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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."
I'm an extra class ham, but I believe amateur radio is a dying art/hobby. The thanks go mostly to the internet and cell phones. While I'm a bit sad to see very few of the younger folk comming into the hobby, I'm not surprised.
-- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
BPL= Broadband over Power Lines...
Which all users of RF technology of any kind consider a boogyman unknown because power lines weren't meant to carry any sort of signaling at all and therefore are completely unshielded. It's just plain a theoretical nightmare if this technology were to be widely deployed... nobody's quite sure how bad the problems for other applications would be.
This may be a nothingness, or it may be the death of ham radio depending on who you listen to.
HAM radios are not as popular as they once were. I think events like this have the ability to bring the hobby to a new generation. With email being so easy to communicate with others around the world, it makes HAM radios look cumbersome.
I think the real attention grabber would be to show how these HAM radios have been around for so long and still continue to get the job done. After all, you can communicate around the world with technology developed before the Internet!
--
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A good line from ARRL is at:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/
Seems wireless internet would be far cheaper and more effective. Plus, some BPL solutions rely on 802.11 for the last 25 feet or so.
I don't know, but it works for me.
I'm not that into HAM stuff, but my
father was. I went to plenty of HAMFests
and Field Days with him. Field Day is quite
fun, especially when you camp as well.
Before he died I managed his site with the
equipment he (mostly) used.
http://k2pts.home.comcast.net/
Field Day is fun, even if you're not into
HAM/radios, check it out!
hey, uh, guys? its not HAM radio, its Ham radio. no acronym... and I am 17, and i have several good freinds that have their tickets(ham liscences) that got them before i met them... and i didn't meet them on the radio. So obviously, the interest is out there... and anyone who is interested in some of the stuff here on /. might enjoy amatuer radio.
73 de KC2KVY
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature to help me spread!
I realize you're a troll, but...
The reason Ham radio has it ALL OVER any internet technology is that it requires exactly TWO pieces of equipment to communicate effectively across great distances.
When the 'net goes out, Ham radio will still work.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
Not to mention when the phone system and satellite phone goes down. Impossible you say? Recall the LA fires of last year: no cell (towers burned town), regular phone didn't work (switching stations burned, and overloaded) and overloaded satellites. What was left? Ah, the obsolete HAM radio.
I don't know, but it works for me.
Field Day is great. Hams are volunteers serving their country in a time of uncertainty. We owe hams a great deal of gratitude for their work. Numerous incidents have shown how fragile our infrastructure has become (blackouts, hurricanes, tornados). Our country is ill prepared to handle disaster. This is why ham radio needs to be protected. Most people do not understand ham (or amateur) radio. They believe it's all about talking. It's not. Aside from the emergency service aspects, ham radio is about science. It's about engineering and design. It's about physics theory. A large number of professional engineers are also hams, such as electrical engineers, computer scientists, and pilots. The Internet has tremendous value. But long distance ham radio is much more challenging. The challenge is to build your own station, to understand Earth's ionosphere, and to make far away contacts with modest power. You hold the infrastructure. Hams have even put numerous satellites in orbit. I'll be operating at field day this year. If you want to find out what ham radio is all about, show up at your nearest club and take a look. It's fun! And what you do with the hobby is up to you!
No, that isn't cool. People saying crap like that will be used by those in power to remove your radios from you.
Hams are playing this like it is some game, and it isn't. You are fighting people with lots of money and power and making snide little comments will not buy you ANY friends.
I used to be on the hams side, till I realized they where acting like a bunch of spoiled kids and spining every piece of info to make their side look perfect and the other side look like the devil.
You are also overlooking the large push to move all those emergency services over to different systems that are much more resistant to interference (digital and encrypted links, look at the ads in mags targeting those useres)
You are also overlooking the large push to move all those emergency services over to different systems that are much more resistant to interference (digital and encrypted links, look at the ads in mags targeting those useres)
The reason these frequencies are used is because of ionospheric propagation. (Over the horizon propagation.) You can use digital and encrypted links via ionosphere, but to use another part of the spectrum requires infrastructure that can fail.
The HF spectrum is a natural resource. We should not pollute it simply because it can be used to deliver broadband internet access.
--fatboy
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
That's long been a tension within the hobby. Are we about the medium, or about the message?
A large part of the hobby is about the medium. We really don't care what information is sent - we're interested in the method used to send that information.
Isn't that essentially the same motivation that drives kernel hackers? Who don't really care about what computing gets done, just that it can be done on a kernel they built themselves...
You can use it for data - I have used it that way off and on for over 10 years.
Packet radio has been around a long time, in fact, that was my first connectivity to the Internet.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
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
Amplifying on why some emergency services are staying with HF and are NOT moving to the newer UHF/Microwave stuff, and why high-frequency/shortwave communications are important:
A number of services use a technique known as NVIS (Near-Vertical-Incidence-Skywave.) NVIS is basically sending your signals nearly straight up, with a well-chosen frequency that gets reflected almost straight back down by the ionosphere. These frequencies are nearly always in the HF bands (~3-30 MHz).
This particular mode of communications is really helpful in situations where there is no infrastructure and no line of sight. A classic example is forest fires -- the fire often knocks out communications repeaters, and often mountains/hills isolate pockets of firefighters with no line of site communications; NVIS overcomes this as the signals are usually coming in from directly above. It also works well for islands or really any regional communications with limited support infrastructure.
As mentioned elsewhere, you can run pretty much any modulation scheme (digital data, voice, whatever) using NVIS. But both sides need to hear the signals, and the concern is that BPL could prevent one side (likely the home base/communications center side rather than those in the field) from being able to hear, thus preventing any useful communications.