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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

#181

Post by dredmorbius »

HocusLocus wrote: post #159
jeffwass wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 80’s, before there was Iridium satellite, my uncle would use HAM radio to keep in touch with us while sailing his boat between Hawaii and California. Even though my household weren’t HAM’s at the time, he’d “call” us every few days through a “phone patch” to give status updates in the middle of the Pacific. Basically, he’d make connections to various HAM’s somewhere, trying to find someone who could do a…

My good friend WA2AAX, now a silent key, told of a visit he once made to the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. During a lull in operation they let him traverse the catwalk spanning the 'dish' (a spherical mesh 1,000 ft diameter built inside a natural sinkhole) as the moon reached its zenith. Scanning his VHF HT he was able to hear many moonbouncing HAMs and even voice traffic from repeaters in the US. With a standa…

One of Arecebo's missions was to listen on Soviet and Sino transmissions, or nuke tests, via moon bounced transmissions.

(From Steve Blank's "Secret history of Silicon Valley" talk. https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/10023411/steve_bla... )

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

#182

Post by daedalus_j »

arendtio wrote: post #136

If you want to learn Morse Code I can recommend using these Anki decks: - Easy start but without punctuation. You might want to add that https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/950182698 - Pretty good but hard to start with https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3645353967 - There are a few more Decks: https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/morse%20code

https://lcwo.net is also quite a good tool.

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

#183

Post by geggam »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #160
sathackr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recursive law-breaking. Using the scanner while breaking the law is breaking the law, so by breaking the law while using the scanner, you're also breaking the law...while using the scanner. Kinda like using a gun in the commission of a felony...is a felony. Or being arrested and the only charge is resisting arrest.

I think of it more as computing something in "two passes". First, decide if the person committed a crime not in that "tack-on" category. Then, evaluate which "tack-ons" are applicable and possibly make those charges.

Profit motive in the legal system is blatant isnt it ?

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

#184

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

Tepix wrote: post #133

I'm interested in getting into HAM radio to communicate with/via satellites (or the moon), what's a good resource to get started?

AmSat has some good articles for getting started with satellites:

https://www.amsat.org/introduction-to-working-amateur-satell...

Moonbounce is challenging even for experienced hams.

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

#186

Post by phaedrus »

gambler wrote: post #162
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…

The Machine Stops was one of the first science fiction stories I ever read, and one I will never forget.

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

#187

Post by scarecrowbob »

criddell wrote: post #179
scarecrowbob wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a lot of ifs to all that. I think if I were going to do something to prepare for disaster, I'd have a big store of water and shelf-stable foods on hand first. I probably should do that...

Well, pragmatically, it only takes 2 folks with radios.

Historically, there is a whole lot of prescident for it's functionality.

By all means, though, having water and store-able food is an excellent thing to do regardless.

Just anecdotally, having a radio and knowing how to use it is way higher on my list of personal prep than owning a firearm and knowing how to use it.

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

#188

Post by sean2 »

criddell wrote: post #179
scarecrowbob wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a lot of ifs to all that. I think if I were going to do something to prepare for disaster, I'd have a big store of water and shelf-stable foods on hand first. I probably should do that...

Well, yeah, communication is so far down on the priority of needs that my county's disaster preparedness pamphlets don't even mention it.

But after we got hit with a hurricane it was pretty nifty to have ham radio friends who were able to exchange messages with hams near families in unaffected areas. I don't remember seeing any pragmatic uses for ham radio in that particular disaster, but those lines of communication was great for morale.

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

#189

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

hyperpallium wrote: post #116

What's the most lightweight, portable ham radio? Is it comparable to a smartphone?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "ham radio". Here's a tiny surface mount transmitter that is barely more than a gram and operates on amateur frequencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkaN21K5S0

Gerber file, bill of materials, etc are freely available. I'm looking at modifying the design into a beacon for a rocket radiolocation project.

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

#190

Post by matthewmcg »

HocusLocus wrote: post #159
jeffwass wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 80’s, before there was Iridium satellite, my uncle would use HAM radio to keep in touch with us while sailing his boat between Hawaii and California. Even though my household weren’t HAM’s at the time, he’d “call” us every few days through a “phone patch” to give status updates in the middle of the Pacific. Basically, he’d make connections to various HAM’s somewhere, trying to find someone who could do a…

My good friend WA2AAX, now a silent key, told of a visit he once made to the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. During a lull in operation they let him traverse the catwalk spanning the 'dish' (a spherical mesh 1,000 ft diameter built inside a natural sinkhole) as the moon reached its zenith. Scanning his VHF HT he was able to hear many moonbouncing HAMs and even voice traffic from repeaters in the US. With a standa…

Great story! That’s sort of the Ham equivalent of the XKCD with the “real programers use a butterfly”[1]

[1]: https://www.xkcd.com/378/

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