Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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
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... --