[HN Gopher] Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateu...
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Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateur radio?
Author : austinallegro
Score : 80 points
Date : 2024-07-18 16:05 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kb6nu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kb6nu.com)
| gunalx wrote:
| I do agree. amateur radio, can be so useful for hacking on custom
| protocols, and transferring data. It does not all have to be
| talking on the radio if that doe snot interest you. I also feel
| like a new generation is blooming.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| Playing with radios teaches you so much: no hobby has been more
| helpful for my career than ham radio.
|
| And it's such a broad hobby: you can make contacts just like your
| granddad on MF/HF CW today, and then on monster microwave arrays
| doing Earth-Moon-Earth with modern digital encodings tomorrow.
| You only need the one license.
| wepple wrote:
| > Playing with radios teaches you so much: no hobby has been
| more helpful for my career than ham radio.
|
| Can you share some of the broad categories of things you've
| learnt?
| Animats wrote:
| Of course hackers need to know how radio works. They need to know
| how to break into WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular comms, take over
| drones, break into RF-controlled industrial networks, spoof GPS,
| read RFID devices from a distance...
|
| None of that is in the ham bands. Few hams have enough RF
| knowledge to do any of that. Hams are mostly still at CQ DX, CQ
| DX...
| mikewarot wrote:
| I'm glad to see that he mentions GNU Radio in his slides. It's
| amazing what you can do with it. I built a VOR receiver a few
| years ago.
|
| I'll migrate it to the new QT based display sometime this fall.
| lormayna wrote:
| How hard was to create a VOR receiver with GNUradio? I really
| like the idea, but I found GNUradio very difficult to learn
| (and I have a master degree in Telecommunication Engineering).
| The basic things are easy, but when things becoming complex I
| am getting lost immediately. My side project, still unfinished
| since years, is to create a WSPR decoder in GNUradio
| mikewarot wrote:
| It took me a day of futzing around, and then a drive out to
| Chicago Heights and around the block where the VOR
| transmitter is. I manually tweaked the timing to adjust for
| the different delays in the detector chains.
| polalavik wrote:
| Im a signal processing engineer by day focusing in comms. That is
| to say, I think radio is really exciting. I recently got my ham
| license for fun and boy is it fucking boring. It's just a bunch
| of old dudes talking about where they are driving to and gate
| keeping the spectrum through repeater systems that you need to
| pay to be a member of or else you might get a stern finger
| wagging.
|
| From my understanding, ham radio back in the day was about
| tinkering. With the advent of Amazon and cheap electronics
| anybody can now get into it without tinkering at all. Would be
| nice to see people start tinkering again - really go crazy on
| protocols, experimental PHYs, etc. that's the only way it's ever
| going to be exciting again.
| nullc wrote:
| Your mistake may be doing things you find uninteresting with
| it.
|
| There are experimental protocols and PHYs... you just don't
| (generally) find them on the VHF repeaters, which, I agree are
| super boring.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'd love to do more local / device networking, but I feel
| that's basically a solved problem. I can plug zigbee modules
| in all day and make serial packets bounce anywhere.
|
| Hackers are _sparse_ geographically. It 's not like my friend
| down the street would plug in his radio and we'd share
| packets. And if we did, why not use the internet?
|
| HAM has been a bit of a letdown to me, too. I had higher /
| hackier hopes for it.
| falcolas wrote:
| > that's basically a solved problem. ... why not use the
| internet?
|
| Pretty close to everything you can do with radio signals is
| "solved", just like almost everything you can do with
| computers is solved.
|
| But these problems have been solved by _other_ people. Not
| you. What are your motivations for hacking at all? It 's
| probably not because you're in entirely novel territory.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > I recently got my ham license for fun and boy is it fucking
| boring. It's just a bunch of old dudes talking about where they
| are driving to and gate keeping the spectrum through repeater
| systems that you need to pay to be a member of or else you
| might get a stern finger wagging.
|
| my experience, too. I did EW in the military and it was
| interesting-ish. decided to, a couple years back, get the
| license and play around, see if I could connect with some of
| the local Elmers -- and it was laaaaaaame.
|
| by comparison, other meetup groups like for drones, linux, or
| other nerdy-as-hell topics was still pretty lively. I went to
| some LUGs in Australia that were a straight-up blast, Linux
| trivia night in bars, etc.
