Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Transmit legit, become a ham
Nothing forces you to interact with other ham radio operators. You can happily work in isolation communicating among your own stations if you wish. Unless you need to do frequency coordination, which you usually do. Then you have to deal with the oldest, gnarliest hams around, the ones who 50 years ago got access to mountaintop towers and have been squatting on them ever since, like trolls under bridges. However, ham-land contains a ready pool of technically inclined people, most of whom are interested in but not well informed about subjects like software defined radio and Free Software. I got a ham Tech license in the 1970-80's and it was one of the more disappointing experiences in my life. What a culture clash! The ham fraternity was filled with people who spent all their time chit-chatting on their handheld radios about their personal lives, but who knew and cared very little about radio technology or computers. (Nowadays everyone has cellphones, but in those days they were the only ones who could communicate mobile.) They fought uselessly over stupid little status things like how short or long your callsign was. I soldered together a 1200 bps packet radio interface board, ran BBS's, evolved protocol software, and taught classes on digital radio communication protocols to the interested part of the local Bay Area ham community (led by Hank Magnuski, KA6M). The almost universal attitude among the hams who I met was We got here first, we own these frequencies, don't you put any funny computer stuff on 'em because that will just attract more of the public to horn in on our monopoly. They actively threatened to turn me in to the FCC for any real or imagined violation of the incredibly picky rules, like letting someone else log in over my radio modem (carrying third party traffic). Really friendly folks. I decided to retire my ham license until a large number of the existing hams died off (many were middle aged or older). Perhaps now the worst jerks have cleared the ranks, and some more welcoming people are hams; I don't know. I moved my digital radio experiments to the unlicensed bands, ignored the hams, and have been much happier ever since. I think the hams are still doing 1200 bps FSK, while the unlicensed folks have evolved to 108,000,000 bps WiFi. There must be tens of thousands of hams nationwide. There are tens of thousands of WiFi nodes in San Francisco alone -- and no crazy restrictions about not using encryption, not letting other people use your radio, etc. John ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Transmit legit, become a ham
John Gilmore wrote: Unless you need to do frequency coordination, which you usually do. Then you have to deal with the oldest, gnarliest hams around, the ones who 50 years ago got access to mountaintop towers and have been squatting on them ever since, like trolls under bridges. Frequency coordination is voluntary in the amateur radio service. Unless you plan to operate in a band that is already packed with repeaters, you can, in most places, ignore frequency coordination; typically the local coordination body (if it functions at all, which is by no means a guarantee) has designated some range of frequencies as open use and you can just use those frequencies. And very few areas have meaningful coordination for the bands above 900 MHz; even if there is coordination in place for 33cm and up, odds are nobody will notice if you ignore it. Amateur radio frequency coordinators tend to be tinplated dictators with delusion of godhood. They also do not have the blessing of the FCC that they like to pretend they do, and furthermore their legal authority is entirely limited to repeaters (which they'd know if they had actually read the regulations that apply to them, which is unlikely). Things have changed since the 70s; a lot of the twerps you dealt with have died off by now. Kelly ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Transmit legit, become a ham
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 6:22 AM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: Nothing forces you to interact with other ham radio operators. You can happily work in isolation communicating among your own stations if you wish. Unless you need to do frequency coordination, which you usually do. Then you have to deal with the oldest, gnarliest hams around, the ones who 50 years ago got access to mountaintop towers and have been squatting on them ever since, like trolls under bridges. Mostly echoing what Kelly said... Operating in the DC suburbs I've never had need to coordinate, there is always plenty of inactive space on the 23cm band. Though perhaps in California (where there is a lot of 23cm activity, as I understand it) experiences may differ. Some of the amateur allocations overlap ISM allocations, so even the worst spectrum dictator would have little hope of micromanaging that. I suppose its a little different if you're looking to run something like a persistent packet BBS. I got a ham Tech license in the 1970-80's and it was one of the more disappointing experiences in my life. What a culture clash! The ham fraternity was filled with people who