- Joined
- Jun 4, 2017
Considering how lax the FCC has been the past 15 years, you can probably pirate without a ticket and get away with it. That is not legal advice.
Ham Radio / Off-grid communication
- Thread starter 888Flux
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2023
I have 2 rtl-sdrs I have used for digital (unencrypted) police traffic and naval AIS. I like this thread.
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2013
You don't have to worry about the FCC. You have to worry about your local hams playing foxhunting with someone not playing by the rules. Then the FCC comes.
Otherwise. I've been playing around with Meshtastic. And I'm a little disappointed by the webui. (Can't share keys, refuses to save configuration.) So I've had to manually configure using the CLI. Which isn't terrible. But the documentation is terrible. There are links on the website that go nowhere. There isn't a forum to ask questions or bring issues up. Instead there's a gay ass discord.
Ranting aside. It was pretty simple to get set up. But Id rather set up a service on top of lorawan. Instead of the mess I've encountered with Meshtastic.
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2019
This is literally the best time in at least twenty years to get (back) on HF; setting aside the occasional blackout because of flares, etc. the sun has been going gangbusters during the current solar cycle and 17 Meters and up have had some kind of DX opening almost every day.Great to see a thread on this, thanks @777Flux. I've been out of ham radio for a while, but I have nothing but good memories about it. I bought a new Icom 7300 series transciever a couple of years ago to get back into HF ham radio, but other things got in it's way. It's just sitting on my desk now, connected to a random wire antenna, and I only do listening for now. Both to weird number stations or just trying to pick up European HF stations during nighttime.
Back in the days pre-internet when living in Europe I used to fuck around a lot with packet radio because dialing any other European country was unaffordable, up to 10 current US dollars a minute, to exchange data with other nerds that were into ham radio. Hours long AX.25 sessions over HF, exchanging either Fidomail for local BBS'es or just straight up pirating software over radio. Loved VHF/UHF DX'ing as well, trying to pick up TV stations from far away and seeing the station identifying logo's through a fuckload of noise.
Happy to see what other Kiwi's are up to, this is certainly renewing my interest in this stuff again!
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2019
I can confirm that he is quite annoying. Heard him many a time on my drive home from work. First time he complained about “window lickers” I laughed, but it got old quick when I just wanted to trash talk with truckers
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2022
Depends on country. Where I live callsigns and related info are not publicly accessible by default. There are public callbooks but you have to input your info by yourself and it's not mandatory. I got my callisign months ago and there's no info about me anywhere except in the communication agency's archives.
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2023
older hams are some of the biggest moralfags and rulefags i have ever met. they get very grumpy if anything remotely interesting like latin american pirate stations interrupt their health issue chat sessions
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2013
It's almost like the hobby has autism as a prerequisite and autistics like their rules and order.
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2019
Sounds like some good fun could be had fucking with them in a mobile install
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2021
The best HF SDR I've had experience with so far has been the RSPDuo which is in a similar price point when compared to the AirSPY HF+. It has two independent 50 ohm connections so you can run two different antennas to the receiver. But if you are just getting started with the hobby and don't want to spend more than $30 the RTL-SDR V4 can provide basic HF coverage for most of the bands.
Something to note for using the RTL-SDR for HF reception is the cable is going to make a lot of difference. The RTL-SDR has an SMA port and you'll probably want to get a SMA to PL-259 adapter and some RG8/RG-58 cable. You also want to keep the cable run as short as possible. For other SDR receivers I have found this to be less of an issue but the RTL-SDR platform is very sensitive to noise.
In a hypothetical scenario yes. The FCC doesn't have the infrastructure in place to take enforcement action against unlicensed operators who aren't engaged in gross misconduct like interfering with public utility . Additionally for rules regarding "encryption", baud limits, out of band operations and power limits it's very difficult to bring the hammer down on someone when there is a lack of any established case law. Many of the rules in Part 97 where from a time where the Internet did not exist.
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
Building a mobile HF setup that could actually do something is kinda a waste just to be unsociable.
There are lots of rule cucks FM repeaters. Those guys tend to be the wacker type (wanabe FD/PD) also.
But there are also lots of interesting people in the hobby. One of the smartest and helpful guys I ever met in ham radio was this crotchety old buzzard (SK now) who was an ex-engineer for AT&T Long Lines. I still have an old moto Spectra he helped me mod for 900mhz.
And the first time I ever heard of linux was some nerds talking about it on the local repeater.
I duno there are parts of 40 and 20 meters that sound like /b/.
Years ago when I worked around NYC the FM repeater scene there was fun.
Also the southern California repeaters are infamous for being zoo's.
(nigger posters but irl)
Thats a constant in ham radio software. Hams tend to be tinkerers who are always jumping from one thing to the next. Everything is always barely documented and 90% done.