|
| but ham was a snoozefest, and outside of doing some illegal-ass
| shit that the FCC would absolutely hammer me for, I can't think
| of anything cool to do with the license.
| cloudripper wrote:
| In California, you can get a license plate with your call
| sign. That's kind of cool, right? Maybe moreso if you have a
| punny vanity call sign.
| dave78 wrote:
| I think this is true for many states, however I personally
| am not interested since callsigns are easily looked up
| online. I don't really want to be driving around with a
| giant sign on my car telling every random passer-by who I
| am.
|
| I do sometimes wonder if the privacy of amateur radio
| operator info should be reconsidered - having my name and
| home address plastered all over the internet just because I
| have an amateur radio license is rather annoying.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I agree it is largely boring, particularly on the local bands
| where it's basically a local discord of people talking about
| traffic.
|
| But if you get your General license you can play with HF and
| get geeky with antennas, try to make contact with people on low
| power (qrp) on protocols like JS8.
|
| I was able to make contacts from Texas to South America and
| Canada, and even Europe I think, on 10w with a crummy EFHW
| antenna, a wire slung over a tree at 45 degrees.
|
| As far as more geeky protocol hacking, I haven't gotten into
| it.
| wdfx wrote:
| I've played with a cheap Chinese clone sdr receiver and LNA
| and filter and have received FT8 calls from Indonesia and
| Australia on a length of scrap wire I hung up in my loft here
| in London UK. Calls from all over Europe and from USA are
| pretty trivial to pick up.
|
| I would be interested in getting licensed to TX, but then to
| apply that practically I'd need to invest also in 100s -
| 1000s of PSPSPS of gear rather than a mere 10s. And then once
| I've done that ... I think the novelty would be mostly gone
| if I'm honest. I don't think the practical expense seems
| worth it.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| The value prop used to be "talk to other nerds around the
| world" but the internet does it better and easier now. There
| are other things ham radio _could_ grow into, but the community
| does not seem to be interested in the radical change needed for
| them yet.
| Borg3 wrote:
| Exacly. I've myself been looking around HAMs from networking
| point of view. I am networker and I would love to get hands
| on some digital radio.. at least 128Kbps, ideally 1024Kbps
| stuff where I can slap all the protocol to build network on
| top of it and then IP. But nope, cannot find anything
| interesting with decent ranges and cheap enough to buy for
| tinkering. It seems to be a nische that noone cares to claim.
|
| I know about HSMM, but they are using normal WiFi AP and just
| slap custom software on top of it and use HAM frequencies.
| Not bad idea...
|
| They communities are also awfully closed. I tried to find
| some IRC servers for HAM/network related stuff and no luck
| really. Found one channel, but they are mostly US people out
| there (TZ issue for me).
| falcolas wrote:
| It's a good thing that you don't need the community to do
| interesting things with radio signals, just an interest in
| doing so. Chatting with other people is just a nice side
| effect of working with signals sent over RF.
|
| And when it comes to doing interesting things with
| technology, there are many other communities to collaborate
| with; someone might even build their own community of people
| who also want to chat over RF.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Yeah, and it turns out that talking to other nerds around the
| world kind of sucks a lot of the time.
| etimberg wrote:
| Similar problem for me. It seems like most folks near me do a
| lot of contesting which I have neither the time nor the
| interest to do.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| Indeed the typical VHF repeater conversation is quite dull.
| It's a combination of the demographic and the statistical fact
| that (as a broad generalization) the people who spend much of
| their day chatting on the repeater don't have all that much
| interesting going on in their lives.
|
| That said, there are absolutely some fascinating people in
| amateur radio, and on the air. I'd recommend:
|
| 2M FM simplex (146.520 MHz) VHF SSB (6 meters or 2 meters) HF
| SSB, specifically 30 meters or 17 meters
|
| That's about trying to randomly find interesting technical
| people to talk to on the air.
|
| Even more interesting is the specialized communities around
| microwave (10GHz point-to-point) and satellite (skip the old
| VHF/UHF FM satellites and check out the 5/10 GHz geostationary
| and other recent projects).
| adrianpike wrote:
| Those geostationary sats sound really interesting, but I've
| struggled to find any remotely modern tools or DB's to find
| visible sats - is there a current best of breed I can look
| at?
