[HN Gopher] FCC Temporary Waiver Permits Higher Symbol Rate Data...
___________________________________________________________________
FCC Temporary Waiver Permits Higher Symbol Rate Data for Hurricane
Ida Traffic
Author : 7402
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-08-30 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.arrl.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.arrl.org)
| spookthesunset wrote:
| They should figure out how to rework the regulations to limit
| bandwidth, not baud. The intent is to keep a few amateur radio
| operators from hogging a ton of the very limited HF spectrum. If
| somebody can figure out how to cram more data into a small slice
| of bandwidth, more power to them.
| p_j_w wrote:
| It's been discussed. From the article:
|
| "In 2016, in response to an ARRL petition for rulemaking, the
| FCC proposed to remove the symbol rate limitations, which it
| tentatively concluded had become unnecessary due to advances in
| modulation techniques and no longer served a useful purpose.
| That proceeding, WT Docket 16-239, is still pending."
| lima wrote:
| That's how it works in most of Europe (for the most part) -
| there's limits on duty cycle, bandwidth and power.
| edrxty wrote:
| I've had a number of "cordial debates" with crusty old hams on
| this subject. The old guard is still very much hung up on the
| Old Way. Change scares a lot of the people who learned on
| expensive vaccum tube systems before the hobby was more broadly
| accessible. Things like high baudrate, bandwidth negotiation,
| spread spectrum and encryption scare the pants off of them
| regardless of the fact that the bands are mostly empty.
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's disgusting how hacker news allows attacks on people
| because of their age.
| edrxty wrote:
| Apologies, I was trying to point at a mentality rather than
| an age but obviously the wording could be better. There are
| plenty of 20-30 somethings that hold the same beliefs and
| plenty of older ones that agree with me. The amateur radio
| community is a rather complicated landscape and that bears
| acknowledging.
| VLM wrote:
| "bandwidth negotiation" - HF paths are often unidirectional
| in the sense that you can interfere with station A without
| station B being able to hear. You can easily interfere with
| people you can't hear and autonegotiation mean you're
| autojamming without being aware of it. Not an issue with
| "human in the loop" modes. No application layer need for it
| anyway.
|
| "spread spectrum" - See above, plus raising the noise floor
| means the death of entire weak signal modes.
|
| "encryption" - Absolutely no need. Would be death of ham
| radio. Why bother with cheap ham radio licenses if you can
| just transmit anything you want but encrypted.
|
| "the bands are mostly empty" Buy a better antenna LOL.
| edrxty wrote:
| Found one
|
| Bandwidth negotiation - you can already interfere in the
| same way without it. This is also true of any radio
| communication, ELF or EHF
|
| Spread spectrum - yes but has the ability to not
| significantly interfere with any single other link, can
| obviously otherwise be kept out of the tiny segment for
| weak digital or otherwise confined to sub bands
|
| Encryption - this one's my favorite: the hardware is
| already common, if this argument were true then ham would
| already be dead. If someone is being abusive they don't
| give their call anyway and we hunt them with DF the way we
| always have.
|
| Bands - have you seen 17m to light?
|
| Tldr we have coexisted by being neighborly for over 100
| years. New technologies won't add or remove the underlying
| need for being neighborly. We can therefore play with the
| new toys if we continue to uphold those principles as we
| always have.
| op00to wrote:
| I tuned into 12m randomly for about 10 minutes around
| lunch time today and picked up a /mm calling CQ which was
| fun.
| VLM wrote:
| Bandwidth negotiation - Uh, no. Human in the loop with
| ears can hear a complaint of interference and stop or
| adjust. Autonegotiation just turns up the power until the
| victim can't use the service anymore. RF is not a phone
| line. Note that we have legal things like RSID mode
| detection, which is not autonegotiation. Autonegotiation
| is a great technology for military anti-jamming purposes,
| not ham radio.
|
| Spread spectrum - The coding gain from SS varies with the
| bandwidth spread across, so SS over a narrow enough
| channel... isn't even SS anymore. That said we seem to
| agree that VHF and up there's plenty of space to
| channelize and regulate by frequency. What does anyone
| gain from it other than it interferes with anything else
| in its channel?
|
| Encryption - You haven't explained why its needed. "I
| can't talk to you, you can't talk to me" isn't very
| neighborly or ham radio friendly. So its not needed and
| only provides downsides. Emcom is difficult enough
| without everyone not sharing secret keys. What part 97.1
| "basis and purpose" section does secretive private
| transmissions benefit? I mean, if it was useful for some
| ham radio purpose, sure sounds cool go for it. Encryption
| is certainly very useful for non-ham-radio purposes, but
| then by definition it shouldn't be on the ham bands
| anyway. I admit there are weird exceptions where
| encryption might be useful, which are already written
| into regulation, like 97.211 "Space telecommand station"
| part (b) permits space satellite control uplinks to be
| encrypted, but only the control signals, which makes
| sense, so some rando doesn't take over a satellite...
|
| "New technologies won't add or remove the underlying need
| for being neighborly."
|
| Agreed. As of 2021 nobody has invented a technology for
| wideband digital to coexist with, well, anything, other
| than regulating under a channelized system, which seems
| impossible for international HF.
|
| Your three main arguments seem to boil down to "why can't
| I jam other people?" whereas my point of view is "why
| would anyone want to jam other people" so we're probably
| never going to get along.
| a-dub wrote:
| as someone who is not familiar with this world (but takes
| deep interest in (n)etiquette), would someone be willing
| to do a quick breakdown of ham netiquette, "being
| neighborly", fears of encryption and how abuse is managed
| in the ham world?
|
| i ask because maybe there are some learnings and lessons
| there that could apply to internet policy today.
|
| it sounds like certain things, like anonymity, are
| banned? there's some sort of community policing? i'm
| super curious.
| VLM wrote:
| Yeah there's no anonymity.
