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We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

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Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#161

Post by BenjiWiebe »

apatters wrote: post #117
SOMA_BOFH wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online SDR receivers are a great way to listen using other people's equipment: http://www.websdr.org Reverse Beacon Network and PSKreporter are excellent tools to see how people's signals are propagating: http://www.reversebeacon.net ttps://pskreporter.info/pskmap.html

Oh man. This is amazing. Going to require at least one full evening to figure out WTF I am looking at though :)

Check out the WSPRnet map to get a visual indicator of propagation conditions, by seeing which automated stations can hear which other automated stations.

Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#162

Post by gambler »

HocusLocus wrote: post #155

Cell phones are laughable single points of failure. Everyone brought this upon themselves from decades of bad engineering choices, if you consider resilience an objective. Once upon a time there was a terrestrial network of small autonomous telephone exchanges. Your phone numbers were tied to geographical locations. It seemed 'inconvenient'. Now you or your signal often have to travel hundreds of miles (as the crow f…

Thank you for posting this.

> Now you or your signal often have to travel hundreds of miles (as the crow flies) to find a central office that is required for call completion, even between two phones 10 feet apart.

And people generally think this is okay. Until something big happens and everyone reacts to it by trying to call other people, the central office gets overwhelmed, and the entire system stops working right when it's needed the most.

Then you get something like AWS or Azure outage. And you see engineers saying "it's fine, there are so many services down, no one expects out to work".

Then you get something like that big Oculus Rift shutdown. No big deal, right? But do you know that that some industrial control systems use certificate signing?

I've just finished reading The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. If you think about it, the kind of systemic failure he describes is not as ridiculous as it might sound. Over time, people start taking large technical systems for granted, like forces of nature.

Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#163

Post by calebm »

HocusLocus wrote: post #155

Cell phones are laughable single points of failure. Everyone brought this upon themselves from decades of bad engineering choices, if you consider resilience an objective. Once upon a time there was a terrestrial network of small autonomous telephone exchanges. Your phone numbers were tied to geographical locations. It seemed 'inconvenient'. Now you or your signal often have to travel hundreds of miles (as the crow f…

This is one of the things that got me into ham. If cell phones and internet go down, most people can only communicate as far as they can yell.

Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#164

Post by criddell »

calebm wrote: post #163
HocusLocus wrote: post #155

Cell phones are laughable single points of failure. Everyone brought this upon themselves from decades of bad engineering choices, if you consider resilience an objective. Once upon a time there was a terrestrial network of small autonomous telephone exchanges. Your phone numbers were tied to geographical locations. It seemed 'inconvenient'. Now you or your signal often have to travel hundreds of miles (as the crow f…

This is one of the things that got me into ham. If cell phones and internet go down, most people can only communicate as far as they can yell.

None of the other people I communicate with are hams, so if the grid goes away, I'm still pretty much limited to yelling.

Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#165

Post by criddell »

apatters wrote: post #107

I've always been curious about this hobby but never jumped in. The technology is an interesting curiosity to me but speaking bluntly what would probably give me the impetus to really spend time on it would be tapping into any kind of underground content or social experience that exists. For instance I read that Art Bell got started by broadcasting his show over shortwave bands, what a fascinating experience it would…

Shortwave feels like an abandoned town unless you like religious radio.

Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#166

Post by scarecrowbob »

criddell wrote: post #164
calebm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the things that got me into ham. If cell phones and internet go down, most people can only communicate as far as they can yell.

None of the other people I communicate with are hams, so if the grid goes away, I'm still pretty much limited to yelling.

I dunno... one part of ham radio is acting as a relay.

If there are two groups of folks, and they each have a ham in them at least the groups can relay messages to each other.

Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#167

Post by macintux »

citrablue wrote: post #98
noobly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does radio provide advantages for logging purposes? I log a bit, not as extensively as you seem to (but I'm always looking to incorporate more data and improved workflow ideas), but I can't clearly envision (due to my ignorance of radio, likely) the advantages radio would provide over just entering info into my laptop in a text file (including keeping clocked time, timestamps, etc).

The amateur radio community emphasizes logging all contacts. It builds a habit, especially since a lot of community interaction is around (friendly) competitions of who can make the most distant contacts, etc. All informal, but it teaches the habit through cultural acclimation.

Additionally the FCC mandates certain station records be maintained, so it's not entirely a community initiative.

Re: We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio

#168

Post by idoescompooters »

CathyWest wrote: post #158

I'm curious, do hams ever troll one another as internet users frequently do?

Ohhh yes. That would occur on 14.313 MHz on the 20m band. Don't find yourself caught calling "CQ" on that frequency. It is where lots of bad language and name calling occurs.
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