[subway]

It's really depressing that we've largely abandoned the art of decentralized radio communication. I think Amateur radio has seen a minor resurgence in recent years, but it seems like more and more traffic that traditionally would have been passed by decentralized amateur operators now relies on centralized networks.

Obviously Zello and its ilk bring significant benefits with them, but I worry about the impact they have on proliferation of radio skills.

[hamthrowaway]

I tried getting into Amateur Radio. I'm mid-30s, and I really liked the idea of ham radio, ever since I was a child.

So I went ahead and spent 8 months on it. I got my Extra license (the highest level), learned all about Ares, got into nets.. all of it. I bought an Icom 7300 (really great radio). I even started learning Morse.

Why did I quit?

I couldn't deal with some of the hmm,"interesting" people on ham radio! I have a slight accent, enough to mark me out as a non-native born American (I'm a citizen now though), and I kept meeting people who were downright nasty to me.

I tried focusing on the positive, but after a few months and one particularly unpleasant contact, my wife asked me why I was wasting my time trying to talk to people who clearly didn't want me around.

She was right, and I quit. Yes, I met plenty of really nice hams, but every week that I was on the air, I would be bound to find someone calling me names.

Sure, you can just "spin the dial", but for those who don't know, ham radio is not anonymous. FCC regulations state that you have to give your call sign every 10 minutes, and you can look up anyone's name and home address from that call sign. That unpleasant contact consisted of a fine citizen telling me that he was going to come over and "kick my ass". Just because he thought I was illegal or something like that.

I'm sure he was just bloviating, but hey, I have a wife and kids.. I'm not risking it.

I'm still an Extra, but I sold my radios and don't want to get into it anymore.

[sverige]

Amateur radio is still alive, but there are not nearly as many active hams as there were 30 years ago when I first got my license. A much smaller percentage of hams know how to pass traffic in a systematic way these days, and not as many are proficient with Morse code, which is arguably the most efficient use of spectrum in disaster scenarios.

Hams did help during Harvey and are helping during Irma, but it doesn't get as much press as it used to.

I also think that there has been sort of a systematic degradation in neighborhood relations that has an impact on disaster response. My neighborhood has mostly middle aged and older people in it now, most of us know each other, but many neighborhoods have become much more transient in the last generation or so and ties are not as strong.

My challenge to a community that includes "hacker" in its name is to consider picking up the radio hobby. It has some real old school hacker opportunities for everyone. And, it has never been easier to obtain an amateur license. The Morse code requirements have been dropped. The technical part of the test is not that difficult for anyone with any understanding of electronics. The regulations are somewhat obscure, but not difficult to grasp. We need an infusion of new amateur radio operators. The old guys (like my dad) are disappearing fast.

[TeMPOraL]

The hackerspace I help run did a lot of work to rekindle the interest in amateur radio in the area by running free HAM courses; it led to a few dozen new licenses over last two years. If you are active in a hackerspace, consider running something like this too.

Personally, I'm planning to take an exam in literally 28 days from now. In my country there's a group of HAM operators training regularly for emergency operations (EMCOM), and I'm interested in participating in that.

[uabstraction]

> My challenge to a community that includes "hacker" in its name is to consider picking up the radio hobby.

You hit the nail on the head here. I've been fooling around with computer programming for over a decade now (since I was in Jr. High), and Arduinos and Raspberry Pis as long as they have been available, but I never put much thought into ham radio. Most of the makers I know go straight to pre-made WiFi or Bluetooth modules when the time comes to make their projects work wirelessly - accepting their limitations while overlooking much simpler solutions which can be achieved though RF and a little bit of know-how. In hindsight, I wish I had learned about ham radio much sooner.

There is a massive schism between the ham community and the hacker community which doesn't make much sense to me. They are both very much interested in finding novel solutions to problems and sharing them with the community, doing more with less, placing value in decentralization, and have a similar sort of independent counter-culture and grounded respect for technology.

I think it is simply a problem of awareness. Before I got into ham radio, I assumed that the FCC simply allocated a tiny bucket of useless spectrum for amateur use, and that it's practical utility was quite limited. I didn't know that amateurs had access to bands all the way across the spectrum, that they are allowed to transmit at 1500 watts, that they could talk directly to the ISS, or make use of satellite repeaters and reach across oceans with a walkie talkie. On the HF bands, ham radio makes international communication possible without any middleman, subscription fee, or infrastructure. It is also a godsend for people launching weather balloons, allows you to build some incredibly badass RC craft, and can serve as the backbone of all sorts of other fascinating endeavors.

I think the schism is generational. The maker movement is composed largely of kids who grew up with the Internet, and really took off with social media and web 2.0, while the ham community is composed of a large body of people who came of age and mastered their craft before computers became ubiquitous. For better or worse, a lot of them seem to remain set in their ways. Many ham websites, including those of active clubs, brick and mortar stores, and repeater networks, look like they're straight out of the 90s, and social media outreach remains quite limited. I suppose the fundamentals of radio, much like physics or mathematics, hasn't changed much in the past 50 years, but these communities unfortunately seem to be living in different worlds.

I think that it is essential for us to bridge the gap. The alliance of the hams and the makers really stands to bring positive outcomes for both communities.

[jpindar]

Some of the fundamentals have changed, or at least been added to - nowadays some radios are actually software defined radios, but their owners might not even know it because the SDR and an embedded computer are built into one chassis, with physical front panel controls.

[sverige]

You are absolutely right about the generation gap between the two groups. I'm middle aged and one of the younger people at my ham radio club. I will say that some of us older folks have some computer skills, though. And many of them want to acquire maker skills but aren't sure where to start. Maybe that is my next local project.

I don't have any social media accounts, but I know some hams do engage there.

[okreallywtf]

This seems like an opportunity for the amateur radio community to remind the world of its existence and to do some outreach that could eventually save lives. I have an emergency radio (1 way) that I've never used but if all other lines of communication were to go down I would pull it out and crank it up (literally, its a crank radio).

It seems uncertain whether these kinds of weather events are going to become more common but in general it does seem that climate change is likely to cause more extreme weather conditions worldwide (some of the wildfires we've seen could have a similar isolating need-rescue situations), disaster preparedness might become much more of a way of life than it has been for us in a while.

[Faark]

I have no experience with amateur radio. How resilient is it against bad actors? If i'd about to drown i'd probably keep yelling for help, regardless of consequences (for others). How do you handle such cases without some authority like in centralized networks? Switch to a different frequency?

[redog]

LTE is radio. and WTF is decentralized radio? I don't think you can run a transmitter on the blockchain.

[nocha]

And what happens when a hurricane takes down the cell tower? Or the power is out for days and the cell tower's backup batteries run dry?

Decentralised radio is essentially ham radio. Individual units talking directly to each other, without relying on a single point of failure (the cell company). As others have said above, ham radio is a godsend in some situations. If you use the right bands, you can talk halfway around the world while running off batteries and using a wire thrown over a tree for an antenna.

[driverdan]

Most mobile radio operators rely on repeaters which is a form of centralization. You can communicate without them but need to be closer or have the right equipment ahead of time.

[redog]

> you can talk halfway around the world while running off batteries and using a wire thrown over a tree for an antenna.

And then what when everyone talks. Isn't it already regulated for this same reasoning? Seems to me a combination of open protocols and mesh networking would be better than government restricted ham.

[zeckalpha]

Much mesh networking innovation is happening in ham communities. Go check it out.

[XR0CSWV3h3kZWg]

decentralized != blockchain.