|
| As for community policing the FCC itself polices some,
| and the official observer program has been replaced by
| the volunteer monitor program which is mostly the same
| thing.
|
| I think you can assume much like on the net, there's at
| least ten times as many lurkers listening as there are
| people talking.
|
| Back in '28, 1928, the radio amateur's code was written
| which was a pretty good attempt at letting people talk as
| much as possible while eliminating ore reducing flame
| wars over the air.
|
| https://www.arrl.org/amateur-code
|
| This mentions the informal, sometimes ignored, ban on
| political speech:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_amateur_radio
|
| My guess is over the last century the more authoritarian
| govts banned it, and the free-er countries have lots of
| people who like to collect contacts and you're not going
| to get a collectible QSL card in the mail from a guy if
| over the air you call him a filthy (insert appropriate
| political slur here) so naturally people tended to not
| talk about politics, because gotta collect QSL cards or
| contest points or whatever.
|
| On the radio, the quality of your station and antenna and
| your skills determine how many people you can talk to, so
| competition, so people are more civil to each other. On
| the internet, unfortunately everyone "hears" everyone, so
| there's no gain from not being a jerk, so there's lots of
| jerks.
| jtdressel wrote:
| I don't have a lot of time, but this was an interesting
| question. If you message me I'll dig up references. There
| are nuances and exceptions to almost everything I list
| below.
|
| The radio spectrum is a scarce resource. Two of the main
| reasons amateur radio users are given access to the
| spectrum is to help with disaster recovery and to advance
| the art and science of radio.
|
| Callsigns are public - you can look up anyone's to see
| who they are.
|
| You're required to give your callsign at the end of your
| transmission, and every 10 minutes.
|
| There are some limitations on content. No music, no
| profanity, no commercial uses, and no encryption.
|
| netiquette varies based on what you are doing. In
| general, shorter range bands have better sound quality
| and are more casual. Longer range has worse sound quality
| (or no sound like morse or ft8).
|
| If you're on one of the shorter range bands (e.g. 70cm)
| you'll often find people who are keeping in touch with
| friends, or just looking for someone to talk to.
|
| On the longer range, you'll run into stuff like contests
| - all the other person wants to know is who you are, and
| where you are. They're trying to see either how many
| contacts they can make in a period of time or how far
| away they're able to make contacts.
|
| There are "formal traffic" nets - which pass messages.
| Local nets will route traffic they can't deliver to
| regional nets, and then back down to local nets. Usually
| they just pass practice traffic around - until a disaster
| occurs and they are needed. More info
| https://www.arrl.org/nts-manual
|
| The lowest level license is the Technician. You can find
| the Technician exam pool online in several formats. https
| ://www.arrl.org/files/file/VEs/2018-2022%20Tech%20Class..
| .
|
| Edit: I forgot about you abuse question. Hams tend to
| police their own or will work with the FCC to report
| people misusing the airwaves. The practice version of
| this is called "fox hunting" - where someone places a
| transmitter and you try to find it.
|
| Most hams care about keeping the hobby alive. If they
| find someone who's broadcasting with too much power or
| without a license usually they'll try to work with that
| person to correct the behavior. If that doesn't work,
| they'll often work with the FCC.
| swalberg wrote:
| Only been a Ham for 2 years, but the etiquette I've
| observed falls along the lines of "don't do things that
| make it hard for other people to have fun". Like checking
| to see if the frequency is in use before sending, and not
| blasting out a wide signal when a narrow one will do.
| Respecting band plans, both formal and informal,
| especially digital people sticking around established
| watering holes and not splattering the CW areas. Don't
| tune up (sending a tone to configure your antenna tuner)
| on someone's frequency.
|
| Another part is "let people do their thing". Like if
| someone's in a special activity and managing a pileup
| (lots of people trying to call), just give them the
| exchange and move on.
|
| Due to the asymmetric nature of propagation, stuff
| happens. You may not hear anyone using the frequency but
| they hear you just fine. If band conditions take a turn
| for the worse, politely tell the other person you're
| losing them and thanks for the conversation.
|
| Anonymity is banned; FCC part 97 says you have to use
| your call sign every 10 minutes and at the end of the
| transmission.
|
| Ultimately the FCC is responsible for enforcing these but
| of course don't have the time. People can report people
| to the FCC and they _may_ open an investigation depending
| on that nature of it. There's also the ARRL volunteer
| monitoring program where participants listen on the air
| and, through the program, send out notices of good and
| bad behavior, optionally referring cases to the FCC. It's
| usually stuff like "guy constantly being a jackass on a
| repeater and ruining it for others", with a good bit of
| "sending outside your privileges" and "not identifying
| yourself".
|
| That said we've all accidentally sent outside our
| privileges, we've all stepped on people. It happens.
|
| As amateurs we know that if we don't do a good job of
| operating we'll lose the spectrum, so it's usually not a
| huge problem. There are jerks, there are also people that
| don't know they're being jerks.
| kragen wrote:
| There's very little emergency communication that wouldn't
| benefit from at least cryptographic signatures; in many
| cases it's also important to be able to communicate
| private data in emergencies. Not allowing encryption
| makes amateur radio of very little use in emergencies.
|
| There are lots of "telecommand" use cases that aren't to
| satellites, too.
|
| The broader problem is that prohibiting new technologies
| in ham radio until they've been demonstrated to be useful
| (in your case, demonstrated to be useful _in ham radio_ ,
| despite being prohibited at the time, but most people are
| less blatantly unreasonable) is a recipe for, at best,
| chasing the taillights of commercial radio systems, and
| more commonly total technological stagnation and gradual
| abandonment.
| VLM wrote:
| > Not allowing encryption makes amateur radio of very
| little use in emergencies.
|
| I can't even imagine what would require encryption ...
| maybe PII medical traffic under some peculiar artificial
| scenario and most pessimistic possible HIPPA
| interpretation?
