7 ms·

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

provobro 5y ago
That and anyone using this would need a ham radio license
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  IMO that's a great way to set up a sandbox: it has built in crowd control and a mechanism to keep out flagrant abuse. Yeah, it doesn't scale to the moon, but that's the whole point: it's a proving ground, not a moon rocket.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    It's not that it doesn't scale - it's just there's a reason people use letters to communicate and not postcards. People expect a modicum of privacy which ham radio, to its detriment, denies.
    - edrxty 5y ago
      It also completely prevents any interesting radio experimentation. There isn't anything left on that frontier that couldn't be conflated with encryption.
      - jmwilson 5y ago
        As someone who once believed this, this statement is simply not true. Experimentation in ham radio is largely about the physical layer, with maybe some layer 2-4 work when it comes to building low-scale communications infrastructure. Encryption is not implemented at this level, and the limitations on encrypted content do not impede research into new digital modes or actual radio science. I think it is worth asking why modern digital radio standards (e.g. P25, DMR, LTE, 5G) were largely developed outside the ham community. My survey level understanding is they came from the communication needs of their users and are not a natural evolution of something that hams would build, with or without encryption. When I was researching DMR, there's a lot of stuff that is unnecessarily clunky when considering the use case of a ham QSO. Conversely, the business users of DMR want more structure than what's provided with amateur-designed digital modes. With 5G, I think there are some real technical and capital barriers, i.e., very few amateurs have access to the grade of test equipment needed to engineer and experiment with systems at those frequencies.
        thereddaikon 5y ago
        To your first point I think you are missing their meaning a bit. There is actual encryption, like AES. And then there are communications methods that aren't open by default. The way in which the FCC regulations are penned means Ham transmissions can't be private in any way. So no just actual encryption but pretty much anyone with a compatible transceiver should be able to listen in to what you are saying at any time. That level of permissiveness can be problematic because some technologies are by their nature not compliant. FHSS comes to mind. Its not encrypted but if you don't know know the sequence it might as well be. WiFi, bluetooth and most cell protocols use FHSS. So if you wanted to experiment with digital data transfer and make it in any way robust in a congested area you could not do so as a Ham. Its implicitly illegal. To your second point I agree. DMR, P25, TETRA etc were developed with police departments and such in mind. To get the full use out of them requires a heavy investment infrastructure for trunking systems. And their programming models assume a set it and leave it use case where the operators are not trained or even savvy to RF comms. This makes them at best clunky for Hams. DMR has caught on not because its the best, but I think because its easier and cheaper for radio makers to license it. In Europe Type 1 is also allowed unlicensed which gives the market momentum.
      - detaro 5y ago
        What's more conflated with encryption than e.g. the level of encoding you find in DVB-S or FT-8?
        genewitch 5y ago
        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".
        detaro 5y ago
        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?
        genewitch 5y ago
        FT-8 has issues beyond what is or is not encoding that could be argued (and is) to be in violation of certain rules.
    - thereddaikon 5y ago
      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 maintaining the status quo than actually continuing the spirit of the hobby. There is nothing experimental or ground breaking about talking to someone states away using an HF transceiver that cost $4k in analog FM. That stopped being innovative 80 years ago. There are a lot of interesting things being done with RF that are off limits to amateurs because they require a business license. But you are talking about normal people using radio for normal conversations. That's a distinct use case. Its something worth discussing, the FCC has lagged behind there too but its not the same thing as Ham.
      - generalizations 5y ago
        > 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.
        danachow 5y ago
        Have you never heard of twitter?
      - ryanmercer 5y ago
        >and LARPing as emergency services dispatchers Uh, they might LARP in your neck of the woods but my county HEAVILY relies on amateur operators for weather related emergencies all year long (tornado country plus snow country). It's the primary reason my wife and I are getting into amateur radio.
  - danbr 5y ago
    > IMO that's a great way to set up a sandbox: it has built in crowd control and a mechanism to keep out flagrant abuse. Sadly nothing is really stopping anyone from buying radios online and transmitting garbage. Sure the FCC will come knocking if someone flagrantly transmits without regard for others.
    - iszomer 5y ago
      Then again, there are people who police themselves and others. Here's an interesting story about an investigation into a camouflaged jammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjInmHsWdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjInmHsWdM
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      HFDF used to be difficult for the military. Now it's easy for hobbyists. Times change. Rules need to keep up. I don't mean "chase a squealer with a truck and a dimensional antenna," either, I mean persistent always-on infrastructure to plot emissions on a map. That's a hobby thing now.
  - BuildTheRobots 5y ago
    Don't scale to the moon, but with a full license you can put out enough power to bounce a signal off the moon...
- rmason 5y ago
