FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio? • Hacker News Board

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#101

Post by ChuckMcM » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 3:17 AM UTC

sliken wrote: post #96

ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Too many people get funneled into this trap by the ARRL who understandably push "get on the air today!" type articles which haven't been updated since the 80's and have people getting HF radios and hunting for repeaters on the 2M band. And the grumpy old guys who are pissed off it isn't the 80's (or 70's or 50's, few seem to be nostalgic for the 60's) anymore. In the digital radio space its a lot more o…

I've searched this space looking for a decent RX/TX SDR that does a few watts. It's surprisingly hard. Seems like the 5 watt $30 HTs (that are SDR based) are extremely common, but as soon as you add any flexibility it's $1000s.

Those two constraints are easily separated. Radio and separate power amplifier. You will find that a really wide band power amp is expensive so a lot of people will have two to five PAs and an RF switch to select between them

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#102

Post by franciscrick1 » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 5:13 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

mmaunder wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guys, no one is forcing you to listen to that stuff. Get off the voice bands, get on digital and you'll have a blast. Here's a fun talk at Defcon from Balint Seeber, a ham who focuses on security, to get you in the right headspace. I attended this and the group of 6 of us that hung out afterwards with Balint was some of the most impressive people I've met at Defcon. One had built a bug sniffer. Another was intercepti…

Exactly this. Too many people get funneled into this trap by the ARRL who understandably push "get on the air today!" type articles which haven't been updated since the 80's and have people getting HF radios and hunting for repeaters on the 2M band. And the grumpy old guys who are pissed off it isn't the 80's (or 70's or 50's, few seem to be nostalgic for the 60's) anymore. In the digital radio space its a lot more o…

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#103

Post by StudentStuff » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 6:01 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

mmaunder wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guys, no one is forcing you to listen to that stuff. Get off the voice bands, get on digital and you'll have a blast. Here's a fun talk at Defcon from Balint Seeber, a ham who focuses on security, to get you in the right headspace. I attended this and the group of 6 of us that hung out afterwards with Balint was some of the most impressive people I've met at Defcon. One had built a bug sniffer. Another was intercepti…

Exactly this. Too many people get funneled into this trap by the ARRL who understandably push "get on the air today!" type articles which haven't been updated since the 80's and have people getting HF radios and hunting for repeaters on the 2M band. And the grumpy old guys who are pissed off it isn't the 80's (or 70's or 50's, few seem to be nostalgic for the 60's) anymore. In the digital radio space its a lot more o…

Those grumpy guys pervade the web too, in some places when I talk about OpenWRT I'll get mobbed by people that view it as evil, linking it to dead forks of the early 2000s that were popular for blasting RF. These same people love to hate on the GPL, over squabbles that happened decades ago. Highlighting that GPLv3 fixes the permanent license revocation loophole of GPLv2 goes in one ear and out another with 'em.

When I point out the dozens of watts some HAMs are blasting in part of the 5Ghz band, these same asshats are all over that shit. It makes me want to have zero involvement with this toxic community, since many active members can't handle basic logic.

For now I'll stick to the ISM bands, Part 15 is good for many applications.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#104

Post by 8bitsrule » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 6:09 AM UTC

resters wrote: post #39

AWildC182 wrote: post #4

This has one unspoken bonus feature: Not having to talk to an octogenarian about politics. I know it sounds silly, but I suspect this is one of the huge features driving it's success. Amateur radio is plagued by bad actors and grumpy old men, along with the general age imbalance that makes it fairly unpleasant for young people and extremely unpleasant for anyone who sounds vaguely feminine...

I feel the need to clarify AWildC182's comment because I think it reflects poorly on amateur radio as an inviting place for younger people. There are some "scenes" in amateur radio that are dominated by older, somewhat conservative leaning discourse. Some VHF and UHF repeaters are like this, and there are many groups of people who chat with the same group every night on 80m SSB. Some newcomers start out on VHF/UHF re…

In my experience, hams break down roughly down into two groups. Yep, there are those who like to ragchew about any/everything. For them radio is a means, not an end.

And then those who are really interested in ham radio itself ... equipment, antennas, modes, propagation ... any of the endless opportunities to explore and trade ideas about new radio experiences with other people.

Those discussions are easiest to have without repeaters or HF QRM. Get to know who's technical in your area (they -do- pop up on repeaters now and then) and those discussions can endlessly fun without the bragging and the B.S.