|
| Now remember, that the stereotype of ham radio emcom is
| people roll up with no idea how to program their HT to
| the correct frequencies so they can't even participate.
| So demanding everyone participate in a GPG WoT or join a
| Kerberos domain to share encryption keys is an absolute
| non-starter. If the general public cannot participate
| without extensive preparation before the event, it means
| its not part 97 emcom, its just a poor low budget
| imitation of part 90, its not part 97 operation at all.
| Why not get GMRS licenses?
|
| Remember there is the perpetual battle in emcom between
| the people who think "provide emergency communications"
| applies to Big Brother despite his infinite budget
| outclassing any possible Ham response, vs the people who
| think emergency communications is for the people or the
| general public or even for the individual. Both sides
| like to denigrate the other side, unfortunately.
|
| So consider I was listening to a rando ham "involuntary
| storm chaser" report a tornado sighting to the NWS a
| couple weeks ago. How, in that scenario does encryption
| help? By making it impossible for the ham to talk to the
| NWS station because they never shared keys in advance or
| they shared the 2020 keys and not the 2021 keys? By
| making it impossible for the general public to hear the
| tornado report they would be safer not knowing?
|
| Consider something topical, like the hurricane in NO. A
| rando member of the general ham radio public reports
| hurricane related flooding. The value encryption provides
| is making it impossible for the ham radio operator to
| talk to people to make the report, and encryption also
| makes it impossible for the general ham radio public to
| help. "Real ham radio emcom" situation he'd just dial up
| the repeater and talk to net control and make his report
| and move on with life. Somehow encryption would help, but
| ... how?
|
| Edited to add:
|
| > There are lots of "telecommand" use cases that aren't
| to satellites, too.
|
| I forgot to agree with you on that. Repeater control
| links and the like.
| kragen wrote:
| Maybe "very little use in emergencies" was an
| overstatement on my part. Clearly there is some important
| communication in emergencies that doesn't need crypto.
|
| But I think the vast bulk of communications necessary in
| an emergency is between people who need to talk to their
| family members to find out where they are, what condition
| they're in, and what resources they have. That
| information often needs to remain private between the
| people who are communicating. Right now it's not mostly
| sent over ham radio because it can't be. In fact, it
| isn't transmitted at all, so people die. Advances like
| Codec 2 dramatically expand our possibilities for
| communications in emergencies, but mostly for doing new
| things like that, things we're not already doing.
|
| As another example, suppose that, instead of one person
| reporting hurricane-related flooding you had a water-
| level sensor every 100 meters in a rough hexagonal grid,
| each transmitting a packet every 6 minutes carrying a
| 16-bit ID and an 8-bit water level. In theory this is an
| average of about 8 bits per second per square kilometer,
| so it wouldn't have to cause much interference or use
| much average power, but it's hard to get it to work under
| Part 15 rules because Part 15 doesn't allow you to
| average your power usage over 6 minutes, so you pretty
| much have to build a mesh network to get adequate range
| at the allowed power levels. You probably need to
| cryptographically sign the packets for the system to be
| reasonably reliable. (They don't need to be secret, but
| you need to be able to distinguish legitimate reports
| from griefers trying to divert emergency resources when
| there's no emergency.)
|
| Nowadays you might be able to do that with LoRa. But you
| could have done it 20 years ago on the amateur bands ---
| except that it's illegal. So again hams are chasing the
| taillights of commercial radio, the opposite of how it's
| supposed to be.
| penagwin wrote:
| I've listened to several police radios with my SDR - "old
| male with [medical condition] at [person's address]"
| isn't uncommon.
|
| Some research - paramedics are likely covered under HIPAA
| (if they work for a healthcare entity that provides
| ambulance services), I don't believe police or the fire
| department would be covered.
| kragen wrote:
| The things I'm thinking most need to be protected are
| more like "unaccompanied 16-year-old girl [name] at
| [station's address] plans to cross the recently burned
| area to rendezvous with [family member's name] at
| [rendezvous point]. She was able to get the cash savings
| out of the safe before the house burned."
|
| After Katrina, dead bodies with gunshot wounds rotted in
| the streets for weeks, uninvestigated. Human jackals
| aren't common but when they sense impunity they do make
| their presence known.
| krofptN wrote:
| While I tend to agree more with your answers than edrxty
| baseless claims about spread spectrum and unrealistic
| bandwidth negotiation (doesn't work with hidden nodes),
| it's important to note that there _are_ alternative
| models to the ham spectrum management model. Namely:
|
| ISM short range device (SRD) - the rules are very simple:
| transmit anything you want, no more than xxx watts, tx
| duty cycle no more than 1%. IMHO, this can be scaled to
| ham frequencies (ex: 0.01% duty cycle).
|
| ISM 2.4 GHz - the rules are (basically) transmit only if
| no other signal is detected above threshold (-75dBm).
| Exponential back off otherwise. This is also called the
| Aloha model. This model also works most of the time,
| although its applicability to HF propagation is unclear.
| VLM wrote:
| > This is also called the Aloha model
|
| The history of HF packet radio going back almost 40 years
| now, shows it stomps things pretty bad. RTTY and PSK31
| ops simply cannot operate nearby HF packet channels.
|
| Aloha DOES work really well for decades on "toll quality
| VHF FM" strong high SNR local packet radio LANs.
|
| Everyone's gotta be able to hear everyone or else channel
| thruput drops to about zero. Easy on a city wide VHF FM
| packet lan, impossible on HF.
|
| Reminds me of thin net ethernet in the 80s (thicknet
| also, LOL). One babbling transmitter and the whole LAN is
| down for everyone.
| edrxty wrote:
| I feel like you're taking an extremely narrow view of use
| cases, but I apologize I'm coming off as antagonistic,
| it's not my intent. I really just want people to open up
| to expanding what's possible in our bands.
