Hacker News Reader

> What you're proposing amounts to the total abandonment of all the principles that have governed amateur radio for over a century.

This is a ridiculous premise. Things have changed a lot in the last century. We have the freaking internet now for one. It's my personal opinion that HAM is dying because it hasn't kept up with the times. How do you draw new people in? Being able to communicate with others isn't interesting. There are far easier and cheaper methods to do this that younger generation have had since they were children. So let's look at other things. What about making internet relays? Servers? Controlling things (HAM-OT?)

There is unlicenced spectrum where encrypted traffic is allowed (900MHz, 2.4GHz, 5.8GHz) why aren't those adequate for these experiments?

WiFi frequencies are often crowded and harder to get range on.

Those are way higher frequencies than the popular ham bands. I can barely get wifi to cover my apartment, but I can reliably pick up folks from across the city on my handheld radio.

(Which is why spectrum is much more valuable and there aren't unlicensed bands.)

https://faradayrf.com/faraday/

33cm ham band, up to 500kbps, tons of range, especially with yagi/directional antennas, even in a metro area the size of LA. The sad part of this project is that it never took off.

>It's my personal opinion that HAM is dying because it hasn't kept up with the times. How do you draw new people in?

Ham radio is not dying. There are more licensed amateurs now than there ever has been, and it's growing every year [1]. The whole notion that ham radio is this old relic nobody uses anymore has no bearing in reality.

[1]http://www.arrl.org/news/us-amateur-radio-numbers-reach-an-a...

> What you're proposing amounts to the total abandonment of all the principles that have governed amateur radio for over a century.

If you're going to be dramatic about it: yes, that's exactly what I'm proposing. We've learned in the last couple of decades on the Internet that communication needs to be encrypted and authenticated as a matter of course. We did not know that a century ago. (We didn't have modern cryptography a century ago.) I think it's perfectly fair to re-evaluate in light of that.

Specifically, you basically can't use any modern network protocol over packet radio any more, because no modern network protocol worth using has a non-encrypted mode.

> What activity would people like to undertake that a) requires encryption and b) is compatible with the basis and purpose of amateur radio as stated in part 97?

Personally, I'd like to tunnel E2E-encrypted text messages, a mosh session to my IRC box, etc., which ordinarily would go over cellular internet links, over ham radio to reach parts of my city with poor cellular coverage, for the purpose of casual conversations with friends and also getting experience with building/operating portable wireless communication systems. Casual conversations that inspire you to get better at building wireless communication systems is a completely normal, intentional, well-accepted use of the amateur service, perhaps the most normal and well-accepted use.

(I also suspect that being able to tunnel normal internet communication protocols over ham radio would be more reliable and valuable in an emergency than voice and ham-specific protocols, and I'd argue that building and gaining practical experience with such systems is also a reasonable use of the amateur service.)

> How could a simple rule on the duration of transmissions or the length of QSOs meaningfully distinguish between technical experimentation, communications that could not occur by any other medium and the commercial exploitation of the amateur service?

If your transmissions are long or regular, then they cannot be encrypted. This does not ban long transmissions, this rule bans long and regular encrypted transmissions - i.e., it is effectively a subset of the existing rule banning encrypted transmissions of any length. So, all existing uses are permitted.

(Are you envisioning a legitimate purpose for encrypted data over low-SNR links? Then you're probably being more ambitious than I am in your hopes for encrypted ham radio!)

The standard FCC response to your request would be the MOSH session would run great on existing 802.11 regulated under 47CFR15.247 (probably?) so trying to implement it under 47CRF97 is a paperwork mistake.

A step up from consumer wifi gear, the specific term to google for would be U-NII as in the thingie that WISP wireless ISPs operate under. My understanding of U-NII gear (which might be wrong) is by definition its unlicensed. Its long distance performance crushes anything wifi can do (legally, anyway LOL). My understanding of U-NII is 47CFR15.407 which is a different subsection than consumer wifi.

If you feel really ambitious, FCC Part 101 service is the way to go if you want real distance. A license is a couple hundred bucks new or renewed. Your electric bill for the equipment for part 101 service will cost more than that, I think. Just because a Part 73 renewal costs about a new car per year, doesn't mean ALL the fees are draconian. You can certainly spend more on unlicensed 802.11 gear than on used Part 101 gear as a complete system; its not even remotely unrealistic for a private citizen to do part 101 stuff for fun.

If you're feeling really really really ambitious the cost of a form 442 experimental request was ridiculous like sixty bucks. But thats for really exotic experimentation like we're inventing new hardware and new protocols. And a 442 request is by definition not an existing service so they may well respond with an allocation and temporary license that doesn't work for you.

The point of all this is the FCC already has four services you can operate under, ranging from literally free up to a serious but realistic hobby expense, so changing the rules of an existing fifth service is going to be a very hard sell. Like, seriously, none of the four services they offer fit your needs, not even the $60 experimental request form?

Extensive historical part 97 operation indicates encryption has never been useful or required for the other goals mentioned such as casual conversation or operating portable communications systems, so the FCC is not going to take that subgoal very seriously at all.

Thank you—this is an informative reply and I'll check out these options.

I made a comment on here not too long ago that said HAM operators are the equivalent of tech tattle-tales.

This comment is exactly why I say that.

> What you're proposing amounts to the total abandonment of all the principles that have governed amateur radio for over a century.

And this is a bad thing, somehow? In the past century, things have changed so much. For some reason, every HAM implies that encrypted communications means encrypted chatting. No one who wants encrypted comms (who I know) wants to use it for chatting, we want to use it for control mechanisms.

Quit being anti-hacker.

> No one who wants encrypted comms (who I know) wants to use it for chatting, we want to use it for control mechanisms.

As VLM keeps saying time and again in this thread, there are other bands for that.

And even if you really, really wanted to run control mechanisms over HAM bands and didn't want anyone to inject telemetry and control signals, you don't need encryption of all traffic for that. Only authentication. Exchange keys and then just send signed but cleartext messages.

Why would you want to encrypt the control traffic so that no other HAM could listen to it and learn from it? Quit being anti-hacker.

Would cryptographic signing be allowed... the CnC message is unencrypted, and you add a signed signature against the message that is against a public/private key pair. The data isn't encrypted, but the signature still proves that you're authorized.

ISM bands are available to use with whatever encryption scheme you wish to employ.

And as others have mentioned elsewhere: control mechanisms just need authentication, not encryption. Plenty of ways to skin that cat.

Are there any rules about what spoken languages can be used in what circumstances? I can imagine a lot of local hobbyists in the US getting upset if a few people started speaking Spanish on the radio. What if people speak a language that very few people know? Unless there's some rule encouraging the use of language that is widely understood in the region, then it seems like encryption would only "cause" a problem because, well, crap, we're just accustomed to people using a language we can understand.

Any language is fine. The callsign has to be understandable and that’s it. If people want to talk in Esperanto they totally can. People talk in Spanish on the ham bands all the time!