There are thousands of things to try, and a never-ending range of new technical variations to combine. Possibilities these days are really endless.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#105

Post by hatsunearu » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

I think the FCC should remove the 300 baud limit for HF which is super arbitrary and limiting for real digital modes. That limit makes modes that are quite distant from modern day commercial digital modulations viable--FT8, JT65, and so on being examples.

They are primarily asynchronous MFSK detectors with tons of symbols--pretty weird design and a work around of the 300 baud limit. We can't get cool stuff like QAM, high rate PSK, and other nice modes working because of this arbitrary old rule.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#106

Post by hatsunearu » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

jpmattia wrote: post #77

ianburrell wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FT8 and other weak signal modes can work with more noise and less signal than conventional modes. Which makes possible to communicate with the current poor HF propagation, or with lower power devices and longer distances. It does this by using low bandwidth (50 Hz), low bit rate (6 bit/s), and error correction. The other special thing about FT8 is that it only does contacts, with binary messages for doing the exchang…

> FT8 and other weak signal modes can work with more noise and less signal than conventional modes I'm a little surprised that FT8 is better S/N than conventional mode of morse code, but then I didn't think in terms of S/N back when I was active in the 70s/80s (btw: Straight key! I finally build a keyer after 5 years of straight key, and then went off to college and didn't have another QSO for many years. :( Edit: Re…

morse CW is pretty bad in terms of BER because it's hard to create a robust automatic decoder, not to mention OOK (which is morse essentially is for this purpose) is very poor against multipath interference.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#107

Post by someguydave » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

Custardian wrote: post #72

zokier wrote: post #55

I feel like I'm missing some context here; why is FT8 controversial in the first place?

Global communication in amateur radio was previously only been possible using high power transmissions (which requires a full license). FT8 makes global communication achievable for beginner amateur radio folk. Some amateur radio practitioners think if you want global communications without learning radio theory, use your ISP or SIM provider.

But knowing “radio theory” isn’t enough to have global SSB conversations on HF. You need a high antenna and reasonably high power, something which most of the population will never be able to have because of how harshly antennas are judged by others in the real estate market.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#108

Post by MisterTea » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #58

MisterTea wrote: post #36

Interesting. But as a non-ham I find the article chock full of ham jargon which leaves me completely lost. > What happened to take an esoteric mode designed for multi-hop E skip on VHF and overnight turn it into a worldwide phenomenon across all bands from 2200m through 70cm? In other words, what makes FT8 a killer app? Indeed. What does make FT8 the killer app? Anyone care to break this down in layman's terms that a…

So, multi-hop E-skip is a way that the signal can propagate through the ionosphere. (E-layer skip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation ). 2200m and 7cm are wavelengths. FT8 is a digital mode that can transmit a very restrictied amount of information -- basically your callsign and where you are. Exchanging this information is enough for a contact, or QSO. The debate is about whether it's still about c…

Ah, I think I understand. I remember hearing the term, "shooting skip", which I understand as slang CB users used for talking to people past the horizon using the ionosphere to bounce the radio waves.

So if I understand correctly this is a game hams play where you try to skip your signal as far as possible and see if you get a ping?

If I am understand this properly, this successful exchange earns you a point and the old timers used post cards as score keeping, as once the ping was established they could each mail each other.

I assume FT8 is text only?

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#109

Post by fapjacks » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

AWildC182 wrote: post #4

This has one unspoken bonus feature: Not having to talk to an octogenarian about politics. I know it sounds silly, but I suspect this is one of the huge features driving it's success. Amateur radio is plagued by bad actors and grumpy old men, along with the general age imbalance that makes it fairly unpleasant for young people and extremely unpleasant for anyone who sounds vaguely feminine...

It is painful where I live on the typical UHF/VHF bands. And even worse if anybody doesn't lie and say they're using a Kenwood/Yaesu/ICOM and instead makes the enormous mistake of mentioning they're working the repeater with a Baofeng.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#110

Post by someone454 » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

silman wrote: post #24

AWildC182 wrote: post #4

This has one unspoken bonus feature: Not having to talk to an octogenarian about politics. I know it sounds silly, but I suspect this is one of the huge features driving it's success. Amateur radio is plagued by bad actors and grumpy old men, along with the general age imbalance that makes it fairly unpleasant for young people and extremely unpleasant for anyone who sounds vaguely feminine...

As someone who went from nothing -> Amateur Extra when i was 23 (25 now) from a random spurt of inspiration to learn ham radio and then promptly did nothing with the license i agree with this. I don't know exactly what i was expecting from getting the license but i will say that i didn't expect it to basically just be dominated by old conservative men who don't appreciate younger folk stepping in on their air space.…

Sounds kind of like the mirror opposite of HN