|
| The ham bands are for experimentation. Currently
| experimentation is essentially banned as the most of the
| biggest recent innovations are against the rules and the
| old guard wants to ban the rest (see FT8/WSPR).
|
| Negotiation - there are plenty of bandwidth negotiation
| strategies, not just scream louder. You can listen and
| avoid areas where people are obviously talking, it
| doesn't take human level intellect to detect signal.
|
| SS - interference avoidance is the biggest use case.
| There are a number of different techniques here, not just
| noise vomit, chirp being one of the more interesting.
|
| Encryption - Obviously nobody in their right mind is
| going to sit there and scream about a tornado on an
| encrypted channel or try to coordinate encrypted emcom.
| Simplifying ham to the point where anyone can use it is
| called the FRS band and as such we don't need to worry
| about that here. There are plenty of useful cases though,
| remote command/telemetry being only one of many.
| Experimenting with encrypted modes/algorithms/hardware is
| the most relevant, as well as just wanting the ability to
| have a private conversation from time to time. Lets also
| not forget that it's legal in Europe and they have yet to
| meet a firey ham demise.
|
| 2021 - and with these rules there never will be one.
| Private industry has no interest but spectrum is finite
| and human needs are infinite. Developing such a mode
| would be extremely useful if the FCC ever gets around to
| increasing the size and number of ISM bands as more
| applications arise.
|
| I'd be willing to meet you with this: the HF bands are
| touchy, I fully agree there's a legitimate interest in
| keeping things the way they are >=20m. I think the wild
| west should really open up at VHF and above however.
| There just isn't any use save one repeater out of
| hundreds every few hours in a sea of blue waterfall. Even
| if encryption/SS/WB/whatever was legalized on 2m/70cm and
| WILDLY abused (it wouldn't be) I don't think anyone would
| really even notice.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I've been an Extra since 1977. My pants are not scared off.
| poetaster wrote:
| Old guard. VLM is in the right. As a kid i was a terror.
| Killowatts of power. Irressistable! But we decided, ricky and
| i, to stick to fm. I do not believe we were loved.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Radio engineering doesn't mesh well with a "move fast and
| break things" world view. Often the things you're breaking
| mean _other_ people are losing out.
|
| The world of HF is very different from higher bands because
| of propagation and low band width (especially for hams). With
| a well tuned antenna even a relatively modest transmitter can
| DX hundreds or thousands of miles.
|
| * The low band width on HF with a high noise floor makes high
| symbol rates pointless throughout the band. You'd need so
| much FEC there'd be little benefit from the higher rates. A
| symbol rate that might work fine for contacts a hundred miles
| apart will just be noise for contacts five hundred miles
| away. Because of DXing on HF it's entirely possible to have
| your transmissions picked up across the hemisphere.
|
| * Likewise symbol rate negotiation is problematic because of
| propagation. Transmissions aren't point to point links even
| if you're addressing a particular station. Like the point
| above symbol rates that work for two stations will not
| necessarily work for all stations that will receive the
| signal. That's just more noise for them and an inability to
| use that part of the band.
|
| * The band width for hams on HF is too small for spread
| spectrum comms to be useful. Yet again transmissions that
| work in some conditions won't necessarily work everywhere the
| transmission reaches.
|
| * Quick, what's the difference between an encrypted signal
| with a long duty cycle and noise? NOTHING. Every aspect of
| ham radio comes back down to being good stewards of a scarce
| resource and sharing it.
|
| If you blast your headphones you're not going to affect me
| living next door. You can listen to whatever you want at any
| volume. If you blow out your ear drums that's your business.
| If you instead blast your big-ass stereo speakers now you're
| affecting me next door. You've got a right to blast out your
| eardrums, not mine.
|
| Radio, like the air between our houses, is a shared medium.
| There's bands where if you want to blast signals or play
| around with different modes, I'll never detect it even living
| next door. There's also bands, like HF, where you can affect
| my use of the band even on opposite sides of the state. You
| don't have more of a right to hams bands than I do. If you
| want to blast high powered wide bandwidth transmissions,
| petition the FCC to buy a license to some spectrum (good
| luck).
|
| The issue isn't graybeard hams being afraid of new fangled
| technology. While those do exist the much bigger issue is the
| whole of the HF band (and all uses of it) could fit in a
| _single_ WiFi channel with room to spare. Of that tiny space
| hams have privileges on a tiny subsection. To even use that
| tiny subsection requires advanced licensing and a fair
| investment in equipment. Any individual user wants to put
| that time /money investment to use but so does every other
| user. It's hard to share a sliver of bandwidth if there's a
| couple assholes essentially blasting out noise all across
| that sliver of spectrum.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > more power to them.
|
| "At all times, transmitter power must be the minimum necessary
| to carry out the desired communications."
|
| http://www.arrl.org/frequency-allocations
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| The minimum required amount of power to them.
| iseanstevens wrote:
| Nice, that actually works pretty well as a social construct
| for government/leadership.
| jeffrogers wrote:
| Hoping municipalities around the country note that the amateur
| radio programs they've been depreciating over the last decade
| actually have a role to play in emergencies like major
| hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I'm sure we all thank the FCC for its gracious permission here.
|
| > In 2016, in response to an ARRL petition for rulemaking, the
| FCC proposed to remove the symbol rate limitations, which it
| tentatively concluded had become unnecessary due to advances in
| modulation techniques and no longer served a useful purpose. That
| proceeding, WT Docket 16-239, is still pending.
|
| I'm certainly grateful that the custodians of such a valuable
| public resource as "radio communication" are taking such a
| deliberate, measured approach to their jobs. Just imagine the
| horror and chaos that could descend if we allowed higher bandwith
| digital comms over these frequencies... People might send _porn_!
|
| (This is sarcastic, in case the bots need the hint)
| geofft wrote:
| http://www.arrl.org/news/view/fcc-agrees-to-90-day-pause-in-...
