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Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

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Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#71

Post by GekkePrutser »

edrxty wrote: post #17
sseagull wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am hoping they explained why. Most people who complain about the encryption regulation just completely disregard the reason for encryption in the first place (ie, all other regulations become unenforceable if encryption is allowed).

The unenforceable argument isn't really a thing. If we look at some common encryption standards, the call sign is in the clear as it has to be for routing. In the case where someone is swearing with their friends over an encrypted channel, it's just not a problem, no child will hear the swears without a quantum supercomputer. In the case where a business is illegally using ham bands to avoid paying license fees, they…

I think it's also because ham radio is supposed to be shared experimentation. Part of this is hearing someone trying something out and replying.

If everyone starts chatting with their friends on encrypted channels, we don't really have a community anymore. It was never meant to be a private chatbox.

I think it should be a bit less rigid in this day and age though. For example it should be allowed to use encryption for authentication purposes IMO. It's too easy now on digital modes to fake someone's callsign. Brandmeister has built some cool stuff with one time password but more complex authentication mechanisms aren't allowed. Apparently the FCC allows an exception for this but not every country does.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#72

Post by ajsnigrutin »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #70
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the FCC, but usually, only encryption is prohibited. Otherwise, there are many data protocols, even new ones developed for ham networks, in ~10mbit range for IP, eg: http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/nbp/nbp.html

Thanks this protocol is very interesting. Hadn't heard of it yet.

Same guy also build his own gps receiver from scratch(!) in 1991(!)

http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#73

Post by detaro »

genewitch wrote: post #68
detaro wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more conflated with encryption than e.g. the level of encoding you find in DVB-S or FT-8?

Ft-8, jt-9, jt-65, and wspr all break the rules when on 60 meters. No one cares... You're only allowed to transmit square on center of the allotted channels, and, this is the important bit, one person at a time. All the modes that JT invented flat out ignore both rules for 60 meter transmissions. I don't care, but I get sick of people telling me that my pactor modem is "illegal".

60m in the US I guess, where it's a very restricted secondary use of a military band. That's quite a special case.

Also these modes being ok or not on 60m has nothing to do with the question I asked?

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#74

Post by ryanmercer »

genewitch wrote: post #69
ryanmercer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy though. You can memorize the Technician pool in 5-10 hours with https://www.hamstudy.org or their app - the app is GREAT - (I know, my wife and I just did it and are testing for the tech Saturday, I've passed the last 100 something practice tests in a row) and the General is only slightly harder. I'm working 60-70 hours a week, plus class, plus church responsibilities and I'm consistently getting 70-71% cor…

I'm gonna be a little bit of a jerk, here. The general can be crammed for but I don't think it should be. Cram the technician license if you just "gotta get on air". The general and extra should be reserved for people who can answer questions at their level and below. Merely reading part 97 of the FCC regulations is enough to technically pass the parts of all three that don't have anything to do with "a station", yet…

I don't feel that any of the questions on the general actually equip me to know how to even connect the components of a complete radio setup up, so I'll just have to agree to disagree.

A good chunk of the questions are memorizing frequencies and wattages you're allowed to use for various things... something you can print off on a chart and tape to the wall.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#75

Post by genewitch »

ryanmercer wrote: post #74
genewitch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna be a little bit of a jerk, here. The general can be crammed for but I don't think it should be. Cram the technician license if you just "gotta get on air". The general and extra should be reserved for people who can answer questions at their level and below. Merely reading part 97 of the FCC regulations is enough to technically pass the parts of all three that don't have anything to do with "a station", yet…

I don't feel that any of the questions on the general actually equip me to know how to even connect the components of a complete radio setup up, so I'll just have to agree to disagree. A good chunk of the questions are memorizing frequencies and wattages you're allowed to use for various things... something you can print off on a chart and tape to the wall.

there's questions about common mode interference and other RFI things, cabling, antennas, and things like that. strict "rules only" is technician - what bands, how much power (which gets interesting in quite a few bands), and so on. Technician is like "set up a modem to get on a BBS."

