21 Weather Forecast and Hurricane Updates
• 3:18 Class Schedule and Topics Overview
• 7:06 Starlink and Solar Tech Testing
• 9:30 Podcast Updates and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended, off-grid compound high in the mountains, coming to you from his florida room in richmond, virginia neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, keith hey y'all, it's keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, september 23rd 2025.

Speaker 2: 0:48

And it is Prepper Camp Weekend. I have not tent camped in forever and so it's been taking me two or three days to make a list and to find everything that I need and the things that I thought I have that I lost or never had. To begin with, I've had to run out and buy a few things. So definitely looking forward to it Thursday, friday, saturday and Sunday. So I'm leaving Thursday. The actual prepper camp is Friday, saturday, Sunday, leaving an O-Dark 100 on Thursday to get down there and get set up. Apparently, if you get there later on Thursday and then early Friday, there's just a lot of people trying to get in. A lot of people do stay in the campground. There are people that camp in Tent City, where I will be, but the majority of people drive in. They're staying at hotels in the area or they live relatively close and they just drive back and forth. So it's going to be a wet weekend. Looking at the forecast, there's a couple of disturbances going on. Checked out the National Hurricane Center a few minutes ago. Gabrielle took a hard right turn, just like Aaron did. I think Aaron was the hurricane a few weeks ago that took the hard right turn. So we are definitely I don't want to say definitely do but we've dodged two bullets. So I'm not sure what disturbance one and disturbance two are going to do. They're way out in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure if they're going to develop into hurricanes and actually make landfall or not. Regardless, the forecast for Prepper Camp and most of the East Coast is rain Checking. The forecast in Saluda, north Carolina, where Prepper Camp is anywhere from a half inch to three quarters of an inch to Saturday. The last time I checked was hardly any rain, but then the rain picking back up on Sunday. So ultimately we'll see what happens. I had a chance to look at the schedule. They printed the schedule the other day and the classes are Friday, saturday and there's actually a full slate of classes for Sunday. I know a lot of times you go to little conventions and meetups and Sundays like the half day, but they've actually run it all the way through until about 5, 15, 6 o'clock on Sunday, which is fantastic. So a lot of the classes they're taught. Each class is taught one time a day, so there is a lot of overlap. So the great thing about it is, for example. So ham radio I'm definitely going to go to the ham radio class on Friday, but that also conflicts with mesh communications. Meshtastic Talked about that a couple podcasts ago, so I'm very interested in that. So I'm going to have to go to one on Friday, then one on Saturday, or maybe Friday, sunday. Bug out bags I don't see any conflicts with bug out bags. Oh no, canning. So the canning diva will be there. So I've got a conflict with bug out bags and canning for all. So I have to figure that one out again. Friday, saturday or a Friday Sunday. I'll get that squared away. Bug out vehicles I hear they're going to bring one of those big monster roam the earth kind of things that costs about $500,000. It'll be kind of cool to walk around in one Situational awareness I've been preaching that for years. Night vision That'll be kind of cool.

Speaker 2: 3:57

Blacksmithing I'm not very handy with tools, but I may check that one out. Restoring cast iron so handy with tools, but I may check that one out. Restoring cast iron. So here's a funny story when I was in high school my mom had a cast iron skillet that I think was passed down from her mother to her. Well, you know you don't scrub and clean cast iron. It's seasoned and that's how it keeps its flavor and all that good stuff. Well, I didn't know that when I was 17 and I cleaned my mom's cast iron skillet to like a mirror finish. She appreciated the effort but I think I ruined like the last quarter century of seasoning and the millions of meals that were cooked on that. Again, she appreciated the effort but she was not very happy. So I think I might go to that one to find out exactly how you do it. Beekeeping I've kept bees before. I may check that one out. Butchering I'm very interested in that. I don't have a place to butcher animals but I am interested in that. There's a movie, there's a dog, a protection dog demo. That'll be kind of cool.

Speaker 2: 5:00

Drones post-disaster. I'm interested in this one. I'm just going to take a wild guess. If your neighborhood or your home has been hit, or you have a lot of acreage that's been hit by a storm, you have the ability of sending your drone up. Oh, how many trees do I have down? Am I able to get out of the neighborhood? Let me, you know, surveil the surrounding areas. Oh, there's a civil unrest at the grocery store a quarter mile away, active shooter situation. Police have the roads barricaded. Obviously you don't want to interfere with a crime scene, but I think those drones would be a very good tool to use post-disaster Hence the name drones post-disaster. I'm definitely going to have to check that one out.

Speaker 2: 5:41

Reloading ammo I've always been interested in that but I never did get into that.