|
| > _The Commission 's proposed changes differed from the ARRL's
| initial filing and caused the ARRL to be concerned about
| possible interference to current users resulting from the
| deletion of the ARRL's requested 2.8 kHz bandwidth limitation.
| Due to those concerns the League filed comments with the FCC
| opposing the deletion of the requested bandwidth._
|
| The ARRL is asking the FCC to not drop the rule entirely.
| lolthishuman wrote:
| Why is it regulated anyway? What's the balance at play? Limits?
| VLM wrote:
| Fcc part 97.101 "General Standards" (d): "No amateur operator
| shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause
| interference to any radio communication or signal."
|
| Pitiful we have to encode "the golden rule" of treat others
| like you'd have them treat you into law, but here we are its
| in the CFR.
|
| As of 2021 no one has a technological answer to how to avoid
| various wide band digital technologies from interference
| against, well, absolutely everything else currently in use,
| without forcing everyone to operate in a channelized system
| with massive international coordination problems. The
| international part is a nightmare, what if, I donno, Bulgaria
| refuses to channelize? Nothing will work for anyone unless
| everyone cooperates.
|
| Wideband digital modes do NOT play well with others.
|
| There are channelized bands around 5 mhz (in the usa) and the
| FCC does relax quite a bit on wide open microwave bands, but
| people are going to request turning all of 20 meters into one
| single user digital channel, and to hell with everyone else
| currently using the band, apparently into infinity. Its an
| eternal meme.
|
| I guess the best analogy I can come up with, is you can zone
| land as a public park for people to picnic, but that doesn't
| mean the land is completely lawless, if you blast your music
| at 160 dB the police will arrest you for preventing everyone
| else from enjoying their picnic.
|
| We easily right now have the technological ability to turn
| the 20M band into a single channel, single user, very high
| speed digital path at 1500 watts. But that's a terrible idea,
| given the zillions of current users, local and international,
| who would be kicked off completely unable to operate.
| makomk wrote:
| There's very limited bandwidth available on most of the ham
| radio bands and other users don't want people taking up large
| chunks of bandwidth with wide, high-bitrate data signals and
| making the bands unusable for everyone else.
| chociej wrote:
| To get one of the big things out of the way: bandwidth. The
| FCC don't want anyone taking up big chunks of spectrum
| without using a license or service appropriate to that use.
| Notably, they don't want a few users to be able to chew up
| entire bands.
|
| But there's a philosophical part to the discussion also. The
| tradeoff goes like this: hams get some really nice spectrum
| assignments, low fees, self-regulation, experimental modes
| and techniques, etc. In exchange, they can't use the amateur
| radio service commercially or for non-personal aims, and
| specifically they are expected to focus mostly on learning,
| community interaction, public service, experimentation, and
| so on. They also want amateur modes to be somewhat
| approachable, i.e. not requiring exotic or expensive
| hardware, necessarily.
|
| Should an operator wish to use the radio spectrum for
| commercial or highly productive use, especially one requiring
| significant bandwidth, secrecy, exclusivity, etc, they are
| expected to use a different license / service more
| appropriate to those needs.
|
| Basically:
|
| Tinkering, chit-chat, community service, narrow bandwidths =>
| amateur radio
|
| Anything else => get a different license
|
| To that end it was long the FCC's stance that high symbol
| rates sort of implied that you're going outside the purposes
| of the amateur radio service. With digital communication
| having developed as much as it has, though, it's reasonable
| that hams want to be able to do more interesting things with
| digital modes, which generally means higher symbol rates.
| leephillips wrote:
| An interesting twist to the regulations is that you're not
| allowed to use ham radio as a substitute for cell service.
| I never quite understood this rule, nor how it was to be
| enforced; but it would seem to place some limits on the
| permissible chit-chat.
|
| Also: no encryption.
| VLM wrote:
| > substitute for cell service
|
| 47 CFR 97.113 Prohibited transmissions, (a) No amateur
| station shall transmit: (5) Communications, on a regular
| basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively
| through other radio services.
|
| The FCC has a perfectly good part 22 service for cell
| phones.
|
| Or FCC part 73 regulates "old fashioned broadcast radio"
|
| Per 97.1 (a) thru (e) explain the purpose of amateur
| radio but it boils down to something like a national
| park, sorta. The purpose of the service is NOT to avoid
| existing regulation.
|
| "on a regular basis" means experiment as much as
| possible, for free, non-professionally, as a ham, but if
| you try to set up a formal cell phone company business
| for the public just like AT&T, and try to tell the FCC
| you prefer being regulated under part 97 and pay only $35
| for a license, the FCC will be very very very mad at you,
| wave 47 cfr 97.113(a)(5) at you, then regulate you under
| part 22.
|
| The FCC has nothing against people building broadcast
| radio services; but if you try to demand they regulate
| your public broadcast FM radio service under part 97
| rules, the FCC is warning you they will absolutely insist
| on regulating and charging you under part 73 rules...
| poetaster wrote:
| Service. In the sense of serving!? My two FM episodes, 25
| years apart, were service. Not for regulatory purposes.
| To those, we but poor wee pirates were, and remain.
| leephillips wrote:
| > Communications, on a regular basis, which could
| reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio
| services.
|
| I guess this was the bit I had in mind. It means that one
| can't use amateur radio for what a cell phone is normally
| used for, doesn't it? Like calling your ham friends to
| make arrangements for poker night. Or is that the wrong
| interpretation?
| VLM wrote:
| That example is fine its not a regular basis.
|
| Note you can run a business on a cell phone or do
| financial transactions or speak swear words or all kinds
| of things common carriers supposedly don't care about but
| would be banned on ham radio. Also ham radio has no SLA
| or mandatory 911 access like a phone. Consider... if you
| are a casino operator and you're trying to book hotel
| rooms for these guys to play poker night at your casino,
| that would be forbidden under part 97 because its a
| business and part 97 isn't for business use.
