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Field Day 2004
pa3gvr writes "This weekend many Amateur Radio operators (HAMs) throughout the US and Canada will take their equipment to public parks, campgrounds and Emergency Operation Centers. With all the coverage that BPL has gotten lately it might be interesting to see what this Amateur Radio thing actually is. Field Day is setup as an exercise for HAMs to test their readiness and ability to operate under less than ideal (emergency) conditions. Besides the training and exercise aspect, this is also a social event. Visitors are welcome to have a look and maybe even operate some of the equipment. K4FAU, Florida Atlantic University ARC and Boca Raton ARC will be setting up their Field Day station on the Boca Raton, FL FAU campus."
It makes me wonder who would be connected first in a real disaster these days... HAM or an ad hoc WiFi net...
Maybe we should hold a race in some remote area to see who can deploy and communicate fastest in an unknown environment.
The question I would ask is: Connected to what?
Sure both Ham radio operators and wireless networking enthusiasts (note that those two groups aren't mutually exclusive!) could get connected to each other pretty darn quickly if a catastrophe were to occur.
WiFi operators are pretty much restricted to the low power transmitters and short wavelenth that the off-the-shelf equipment provides. Good antennas, amplifiers, and path design can make for links that extend dozens of kilometers, but the HF Ham rig in my truck can reach other Hams in the US and almost all other countries in the world with just a short whip antenna (1.5 meters and a coil).
It does draw more power and it's not digital. I could do digital data transfer on Ham HF bands, but not near as fast as WiFi. Both have infinite usefulness in emergencies and it's a shame that one is decreasing in use while the other is growing, rather than both growing. If both were growing, I think we would see more people interested in making the two fields interoperate better. The current group of Ham WiFi enthusiasts is small relative to the general "old codgers" of Ham radio.
Coincidentally, I'm actually planning to take my technician's license test this weekend.
As an outsider, it seems to me that there's a connection between the lack of popularity of ham radio and the severe restrictions placed on what can be done with it.
For instance: sure, I can check my email over ham radio, but I'm not allowed to use encryption. So, to check my email I have to either a)broadcast my IMAP password to everyone within hundreds of miles, or b)disable passwords altogether and leave my mail account wide open.
Neither of these options seem very appealling, In the networking community, cryptography is seen as a great thing.
What do most ham operators think of these kinds of restrictions (no crypto, no music, no commercial traffic)? Do you like having the openness that a no-crypto policy implies, or do you prefer to keep the airwaves uncluttered by non-ham radio related personal/commercial traffic, or do you all grumble at the FCCs outdated restrictions?
-jim
My club, the 10-70 Repeater Association will be operating 12A (yes, twelve stations) as N2SE if all goes well tomorrow morning from Mahwah, New Jersey. Hope to work you!
Cheer up. I believe at least some of the spirit of HAM radio lives in the heart of every Linksys WiFi router hacker who is trying to tweak maximum performance out of a wireless mesh network or clambering around on the roof to aim a yaggi antenna at an AP across town.
Voices talking or packets flying, it's still magical to pull stuff out of the thin air and today's WiFi geek gazing at his Kismet data is like yesterday's HAM operator putting push-pins in a map on the wall.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
at the Palo Alto Amateur Radio Association field day. Non-hams are welcome to come to the GOTA station in Saturday after 11AM and get on the air.
I will be helping demonstrate something called "PSK-31" which is
kind of amateur radio Instant Messaging. With your laptop
computer and a small radio running on AA batteries and a piece of wire,
you can talk halfway around the world, instantly.
Read all about it at my PSK presentation for non-hams. And if you are in the Bay Area, come check us out, or
one of the other area Field Day sites such as
Maybe an acceptable compromise would be to allow encryption and/or commercial use, but only for digital communication methods that don't use much bandwidth (such as PSK31). That way, the people who want encrypted email or ssh from the boonies, and want it bad enough that they'll get a license and live with low speeds, can have it without clogging the spectrum.
