
When everything else fails, amateur radio will still be there and thriving - Tomte
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/when-everything-else-fails-amateur-radio-will-still-be-there-and-thriving/
======
davidwihl
I was a volunteer ham working a first aid station during the 2013 Boston
Marathon bombing. The cell bandwidth was rapidly overwhelmed. Ham continued to
work, including amazing professionalism on the part of Net Control when things
got really busy. It's battle proven.

FMI [http://www.arrl.org/news/radio-amateurs-provide-
communicatio...](http://www.arrl.org/news/radio-amateurs-provide-
communication-support-in-boston-marathon-bombings-updated)

------
grandalf
Amateur Radio is a great hobby if you're interested in radio wave propagation,
RF engineering, radiosport, digital modes, satellites, etc.

It's surprisingly easy to get a license, and you'll find that many of the
older generation of radio amateurs are among the most young-at-heart oldsters
you'll encounter.

~~~
IgorPartola
I am the type that would go and get a license to start messing around with
something like packet radio, but the last time I looked into it I encountered
two things that I thought were huge road blocks.

First, the study material and sample questions were way out of my league. I
studied physics in college so I am not completely ignorant when it comes to
things like frequency, phase, modulation, etc. However, I could not figure out
what the hell I was reading in the study guide.

Second was the cost. I am ok with building my own equipment out of repurposed
electronics, or spending a few bucks on some type of add on card, but the
guides I found were talking about $500 beginner radios.

It is quite possible that I was looking at some very advanced type of ham
license and communications equipment. If so, what is the best place to start.
If not, then y'all must be some kind of rich geniuses!

~~~
solarengineer
I invested some time in understanding the syllabus and clearing the ARRL
exams. You may want to take it one step at a time.

Also, radio needn't been too expensive. Check out the Baofeng hand held units
that retail for about USD 30 on Amazon. These are only for UHF and VHF. For HF
(international), you could either use repeaters, or Radio gateways on the
Internet, or EchoLink. I use EchoLink on my mobile phone when I'm in countries
where I don't have a license to operate.

~~~
ConroyBumpus
What's nice about the Baofeng VHF/UHF handhelds is that they correspond with
the frequencies available to an entry level ("technician") US amateur radio
license. When combined with an online study guide, the test fees and radio
combined are less than $75, providing an inexpensive introduction to learning
a lot about RF systems and proper radio operating procedures.

~~~
grandalf
True -- And this is just the very tip of the iceberg. Not bad if you want to
spend $35 to get started, but far less amazing than if you spend $100 on some
simple HF gear.

------
walrus01
When everything else fails because a massive catastrophe has hit your local
area, even something as big as a 9.2 earthquake destroying most of
California... Everything satellite based (that is not dependent on teleports
in CA) will still function fine. Amateur radio is nice and all for voice
communication, but for IP data you could still use:

a) C, Ku and Ka-band VSAT terminals via geostationary satellite, to earth
station anywhere else in the same hemisphere. Example: 1.2m VSAT in CA,
teleport in TX.

There are all sorts of mobile VSAT systems including auto-aim/auto tracking
antennas and military grade ones that will fit into a large backpack.

b) Handheld satellite phones: Iridium phones will work fine after a huge
clusterfuck disaster. And run on a lot less power than a ham radio rig. They
use a LEO satellite network. The Inmarsat iSatphone talks to the I-4 series of
geostationary satellites and will work fine.

c) Portable L and S-band laptop sized Inmarsat terminals (BGAN), again
speaking to the I-4 series satellites. These are about the size of a fat
laptop and also require a lot less power than a ham radio setup. Speeds from
100 to 500 kbps depending on spot beam capacity/utilization and TDMA
contention ratio. Some have built in wifi hotspots, others have a 100BaseTX
interface to plug in your own router.

