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FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

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Re: FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

#21

Post by underseacables »

jvanderbot wrote: post #9
underseacables wrote: post #3

This is unfortunate but I’m more displeased with the ARRL. They spend millions on lobbyists and politicians, pay the President A quarter of a million a year, and they’re really not doing that much for it. The website is seriously lacking an up-to-date information about state and federal issues, and I’m very dismayed at what seems to be a lot of money spent but very little to show for it. Ive been an Extra since 2002…

Lobbyists is exactly what I pay them for. But other than that, a quarter million sounds huge, but that's not huge for a big, heavily-government-involved national non-profit. For my own benefit, they orchestrate the classes and testing that I used to get my license, publish excellent reference materials, etc. I'm no longer in tornado country, but in earthquake country and a bigger city, the many different HAM activiti…

So I started digging into this and I can’t tell what they are doing, I barely passed political science, but I went to the webpage and clicked on legislative issues and there’s nothing there. So I pulled up the report every nonprofit is required to file, and they are paying lobbyists millions of dollars. What are they lobbying for?

Re: FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

#22

Post by Johnythree »

ridaj wrote: post #16

It's somewhat surprising for a radio amateur group to take it upon themselves to complain to the FCC about interference to a whole bunch of infrastructure-critical systems like satellite positioning, air traffic control, etc. Sounds a bit like spectrum vigilantism to me. Or was there actual harm done to these systems? You'd hope that if it was really critical there'd be more investigations by the government vs waitin…

To have any hope of keeping the ham frequency allocations, hams MUST be self policing and vigilant.

Re: FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

#23

Post by triactual »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #8
trafalgarcircle wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux allows individuals to override tx frequencies and power on many devices, but at least that’s done in software. I could understand if the dips were for setting bits on a frequency divider and could allow selecting any frequency, but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale.

>but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale. The whole point of this cheapo hardware is that it can be used for whatever just by setting switches and therefore achieves massive economies of scale. They sell the same hardware to the drone makers and the radio makers and so on. IIRC these switches were not user accessible. The manufacturer set them in the right position.

No, dip switches are for end user configuration. Radio modules use firmware or other semipermanent and non-user accessible configuration to set frequency bands which is usually for regionalization. There isn’t really a use case for transmitting in global navigation bands outside of malicious jamming or spoofing.

Re: FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

#24

Post by jimktrains2 »

walrus01 wrote: post #12
underseacables wrote: post #3

This is unfortunate but I’m more displeased with the ARRL. They spend millions on lobbyists and politicians, pay the President A quarter of a million a year, and they’re really not doing that much for it. The website is seriously lacking an up-to-date information about state and federal issues, and I’m very dismayed at what seems to be a lot of money spent but very little to show for it. Ive been an Extra since 2002…

I do professional microwave radio systems and have next to no interest in getting involved in analog ham stuff.

Ham radio is as analog as your microwave systems are. I'm not going to convince you to become a ham, but hams have a lot of digital voice and data modes at their disposal.

Re: FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

#25

Post by repiret »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #8
trafalgarcircle wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux allows individuals to override tx frequencies and power on many devices, but at least that’s done in software. I could understand if the dips were for setting bits on a frequency divider and could allow selecting any frequency, but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale.

>but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale. The whole point of this cheapo hardware is that it can be used for whatever just by setting switches and therefore achieves massive economies of scale. They sell the same hardware to the drone makers and the radio makers and so on. IIRC these switches were not user accessible. The manufacturer set them in the right position.

One of the requirements of radio equipment is that it must not be easily user modifiable to operate on the wrong frequencies. In the past, that has been construed to include where a user could use a soldering iron to replace a resistor. So certainly changing some DIP switches counts too.

Re: FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

#26

Post by [deleted] »

triactual wrote: post #23
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale. The whole point of this cheapo hardware is that it can be used for whatever just by setting switches and therefore achieves massive economies of scale. They sell the same hardware to the drone makers and the radio makers and so on. IIRC these switches were not user accessible. The manufacturer set them in the right position.

No, dip switches are for end user configuration. Radio modules use firmware or other semipermanent and non-user accessible configuration to set frequency bands which is usually for regionalization. There isn’t really a use case for transmitting in global navigation bands outside of malicious jamming or spoofing.

[deleted]

Re: FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters

#29

Post by R0b0t1 »

duskwuff wrote: post #14
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale. The whole point of this cheapo hardware is that it can be used for whatever just by setting switches and therefore achieves massive economies of scale. They sell the same hardware to the drone makers and the radio makers and so on. IIRC these switches were not user accessible. The manufacturer set them in the right position.

> IIRC these switches were not user accessible. They were definitely user accessible in at least some of the products. Here are a couple of the devices named in the FCC complaint which obviously had exposed DIP switches: https://hobbyking.com/en_us/aomway-700tvl-cmos-hd-camera-nts... https://hobbyking.com/en_us/1-2ghz-mg-500mw-8ch-a-v-wireless... https://hobbyking.com/en_us/x40-l-25mw-tx-cnc-alloy-cas.html There were…

I still don't feel great about this. It should be up to the end user to not break the law.
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