|
| Its definitely an intent based situation. "Fooling around
| with radio technology while having convos of a non-
| commercial personal nature to promote international
| goodwill and gain radio operating experience" is
| literally what part 97 was designed for, and fits the
| poker game example perfectly. "We built a nationwide
| cellphone network but forgot to budget for FCC licensing
| fees so we'll reprogram to use ham radio freqs and lie to
| the FCC and tell them its a part 97 ham radio, while we
| sell it to the general public as a cell phone" would be
| quite stunningly illegal because it would be perfectly
| reasonable to operate a commercial cell phone network
| under existing FCC regulations for commercial cell phone
| providers, and its done on a regular basis by the famous
| big name nationwide cell phone services every day...
| second--shift wrote:
| I've heard this several times about ham radio, and to me
| as an outsider the idea of shared access to the medium is
| a bit off-putting to me.
|
| Is it possible to have two-way links "in the clear" but
| otherwise encoded or ciphered? Is there a regulation that
| says all transmissions must be in English, for example,
| or can I transmit in Esperanto/Navajo/hex?
| jandrese wrote:
| The big limitation is no encryption. So it's only a
| substitute for cell service if you're ok with being on a
| big party line with everybody else in the vicinity.
| burnished wrote:
| Thanks for the additional context!
| madengr wrote:
| I'm wondering if you could legalese around it since a PRN
| is a chip, not a symbol, as the former has no information.
| So one could spread a low symbol rate into a high chip
| rate.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| It's limited because they don't want to create a defacto
| lower limit on what it costs to start using HAM bands.
|
| That said, I agree it's taking too long. The technology for
| the higher symbol rates is now cheap enough to be a non-
| issue.
| pgt wrote:
| Presumably for the same reason that GPS time signals had
| (have?) pseudorandom noise added: to prevent an adversary
| from using your own systems to steer missiles with high
| precision.
| madengr wrote:
| GPS uses PN codes for the timing difference measurement, as
| well as allowing multiple satellites on a single channel. I
| believe the dithering (selective availability) was turned
| off years ago, thus the L2 channel ads only ionospheric
| correction (which can also be accomplished with local
| sources).
|
| The FCC symbol rate limitation needs to go. It's a
| hindrance on HAM radio. Just regulate it by bandwidth, or
| better yet EIRP PSD, but that would be tough to control.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Yes, Selective Availability was turned off in 2000 and
| will never be re-enabled. In fact, the latest generation
| of GPS satellites do not even support Selective
| Availability:
| https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/
| morcheeba wrote:
| PRN (Pseudorandom noise) in the context of GPS is just a
| coding standard - it's just CDMA (aka Spread Spectrum) and
| it allows all satellite to use the same frequency. A side
| benefit is that the signals can be below the noise floor,
| and when you apply the gain from decoding, it rises the
| signal above the noise floor (exactly like how you can pick
| out a voice in a crowded bar if you know what that voice
| sounds like).
| nomel wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? The purpose and limitations of RF
| bandwidth allocation isn't exactly widely known.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Truly. I have philosophical problems with the existence of
| the FCC but there's a great deal of interesting and
| educational discussion to be had here.
|
| At the risk of delving further into conspiracy theory I
| suspect that may be a reason its downvoted; because there's
| room for debate. There's currently a lot of feeling that
| once the government is involved debate must be silenced.
| geofft wrote:
| I didn't downvote it, but I strongly suspect it was
| because of the sarcasm, the meta-sarcasm, and ultimately
| the _unwillingness_ to believe that interesting opposing
| arguments might exist. That is, the post didn 't
| encourage interesting and educational discussion, just
| derision. The merit of the resulting conversation was
| despite the initial post, not because of it.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| What's the technology here? I'm amateur licensed and really in
| the market for a radio pager. Asynchronous short messages would
| really help me out.
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| The TLDR is packet radio speed caps and frequency restrictions
| are being [temporarily] lifted for Ida-related communications.
|
| PS: the world needs more hams!
| post_break wrote:
| Maybe if the existing hams didn't gate keep. They are the
| perfect example of a hobby that is hostile to newcomers.
| kragen wrote:
| They're gatekeeping so you don't drown out their
| conversations with their friends by radiating kilowatts of
| noise because you think it's cool (or make money that way).
| Like what happened to Usenet as the internet got
| commercialized.
| imroot wrote:
| I'm not going to say that it doesn't happen, but, honestly,
| most of the folks who I've met in my journey with Amateur
| radio are folks who are truly excited about RF and who want
| to share their knowledge in the hobby to others.
| bityard wrote:
| I keep hearing this meme but think it's either overblown,
| or used as an excuse to avoid the hobby just because they
| are outside of the typical ham radio demographic.
|
| I got my license a few years ago and nearly everyone I've
| ever interacted with has been friendly and willing to help
| if I need it. Yes, there are asshats on the air, just like
| there are asshats on the Internet and everywhere else. You
| just don't talk to them.
| mortenlarsen wrote:
| Not in my experience. Everyone was very welcoming. And many
| were actively doing outreach.
|
| I got my "Radio Amateur Extra" license in August of last
| year.
| progman32 wrote:
| (Not a ham - but thinking of becoming one): Are you
| referring to the exam, or something else?
|
| I find entrance exams are almost always orthogonal to
| actual performance (like tech interviews). I think it
| should be limited to verifying an understanding of safety
| and the law only. Everything else can be quickly and easily
| looked up if needed. If I make a fool of myself on the air
| that's on me.
|
| Take a look at the question pool: http://www.arrl.org/files
| /file/VEs/2019-2023%20General%20Cla...
|
| Say we limit the exam to subelements G0 (Safety), G1
| (Commission's Rules), G2 (Operating Procedures), and G4
| (Amateur Radio Practices). What's the downside? Why are we
| asking people about Digital circuits; amplifiers and
| oscillators (G7B), Analog and digital integrated circuits
| (ICs); memory; I/O devices; microwave ICs (MMICs); display
| devices; connectors; ferrite cores (G6B), etc? I agree it's
| useful information, but if all I want to do is operate my
| radio, why gatekeep on this other knowledge? Is my
| incomplete understanding blinding me?