You can do all sorts of useful VoIP tricks with Iridium and Inmarsat satellite
phones - both services offer regular US NPA DIDs that ring on your phone, and
it's easy to set up a phone with a short 50 ohm coaxial cable to an exterior
roof antenna if you need to semi-permanently install one on the desk of an
indoor command center/disaster relief comms post.

edit: The major use of geostationary satellite in a disaster is to repair and
bring back online a broken/islanded TCP/IP network. You can show up to a
completely off-net command center (for example: Disaster operations HQ for
City of San Francisco) and bring it back online to the outside world by
parking a 1 to 2 meter sized VSAT dish on the roof and connecting a satellite
modem to the WAN uplink of their router. Satellite serves a different and
complementary purpose to ham radio which is almost purely analog voice in a
disaster scenario. Two people can carry the equipment needed to bring a 5 Mbps
x 5 Mbps pipe with 0.0% packet loss.

~~~
Steltek
Wow, that sounds awfully fancy. How much does all of that cost? Subscription
required?

Seems like Ham would be much cheaper and just as good, funneling local
emergency communications into more sophisticated setups (that are probably
owning and operating satphones for you).

~~~
CraigJPerry
And also, you can travel with it to India

[http://m.timesofindia.com/city/kochi/Satellite-phone-
spells-...](http://m.timesofindia.com/city/kochi/Satellite-phone-spells-
trouble-for-US-citizen/articleshow/51847175.cms)

~~~
walrus01
I know more than ten people who've been to India with Iridium phones and no
problems. They're "technically" against the law in the same way that 80% of
the adult content on the Internet is in violation of Indian law. There's all
kinds of stuff that's technically illegal in India and laws that everybody
ignores in daily practice. What you're looking at in that news article is the
end result of a failed bribery/shakedown attempt by corrupt Indian police and
a stupid white foreigner who was too dumb to know when to pay Rs1000.

~~~
baytrailcat
I wouldn't put it in the same category as porn. Indian authorities are pretty
paranoid about satellite phones since it is the preferred form of
communication of terrorists. Bribing doesn't work always, especially when
dealing with central-government authorities.

~~~
ape4
That's the reason for the ban?

~~~
baytrailcat
Yes. It was discovered to be used by terrorists in the past (esp. the 2008
Mumbai attacks).

~~~
walrus01
No, it's the government's excuse to crack down on foreign journalists poking
their noses into places where they don't want them to go (Maoist insurgencies,
for example). Getting a "burner" phone in India on GSM networks is
ridiculously easy and costs about ten bucks. Actual terrorists like Laskar-e-
Taiba are well aware that using a satellite phone is one of the quickest and
most effective ways to get your calls listened to by the NSA. Iridium has
effectively zero security and all of its calls pass through a few centralized
gateways.

------
slr555
For me the best thing about HAM is that it makes you learn before you can
play. For a non-engineer such as myself, having to learn the electronics,
physics, antenna design, FCC rules etc. forced me to acquire knowledge I
probably wouldn't have otherwise gone out of my way for as an adult. I got my
General class license a few years ago and keep trying to get myself motivated
to go for my Amateur Extra license but doing HAM in NYC is hard. Unless you
are lucky enough to have someplace you can put up some kind of antenna you are
largely limited to a 5 watt HT. There is so much that is exciting happening in
HAM today. SDR systems are very exciting as is all the internet hybrid. It is
super fun and I do hope a new generation gets psyched about it and drives
innovation.

~~~
brian-armstrong
My parents live somewhere relatively rural and I live in a major city. For a
while I had a laptop hooked up to a Tentec tranceiver and a 40' vertical back
at my folks' place. I was able to remote in and control and hear everything.
If amateur radio were more popular I kind of wonder if timeshare on a system
like that would be feasible. Sort of defeats the point of operating your own
equipment though :P

~~~
starnixgod
These guys are doing just that:
[http://www.remotehamradio.com/](http://www.remotehamradio.com/)

------
brian-armstrong
One of the things I like about amateur radio is that it teaches you to respect
a common good (in this case, the spectrum). Hams seem to really understand
this concept. It's easy to be defeatist and cry about tragedy of the commons
but in amateur radio people are largely respectful and abide by the etiquette.

~~~
tlrobinson
Yeah... but it also doesn't hurt that there are a number of regulations
designed to prevent abuse and the FCC isn't shy about handing out $10,000+
fines to repeat offenders.

~~~
brian-armstrong
This really isn't it, though. The respect for others aspect is baked into the
instruction you get if you study at a club. I think people generally
understand that the only way for everyone to make those long range contacts
they want (or whatever they're trying to accomplish) is if everyone is mostly
being fair in their use of the bands. I don't get the sense that people would
start acting out of turn if only someone stopped watching them.