spent all their time chit-chatting on their handheld radios about their personal lives, but who knew and cared very little about radio technology or computers. (Nowadays everyone has cellphones, but in those days they were the only ones who could communicate mobile.) In my direct experience this has changed (Although I've only been licensed a couple of years, I've owned a radio for a decade and seen the decline and shift away). Between the internet, pervasive cell phones, SMS, and such people that simply want to chat have moved on to mediums which better support technophobes. Certainly they still exist, but today in most areas the bigger problem is under utilization of the allocations (especially the UHF/SHF ones) and the related fear that the allocations will be taken away. [snip] since. I think the hams are still doing 1200 bps FSK, while the unlicensed folks have evolved to 108,000,000 bps WiFi. At lower frequencies the latest fads involve low speed very narrow-band efficient modulations such as PSK-31, and other low speed fancy forward error corrected protocols which operate at near the information theoretic limit like JT65B. At higher frequencies D-STAR is becoming popular in some areas, and D-STAR depends on a proprietary, patent encumbered, and trade-secret speech codec. Of course, there are people running multimegabit and even WiFi systems operated under part 97 (e.g. switched into ham bands, or on the overlapping ISM segments but with the ham emission restrictions rather than the part 15) There must be tens of thousands of hams nationwide. There are tens of thousands of WiFi nodes in San Francisco alone -- and no crazy restrictions about not using encryption, not letting other people use your radio, etc. There are about 700k licensees. Who knows about how many are actually active, or even living. I could only assume that it would be significantly less than half. Of course, 99.999% of your WiFi nodes are just some Apple controlled appliances with users who even more are blissfully ignorant of how the technology works. It's great for facilitating communication, but the bulk of it isn't facilitating advancement of the art of radio engineering. Because the technology encourages ignorant usage any effort to build more intelligent infrastructure (meshes and such) has to contend with the interference from those tens of thousands of nodes with little to no hope for relief. It's a bit bogus to compare the lack of restrictions on ISM with the restrictions on ham radio. If your ISM radiated power is high enough to have any real range on your uncertified equipment, you're in clear violation of the FCC regulations. I suppose you could argue that enforcement is much more likely in the ham bands, and I suppose that may be true but I don't think it's fair or accurate to say that the restrictions are worse. The content, crypto, and usage restrictions are silly on ham radio, especially when compared with how people are using part 15 devices. I think the goals for spectrum management could be better achieved through other means. But getting the rules changed would require having new blood around to petition the FCC to change the rules. Cheers, ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Transmit legit, become a ham
Gregory Maxwell wrote: Moreover, the amateur license gives you a ready and simple explanation for anyone who might want to claim that you possession of radio equipment signals some kind of intent to operate in a forbidden manner. Why do you have all this radio stuff? Are you a terrorist?? No. Ham radio operator. oh. Okay. I'll just leave now before you geek-out on me. Another point to consider is that the EB's approach toward interference is different when the interference comes from an unlicensed source as opposed to a licensed one. If harmful interference to a licensed station originates from an unlicensed source and the unlicensed source is an intentional radiator that isn't just a malfunctioning part 15 device or something, the FCC is very likely to slap the responsible party with a Notice of Unauthorized Operation, or NOUO; NOUOs typically carry an $11,000 fine and that fine is often assessed on the first offense. However, interference which originates from a licensed station, even if the licensee is not authorized to operate on the frequencies in question, will typically result in a Notice of Violation, or NOV. Licensees subject to a NOV are typically given an opportunity to correct the violation without penalty, especially when the interference was not intentional or was due to a misunderstanding or an ordinary technical error on the part of the licensee. Amateur radio operators, in particular, are often given considerable leeway here. NOVs also tend to carry smaller fines (at least for amateur service licensees) than an NOUO for the same behavior, and the FCC is less likely to confiscate offending equipment. As an aside, I'm a ARRL/VEC accredited volunteer examiner, and have administered nearly 100 license examinations now, so I think by now I have some concept of how the process works. If anyone has any questions regarding this process, I'll be glad to answer them. Regards, Kelly (AB9RF) ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
