4 ms·

Why would you piss about using amateur radio for that when you can go 20-30km with cheap off-the-shelf microwave links?

by ErroneousBosh 3mo ago

inigyou 3mo ago
In which frequency band? 2.4GHz?
- ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
  2.4 or 5.8GHz - take a look at the NanoStation 5ACs. They cost pennies and have about 15km range. If you want further you can spend about a ton and get a pair of LiteBeam 5ACs instead.
  - tzs 3mo ago
    With a ham license you could use up to 1500W, which is around 200x what those have. If you were on top of a mountain and had a friend on top of a mountain 150 km away you could establish a reliable, stable point to point WiFi connection. Over shorter range, but still more than what those low power devices can do, you could stream multiple 4K videos simultaneous where the low power devices would be crawling. Not many people will need to do this, especially with the limits on encryption, but that's OK. Ham radio is not supposed to substitute for other radio services. It's supposed to be about learning about radio and providing a backup when other systems fail during disasters.
    - ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
      Well, no, you couldn't, because that's kind of not how it works. Power doesn't make it go faster or further. You can easily go 150km with a few hundred milliwatts and get 322Mbps with a few hundred quid's worth of equipment if you've got good clear line-of-sight, but you need to go to a way higher frequency than 5.8GHz. Also, don't forget that there's a difference between TX power and EIRP - when I had my amateur radio Foundation licence and was limited to 10 watts, I was running 10W at the antenna port as measured on the terribly expensive Marconi test set - but well over 150W EIRP totally legally by simply using a decent aerial. This also meant that instead of blasting everything around with RF and only hearing fairly close stations, I could hear about as far as I could transmit. Finally, I think you're grossly underestimating the cost and complexity of something that'll output 1500W on 2.4GHz, which would be incredibly expensive and difficult to operate.
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        Power literally does make it go further and with higher SNR (so faster).
        ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
        No, it doesn't, it only does so under certain conditions. For bidirectional communications it is *always* better to use a more efficient aerial. It's interesting that you think "better SNR means faster". How do you think that works? How would you stream a couple of 4K video feeds over say the 40m band? Do you think other limitations might come into play before SNR ever did?

Why would you piss about using amateur radio for that when you can go 20-30km with cheap off-the-shelf microwave links?

inigyou 3mo ago

In which frequency band? 2.4GHz?

ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
2.4 or 5.8GHz - take a look at the NanoStation 5ACs. They cost pennies and have about 15km range. If you want further you can spend about a ton and get a pair of LiteBeam 5ACs instead.
- tzs 3mo ago
  With a ham license you could use up to 1500W, which is around 200x what those have. If you were on top of a mountain and had a friend on top of a mountain 150 km away you could establish a reliable, stable point to point WiFi connection. Over shorter range, but still more than what those low power devices can do, you could stream multiple 4K videos simultaneous where the low power devices would be crawling. Not many people will need to do this, especially with the limits on encryption, but that's OK. Ham radio is not supposed to substitute for other radio services. It's supposed to be about learning about radio and providing a backup when other systems fail during disasters.
  - ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
    Well, no, you couldn't, because that's kind of not how it works. Power doesn't make it go faster or further. You can easily go 150km with a few hundred milliwatts and get 322Mbps with a few hundred quid's worth of equipment if you've got good clear line-of-sight, but you need to go to a way higher frequency than 5.8GHz. Also, don't forget that there's a difference between TX power and EIRP - when I had my amateur radio Foundation licence and was limited to 10 watts, I was running 10W at the antenna port as measured on the terribly expensive Marconi test set - but well over 150W EIRP totally legally by simply using a decent aerial. This also meant that instead of blasting everything around with RF and only hearing fairly close stations, I could hear about as far as I could transmit. Finally, I think you're grossly underestimating the cost and complexity of something that'll output 1500W on 2.4GHz, which would be incredibly expensive and difficult to operate.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Power literally does make it go further and with higher SNR (so faster).
      - ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
        No, it doesn't, it only does so under certain conditions. For bidirectional communications it is *always* better to use a more efficient aerial. It's interesting that you think "better SNR means faster". How do you think that works? How would you stream a couple of 4K video feeds over say the 40m band? Do you think other limitations might come into play before SNR ever did?