~~~
aninhumer
Sure, the culture is a strong component, but that's how most rules work. You
have strong social pressure, such that the majority of people don't even
consider breaking the rules, and then you have enforcement to dissuade the few
remaining bad actors. Neither alone is sufficient.

------
qwertyuiop924
I got my license in the 6th grade. Which wasn't all that long ago for me. We
helped establish a local radio club. Like programming, amateur radio can be
very intimidating, but isn't ultimately that complicated.

On a side note, megabit speeds on HAMNET? Holy Crap. Most packet radio only
talks maybe 9600 baud max. Hmm. Come to think of it, Linux does have kernel-
level AX.25 networking support... Anybody up for Quake over radio? :-P

~~~
mc42
My only major concern about that is would the data encoding of quake be
considered "encryption" in the eyes of the FCC?

Other than that, it'd be pretty cool to see that.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
IIRC, according to the amateur radio rules as written by the FCC, you can use
any encoding for amateur traffic, provided that it can be decoded using freely
available software (by anybody who downloads the software, so don't be getting
ideas about GPG), and QuakeWorld traffic most certainly can be. Although the
fact that some of the datastream requires proprietary assets to be applied
fully (player location, etc.), it may be a grey area, but I think it works. In
which case, Xonotic, OpenArena, or Teeworlds would fit nicely. Although
Xonotic uses the DarkPlaces network protocol, and I don't know how optimized
for low speed the DP protocol is. Heck, for all I know, it's NetQuake derived.

~~~
tlrobinson
It doesn't even need to be free (as in beer or speech) software... there are a
number of popular proprietary protocols like DStar.

I kind of wish that weren't the case. At a minimum the protocol should be
documented and unencumbered by patents.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Well, then, I'm in the clear. I guess I kind of have to do it now... we shall
see...

------
peterkshultz
My father introduced me to amateur radio at a young age. I got my license as a
teenager.

I play with a mode of communication called Earth-Moon-Earth, or EME. The idea
is to bounce signals off the moon and have them get picked up by a pre-
arranged partner back on Earth. It feels cutting-edge.

Were more people exposed to such off-the-wall applications of ham radio, I
think there'd be a resurgence in the hobby.

------
kqr
So for someone completely uninitiated: what's the smallest and cheapest
possible step into this world? I'm not ready to dive into it fully, but I feel
like a good first step might be to just get portable, cheap equipment that
lets me tune in and listen to broadcasts on various frequencies. Does my
thinking make sense?

Background: I have ADHD so I have to force myself to not jump in at the deep
end whenever I hear of something novel and cool.

~~~
mumrah
Cheapest? A Chinese radio off Amazon, e.g., [https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-
UV-5R-Dual-Radio-Black/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-
Radio-Black/dp/B007H4VT7A). This will allow you to tune in to local repeaters
and listen. N.B., you cannot legally transmit without a license which is easy
and cheap to obtain [http://www.arrl.org/getting-
licensed](http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed).

After getting licensed, you'll probably get frustrated with the UV-5R and look
into a more capable hand held unit, or a mobile radio. These start at around
$150 and go up from there (plus antennas, power supplies, etc).

~~~
kqr
Thanks! I'm well aware I'm not legally allowed to transmit and don't plan to
either. I'm just fascinated by the prospect of receiving invisible waves and
having them translated into sound in my hand.

Can I read somewhere about which frequencies are used by ham operators, and
descriptions of things like UHF and VF and narrowband and such?

~~~
btreecat
If you don't have any interest in transmission (for now) you should probably
pick up an SDR dongle since they can tune a much wider range of frequencies,
and are cheaper.

[http://www.rtl-sdr.com/](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/)

~~~
koryk
I bought an rtl sdr before I started studying for my license. It is a great
entry point into the hobby. GQRX and SDR# are great applications for browsing
and visualizing. Another fun thing to do is get weather data from commercial
outdoor wireless weather sensors in your area with RTL 433
[https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433](https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433)

------
mikegioia
This is really cool. The article mentions that encryption is illegal over
these radio frequencies, but why is that? Are people actively detecting
encrypted data?