Speaker 2: 5:47

Plenty of folks with books. There'll be vendors there. Stop the bleed Definitely going to the stop the bleed class. Again. Go out on a limb and say that there's going to be vendors there with IFACs and all sorts of first aid kits. Plenty of. So I can. I can see myself spending way too much money. So all the classes pretty much run Friday, saturday and Sunday and a lot of the classes are taught once a day. So again, if you have a conflict you can always just go ahead and catch it the next day.

Speaker 2: 6:16

So it's going to be a very, very busy three days for me. It's going to be a wet three days, but it's very difficult when you go to meetings and conventions like this to find enough people that are like-minded. For ham radio operators there's ham fest. Classic car clubs, they have classic car club meetups, but there's not many prepping events or prepping gatherings or prepping conventions, so I'm definitely going to meet up with some people I've spoke to. I've communicated with online for years now. I think I might be on with the Prepper Broadcasting Network at one point. We're going to have to figure that out. I'm considering bringing my laptop so, in the event it does rain and I'm not able to get to a class or there's a break in my class schedule, if I want to, I may go back and just record something.

Speaker 2: 7:06

I made a couple impulse buys. I purchased a Starlink and I purchased the standard antenna and the roaming package or their roam plan. It's 50 megs for $50 per month and the great thing about that is you can turn it off and on. You can use it for a couple months. You can pause the service and start back a month later, two months later, three months later. I'm very interested to see how this works. I have been running it here in the house, at the house the last few days and I'm pretty impressed with it. I'm interested to see how well it does at the campground. I've heard there's complimentary Wi-Fi in the campground, but I don't know how far that extends. I've heard somebody say, oh, in the last couple of years there's cell towers around, so there is cell service. It's kind of spotty. I won't know until I get there. But primarily I'm bringing that just to test it out. And in any SHTF situation, depending on how extensive or how bad the situation is, the Starlink data centers and servers all run on electricity and they're probably spread out all over the country, if not all over the world. So in the event one of the data centers goes down or where they broadcast and receive the satellite, if that goes down, I assume they have redundancy built in, but I'm interested to see how that works.

Speaker 2: 8:27

The other impulse buy I made was a Rennergy 400 watt solar blanket. So you have your rigid solar panels, you have your portable solar panels and then you have your flexible solar panels. Well, this is kind of a hybrid of all of those. It folds into like a little kind of little little carrying case and it has a lot of panels on it. It is very, very heavy. So I got to figure out where I'm going to put that. Now it is. The weather's going to be overcast, the weather's going to be rainy. I don't expect to get a very good sense of how much wattage it's going to put out. I did put it down in the backyard the other day but it was kind of overcast and there was some shade. I was getting about 220 watts. But again, I'm taking it just to see what it does. Probably won't get a very good feel for it with it being so overcast, but you know it's something I want to try.

Speaker 2: 9:17

Going back to the podcast on Run Hide Fight, I can tell by the number of downloads that it reached a pretty wide audience and if you were some of those folks that shared that podcast with other people, I really do appreciate that. And speaking of podcasts and downloads I know I've spoken about this before About 80% of the podcasts are downloaded here in the United States. Normally the United Kingdom is right behind with Australia as a close second. Well, the last week or 10 days I've had a lot of downloads from Australia and Australia has eclipsed the UK and they are now in second place. So everybody down in New South Wales or wherever you might be down under, I really do appreciate you listening.

Speaker 2: 10:04

I did get my first little commission email from Augustin Farms. As you guys know, part of the affiliate program, use the affiliate link, podcast prep at checkout get an extra 10%. So I was really stoked to get an email. So I actually got a couple bucks from somebody's order. So, whomever that was out there in podcast land, I really do appreciate you making that purchase and using the affiliate link and using the little coupon code to get your extra 10%. I was really stoked to get that.

Speaker 2: 10:31

Well, folks, I think that is about it. Like I said, I may take my laptop, I may post something from Prepper Camp. It may be via the star link. Again, I don't know what the cell service is going to look like, if at all. I could always use my phone as a hotspot, I guess. But again, depending on what's going on and how much free time I have, I might go ahead and record something just to let everybody know what the classes are like and what I've been up to. All right, folks, thanks again for stopping by. I really do appreciate it. I appreciate all the downloads, I appreciate the emails, I appreciate all the shares and don't forget, please share the podcast and give me a review. It really helps the podcast gain traction on some of these other platforms. All right, folks, and, as always, take care of one another, be careful out there, and until next time.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Thanks for listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode While you're at it. Help spread the word by leaving a rating and review.