5 ms·

Amateur radio operators turn to analog tech to communicate during pandemic

37 points by wglb 7y ago

drmpeg 7y ago
Yet a fairly large portion of ham radio activity is now digital (FT8).
- kawfey 7y ago
  That is still via ham radio, and it's still very analog. A digital signal is created by a computer, which is converted into an [analog] audio signal, then piped through the [analog] audio input (either mic or line-in) of a ham radio, transmitted over [analog] RF, and decoded by the receiver's computer in reverse. The point of the article is that is the communication isn't relying on standard communications infrastructure. The headline falls short.
  - hilbert42 7y ago
    "The headline falls short" Yeah, but we all well know what the 'shorthand' means!
  - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    In that case, everything is analog. When a transistor (digital) switches, it does so via electricity (analog).
- wglb 7y ago
  Yes, it has certainly taken off. But there are still morse code traffic networks, and lots of voice activity. There is very significant CW activity during contests and other special events. But FT8 has seriously balooned. But there are other digital modes that are suited to passing emergency traffic in reliable ways, but their use hasn't grown nearly as much.
state_less 7y ago
I really like ad-hoc networks like this. I hang out on the marine bands these days. Makes me think, maybe we could turn on unsecured WiFi (e.g. WiFi network named ‘community-wifi’), establish IPs and provide some simple services for free to a local community. Something like a digital version of little free library. Provide digital book library, DMs, email, voice chat option and so on? It’d be nice to talk with local radios. Plus no need to pay to communicate. Curious if there are projects like this out there? If not, this makes me want to run some simple services (DNS, BootP/DHCP, HTTP server and homepage with a description and links to additional services).
- hilbert42 7y ago
  "I really like ad-hoc networks like this." As one who got my license and call sign decades ago when I was at school (but which I've long since let lapse), I'm very familiar with ad-hoc networks of this type. My past AR experience also made me a great believer in mesh networks for similar reasons. Both have one great virtue and that is that they're essentially independent from infrastructure that one doesn't own or control directly. When corporations, authoritarian states, dictatorships and or natural disasters get in one's way it's very comforting to know that one can always fallback upon some pretty low tech kit to communicate across the world. Under reasonable conditions, an old telegraph pounder, an 807 beam power tube designed in the late 1930s and a little help from the ionosphere will still easily get you across the planet. ;-)
- Ao7bei3s 7y ago
  That exists, e.g. Freifunk ("free radio", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk) is a collection of open wifi mesh networks in major German cities. The larger ones of these meshes have several thousands of nodes. It is community operated (ie, anyone can participate, though in practice technical issues are driven by technical people and important backbone infrastructure is done with professional hardware). It has an ideological focus on local services, but really what most users use it for is just internet access. And the question is - as a service operator, why would you want to limit something to local people and spotty mesh networking tech, when you could put it on the internet where it can be available to everyone? You're looking at it constructively (add a service for the local community), but from my perspective, availability on the internet is the default, and if there's a local mesh network that encourages people to offer services on the local mesh in particular, that is taking something away that could have been offered on the internet. In a way this is similar to net neutrality - the content should not be tied to the network or vice versa. Obviously over the years that's been a constant point of discussion/contention within the Freifunk community as well, and in general there has been some contention between ideology and technical reality (for example, ideologically, open mesh networks are obviously superior due to fault tolerance and democratized control. But in practice, and in particular the way the real Freifunk meshes are built, things are less decentralized than one would naively expect, the mesh links are unreliable, lossy, bandwidth-constrained, and high latency/jitter, the mesh protocols like batman-adv don't scale well, broadcast spam and management traffic overhead are real problems, etc. - Ideologically there should be no central control, but practically practically you have to have a blessed firmware for interoperability reasons, or if you offer internet access someone needs to control the AS and IP ranges etc.)
taborj 7y ago
To be fair, we were gonna do this anyway. 73

37 points by wglb 7y ago

drmpeg 7y ago

Yet a fairly large portion of ham radio activity is now digital (FT8).

kawfey 7y ago
That is still via ham radio, and it's still very analog. A digital signal is created by a computer, which is converted into an [analog] audio signal, then piped through the [analog] audio input (either mic or line-in) of a ham radio, transmitted over [analog] RF, and decoded by the receiver's computer in reverse. The point of the article is that is the communication isn't relying on standard communications infrastructure. The headline falls short.
- hilbert42 7y ago
  "The headline falls short" Yeah, but we all well know what the 'shorthand' means!
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  In that case, everything is analog. When a transistor (digital) switches, it does so via electricity (analog).
wglb 7y ago
Yes, it has certainly taken off. But there are still morse code traffic networks, and lots of voice activity. There is very significant CW activity during contests and other special events. But FT8 has seriously balooned. But there are other digital modes that are suited to passing emergency traffic in reliable ways, but their use hasn't grown nearly as much.

state_less 7y ago

I really like ad-hoc networks like this. I hang out on the marine bands these days. Makes me think, maybe we could turn on unsecured WiFi (e.g. WiFi network named ‘community-wifi’), establish IPs and provide some simple services for free to a local community. Something like a digital version of little free library. Provide digital book library, DMs, email, voice chat option and so on? It’d be nice to talk with local radios. Plus no need to pay to communicate. Curious if there are projects like this out there? If not, this makes me want to run some simple services (DNS, BootP/DHCP, HTTP server and homepage with a description and links to additional services).

hilbert42 7y ago
"I really like ad-hoc networks like this." As one who got my license and call sign decades ago when I was at school (but which I've long since let lapse), I'm very familiar with ad-hoc networks of this type. My past AR experience also made me a great believer in mesh networks for similar reasons. Both have one great virtue and that is that they're essentially independent from infrastructure that one doesn't own or control directly. When corporations, authoritarian states, dictatorships and or natural disasters get in one's way it's very comforting to know that one can always fallback upon some pretty low tech kit to communicate across the world. Under reasonable conditions, an old telegraph pounder, an 807 beam power tube designed in the late 1930s and a little help from the ionosphere will still easily get you across the planet. ;-)
Ao7bei3s 7y ago
That exists, e.g. Freifunk ("free radio", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk) is a collection of open wifi mesh networks in major German cities. The larger ones of these meshes have several thousands of nodes. It is community operated (ie, anyone can participate, though in practice technical issues are driven by technical people and important backbone infrastructure is done with professional hardware). It has an ideological focus on local services, but really what most users use it for is just internet access. And the question is - as a service operator, why would you want to limit something to local people and spotty mesh networking tech, when you could put it on the internet where it can be available to everyone? You're looking at it constructively (add a service for the local community), but from my perspective, availability on the internet is the default, and if there's a local mesh network that encourages people to offer services on the local mesh in particular, that is taking something away that could have been offered on the internet. In a way this is similar to net neutrality - the content should not be tied to the network or vice versa. Obviously over the years that's been a constant point of discussion/contention within the Freifunk community as well, and in general there has been some contention between ideology and technical reality (for example, ideologically, open mesh networks are obviously superior due to fault tolerance and democratized control. But in practice, and in particular the way the real Freifunk meshes are built, things are less decentralized than one would naively expect, the mesh links are unreliable, lossy, bandwidth-constrained, and high latency/jitter, the mesh protocols like batman-adv don't scale well, broadcast spam and management traffic overhead are real problems, etc. - Ideologically there should be no central control, but practically practically you have to have a blessed firmware for interoperability reasons, or if you offer internet access someone needs to control the AS and IP ranges etc.)

taborj 7y ago

To be fair, we were gonna do this anyway. 73