  Getting a technicians license is probably easier than you think. I've heard of amateur radio clubs putting on all Saturday classes with people taking the test at the end. VHF radios aren't expensive, in fact they're importing some from China that are dirt cheap. Course if you want to work on the HF bands then it requires a bit more work to get the higher class licenses.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  This is a pro... learn some radio stuff, pay a tiny amount of money, and get a licence to communicate without the need for random providers.
- ryanmercer 5y ago
  It's easy though. You can memorize the Technician pool in 5-10 hours with https://www.hamstudy.org 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% correct on the General already just from using the app for a half hour or so a day and listening to the question pool via KB6NU's book while I work since Monday morning. I probably won't get up to passing it Saturday but I can just do an online test in the next few weeks once my Tech is in the database Monday or Tuesday. Getting the General gives you plenty of room to do stuff like this.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    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 90% of every argument I've had with hams is interpretation of said rules ( and part 95, and part 90.) I don't want to discourage anyone, but the investment in effort and money between tech and general is in the 4-5 digit range of dollars and hours. By all means study. But cramming the test questions isn't studying and will leave you as an appliance operator that will constantly be told, if ever on the air, that they're doing something either rude, against the rules, or dangerous.
    - ryanmercer 5y ago
      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.
      - 5y ago
tlrobinson 5y ago
I assume you're referring to the rule prohibiting "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning" (e.x. encryption). I don't think it's particularly limiting, as you can still use cryptography for purposes other than "obscuring [the message's] meaning", e.x. authentication. You just can't encrypt the payload. It's also likely necessary to prevent the bands from being overrun with people using them for commercial purposes.
- Steltek 5y ago
  Encryption is a nerd sniping/clickbait topic. I would argue there are other rules with worse impact: - Baud rate vs symbol rate vs bandwidth occupied - No spread spectrum south of ~2.4GHz - New protocols/modes are a catch-22 of needing to be well known to be legal but then how do you create a new one from scratch? - Use-case specific power limits, like radio control. - "Gotcha" technicality fines like incidental broadcasting of music or "fleeting" curse words. Intent and pattern of behavior isn't considered.
  - paulirwin 5y ago
    The symbol rate vs bandwidth is hopefully changing; the ARRL is petitioning the FCC to make it a bandwidth limit instead. On many HF bands, there is limited bandwidth anyways, so the proposed 2.8kHz is a good balance without letting a single individual consume an entire band (i.e. 30m). Spread spectrum usually requires significant bandwidth, and there just aren't amateur bands below 222MHz that are large enough for that to be truly useful. (The lower limit is 222MHz AFAIK, not 2.4GHz.) Even the 222MHz band is only 3MHz wide, and the largest below that is 4MHz. Spread spectrum starts to make more sense at higher frequencies with 50+MHz bandwidth. If you have examples of SS uses that could work well on the order of kHz instead of MHz, I'd be interested in learning more. You can absolutely create a new digital mode protocol from scratch. You just need to make the protocol publicly available and let others know what you're doing. You could do a CW or SSB voice transmission before and after each transmission of your custom protocol, explaining where to go to find out more information. (And of course, station identification.) I'd recommend experimenting on some of the wider/shorter-range bands like 70cm first though, and QRP. This also applies to encryption - if you make the decryption keys publicly available, and you make it clear how others can decrypt what you're transmitting, it is possible to experiment with radio encryption on amateur bands. That goes to the nature of amateur radio - learning and experimentation. But what you can't do is use it for private purposes - there are other bands for that (i.e. ISM). Most of the conversations around this are people frustrated that they can't browse HTTPS sites or have private communications on amateur channels. It would be nearly impossible to ensure people aren't hogging the amateur bands for inappropriate purposes if you can't decrypt/decode what is being transmitted. With such limited bandwidth available, especially on some HF bands as small as 50-100kHz, prohibiting encryption helps ensure equitable access for everyone. It's like complaining about not being able to drive a non-street-legal vehicle on highways. You can still take that vehicle to off-road tracks if you wish and have fun. Power limits - I don't know what to say on this one, other than if you have a good case for exceeding them for a specific use, contact the ARRL or your regional radio organization. Drum up support in the community. If there's enough interest and justification, rules can change. But QRP is sometimes a fun challenge too. As for fines, I have not heard of fines being issued as "gotchas" or for minor infractions. Do you have examples? Most of what I've seen are people causing blatant intentional interference or flagrantly violating the rules with inappropriate behavior, repeatedly after several warnings.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
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 http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/nbp/nbp.html
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Thanks this protocol is very interesting. Hadn't heard of it yet.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Same guy also build his own gps receiver from scratch(!) in 1991(!) http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html
GoodbyeMrChips 5y ago
Only a small portion of the worlds Hams are subject to the FCC. Digital experimentation is wide open and active here.

