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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

#191

Post by WorldMaker »

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…

Cell phones also have some of the greatest capacity to route around failure. Cell phone hardware includes extremely capable, software-controlled radio antennas. Just because they are currently slaved to specific communication patterns doesn't mean that they have to be.

Mesh networking standards exist that can take good advantage of cell phone hardware. Several of the phone handset operating systems are already theoretically capable of supporting it (if they weren't so locked down).

At the very least, in emergencies, cell phones should be able to network point-to-point between each other.

The barriers to doing that currently today are more political and economic than technical. It would be great to try to tear those barriers down.

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

#192

Post by HocusLocus »

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...

Don't underestimate the value of stocking the necessary hardware for short, medium and long range communication. Only part of the post-apocalypse equation is continued survival of you and your family. At the next level is, how useful are you to the community of people around you? There is a deficit these days, or you could call it an advantage -- that there are far more people skilled in computer technology, and even simple farming -- than radio.

Practical skill with communication technology also gets you an 'in' with those in charge of things, even if you were a nobody before.

My survival plan involves

- 12v systems from car batteries

- VHF/UHF short range communication - HF as money permits

- low power FM broadcast station - simple low current broadcast studio

- legacy PCs and notebook PCs, Linux & Windows 7 (custom mods for better/convective cooling, slower clocks, long life)

- massive libraries of ebooks, music, audiobooks and old radio shows

- selected paper reference works (now is a great time to buy!)

Note that solar panels do NOT make this list, not in any massive way. It's about available funds and priorities now.

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

#193

Post by csutter »

michaelt wrote: post #154
m4x wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I volunteer as a radio operator at some sport events. The main reason we use radios instead of cell phones is that it's faster to relay information and works well when you have many field stations talking to a single base station. There's quite a lot of overhead involved in making a cell phone call, and it doesn't work well when you need to relay lots of short messages without tying up the line for everybody else. Wi…

I'm curious about how this works - Do you personally own a stack of handheld radios that work with your radio operator rig? Does the sports event hire handheld radios and a base station that you operate? Presumably they need to be license-free if you're issuing them to unlicensed volunteers? How do you respond to reports distant stations aren't receiving messages?

You don’t need a stack of radios, it’s usually 2 meter and everyone is licensed and operating on the same frequency. There is a net operator managing the traffic, probably with a base station, but it’s their equipment always, it’s purely volunteer.

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

#194

Post by int_19h »

superkuh wrote: post #146
int_19h wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For VHF and UHF , that's not generally true - e.g. a simple quarter-wavelength antenna (exactly what it says on the tin - a stick antenna that is 1/4 of the wavelength on which you intend to operate - so e.g. for VHF 2m band, we're talking ~20" long, and for UHF 70cm it's even shorter) is perfectly sufficient to work repeaters, and to communicate with others directly within the radio horizon. For HF, you do need a la…

>For VHF and UHF, For VHF and UHF it matters that your antenna is very high up (on a pole, roof, or whatever w/line of sight if you want more than a couple blocks) more than your antenna 'size'. So even VHF/UHF/Microwave you still need something "big" unless you're just communicating with your next door neighbor. There's no magic in RF. The cell system for phones only works because they pay the big bucks to put cells…

If you hold the transceiver in front of your head while speaking (as you naturally would), that already gives you 2-3 miles of radio horizon, depending on your height. If the person you're talking to does the same, that range doubles. Of course, that's on flat ground, without hills etc getting in the way... but still, you're usually looking at a mile or two of range, at least.

http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_HowFar2.php

https://hamradioschool.com/how-far-can-i-talk-with-my-radio/

And, of course, beyond that, you'd just use repeaters anyway. There's no shortage of VHF and UHF repeaters, and because they take care of antenna height on their side, it's not uncommon to hit one 10-15 miles away with a handheld.

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

#195

Post by m4x »

michaelt wrote: post #154
m4x wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I volunteer as a radio operator at some sport events. The main reason we use radios instead of cell phones is that it's faster to relay information and works well when you have many field stations talking to a single base station. There's quite a lot of overhead involved in making a cell phone call, and it doesn't work well when you need to relay lots of short messages without tying up the line for everybody else. Wi…

I'm curious about how this works - Do you personally own a stack of handheld radios that work with your radio operator rig? Does the sports event hire handheld radios and a base station that you operate? Presumably they need to be license-free if you're issuing them to unlicensed volunteers? How do you respond to reports distant stations aren't receiving messages?