| kwesthaus wrote:
| > Would be nice to see people start tinkering again - really go
| crazy on protocols, experimental PHYs, etc.
|
| https://m17project.org/ https://openrtx.org/#/
| https://freedv.org/
|
| These are a few projects that I personally think embody this
| well.
| nvy wrote:
| >It's just a bunch of old dudes talking about where they are
| driving to and gate keeping the spectrum
|
| Yup and the grouchy boomers who LARP as emergency preparedness
| personnel.
|
| My experiences with amateur radio people have been universally
| negative, and in my opinion the death of ham radio is squarely
| the fault of its participants.
| rcurry wrote:
| For me, ham was about off grid communications. Back in the day
| I used to do a lot of backpacking and this was before cell
| phones. New Mexico had this incredible repeater network that
| was linked into Kirkland AFB, so you could be just about
| anywhere in the wilderness out there and use the auto patch to
| make a phone call. It was incredible.
|
| Now days we have satcoms for cheap and soon we will have
| Starlink even on mobile phones so ham has lost a bit of its
| value proposition in terms of backcountry safety.
|
| It's still nice to have when there are big power outages or
| emergencies, but you are right that the social side of it has
| died down quite a bit.
|
| Edit: it's also good to have a ham license if you're into
| flying RC airplanes - you can use much more powerful radios and
| have a lot more range.
| nightbrawler wrote:
| Yep! The New Mexico Mega-Link repeater network is still up
| and running.
|
| http://nm5ml.com/nm5ml_map.jpg
|
| There's also a great APRS repeater network:
|
| http://www.urfmsi.org/repeaters/aprs
|
| With APRS you can send/recv text messages from pretty much
| anywhere in NM
| ozim wrote:
| Uhm yeah talking with people is optional and only required to
| check how well they receive you when you set antenna up.
|
| Buying off the shelf everything is not fun. Buy radio and try
| to build an antenna from metal wire or whatever else. Then try
| to see if old farts can hear your calls.
|
| It is much more like fishing it is supposed to be boring unless
| you are really interested in the topic.
|
| Yes there is Chinese vendor that you can buy antennas that will
| work much better than whatever you cobble up by hand but yeah
| YOU are the one to make it fun for yourself not old farts in
| your propagation range.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| You're barking up the wrong tree! Get into HF digital modes:
| the lowest hanging fruit is WSJTX, but there's so much beyond
| that if you want to tinker.
|
| I can honestly say I've never plugged a mic into my
| transceiver, and I probably never will. And I have 500+
| confirmed contacts across 40+ countries. Phone is boring :)
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I've barely done any contesting or public safety or really any
| rag chewing, but I got my Extra for digital RF synthesis
| experiments and digital modes just in case I want to do something
| in those extra bits of the bands.
|
| Lowfer people don't need licensed under a certain power and QRSS
| grabbers are an astoundingly neat thing for everyone licensed or
| not.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Meanwhile the RSGB won't even let you take the foundation license
| test on linux, because they want to spy on potential members.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| What does that mean? They want to use a cheat-discouraging
| browser?
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| You can do it in a virtual machine, and people frequently do.
| The software can't detect nor escape it.
|
| Unrelated (seriously), there's also OARC, the online amateur
| radio club. It's on discord (boo, proprietary), but it's got
| some of the most exciting projects and a really young crowd.
| I'd highly recommend it.
|
| https://www.oarc.uk/
| lormayna wrote:
| What always surprises me on the ham world is the huge number of
| possibilities. Beside having voice QSO in HF or VHF, there are
| many other options: QRP and SOTA/POTA, digital modes, DYI
| antennas and radios, SDR, EME, identifying unknown and misterious
| signal, etc.
|
| What I don't like about the communities is that is mostly
| composed by grey hairs guy that are not really opened to change.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| I haven't seen much innovation in the HAM spectrum, but I do some
| fun stuff done with Lora, and mesh networks by flashing routers
| with custom version of OpenWRT.
|
| Honestly I think the problem with the HAM spectrum is that it
| doesn't allow for (much) encryption and so much digital
| transmissions are hampered.
| riffic wrote:
| I actually have a little ambition but maybe one day if I have
| energy I'll pursue an amateur radio art installation of sorts.
| The space seems ripe for this sort of energy.
| howard941 wrote:
| Tell me more
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