provobro 5y ago

That and anyone using this would need a ham radio license

jjoonathan 5y ago
IMO that's a great way to set up a sandbox: it has built in crowd control and a mechanism to keep out flagrant abuse. Yeah, it doesn't scale to the moon, but that's the whole point: it's a proving ground, not a moon rocket.
- generalizations 5y ago
  It's not that it doesn't scale - it's just there's a reason people use letters to communicate and not postcards. People expect a modicum of privacy which ham radio, to its detriment, denies.
  - edrxty 5y ago
    It also completely prevents any interesting radio experimentation. There isn't anything left on that frontier that couldn't be conflated with encryption.
    - jmwilson 5y ago
      As someone who once believed this, this statement is simply not true. Experimentation in ham radio is largely about the physical layer, with maybe some layer 2-4 work when it comes to building low-scale communications infrastructure. Encryption is not implemented at this level, and the limitations on encrypted content do not impede research into new digital modes or actual radio science. I think it is worth asking why modern digital radio standards (e.g. P25, DMR, LTE, 5G) were largely developed outside the ham community. My survey level understanding is they came from the communication needs of their users and are not a natural evolution of something that hams would build, with or without encryption. When I was researching DMR, there's a lot of stuff that is unnecessarily clunky when considering the use case of a ham QSO. Conversely, the business users of DMR want more structure than what's provided with amateur-designed digital modes. With 5G, I think there are some real technical and capital barriers, i.e., very few amateurs have access to the grade of test equipment needed to engineer and experiment with systems at those frequencies.
      - thereddaikon 5y ago
        To your first point I think you are missing their meaning a bit. There is actual encryption, like AES. And then there are communications methods that aren't open by default. The way in which the FCC regulations are penned means Ham transmissions can't be private in any way. So no just actual encryption but pretty much anyone with a compatible transceiver should be able to listen in to what you are saying at any time. That level of permissiveness can be problematic because some technologies are by their nature not compliant. FHSS comes to mind. Its not encrypted but if you don't know know the sequence it might as well be. WiFi, bluetooth and most cell protocols use FHSS. So if you wanted to experiment with digital data transfer and make it in any way robust in a congested area you could not do so as a Ham. Its implicitly illegal. To your second point I agree. DMR, P25, TETRA etc were developed with police departments and such in mind. To get the full use out of them requires a heavy investment infrastructure for trunking systems. And their programming models assume a set it and leave it use case where the operators are not trained or even savvy to RF comms. This makes them at best clunky for Hams. DMR has caught on not because its the best, but I think because its easier and cheaper for radio makers to license it. In Europe Type 1 is also allowed unlicensed which gives the market momentum.
    - detaro 5y ago
      What's more conflated with encryption than e.g. the level of encoding you find in DVB-S or FT-8?
      - genewitch 5y ago
        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".
        detaro 5y ago
        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?
        genewitch 5y ago
        FT-8 has issues beyond what is or is not encoding that could be argued (and is) to be in violation of certain rules.
  - thereddaikon 5y ago
    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 maintaining the status quo than actually continuing the spirit of the hobby. There is nothing experimental or ground breaking about talking to someone states away using an HF transceiver that cost $4k in analog FM. That stopped being innovative 80 years ago. There are a lot of interesting things being done with RF that are off limits to amateurs because they require a business license. But you are talking about normal people using radio for normal conversations. That's a distinct use case. Its something worth discussing, the FCC has lagged behind there too but its not the same thing as Ham.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      > 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.
      - danachow 5y ago
        Have you never heard of twitter?
    - ryanmercer 5y ago
      >and LARPing as emergency services dispatchers Uh, they might LARP in your neck of the woods but my county HEAVILY relies on amateur operators for weather related emergencies all year long (tornado country plus snow country). It's the primary reason my wife and I are getting into amateur radio.
- danbr 5y ago
  > IMO that's a great way to set up a sandbox: it has built in crowd control and a mechanism to keep out flagrant abuse. Sadly nothing is really stopping anyone from buying radios online and transmitting garbage. Sure the FCC will come knocking if someone flagrantly transmits without regard for others.
  - iszomer 5y ago
    Then again, there are people who police themselves and others. Here's an interesting story about an investigation into a camouflaged jammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjInmHsWdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjInmHsWdM
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    HFDF used to be difficult for the military. Now it's easy for hobbyists. Times change. Rules need to keep up. I don't mean "chase a squealer with a truck and a dimensional antenna," either, I mean persistent always-on infrastructure to plot emissions on a map. That's a hobby thing now.
- BuildTheRobots 5y ago
  Don't scale to the moon, but with a full license you can put out enough power to bounce a signal off the moon...
rmason 5y ago
Getting a technicians license is probably easier than you think. I've heard of amateur radio clubs putting on all Saturday classes with people taking the test at the end. VHF radios aren't expensive, in fact they're importing some from China that are dirt cheap. Course if you want to work on the HF bands then it requires a bit more work to get the higher class licenses.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
This is a pro... learn some radio stuff, pay a tiny amount of money, and get a licence to communicate without the need for random providers.
ryanmercer 5y ago
It's easy though. You can memorize the Technician pool in 5-10 hours with https://www.hamstudy.org 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% correct on the General already just from using the app for a half hour or so a day and listening to the question pool via KB6NU's book while I work since Monday morning. I probably won't get up to passing it Saturday but I can just do an online test in the next few weeks once my Tech is in the database Monday or Tuesday. Getting the General gives you plenty of room to do stuff like this.
- genewitch 5y ago
  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 90% of every argument I've had with hams is interpretation of said rules ( and part 95, and part 90.) I don't want to discourage anyone, but the investment in effort and money between tech and general is in the 4-5 digit range of dollars and hours. By all means study. But cramming the test questions isn't studying and will leave you as an appliance operator that will constantly be told, if ever on the air, that they're doing something either rude, against the rules, or dangerous.
  - ryanmercer 5y ago
    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.
    - 5y ago