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| > (Not a ham - but thinking of becoming one)
|
| Do it! I used "Ham Radio Prep"(google, it's the first
| result). It was really informative for me. They have a
| linear lesson plan with videos/tests to help you learn
| what you need, and then retain that information. After it
| was done, I felt very prepared for the exam, and the
| actual exam went very smoothly. As a side effect, I
| learned a lot about RF that I was ignorant of in the
| past, and thoroughly enjoyed the entire process. Can't
| recommend getting into amateur radio enough, it was one
| of those moments where I realized there was a giant gap
| in my general how-radio-works knowledge.
| coldpie wrote:
| The nerd in me finds the idea of knowing how to operate a
| radio vaguely appealing, but once you can do so and are
| licensed, what do you actually _do_ with it? Just like,
| talk to a couple other guys about... what they had for
| lunch today? Is it just a way to communicate with people?
| Once you 've invested the hours and money, what do you
| have on the other side? I ask this question entirely out
| of ignorance, sincerely I mean no malice with this.
| dpifke wrote:
| I just finished running the Hood to Coast relay race
| (https://hoodtocoast.com). One of my team's runners
| followed someone else down the wrong fork of the road,
| and ended up miles off course in an area with zero cell
| phone coverage. The volunteer hams helping with emergency
| communications for the race were critical for
| coordinating the search. We made sure they didn't have to
| pay for their own beer at the finish line party.
| dexterhaslem wrote:
| there's a lot of variety out there. you can spend your
| entire ticket dorking out on digital modes (esp if you go
| for general+ and have access to lower bands) like FT8,
| FT4, Olivia, WSPR [0] to see how far out you can get on
| as little power as possible and so on.
|
| Or if you want to ease into it, you can get a ham radio
| w/o a license, or cheap SDR and try to receive and decode
| weather sats, etc [1]
|
| making tiny WSPR boards and things like APRS [2] interest
| me more than ragchewing or nets on 40 or 80 meters most
| of the time
|
| forgot my favorite, amateur SSTV (analog baby!) - can see
| some analog and hybrid (easylink over internet..
| cheating) http://www.g0hwc.com/
|
| 0 - http://wsprd.vk7jj.com/ (click search then map to get
| an idea)
|
| 1 https://www.rtl-sdr.com/using-50-lines-of-python-code-
| to-dec...
|
| 2 https://aprs.fi/
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| > talk to a couple other guys about... what they had for
| lunch today?
|
| Sometimes we talk about the weather, haha. The most
| common time I use my radio is during bad weather,
| especially if there are tornado warnings nearby. There
| are [tornado] spotters using the same local repeater in
| our area, and sometimes it can be comforting to hear them
| report a tornado is moving away from you, or dissipating.
| Otherwise, I think we don't have much to talk about until
| there is an emergency of some kind.
|
| One thing I like isn't something you need a license to
| do, but a radio is a great way to listen to existing
| traffic outside the bands a normal "scanner" would
| supply. Everything from drive-thru speakers to casino
| security uses VHF/UHF frequencies, so with a decent dual
| band handheld you can listen to everything, which can be
| amusing sometimes.
|
| Another fun bit, is you can look up registered/reserved
| frequencies on the FCC website. You can't [legally]
| broadcast on these, but it can be interesting to see all
| these reserved frequencies and listen in. Sometimes
| you'll hear chatter among commercial farmers, other times
| electrical linemen...it's a mixed bag. I also tune into
| the local county/city emergency frequencies from time to
| time. I live in a very small rural area, so if you hear
| sirens, typically I can turn on my radio and alternate
| between the fire/police/ems frequencies and find out what
| the sirens were for.
| 7402 wrote:
| The reason to gatekeep on that knowledge is because the
| Amateur license is unique in giving you the legal
| authority to design and build your own transmitters and
| antennas, and to operate on dozens of bands from 135 kHz
| to 275 GHz and up, at powers up to 1500 watts. If you
| just want to operate a store-bought radio, there are much
| easier ways to go about it, e.g., MURS, GMRS, FRS, CB.
|
| Also the Technician-class ham license has an easier test
| than the General-class one linked above. It's certainly
| reasonable to start with that one.
| progman32 wrote:
| That's fair, and yet the exam doesn't seem to
| differentiate on what I want to work on. If I don't know
| about how ICs work or can't exactly remember what the
| speed of light is, should that prevent me from getting a
| license? What if I'm mostly interested in SDR? Should
| that prevent me from being part of the safety net that
| hams claim to provide? What about participating in other
| aspects of the hobby, like DX, general socializing,
| operating a relay, communicating with space hardware,
| etc?
|
| I guess I'm unclear what the concrete value of
| gatekeeping on sections other than the ones I listed are.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Most SDRs are RX only so there's zero need for a license
| for them. As for the other points, the Technician license
| is super easy and you can pass it with minimal study.
|
| If you _can 't_ pass the Technician exam, you'd actually
| be hard pressed to meaninvcully participate in those
| activities you listed. If you don't know the regulations
| around operating a repeater how are you going to operate
| a repeater? If you don't understand just a little about
| radio propagation how are you going to actually do any
| DXing or communicate with space hardware?
|
| Ham licenses exist because radio transmissions affect
| _other_ people and not just yourself. If you don 't know
| what you're doing to can keep _me_ , your neighbor, from
| participating in the hobby because your TX power is too
| high or your antenna is just an untuned jamming device.
| mike_d wrote:
| There is never a legitimate reason to gatekeep knowledge.
|
| Every time I hear this pearl clutching from hams I like
| to remind them that the biggest threat to their hobby
| isn't rouge transmitters and antennas or someone stepping
| on their transmission - but nobody giving a shit about
| them anymore.
|
| If you keep new people from entering the hobby it will
| completely die off and eventually all that spectrum will
| be reallocated to useful things like cellular.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Gatekeeping _on_ the knowledge. Not gatekeeping the
| knowledge.