Last edited:
Jelli
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2020
Eayyy Ham Time! Really excited for this thread.
I am getting a RTL-SDR on Monday, so I'll give the flat foot perspective getting into the hobby.
I got some meshtastic nodes last year and have been messing around with them on and off. And I gotta say they are pretty tacti-cool. It is hard to imagine chatting and bullshitting on them but a well built network of solar repeaters, <600$ worth, could cover a small city with off the grid text messaging pretty easy.
They pretty reliably do 5-10 miles line of sight (~.5 city) at 50mw of power at 460mhz. The nodes mesh and "flood fill" the network, not entirely reliable but pretty good, simple and robust.
But back to SDR,
I want to try and decode privacy tones on FRS frequencies, I don't know if RTL-SDR will reach down there but it'll be interesting to see what the local airwaves look like.
I am getting a RTL-SDR on Monday, so I'll give the flat foot perspective getting into the hobby.
I got some meshtastic nodes last year and have been messing around with them on and off. And I gotta say they are pretty tacti-cool. It is hard to imagine chatting and bullshitting on them but a well built network of solar repeaters, <600$ worth, could cover a small city with off the grid text messaging pretty easy.
They pretty reliably do 5-10 miles line of sight (~.5 city) at 50mw of power at 460mhz. The nodes mesh and "flood fill" the network, not entirely reliable but pretty good, simple and robust.
But back to SDR,
I want to try and decode privacy tones on FRS frequencies, I don't know if RTL-SDR will reach down there but it'll be interesting to see what the local airwaves look like.
Attachments
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2022
Definitely true. There are a lot of hams who would wring my neck if they knew what I did. All you need to cause chaos is a baofeng, laptop and a good soundcard interface.
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
Down where? FRS on 462Mhz? Any of them should. Also look for the GMRS channels. That become popular around here with the jeeper and prepper types. There are a few repeaters now.
Another interesting thing to try and decode would be APRS on 144.39 or the digi on the space station at 145.825.
Or if your local PD is P25 non-encrypted you could try decoding that. So much stuff you could do with even a cheapest rtl-sdr.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2020
I hate to be a technical prick, but literally shortwave radio and CB don't need any doxing info. Just FCC HAM.
And CB level trolling will just lead to IRL nonsense. Wanna get in an irl fight with someone you troll? That's CB.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2022
I thought about getting my license but tbh I don't really see the point. My grandpa had a ham radio and every time I would visit him, I would always have fun listening to him and his friends talk. Sometimes I would even get to say "hi" and talk a bit.
But as I got older, I've realized that it seems like the only people on ham radio are older guys talking about military shit, usually about their time serving the military. There's nothing wrong with that, but I feel like there's no point in me getting a license because I don't want to interrupt other people talking, especially about subjects that I can't talk about. It would be cool to talk to other lady hams but in my years of listening and even talking on there, I only found 2 other female users, and neither of them were into it, they were just supporting their husbands
But as I got older, I've realized that it seems like the only people on ham radio are older guys talking about military shit, usually about their time serving the military. There's nothing wrong with that, but I feel like there's no point in me getting a license because I don't want to interrupt other people talking, especially about subjects that I can't talk about. It would be cool to talk to other lady hams but in my years of listening and even talking on there, I only found 2 other female users, and neither of them were into it, they were just supporting their husbands
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2021
The FCC has drafted a new policy on removing baud limits and digital mode restrictions from the HF bands and replacing it with a 2.8 - 4 kHz bandwidth limitation - which is fairly reasonable
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-397992A1.pdf
This is a step in the right direction, but is probably being done as a result of commercial interests in utilization of the HF bands for transmitting financial data.
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-397992A1.pdf
This is a step in the right direction, but is probably being done as a result of commercial interests in utilization of the HF bands for transmitting financial data.
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2015
It probably is but all the weird "Only THESE modes" limits have been bad so this is good.
And I'm probably going to be the official ham apologist of this thread and that's kind of okay. But it's important to remember (not at you 777 but at this thread in general) is one of the reasons hams are such 'rulefags' is because those corporate interests have always wanted the ham bands. In the 90s in the US we got 2mhz of 220 taken away for landmobile and trains, for example. Now you have these crazy HFT guys who want to use HF for stock trading data. And I've worked not in but around that world and they're just going to ask for more and more. Also there was a period in the 70s where there was some handwringing about the Final Solution to the CB Question. Fortunately for probably everyone, the solution for the FCC was to mostly forget CB exists if they mostly stay in their containment zone.
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2019
It's more because a Congresscritter introduced legislation to force them to revise the rules, and if there's anything the Permanent Bureaucracy doesn't like, it's being told what to do by someone who isn't a swamp creature.
From Zero Retries:
Also, the proposed rule change would be for all bands, not just HF, which is arguably more important than just HF.