It would be cool to experiment with these radios but have it all communicate
using TLS or something.

~~~
Steltek
Let's start with all useful parts of the radio spectrum falling under various
sorts of restrictions (with examples):

* Closed licensed users: cell providers, public safety, etc

* Location limits: immobile antennas like broadcast FM

* Technical limits: ISM devices, Wifi, or FRS walkie talkies

* Content limits: Amateur radio

Amateur Radio gets to bypass a ton of these restrictions:

* Anyone who can pass a test can get a license to use these frequencies

* You can transmit from nearly anywhere

* You can use tremendous amounts of power (1500W vs Wifi's piddly 0.5W or less)

* You can use whatever equipment you can solder together, no certifications other than an honor system of "I'm fairly confident it's within spec"

Encryption would negate the ability to police the few limits left but also
notably, the content. And that primarily means preserving noncommercial
purposes but additionally, you're required to periodically identify yourself
using your FCC callsign.

The Amateur Radio community is already a little nervous with the influx of
cheap $30 radios falling into the hands of unlicensed and inexperienced users
(notably "prepper" types that read disaster readiness articles like this one).

~~~
JoshTriplett
> * You can use tremendous amounts of power (1500W vs Wifi's piddly 0.5W or
> less)

Here's a fun one: wifi 802.11b channel 1 is in an amateur band, so if you have
an amateur license, you identify with your callsign (using the ESSID works),
and you transmit everything in the clear, you can use modified/amplified wifi
equipment at higher power levels than wifi normally allows. (The standard
common-sense restriction of "no more power than needed for the application"
applies.)

An amateur rocketry group I worked with
([http://psas.pdx.edu/](http://psas.pdx.edu/)) uses this to receive wifi at 1W
from a rocket miles away (and going Mach 1.1).

~~~
cweagans
Wow, that's really impressive. I'd have assumed you'd run into some kind of
doppler shift issues going that speed unless you were pretty far away from the
launch site. Why bother with a TCP/IP link, though? Seems like a less verbose
protocol would be a better choice to use to get a simple data stream from your
rocket to ground control.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> I'd have assumed you'd run into some kind of doppler shift issues going that
> speed unless you were pretty far away from the launch site.

Doppler shift might come into play if the rocket went _much_ faster, but Mach
1 just isn't that fast compared to the speed of light. A quick calculation
suggests that a 2.4GHz signal would get shifted by ~3kHz. Wifi isn't that
sensitive.

> Why bother with a TCP/IP link, though? Seems like a less verbose protocol
> would be a better choice to use to get a simple data stream from your rocket
> to ground control.

We used UDP/IP for telemetry data (and had almost no packet loss). TCP/IP did
allow us to SSH to the (Linux-powered) rocket for debugging, though.

~~~
cweagans
I stand corrected.

Also, being able to SSH into a _rocket_ is pretty fucking awesome on it's own.
:)

------
whamlastxmas
Amateur radio will thrive but only relatively speaking - it will still be
pretty useless.

1\. Without repeaters, which in the best situations only have enough battery
for less than a day, you will not be able to reliably communicate farther than
10-20 miles in most circumstances. With handheld devices, only a couple of
miles.

2\. For repeaters that do manage to stay up, even less than a day, they are
usually exclusively for emergency response use only.

3\. Anyone you need to talk to has to have a radio. Most people don't. Most
people don't even know someone who has one.

I looked in amateur radio as a tool for emergency situations and found that
its usefulness was pretty limited. If I had a natural disaster in my city and
needed to communicate to family in a city 300 miles away, it's pretty
complicated and expensive to do so without a repeater, and repeaters can't
really be relied upon in situations like that. My state even has a repeater
network that accesses most major cities in the state, but given that only a
single person can talk on it at a given time, the opportunity to talk to my
family over it during a natural disaster seems pretty unlikely.

~~~
dbcurtis
HF needs to repeaters for around the world coverage.