-jim
I'm an Extra class ham too and have been licensed since 1958 at age 11. While there is clearly truth in what he said, as others have pointed the number of licensees has been increasing over the past few years and we're finding a number of new challenges and that's what ham radio is really about, technical challenges. I've operated with full legal power to a beam on a 125 foot tower and it's not nearly as much fun as the station that I have now which maxes out at 20 watts with a dipole antenna at 30 feet. It's a lot more of a challenge. The MOST fun is my 4 watt rig on 20 meters in the car using a 4 foot antenna. I've made solid contact with all continents using that setup. Now that's really a challenge.
There are lots of other ham radio areas that offer geek challenges, too. You can still "homebrew" your own gear. It doesn't take thousands of dollars to have fun. Microwave distance records fall regularly as do records at the opposite LF end of the radio spectrum. Data communications using packet techniques on VHF/UHF and other digital modes, such as packtor, on the HF (shortwave) bands predate the Internet as we know it we know today. In 1962 I had a teletype machine and a "terminal unit" AKA modem tied to my shortwave setup and was routinely communicating with friends around the world digitally. Now we hook our computers to our radios
Ham radio has been VERY good to me. In 1969 and 70, I got to travel to parts of the world I'd never have seen without ham radio. I was with Project Hope and I used ham radio so that the doctors, nurses and volunteers talk to their family and friends back in the states via phone-patch without it costing $13 for the first 3 minutes via landline.
Being involved with ham radio also encouraged me to go to college and get a degree in Electrical Engineering which has provided me with a very interesting and satisfying career that has consistantly paid me well on top of being fun.
I've watched ham radio evolve over the course of almost 50 years and it's still evolving. I'm not ready to declare it a dinosaur just yet.
73 & CUL
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
There is some recent salvation of Ham radio through the internet itself, believe it or not!
There are 2 new (relatively) systems called IRLP and another called EchoLink. These use the internet to link Ham repeater sites all over the world, using streaming audio (like "RealAudio") between stations.
There are nearly 1000 nodes in IRLP, my repeater uses that protocol, and I'm not sure but EchoLink probably has a similar number of nodes as well.
This is helping to unite Ham radio interests with those related to the internet. This is also providing new Hams, most of which are Technician class and have no "HF" or long-distance communications privileges, a means to talk outside of their local repeater area for a change.
Previously, operating on Field Day or going over to an "Elmer's" house and having him let you work the low bands was the only DX (long distance) exposure most new Hams would ever get. These new internet linking systems are helping to make that experince more readily available. Before the internet became popular, talking to someone in a strange and foreign land was a rare and exciting experience.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
The SAR (Search and Rescue) team my college runs uses Ham for most of our communications needs. It's actually a pretty sweet setup, and a joy of a thing to see. We set up a mobile communication station with very little notice that runs off marine batteries in the middle of nowhere and talks to half the state. We're thinking of connecting the search teams' GPS units to a small packet radio transmitter, which would broadcast back to the Strike Team Leader's laptop, instantly plotting their locations. The STL laptop would rebroadcast the packets back to the Operations Center at the campus.
At least in New Mexico, Ham radio has saved countless lives.
73 de KD5ZPL
Its both fun and very educational. For those of you stuck in the digital realm, events like Field Day expose (yet again) how flexible/adaptable analog comm can be compared to internet or any other digital environment.
Downside: many operators now seem hung up on contests on Field Day, sticking around their shack to see how many contacts they can make.
Upside: the vision of my buddy, with safety goggles, and a Zebco reel duct-taped to a Wrist-Rocket, shooting a dipole up into some lodgepole pine near Mt. Adams, WA. Then pulling in contacts worldwide under the stars next to a campfire using a little mobile unit from his car.
