Since putting up what amounts to a clothesline on my roof a month ago, I've managed to transmit and make contact with 37 states (and multiple countries) using 10 watts.
This is the power equivalent of putting an LED lightbulb on my roof, flicking it on and off, and having the east coast see it and reply.
@ethanschoonover very interesting. Do you know of any resource for using ham radio to transmit data in order to circumvent state-level Internet censorship? I know little about ham radio, but just read some. I see it has maybe 500kb/sec of bandwidth. I also just saw handheld ham radio transceivers for sale... wondering how well those work, since I thought the antennae had to be long...?
I know of satellites that broadcast data into censored countries, but I haven't yet heard of ham radio doing this.
@jamesmarshall it's actually governed by international treaty, so if there is no operating agreement you can't transmit to a station in that country. Additionally ham radio can't broadcast. Legally it's only station to station communications. There are still shortwave stations like voice of america and the BBC that operate in similar frequency ranges for global broadcast in restricted countries, however. But not ham radio.
@ethanschoonover I didn't know that existed.
That is how out of touch I am.
So, basically FSK I reckon.
Maybe I should get back into ham radio.
I never got any good at Morse code.
@ErickaSimone It's one of my primary volunteer activities here in Seattle. I'm just starting to do more distance work now. Definitely keen to grow the hobby. My personal secret goal is to get more folks in who aren't just electronics nerds (love our EEs of course) but also more liberal arts folks like myself.
The most magical thing was my father putting up newer and better antennas.
I can remember holding the wire to the antenna indoors to get scratch broadcasts from other cities.
We live about 1-2 hours outside of New York and about 4 hours away from Philadelphia. The real game changer was when my father installed a rotating antenna.
@var varies country to country. there is an FCC fee now (new) of $35 for your license and there is a fee for the exam ($15). If you buy a book to study from, another $30 or so. A cheap radio can from from $20 to $75. But most/all of those are one time costs and the license term is 10 years. Additionally if you are in touch with local hams you can often find gear for even cheaper (and often get study books for free).
@ethanschoonover I'm near Lexington SC. I'm not a ham operator. I do have a QRP Pixie that I built. I could connect that to a Raspberry Pi and have it belt out some Morse messages just to see if anybody receives them.
@ethanschoonover When I was a kid I built an AM radio and used an extra long wire (stretched from my bedroom to a tree out back). I lived in Philadelphia and could pick up stations from the Rockies, Texas, western Canada, etc.
@smoku@mos_8502 I've never done any lora. There's plenty of old school packet radio still happening. And definitely retro computing stuff with it. E.g. a friend of mine just set up this kaypro with a packet radio modem a couple days ago:
Probably more traditional packet stuff to come since the signal rate limit was just lifted by the FCC.
@smoku@mos_8502@ethanschoonover and the max datarate is absolute shit. Unusable for anything beyond temperature reporting every minute. Moreover the lora chirp modulation is a proprierary scheme.
@f4grx@smoku@mos_8502 yeah i haven't had much interest in lora stuff for that reason. same reason I dislike vara (proprietary) though in that case I sometimes have no option if the winlink node I'm trying to hit is vara only.
@f4grx@mos_8502 This isn't WSPR it's FT8 at 10W (so full QSO, not just prop report). Packet radio def not as popular as it once was but packet radio modems are still definitely in use and in production. From a hobbyist perspective they are fascinating to work with. C.f. https://mastodon.social/@ethanschoonover/111558444451467177
@jaredj@mos_8502@stevelord yeah there are a lot of fun projects in the QRP (low power) space like this. If it looks appealing you should definitely consider a ham radio license. It's very fun to do this kind of project building.
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