[Verse 1] Antenna on the fence post, whisper-height and low, Solder up a circuit board, watch the signal grow, Three little nodes — one porch, one shed, one on the hill, Meshtastic humming quiet when the cell towers still, Set the channel, name it, give the key a twist, Half a mile of coverage on a low-power wrist, Range is just line-of-sight, and oak trees steal a bar, Climb a little higher, let your neighborhood spark. [Chorus] Mesh it, key it, tune it, keep it — Three nodes talking when the grid can't reach it, Two meters, seventy centimeters, calling out your name, A paper list of numbers when the towers turn to flame, Mesh it, key it, tune it, keep it, Home-front voices, never let them sleep. [Verse 2] Grandpa's old repeater box still humming on the ridge, Two meters for the local net, seventy for the bridge, Simplex when the tower's down — radio straight to radio, Winlink types an email through a handset, letters slow, Sunday night at eight o'clock, check in with your call, State your name, your grid square, status — that's protocol, Practice turns the static into something like a friend, A voice that you'll remember long before the message ends. [Chorus] Mesh it, key it, tune it, keep it — Three nodes talking when the grid can't reach it, Two meters, seventy centimeters, calling out your name, A paper list of numbers when the towers turn to flame, Mesh it, key it, tune it, keep it, Home-front voices, never let them sleep. [Verse 3] Starlink dish up on the roof, a fallback in the sky, Fast when fiber's severed and the cable lines run dry, But Kyiv learned it hard when the beams got throttled, sold, One company, one owner — and the signal can turn cold, Moscow's stitching satellites to answer their own call, Lean on just a single star and watch how far you fall, Layer it with local mesh, don't trust one thin thread, Redundancy's the lesson, written plain if it gets read. [Verse 4] Signal for the texting, end-to-end and sealed, Back it up encrypted, keep the passphrase well concealed, But don't forget the notebook, ink instead of code, Numbers of your cousins on the paper-only road, When the battery's failing and the tower's turned to rust, Ink won't crash or vanish — it just holds the ones you trust. [Bridge] Find your local ARES, find the Auxcomm crew, Sign up for a drill day, learn what static crews do, Run the exercise together, log it, time it, send, Train like the outage starts tomorrow, not some far-off end. [Chorus] Mesh it, key it, tune it, keep it — Three nodes talking when the grid can't reach it, Two meters, seventy centimeters, calling out your name, A paper list of numbers when the towers turn to flame, Mesh it, key it, tune it, keep it, Home-front voices, never let them sleep. [Outro] Three nodes, two bands, one dish, one list, When the network falters, you're the one who still exists, Mesh it, key it, tune it, keep it — Home-front calling — never let it sleep.
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