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Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

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Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#31

Post by mikece »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #20

Someone help me understand what is the exciting thing about HAM cause this article doesn't do anything for that. My first exposure to HAM was back in ~2000 when I started working at a car stereo shop and the owner (NU5K) was huge into HAM. He was an asshole most of the time, but very knowledgeable and loved to tinker with different HAM components both benchtop and mobile. Everytime I would try and get interested the…

> there's a million things to tinker with on the hardware side raspberrypi, Arduino, etc... even more on software etc.

It used to be that one of the public services that amateur radio operators performed was weather spotting. Before the age of cell phones that was a vital service. Now if I see severe weather I can text a GPS-tagged photo directly to the NWS.

Mentioning RaspberryPi and amateur radio: I've been interested in combining weather observation stations with packet radio and a truly open database of weather observations that, from the beginning, is dedicated to weather and climate research and will NEVER allow the data or sensor network to be acquired (like Weather Underground). The idea of sticking a weather monitoring station somewhere remote with a PiZero, solar panel, battery, and transceiver to send weather observations to a weather research database... that would hit the sweet spot of combining amateur radio, hardware, cloud architecture, and contributing to science and the public good.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#32

Post by jenkstom »

mikece wrote: post #5
hibby wrote: post #2

I saw this shared on Twitter this morning, and had some thoughts: While the graph is good, it is specific to the US and ignores the fact that a large amount of the amateur population is 50+ - the hobby is healthy now, but there's an age crisis coming soon. It doesn't really reflect the health of the entire hobby, globally, just a specific subset. Millenials aren't young any more, I'm millenial and I've held a ham lic…

> a large amount of the amateur population is 50+ Yes, and a lot of these folks take a "get off my lawn" approach to anything that's different to how amateur radio has been done for the last 50 years. Try talking up metro-wide mesh data network or using packet radio for anything other than APRS you get the "Why would you want to do that?" Once upon a time amateur radio operators MADE their own equipment: it was the m…

To be honest, I see this more as a baby boomer thing than a Gen X thing. Gen X who are into technical things tend to be into digital things. I mean hey, give me a commodore 64 hooked up to a modem and I'm gonna have a good time. Other digital modes are all the same to me. I'm Gen X and I'm 50, and I'm gonna whine more about k-pop than digital modes.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#33

Post by Heliosmaster »

rthomas6 wrote: post #17

I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites, intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio, listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just generally see the invisible world of wireless commun…

Any recommended resources to get started with SDR?

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#34

Post by hibby »

detaro wrote: post #10
hibby wrote: post #2

I saw this shared on Twitter this morning, and had some thoughts: While the graph is good, it is specific to the US and ignores the fact that a large amount of the amateur population is 50+ - the hobby is healthy now, but there's an age crisis coming soon. It doesn't really reflect the health of the entire hobby, globally, just a specific subset. Millenials aren't young any more, I'm millenial and I've held a ham lic…

Two additional things from someone who has considered getting a license a few times, but never quite made the jump because it wasn't clear what for in the end: - a bunch of interesting radio things are available without a license today - e.g. hunting for various signals with a cheap SDR receiver. Which could potentially be a way for ham communities to then get people deeper into it, but the communities seem quite dis…

Gosh it's weird to be recognised on HN for something good that I've done :D

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#35

Post by jsherer »

jron wrote: post #3

When I first read about FT8, I immediately started looking at the code to see how simple it would be to handle more meaningful conversations. Fortunately I stumbled onto this video from Jordan Sherer: https://youtu.be/mZKhVcFOljY He had done all the work for me in JS8Call: https://bitbucket.org/widefido/js8call/ If you want to skip the video, the design document gives a nice overview of the protocol: https://github.c…

Glad you found me :) Here's the main site where you can learn more: http://js8call.com/

And a video walkthrough I did just a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz0Cpkaol-o

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#36

Post by facedeoderant »

rthomas6 wrote: post #17

I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites, intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio, listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just generally see the invisible world of wireless commun…

Specifically you're talking about RTL-SDR, a hacked soundcard that can receive a lot of frequencies. The channels you can legally transmit back on for a few hudred dollars more are FRS/GMRS family/business radio channels. (Speaking about USA only here, since that's the only radio location I know about).

tl;dr for the rest of my post: ham radio is the best type of radio for hackers.