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#76

Post by genewitch »

detaro wrote: post #73
genewitch wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ft-8, jt-9, jt-65, and wspr all break the rules when on 60 meters. No one cares... You're only allowed to transmit square on center of the allotted channels, and, this is the important bit, one person at a time. All the modes that JT invented flat out ignore both rules for 60 meter transmissions. I don't care, but I get sick of people telling me that my pactor modem is "illegal".

60m in the US I guess, where it's a very restricted secondary use of a military band. That's quite a special case. Also these modes being ok or not on 60m has nothing to do with the question I asked?

FT-8 has issues beyond what is or is not encoding that could be argued (and is) to be in violation of certain rules.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#77

Post by GoodbyeMrChips »

thereddaikon wrote: post #5
mikece wrote: post #2

Texting via APRS has been a thing for about 20 years. It's also a fantastic way to publish both your phone number and the numbers of the people you are texting in an easy to skim format. Digital modes is one of the areas where the HN crowd could introduce significant advancements to Amateur radio (while pissing off all of the older HAMs who just want to talk about the weather on 40m).

Unfortunately the FCC's rules around the Ham bands and digital modes ends up restricting a lot of potential for advancement and experimentation.

Only a small portion of the worlds Hams are subject to the FCC. Digital experimentation is wide open and active here.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#78

Post by nyanpasu64 »

sseagull wrote: post #16
jjoonathan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Maybe we need to figure out the essential subset of regulations that preserves the most essential aspects of the system while still permitting encryption. I have no doubt it will be a huge mess and take a few tries to get right. We should get started already -- if we don't, HAM will die, and it will deserve to die.

Mostly. Ham is meant for play, not as a primary means of communication or for commercial purposes. If everything is encrypted, how could you tell? How could you even tell that the users were licensed?

And I'm not broadcasting my legal name and mailing address so i can "play" with radio transmissions.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#79

Post by danachow »

generalizations wrote: post #65
thereddaikon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ham radio is not meant for that though. Its expressly meant for education and scientific experimentation by amateurs. What it actually gets used for is Boomers chewing the fat and LARPing as emergency services dispatchers mostly but the allocations were put in place to allow people to connect with one another and learn the science of RF in a practical way. The sad part is that the FCC has been more interested in main…

> But you are talking about normal people using radio for normal conversations. > What it actually gets used for is Boomers chewing the fat I'm only one data point, but I doubt my generation would 'chew the fat' on a call that anyone else in a wide radius would be listening in on. Not, at least, about anything that's personal. That's the point of my postcard analogy.

Have you never heard of twitter?

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#80

Post by jrockway »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #58
jrockway wrote: post #28

I think if this interests you, you'll like the LoRa-based devices better. They're unlicensed, so you can encrypt, use it without a ham radio license, etc. LoRa is pretty proprietary which is evil and all, but the end result is good. Hackaday has some good example projects: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/25/a-lora-im-me-for-the-end-of-... https://hackaday.io/project/171790-armawatch-armachat-long-r...

Technically we could build something like LoRa on the amateur bands. It's a pretty basic protocol with up/down chirps. With the kind of power we can use compared to the ISM bands this kind of robust protocol would have a huge range.

To some extent, modes like FT8 have shown how effective modern encoding techniques can be. The problem, I suppose, is that FT8 is ridiculously structured; optimizing to the core the bare necessities of a QSO. I think that is probably the reason for its success; if I want to talk to people, it's easy to find them on the Internet. But accumulating QSOs is an achievement in and of itself, and something you can only do with ham radio, so the optimization is probably perfect.

As someone who's had the most ham radio success with FT8, I do find myself asking "what if there is an emergency"? I probably won't have power for my computer, and WSJT-X is pretty cumbersome to use while mobile. So we should probably be looking into other technologies, but the old standby CW seems good enough, so nobody is really looking.

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