Amateur Radio Creeping Out of the 80s?
Lately I’ve been casting about for self-edification projects to capture my interest the way software engineering increasingly does not. I stumbled upon amateur radio once again, and this time spent a bit more time looking into it before dismissing it as a social outlet for the bearded UNIX militants ca. 1982.
I’ve explored amateur radio in the past, but found it completely unsuited to my tastes. First, it is largely a social activity, concerned with communicating with other ‘hams’ using a variety of modes, from Morse code to voice to video. Anyone who knows me will immediately recognize how little that will appeal to me.
Second, while amateur radio technology is fairly cutting edge, it’s concerned mostly with 21st century solutions to 20th century problems. The most active regions of the amateur radio spectrum allocation are HF (Morse code mostly, with long range), and VHF and UHF (mostly audio, but some low-speed data and video). These are bands that have been used for more or less the same things since after World War II. Though digital technology has enabled smaller more efficient radios, not alot else has changed.
The one spot of interest to me is so-called ‘packet radio’, which as its name implies involves the communication of digital data packets over RF links. However, I was shocked and horrified to learn that ‘high speed’ packet radio is 9600 baud half duplex, with plain old packet radio clocking in at 1200 baud or 4800 baud.
For those of you born with broadband, ‘baud’ may be an unfamiliar word. The baud is a measure of the rate at which bits can be communicated over a digital comms link, first used to describe the speed of links between teletype machines. It’s so antiquated that by the time I got my first PC, it had been supplanted by the bits per second, or bps, unit, however it’s still going strong in amateur radio.
When I first started using computers, there was no Internet (rather, there was, but IP links to it were expensive and there was no web, so what IP links there were had limited value). Instead, we hiked up-hill both ways in the snow to dial into BBSs with our modems and dedicated second phone lines. Even at this primitive stage, I expected no less than 14.4kbps, which within a few years jumped to 52kbps. Only once in my entire life have I ever communicated with a 9600 baud link, and was so horrified at the shittiness of the BBS attached to it that I never called back.
So, you can imagine my underwhelment at the prospect of exchanging 1200 baud teletype messages with my fellow hams from all over the world. If you’re thinking that sounds like IM but an order of magnitude lamer, we’re on the same page.
However, undeterred, I kept digging, sure that there must be some hams somewhere who have also used the Internet, and thus realize how incredibly lame the mainstream packet radio capabilities are. After some digging, I learned a few interesting bits:
The ARRL (the lobbying arm/professional organization for American hams) has a working group called the High Speed Multimedia (HSMM) working group, which according to this news release is exploring the use of high-speed unlicensed wireless technologies like 802.11(a|b|g|n) for amateur radio purposes.
This sounds great, but when you go to the HSMM site, you see a ‘under construction’ message. Lovely.
Further research turned up a few more groups doing interesting things with 802.11 and amateur radio, like Green Bay Professional Packet Radio and hsmm.us.
This led me to the second interesting bit: the amateur radio spectrum allocation is actually very diverse, and includes bands from HF to 1.2Ghz, 2.4GHz, 5.6GHz, 10GHz, up to 300GHz and beyond). The 2.4GHz band overlaps with the first few channels of 802.11(b).
The cool thing is, licensed amateur radio operators can reclassify Part 15 (that is, unlicsened wireless devices operating in the ISM bands, like WiFi gear) radios for Part 97 (licensed amateur radio) use, thus allowing amateur radio power output, which is well beyond the maximum imposed by the FCC for unlicensed use. Better still, since licensed users have priority over unlicensed users, if anyone’s wifi gear interferes with an amateur radio use of the spectrum, it’s on them to stop it, and if amateur use interferes with unlicensed use, tough shit.
So, I can run that 1W amp and 24Dbi directional antenna with my WiFi access point under Part 97. Pretty cool.
There are, however, some down sides. First, amateur radio rules are not adapted to the 21st century data comm landscape. Hams are forbidden from using encryption or engaging in commercial activity, which rules out using WPA to protect a network from unauthorized users, and depending upon the FCC’s historically arbitrary and capricious interpretation of the rules, could rule out viewing ad-supported web sites or buying stuff online. With those two restrictions in place, any wireless IP network would converge asymptotically to useless.
Clearly, alot needs to be done to bring amateur radio into the 21st century, and not all hams are particularly happy about it. It’s amusing to me that a radio service explicitly dedicated to driving innovation has a large continent of kurmudgeons who see no reason to support high speed wireless data comms or spread spectrum technologies or anything else invented after 1965.
But, given that obtaining a Technician class amateur radio license requires the ability to walk upright, form simple sentences, and score 75% or better on a test with a published question pool and answer key, it doesn’t take alot to get into it, and since I could give a shit less about ragchewing with other hams on my local repeater or exchanging Morse code with Kazakhs when the troposphere is ionized just so, the equipment required is mostly off-the-shelf WiFi gear.
I’ll probably sit for the exam in January, and as long as I keep my blood alcohol level below .8, I should pass it easily and be able to start tinkering.
Tags: amateur radio, arrl, ham radio, Migrated from Drupal, part97, rf