We are all licensed amateur radio operators and just use our own gear. Not sure what you mean by a stack of radios - we all have our own radios in some form, and they are all interoperable by their nature (not much point in hams using radios that can't communicate with anybody else!).

We normally have somebody free who can travel to any field station if they have equipment problems etc.

Most events pay a small fee for our help, which goes to the local club.

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

#196

Post by tdeck »

I guess it's all relative. I am just getting into ham radio and I am shocked at how expendive HF rigs still are. The QCX kit is $50 sure and it's really well designed, but it takes hours to assemble and it's difficult to debug without already having a radio or other test equipment. If I want to get into Arduino, I can buy a fully built board on eBay for about $3. Other HF radios on the budget end are a couple hundred bucks. It's one of the few areas where you can save significant cash building kits, which is kind of cool.

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

#197

Post by masukomi »

michaelt wrote: post #154
m4x wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I volunteer as a radio operator at some sport events. The main reason we use radios instead of cell phones is that it's faster to relay information and works well when you have many field stations talking to a single base station. There's quite a lot of overhead involved in making a cell phone call, and it doesn't work well when you need to relay lots of short messages without tying up the line for everybody else. Wi…

I'm curious about how this works - Do you personally own a stack of handheld radios that work with your radio operator rig? Does the sports event hire handheld radios and a base station that you operate? Presumably they need to be license-free if you're issuing them to unlicensed volunteers? How do you respond to reports distant stations aren't receiving messages?

in addition to what m4x said, radio has some HUGE benefits over cell in a marathon scenario. If the person you need to talk with is on the phone with someone else you can't get through. With a radio you can. Additionally, everyone (terrain permitting) hears what you have to say so the information propagates out much faster.

On a well run event you have "net control" which is basically a central point that you pass messages to and they pass them out. They're usually an experienced ham set up with a good antenna, and a reasonably powerful transmitter, at a location that can hear from and speak to everyone even if people with handhelds can't hear each other because of distance or terrain. There's a convention for getting permission to speak and how messages are conveyed and passed on.

In my particular case, we set up an antenna for ham frequencies and public service frequencies, officers from our town are deployed, and can talk to us on their police radios but frequently can't speak with each other because we're not in our home town and don't have our repeater (other towns use other frequencies). So I relay messages between officers and I relay messages to and from net command.

Also, if you think about what happens when an emergency (like the Boston Marathon Bombing) happens... imagine how much slower and more disorganized the response would be if all the departments had to make cell calls to each other and wait for each to get off teh line... the central point would call one police dept. Then they'd call the fire. Then they'd call.... and now people are dead because you can't communicate with more than one person at a time.

it's just WAY more efficient than cell phones.

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

#198

Post by Johnythree »

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…

Thailand has two "Personal Radio" services, one at VHF 78 MHz and another at VHF 245 MHz.

The 78 MHz transceivers must have a Yellow case, while the 245 MHz transceivers must have a Red case.

These radios are widely used by small businesses (taxis, guards, etc) right across Thailand. Once you start looking, you'll see them everywhere.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_radio_service#Thailan...

Thailand also has a very active Amateur Radio Community, with many expats licensed. see https://www.qsl.net/rast/

The previous King of Thailand was a Patron of Amateur radio, so access to licensing was taken very seriously by the authorities.

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

#199

Post by Johnythree »

criddell wrote: post #165
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.

Not so.

The HF Ham bands are as busy as ever, while the Shortwave Broadcast bands are chock full of mainly Chinese stations, who incidentally play some amazing music.

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

#200

Post by Johnythree »

p0d wrote: post #51
jimnotgym wrote: post #20

I would like to have a go at building a receiver for listening to CW with my kids. I don't want anything on the computer, just something I can solder that will work. Is there a kit that has a good success rate? I'm in the UK if that matters.

You just need a long piece of wire, diode, ferrite coil wth wire wrapped around, variable resistor and old style ear piece to pick up am radio. No batteries required. I can remember my son’s lack of interest while we made the venerable crystal radio and then his little fascinated face when we picked up some signals

No, not a variable resistor, but variable capacitor.

Do a google search on "Crystal Set", or go to http://theradioboard.com/rb/index.php

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