~~~
whamlastxmas
In the right conditions, with an extra level of licensing, with a lot of
knowledge needed, and using extremely expensive equipment. These do no make
for a good solution for the average person in the event of a natural disaster.

~~~
dbcurtis
Wow. Such negativity. I thought we were all techies here. It seemed to be
cheap enough for me and work well enough for me when I was 12 years old and
mowed lawns to buy radio parts. But I guess actual experience with the
technology is trumped by your superior intuition.

------
vanous
I have an antenna ready to be raised and station in a box.... but other then
feeling like a prepper I have no practical use for it. Network effect applies
here too, like for any other social network. Only old people here on waves,
checking weather daily. I was excited years back, but now it feels like dying
breed.

~~~
vvanders
Yup, really depends on what you're local club is doing.

We've got a pretty active club here with is pretty awesome and I'm hoping to
spend some time playing around with alternate data protocols later this year.

------
agumonkey
There are videos on youtube where some guy scans very long range (across
continents; maybe leveraging atmosphere reflections) and randomly connecting
with dudes up high somewhere in Siberia. I felt living 2001 a space odyssey in
real time. Since I want to go into HAM.

~~~
webtechgal
Yup, with the right ionospheric/propagation conditions, a CQDX call on the
20M/14MHz band could get you some unlikely contacts, even with a pretty low-
powered rig (~100 watts) and a well-tuned antenna.

------
gp10
The intersection of Ham radio and SDR (software defined radio) is proving to
be quite interesting.

------
joeyspn
My neighbour (next door) is a radio aficionado and a thing that worries me is
that sometimes when I'm with the headphones or speakers connected to the
computer, I can hear him speaking... Does anyone knows how is this possible if
the macbook does not have receiver? this has me puzzled...

I find the amateur radio somewhat interesting, but on the dev level. I was
about to buy a HackRf, and I'll probably do it when I have more free time...

~~~
kylehotchkiss
He's likely breaking a FCC anti-interference law (with older equipment
probably). Radio waves have harmonics like instruments do, sort of. So you
repeat your transmission quieter and quieter on some surrounding frequency.

You can hear it because your headphone wires will pick up wavelengths about
the same length (ever heard of people making AM radios with wire and a tin
can?). My understanding and I hope I can be corrected if wrong is that this
only will work for FM transmissions.

I've heard the best thing to do in these situations is to politely inform your
neighbor of the situation and to investigate a solution. Probably some filter
on his transmitter would do the trick. But I'm sure if he's serious about
radio, he'll have a grand time fixing it...

~~~
Johnythree
A useful rule of thumb:

If a non-radio device is picking up radio signals it can never be the
Transmitter which is at fault.

It must be RF breakthrough caused by bad (eg cheap) design in the device.

Source: Retired EMC engineer.

P.S. I've never heard of people building an AM radio with a wire and a tin
can. And if it were possible, any fault would be with the poor receiver not
the transmitter.

~~~
AstroJetson
A tin can wouldn't be the best choice, but almost any cylinder would work.
I've seen crystal sets using Oatmeal boxes, water bottles, etc. I've built
them using wood 2" square and about 6" long. Some wire, a crystal or other
diode, and a capacitor and you can get any of the clear channel stations.

(Capacitor can be made out of foil and paper, crystal out of the graphite from
a pencil and a razor blade. The radio pioneers were pretty inventive. Google
early crystal radio receivers.)

"..any fault would be with the poor receiver .." is correct, but if you took
the time to build your own crystal set, definitely go see the ham next door,
he most likely has the parts in his component stash to add some better RF
selection/rejection to your radio.

Just like most of you like to tinker with code, we like to tinker with radios.

------
carlesfe
It seems there are some ham radio operators here, I hope someone can help: I'd
like to get introduced in this world, is there some guide I can read to know
what I'll need to learn and which equipment I'd need to buy in order to get
started?

~~~
jasiek
Best to contact a radio club in your region. Try these guys:
[http://www.fediea.org/miembros/?call=rcb](http://www.fediea.org/miembros/?call=rcb)
or [http://www.ure.es/](http://www.ure.es/)

------
imglorp
> When everything else fails...

What about nuclear war or a solar mass ejection event? I'm thinking a big fat
EMP will smoke the semiconductors in most amateur rigs: they often have big
antennae and sensitive pre-amps.

Is there any RAD-hard amateur gear?