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, it's a lot like fireworks as a hobby. Everyone has
| easy and open access to the basics ie walkie-
| talkie/bottle rockets, it's only the higher powered
| versions that require a license.
|
| For example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Radio_Service
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| What do you mean? I ask as a ham myself..I took my exam
| [remotely] in 2020. So far all of my contacts in my area
| have been pretty warm greetings. I generally get the
| impression that existing hams like seeing new hams pop up.
|
| That said, I live in a _very_ rural area, and imagine that
| more congested areas(cities) might be less welcoming of new
| traffic.
| bityard wrote:
| > and imagine that more congested areas(cities) might be
| less welcoming of new traffic.
|
| I live right next door to a very large metropolitan area
| and the advantage is that there is a lot of diversity in
| terms of who is on the air. I have 50 repeaters
| programmed into my dual-band radio and almost all of them
| some kind of regular activity from weekly nets to casual
| drive-time QSOs. Lots of older retired gentlemen of
| course but plenty of other stuff going on too.
| molticrystal wrote:
| I wonder how this compares to their previous statements and
| policies, because with a million people out of power and most
| communication systems offline, it does seem that charging people
| is just wrong, and the lack of the necessity of emergency
| communication provided by Amateurs was stated as a reason for
| them not exempting them from licensing fees.
|
| >The FCC also disagreed with those who argued that amateur radio
| licensees should be exempt from fees because of their public
| service contribution during emergencies and disasters.
|
| >"[W]e we are very much aware of these laudable and important
| services amateur radio licensees provide to the American public,"
| the FCC said, but noted that specific exemptions provided under
| Section 8 of the so-called "Ray Baum's Act" requiring the FCC to
| assess the fees do not apply to amateur radio personal licenses.
| "Emergency communications, for example, are voluntary and are not
| required by our rules," the FCC noted. "As we have noted
| previously, '[w]hile the value of the amateur service to the
| public as a voluntary noncommercial communications service,
| particularly with respect to providing emergency communications,
| is one of the underlying principles of the amateur service, the
| amateur service is not an emergency radio service.'" [0]
|
| https://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-reduces-proposed-amateur-radio...
| lxe wrote:
| There are some papers on wideband / high speed HF communication
| techniques. Most applications are basically backup for military
| applications when satellite communication fails.
|
| I think it's an interesting topic, but with mesh networks and
| satellites, HF high speed links are not as relevant.
| adrianpike wrote:
| Got any links? I've been deep diving into NVIS lately and would
| love to have more reading material.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| HF fills a different niche than mesh and satellite.
|
| Satellite has a reasonably high lower bound for implementation,
| and is reasonably easily disrupted.
|
| Mesh is reliant on a relatively high density of relays;
| typically you need nodes within a couple of miles of each other
| depending on terrain.
|
| HF allows for significantly larger mesh network node distances
| (with lower data rate) or much more robust communication that
| is harder to shut down.
| tlrobinson wrote:
| Can anyone provide background on why there's a limit on symbol
| rate at all? Isn't bandwidth a more appropriate limit?
| wyager wrote:
| Yes. Dumb historical decision. People have been trying to get
| it overturned for a while.
| VLM wrote:
| There are some content regulations so transmitting "in the
| clear" for all to read is generally demanded by the .gov.
|
| Groundwave HF paths technologically don't have much of a symbol
| rate limit. You could talk from ND to SD using a quite fast
| symbol rate as long as its a groundwave path under 25 miles or
| so. There are limits, but they're huge.
|
| Skywave "ionosphere bounce" paths have massive multipath issues
| although slow enough symbol rates can make it thru without too
| much intersymbol interference. These paths are worldwide.
|
| Even with existing limits, its quite trivial to transmit a
| modulation that has too fast of a symbol rate for skywave /
| international paths.
|
| I guess I'm just pointing out the existing rate limits are "too
| high" often for international communication. You could turn 10M
| into some kind of short range local wifi I suppose, but all
| anyone more than a hundred miles away would hear would be noise
| / interference due to intersymbol interference and multipath.
|
| Supposedly, in my grandpa's day, the government regulated
| modulation method to a precise detailed level so if you're only
| allowed to transmit 45 baud ITU2 encoded rtty FSK, specifying a
| dozen of one or 12 of another is the same thing, just depends
| how you say it. Then they removed detailed mode regulation "do
| what you want, grandfathering in existing users".
|
| Regulation can take awhile to change with the times. Again,
| supposedly in my grandpa's day, wattmeters were not accurate
| enough to be useful so the government regulated DC input power
| because voltmeters and ammeters are accurate enough for a
| ballpark guess. See also peak power vs "peak envelope power"
| aka PEP measurements for analog single sideband voice. So
| bringing it back around, at one point symbol rate was a
| reasonable proxy for old fashioned rtty fsk bandwidth
| regulation.
| topspin wrote:
| It's just history and regulatory inertia. The rules were
| established when digital radio was nascent and available
| technology limited the modulation techniques that were
| feasible. Digital on some bands is regulated on bandwidth; the
| 70 cm band has a bandwidth limit of 100 kilohertz for
| "unspecified digital codes."
| drmpeg wrote:
| The 70 cm rule is the silliest. The limit for digital data is
| 100 kHz, but you can legally transmit 6 MHz wide analog
| television. Because wide bandwidth video is allowed, digital
| video modes like DVB-S, DVB-T and ATSC are also allowed. To
| get around the 100 kHz restriction for data, some folks are
| running links with 95% data and a low rate video sub-stream.
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