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Confidentiality isn't really part of ham radio. You must be licensed and maintain a semi-public call sign. Part of the fun is learning the physics and engineeri

Confidentiality isn't really part of ham radio. You must be licensed and maintain a semi-public call sign. Part of the fun is learning the physics and engineering of RF and antennas. Makings contacts thousands of miles away usually takes skill and know-how beyond just jumping online and talking with random people. There are a lot of factors such as understanding wave propagation in relation to the earth and ionosphere. It's satisfying to, say, take your little 5W HF radio and mobile antenna into a remote area and make contacts with other operators. There are also lots of other cool aspects such as having privileges to create higher-power mesh networks, etc. It's a technical hobby and not for everyone, but rewarding.

livueta 3y ago
You're accurately describing the status quo, but I think the parent's point is that a lot more people, me included, would be interested in defending these frequency allocations as a public good if they were more practically usable, and practically usable directly implies encryption. It's an awful lot of primo bandwidth for a bit of hobbyist DXing. I think the problem comes down to the HAM rules having been formulated pre-Internet, where the distinction between amateur and commercial activity was a lot more obvious: noncommercial ~= useless, commercial ~= useful. The advent of the Internet demonstrated the existence of a whole new category: noncommercial ~= useful. Today we've got all kinds of noncommercial but highly useful RF applications, e.g. Meshtastic, that are stuck in the relatively limited ISM bands (yes, I'm aware of HAM mode, but recall usefulness → encryption). Just using the Internet isn't a replacement for these projects, as they're intended to be useful offgrid or during times of centralized Internet disruption. IMO it's a crying shame that stuff like this, the bleeding edge of non-commercial usefulness in RF, is lower priority than ragchewing. Besides, it's not as if all the technical aspects go away under looser rules: propagation behavior etc etc are just as important, if not moreso, than they ever were. This doesn't mean just hand it over to the corps; there's a third way. Some chunks of current HAM spectrum should be converted to ISM. That doesn't mean a total free-for-all; duty cycle and EIRP limits apply and can be scaled appropriately to the frequency's propagation characteristics. The degree of freedom in usage in ISM bands drives innovation in protocol design to make better use of available bandwidth, as has happened with 802.11, so congestion/commercial use is actually a good thing.
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livueta 3y ago

You're accurately describing the status quo, but I think the parent's point is that a lot more people, me included, would be interested in defending these frequency allocations as a public good if they were more practically usable, and practically usable directly implies encryption. It's an awful lot of primo bandwidth for a bit of hobbyist DXing. I think the problem comes down to the HAM rules having been formulated pre-Internet, where the distinction between amateur and commercial activity was a lot more obvious: noncommercial ~= useless, commercial ~= useful. The advent of the Internet demonstrated the existence of a whole new category: noncommercial ~= useful. Today we've got all kinds of noncommercial but highly useful RF applications, e.g. Meshtastic, that are stuck in the relatively limited ISM bands (yes, I'm aware of HAM mode, but recall usefulness → encryption). Just using the Internet isn't a replacement for these projects, as they're intended to be useful offgrid or during times of centralized Internet disruption. IMO it's a crying shame that stuff like this, the bleeding edge of non-commercial usefulness in RF, is lower priority than ragchewing. Besides, it's not as if all the technical aspects go away under looser rules: propagation behavior etc etc are just as important, if not moreso, than they ever were. This doesn't mean just hand it over to the corps; there's a third way. Some chunks of current HAM spectrum should be converted to ISM. That doesn't mean a total free-for-all; duty cycle and EIRP limits apply and can be scaled appropriately to the frequency's propagation characteristics. The degree of freedom in usage in ISM bands drives innovation in protocol design to make better use of available bandwidth, as has happened with 802.11, so congestion/commercial use is actually a good thing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]