Pardon me replying to myself, but I just thought of a good P.S. to the parent post - I forgot the best part, that IRLP is a Linux-based application!! It runs under a stripped down version of Red Hat Linux. EchoLink is Windows-based freeware, AFAIK.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
It's 1995 and I have been relocated for my job to a semi-rural area. With lots of spare time on my hands, I decide to explore amateur radio. After a number of evening drives to the Big City to take the exams, I have my Advanced ticket.
I try packet, shortwave, SAREX, SSTV; I talk to clubs across the country having day-long Field Day picnics.
So I'm excited to check out what the nearest club is doing on Field Day. When I arrive at the campground on the top of the tallest hill for miles, it's a bit of a disappointment. The club's Field Day activity consists of a pop-up trailer with 3 pasty dorks inside, 1 HF set, 1 VHF set, 1 fridge full of beer, and a portable generator in need of a tune-up.
Less than a year later, I purchased a Walnut Creek FreeBSD CD set and a Slackware '96 CD in a bookstore on a whim. That was nearly the end of ham radio for me, except my packet radio setup became briefly more complicated using NOS, JNOS, etc.
Some observations that may be considered flamebait:
- The 20 meter band is a great place to get information on the health conditions of the WWII generation.
- Someone one told me: "There are young hams and there are married hams. But there are no young, married hams."
- All that dropping the code requirement for Extra class has achieved is to make it possible for 7-year olds to take all of the written elements and the laughable 5 wpm test in one sitting. (No, I was never able to crack 20 wpm; I will keep my Advanced license.)
- Burt Fisher is a crank, but at least he has a sense of humor about the hobby.
- The public Internet didn't/won't kill ham radio. Every ham thinks the hobby has gone downhill since the "good old days" when they started. What will kill ham radio is when the Japanese stop making ham rigs. Radio Shack struck the first blow.
I'm a young ham and its crap like this that keeps us out. Because you are too stubborn and DON'T want NEW uses for ham radio. Let it die then I say. Then when the FCC takes away your frequencies so someone can check their Email from their blackberry device I don't want to hear you bitching!
How about this... Phone lines are used for talking with voice! Why the hell would we ever want fax machines?! Theres another well setup infrastructure for sending documents, its called THE POSTAL SERVICE! Or why would we want to use a modem over the phone line to watch video? We have TVs, can't you be happy?!
I doubt Alexander Bell ever INTENDED the telephone system to be used for this purpose.
So lets spread out guys! Use ham radio for new things or we're gonna die! Fortune favors the bold and I for one don't mind bending the rules or going in grey areas. If I get in trouble, so be it. But, I'll at least have tried soemthing new. Maybe it will catch on and breath new life into this old horse.
-Foxxz
I got my license in 1965 and have been pretty much continuously active since then. I've heard these same forecasts of doom & demise for the past almost 40 years! Somehow ham radio lives on, morphing itself into a hobby that either invents new technologies, or incorporates other modes into new forms.
The one thing people need to keep in mind is that, when all other forms of communications fail (e.g., the Internet, cellphones, public service radios -- remember 9/11) ham radio gets through.
73,
GJ
(at the N2RE Field Day Site in Princeton, NJ -- google n2re.org for directions)
Lots of Ventura county's Disaster Communications hams helped out the Secret Service and others keep track of the goings on in the past weeks. You'll never read about it in the press. For instance, they actually "ploughed the road" in front of the motorcade.
Saw this early in the morning and decided to crash the party. Wanted to look around a bit and see what this whole thing was about. Got there and immediately I was greeted by one of the organizers and shown around. A thirty minute tour later he shook our hand and sent us on our way. Pretty friendly guy, Sohail Anjum VE3ITU, and ready to spread the word.
:) They had one superstar, John Duffy, who could do 50 words a minute over morse code!!
Now I'm actually pretty intrigued by the whole thing. They were using WiFi equipment with custom Linux firmware for their Linksys routers. They all had laptops for auto-logging their calls. Pretty cool!
If anyone's interested, I ran into this website, M.A.R.C., that is for the GTA area.
Funny what you can run into by just following a whim...