tlrobinson 5y ago

I assume you're referring to the rule prohibiting "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning" (e.x. encryption). I don't think it's particularly limiting, as you can still use cryptography for purposes other than "obscuring [the message's] meaning", e.x. authentication. You just can't encrypt the payload. It's also likely necessary to prevent the bands from being overrun with people using them for commercial purposes.

Steltek 5y ago
Encryption is a nerd sniping/clickbait topic. I would argue there are other rules with worse impact: - Baud rate vs symbol rate vs bandwidth occupied - No spread spectrum south of ~2.4GHz - New protocols/modes are a catch-22 of needing to be well known to be legal but then how do you create a new one from scratch? - Use-case specific power limits, like radio control. - "Gotcha" technicality fines like incidental broadcasting of music or "fleeting" curse words. Intent and pattern of behavior isn't considered.
- paulirwin 5y ago
  The symbol rate vs bandwidth is hopefully changing; the ARRL is petitioning the FCC to make it a bandwidth limit instead. On many HF bands, there is limited bandwidth anyways, so the proposed 2.8kHz is a good balance without letting a single individual consume an entire band (i.e. 30m). Spread spectrum usually requires significant bandwidth, and there just aren't amateur bands below 222MHz that are large enough for that to be truly useful. (The lower limit is 222MHz AFAIK, not 2.4GHz.) Even the 222MHz band is only 3MHz wide, and the largest below that is 4MHz. Spread spectrum starts to make more sense at higher frequencies with 50+MHz bandwidth. If you have examples of SS uses that could work well on the order of kHz instead of MHz, I'd be interested in learning more. You can absolutely create a new digital mode protocol from scratch. You just need to make the protocol publicly available and let others know what you're doing. You could do a CW or SSB voice transmission before and after each transmission of your custom protocol, explaining where to go to find out more information. (And of course, station identification.) I'd recommend experimenting on some of the wider/shorter-range bands like 70cm first though, and QRP. This also applies to encryption - if you make the decryption keys publicly available, and you make it clear how others can decrypt what you're transmitting, it is possible to experiment with radio encryption on amateur bands. That goes to the nature of amateur radio - learning and experimentation. But what you can't do is use it for private purposes - there are other bands for that (i.e. ISM). Most of the conversations around this are people frustrated that they can't browse HTTPS sites or have private communications on amateur channels. It would be nearly impossible to ensure people aren't hogging the amateur bands for inappropriate purposes if you can't decrypt/decode what is being transmitted. With such limited bandwidth available, especially on some HF bands as small as 50-100kHz, prohibiting encryption helps ensure equitable access for everyone. It's like complaining about not being able to drive a non-street-legal vehicle on highways. You can still take that vehicle to off-road tracks if you wish and have fun. Power limits - I don't know what to say on this one, other than if you have a good case for exceeding them for a specific use, contact the ARRL or your regional radio organization. Drum up support in the community. If there's enough interest and justification, rules can change. But QRP is sometimes a fun challenge too. As for fines, I have not heard of fines being issued as "gotchas" or for minor infractions. Do you have examples? Most of what I've seen are people causing blatant intentional interference or flagrantly violating the rules with inappropriate behavior, repeatedly after several warnings.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

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 http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/nbp/nbp.html

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Thanks this protocol is very interesting. Hadn't heard of it yet.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Same guy also build his own gps receiver from scratch(!) in 1991(!) http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html

GoodbyeMrChips 5y ago

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