Undoubtedly you can have tons of fun with a $30 RTL-SDR and basic antenna, but there are lots of things you can do with ham radio once you grow tired of that, or if you find yourself being interested in how radio works generally, but more fundamentally, you can actually talk to people who are _actively hacking on the same types of things you are_ using projects you've both worked on, maybe together.

Regarding FRS/GMRS walkie talkie frequencies: these are UHF (Ultra High Frequency) frequencies, which means a couple of things: range is limited to well under a mile in most conditions, and building a radio to work on FRS or GMRS would be _possible_, but would require a lot of specialized equipment and maybe an engineering degree. Additionally, power is extremely limited on these radios, so you might be able to transmit back, but you'd better be near the business's parking lot to do so legally. Again, as far as a hobby goes, try breaking in on the Chik Fil A drive-thru attendant's recitation of someone's waffle fry order to ask whether you're coming in clearly on your home-built radio.

Ham radio has a community that's thriving and full of fun for new and/or young modern hackers. You just have to know where to look. For starters, consider Ham Radio Village at DEFCON (https://hamvillage.org) or the online Young Amateur Radio Club (https://yarc.world/) (an inclusive and active club centered around a Discord channel full of people interested in the latest tech in ham radio), or Ham Radio Workbench Podcast (https://twitter.com/HamWorkbench) (a podcast focusing on the latest in ham radio with a focus on new technologies and the intersection with the maker sphere). Hackaday frequently hosts new, fresh takes on ham radio hacking as well.

I think ham radio is back to its roots. With the resources of the modern maker movement, it's possible to learn about radio and hack something together that puts you on the air with people as excited as you are.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#37

Post by detaro »

facedeoderant wrote: post #36
rthomas6 wrote: post #17

I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites, intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio, listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just generally see the invisible world of wireless commun…

Specifically you're talking about RTL-SDR, a hacked soundcard that can receive a lot of frequencies. The channels you can legally transmit back on for a few hudred dollars more are FRS/GMRS family/business radio channels. (Speaking about USA only here, since that's the only radio location I know about). tl;dr for the rest of my post: ham radio is the best type of radio for hackers. Undoubtedly you can have tons of fu…

thanks for those links.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#38

Post by nickt »

TAPR [1] is a ham radio club that has a focus on digital stuff, it’s fantastically interesting geekery and should appeal to the HN crowd. The monthly newsletter, the Packet Status Register [2] is a great read, with projects typically involving radio, electronics, software and mechanicals. The TAPR Digital Communications Conference (virtual this year) is in just a few weeks [3].

It’s one of the few Amateur Radio clubs I know that has a Github repo [4]

[1] https://tapr.org/about/ [2] https://tapr.org/tapr-file-archive/ [3] https://tapr.org/2020-dcc-schedule/ [4] https://github.com/TAPR

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#40

Post by hibby »

brian_herman wrote: post #6
hibby wrote: post #2

I saw this shared on Twitter this morning, and had some thoughts: While the graph is good, it is specific to the US and ignores the fact that a large amount of the amateur population is 50+ - the hobby is healthy now, but there's an age crisis coming soon. It doesn't really reflect the health of the entire hobby, globally, just a specific subset. Millenials aren't young any more, I'm millenial and I've held a ham lic…

I've been to ham radio clubs and the age gap is real. I go to the meetups in the Chicago land area and only see about one or two people my age. The people my age are usually sons or daughters of the older people.

This is a big problem in the UK too.

The club I started in had a less pronounced issue, but we also went to the pub after the main meet, and there was a secondary, technical only night run by members of the club.

This made it a bit more welcoming and and less off putting to 20 year old me, but the local club up here meet once a week and it's a tight clique.

I don't even want to try to break in to it! That said, it's not a bad thing that clubs exist to serve their members if that's what they want to do, we'll just make our own, hopefully more friendly club run by guys in their 30s!

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