~~~
Johnythree
Two things:

Firstly hams equipped for emergency communications keep backup radios
(disconnected from antennas) for this very reason.

And if their gear was damaged by EMP, the hams would have the knowledge to
effect repairs, or at least build simple valve based gear by scavenging old
TVs, etc.

Again, this is a popular activity at fields days: A race to see which team can
first make contact by means of a simple Transceiver built from scavenged junk.

------
wprapido
amateur radio was used in the civil war in yugoslavia back in the 90's as a
way to spread news and as a way for friends and relatives on conflicting sides
to kind of get in touch

YU1MVV

------
omginternets
This might seem like a silly question, but what does one _do_ with a HAM radio
license? Just talk to other people?

I have trouble seeing where the creative, build-cool-shit part comes in,
though I'd love to be wrong about this!

~~~
Steltek
* Antennas are usually the first step since it's just straight up metal bent into the right length and shape. Build a QFH to receive weather satellite data directly. Build a Yagi to talk to the ISS (that is, usually people using the ISS repeater) or other satellites.

* Kits for peripherals usually comes next. Antenna tuners, power meters, etc.

* Kit radios themselves. Usually more complicated than regular kits but the potential for hands-on learning is huge.

* Tweaking and tuning. Like squeezing every ounce of performance out of your code, you can always refine your radio setup to go farther or do more on less power.

* SOTA - Summits On The Air. Assemble a radio setup that's light enough to carry to the top of a mountain then prove that it works by contacting other people with it. Typically this is a small COTS or kit radio running on AA batteries with a homebrew antenna.

* EME - Create a high-gain directional antenna and a high power amplifier. Aim it the moon and see if you can hear yourself.

------
nxzero
Given the lack of privacy, security, etc. - using amateur radio is a no go for
me.

~~~
cweagans
Lack of privacy and security? It's public radio communication. What exactly do
you expect?

~~~
nxzero
My expectation of any communication channel is that it allows true anonymity &
strong encryption.

~~~
cweagans
You have the wrong expectation of amateur radio then. It's about as anonymous
as two friends going to a park and yelling loudly to each other.

Encryption is also not allowed by law, since it's public spectrum. Allowing
encryption would be akin to allowing somebody to just build a structure in the
middle of a public park. That takes away usable recreational area from other
people.

~~~
nxzero
Last I checked public parks by default allow anonymity and the exchange of
encrypted messages in public.

Further, allowing anonymity & strong encryption on amateur radio is possible.

If you're claiming there's a difference somehow in the use of spectrum
bandwidth, I'm not seeing it; meaning even with anonymity and strong
encryption it would be possible to manage bandwidth abuse.

~~~
cweagans
Yeah, the park analogy kind of breaks down a bit with radio, but the point is,
ham radio is not for the people that want to discreetly pass coded messages on
slips of paper to another person in the park. It's a medium for the guy with
the megaphone telling people to evacuate due to imminent threats.

In any case, it's the same argument for not allowing automobiles on walking
paths: sure, it'd probably work, but it sort of takes the fun and utility out
of it for other people. Encrypted messages converted to sound for transmission
over the air sounds _horrible_ , and for somebody that's scanning through the
band, landing on that monstrosity is very unpleasant. Also,if you are
transmitting encrypted traffic, you are by definition doing so at the
exclusion of every other ham; they can't know what you're transmitting, and
they can't transmit there. Plus, ham bands are 100% noncommercial, so there's
also no way to enforce that rule.

The purpose of the ham bands is not for you to pass your tinfoil wrapped
messages to other similarly paranoid people. If you want that, use unlicensed
spectrum. You can pass whatever kind of traffic you want there, assuming
you're not causing interference.

------
tmpanon1234act
Pretty fun read. I've been into amateur radio for a while, so here's hoping it
one day proves more useful than just a frivolous hobby :)

------
elcapitan
When everything else fails, I'll write the message on a piece of vellum.

------
nateguchi
*if everything else fails

