What happens if I use SSL over the top of such a network? Is that allowed? If the answer is yes, it seems more like a loophole in the rules than anything.
Probably not. These rules were put in place to prevent spies from using HAM to exfil data during the Cold War. Really I think it should be something that should be revisited but I don't know how the 3 letter agency's would like a method of communication that they can't access.
As I understand it, the idea is that it's a "sandbox" or "test" network. Confidentiality implies a "production" use case, and HAM doesn't want to be the venue for those. You can play around with encryption if the keys are public but you can't actually keep secrets. Even if the secrets are non-commercial. It's a place to play with radios, not a personal communications network.
It would be interesting to see numbers for the actual active radio Hans rather than license holders.
I’ve a feeling (but no proof) that a ham license today is more of a geeky/fun thing to get whilst learning about radio than it was 50 years ago and many with a license may have a UHF radio but don’t actively use it as much.
> waiting to report you to the FCC for any kind of experimentation (a bad thing), This is what always kept me away from HAM Radios. Everyone I knew that was into it was a huge stickler about the rules and would talk about all the bad stuff that should happen to rule breakers. It was pretty unnerving.
What's wrong with following the rules? Spectrum is shared after all...
Nothing wrong with following rules. But if you think you're going to be surrounded by legalists waiting to spring government fines on you for every slip-up, you might be incensed to turn back.
One factor that I bring up whenever the “ham radio is dying” discussion happen is the FCC public database and safety/doxxing, specifically for marginalized communities such as Trans individuals and Black folks. It, itself, is creating a safety concern in modern society for people that may want to join the hobby but fear doxxing and harassment. If I give out my call sign on the Internet (or on the air) you now know my…
Naomi Wu frequently discusses how the 'dox yourself' requirement reduces diversity in the ham community, something I hadn't considered before her tweets. https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Arealsexycyborg%20ham&src...
Keeping at least one hobby from being infested with identity politics seems like a good thing.
I was really glad to find this thread, been doing electronics, do it yourself since the 1959 when I was six and met my first HAM who shared enough to get excited, my paper route got me enough cash to buy my first decent used shortwave receiver. That and a wire I ran from my second story bedroom out to the roof of the garage, and suddenly I was listening to people in different countries and developing a serious interest in languages and putting pins in a world map of everyone I had listened to in different parts of the world. Eventually I learned some of those languages and went lived in some those countries. HAM radio opened the world to me. I just got my General license in June and with SDR radio and my computer started listening in on HAMs. I was shocked at the language and topics and conversations. Way different than 60 years. Started shopping for a kit traceiver to build, hard to find one, not like the old Heathkit days, when I built my first radio when I was 8 years old. It made me sad, then I started realizing that the nerdy kids like me were into 3d printing and Arduino and robots. However, they are going to miss out on the IoT, which will be driven by radios. The young kids are going miss learning the electronics and radio skills I got to learn before I was ten. Those skills took me into computers, programming and physics eventually. I am experimenting now with open source SDR and Lora mesh radio. Still alot to learn. If we really want our country to these type of skill taught early enough to open kids minds to what is possible and that they can design and build it. In my life, it only took one HAM to open my mind. The rest is history...
> 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…
> it was the maker space par excellence long before the term came into being. Just to provide an example: I made a keyer in the 70s. The way to make a PCB was to get a 3x4 copper-coated board from Radio Shack, use a sharpie to draw your desired traces, then etch the board in an HCl bath. After that, you used an old-fashioned soldering iron to attach your components to the board. You became excellent at soldering ICs,…
An important aspect of Ham radio culture, which I think underlies this discussion around the morse requirement, is the degree of self-reliance that you have to demonstrate in order to get a license.
What happens if the power goes out? What happens if you suddenly can't get those cheap PCBs, laptops, and phones from China? How are you going to communicate with someone a long distance away if you can't access a computer or an internet with all the bandwidth you could ever desire?
I think many people (younger hams included) have grown up now with the assumption that all of these things will just always be available. That's a risky approach, and doesn't make for a society that is resilient to external shocks.
> 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…
I got involved with amateur radio ~20 years ago as a teenager Handled radio traffic for various marathons. Was a bunch of 60-70+ people and a few teenagers. Got briefly involved a few years ago. Still dominated by 60-70+ year olds. Me and a friend in our early 40s were the “kids”
Yep, and in my experience the older people definitely lean towards the "law and order" and "follow the rules" side of things, which is very disappointing from a "hacker" sort of "question authority" ethos. You'd think the Venn diagram between trendy maker spaces with 18–40 year olds and amateur radio groups would be close to a circle, but there's hardly any overlap at all.
With the improvements and rising affordability of cellular networks, satellites, wifi, IoT protocols, etc. — not to mention to overall transition from analog to digital — will amateur radio even stay relevant?
My interest lies mostly in building my own SDRs. I'm not quite sure what you're asking as I don't even have a traditional voice transceiver. I got my licence so I can build radio equipment.
im saying, HAM equipment is NOKIA 3310 non HAM world is Iphone 11, samsung galaxy S20 and im saying, my phone in my pocket is more powerful and more capable then any ham radio equipment on the market. my phone can realtime decode 50 streams of packet radio, and im not even using integrated DSP processor inside my ARM SOC packet radio is invention of 199x, we have DOS programs on pentium4 machines to decode almost all…
Your phone, in combination with an appropriate license, would /be/ a ham radio in this context?
You're railing against a small thing I'm not even engaged in. Your phone is not more powerful than something like the USRP, for example, and that's quite popular among hams these days.
> 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…
I’m not a ham but I totally agree with the old guard on rejecting digital. MAKING your own equipment is an essential aspect of why amateur radio is worth preserving — it makes the network very resilient. In a world where digital electronics become very hard to acquire, hams can still maintain essential communication by tearing out components from microwaves and landfills. No such chance if everyone’s dependent on RTL…
Being around after the collapse of civilization is neither the only nor the primary purpose of ham radio, and there's a world of difference between "not rejecting digital tech" and "everyone's dependent on RTL-SDR chips from eBay".
I feel like I am lucky, my club has a bunch of old dudes, but they are still learning and growing. A few years ago, I proposed adding a digital repeater, and it caused all kinds of trouble, but most of those folks left and now its great. We have awesome presentations on how to leverage raspberry pis, building portable battery packs, opensource VNAs, etc. But this is true, a lot of the hobby is very curmudgeon-y. Whic…
Ham radio (the human component) seems to suffer from the DnD 3.5 problem. A lot of people invested considerable effort into obtaining knowledge. Once obtained, they were free to coast. I take it there's no true continuing ed requirement to maintain a license? Now, protocol / technical change threatens to render all their existing knowledge outdated. And furthermore, require additional effort. Unsurprisingly, they're…
> continuing ed requirement to maintain a license?
Why would you gatekeep on something that is mostly a hobby and for volunteers. Putting a continuing ed requirement on that is just going to piss off people. People who build these networks are mostly volunteers and they put a lot of effort into this. I think there should be a bit of respect given for that.