Taking a Radio Camping

jnord

Back in the 70s when shortwave was still king, we used to pack communications radios, rolls of antenna wire and jump on a train to travel up to northern Scandinavia to listen to faraway exotic stations on the medium and shortwave bands. It was an ideal environment with no electronic noise, mainly due to scarce population, and we were free to roll out 500 meters of longwire in various directions without upsetting anybody. Fun times indeed!

curiousfab

The variation in local noise between different locations is huge. As an apartment dweller and radio amateur, this is something I am fighting every day and in a densely populated environment, the noise floor changes all the time, depending on which neighbor operates which electrical device at the time...

The amateur radio community is very aware of the problems and several initiatives have been launched to quantify the effects. One of them is the DARC's ENAMS, which is described in detail here:

https://web.tapr.org/meetings/DCC_2020/DK5HH/F_ENAMS-DCC-DK5...

hvs

A big part of Ham radio today is what are known as POTA (Parks on the Air) activations where hams go to different parks to make contacts with other hams. These are often low-power transmissions (Known as QRP, or 10W or less). I think a big driver of this is the fact that our cities have become so noisy.

https://parksontheair.com/

Side note: if you read Hacker News, enjoy tinkering with electronics, and want to meet/talk to more people like you, I recommend becoming a Ham. The Technician and General exams from the FCC are relatively easy if you have any technical background and it's a great outlet for experimenting.

CrimsonCape

I have a question for amateur radio enthusiasts:

Let's say "radio 1.0" is as it existed since radio was invented: convert raw analog or digital packets into a signal of a given wavelength as assigned by the FCC for the "type" i.e. nautical, hobby, aero, etc. Roughly associated with physical distance.

It's obvious we have the technology at this point where multiple streams of information can be reconstructed from one wire/pipe. My cable internet is mixed with thousands of other users and yet the cable internet system delivers me just my data.

Why is the airwaves not just another physical medium (metal wire, fiber optic, air)?

If I want to build an amateur transmitter to airstream my Twitch to my friend in Brazil, the FCC would say no, because

1. Can't clutter up the airwaves (the FCC manages the wavelengths) 2. For "safety" (government wants to monitor the stream)

In "radio 2.0" I can build my hobby hardware to whatever transmit power I want and use whatever wavelength I want because air is just another medium for the same signal. My question is roughly, why cant the organizing principles of my router, isp cable internet system, etc apply to over the air transmission?

Is it a physics limitation? Or a "we always did it this way therefore you can't have it" (FCC, etc)

Let's say I hypothetically have a high power handheld transmitter in my pocket powered by modern batteries, the FCC doesn't exist, and the power is the best that the modern batteries can provide, with the only tradeoffs being weight of the transmitter and duration of batteries, i.e. physics based tradeoffs.

Don't we have the technology to mix thousands of such handheld transmitters so that everyone can carry one, broadcast their own stream, and intermix the streams, and deconstruct the stream back to my own data?

solardev

Can anyone recommend something (as in radio type or particular device) for relatively portable battery based comms between two hiking groups? The use case is a big group hike that often gets separated into two or more smaller groups walking at different speeds, but wanting to still be able to check in with each other every so often. There's no cell reception out there.

Basically just want a glorified walkie talkie with a bit more range (a few miles through woods and across hills of possible).

I just got my GMRS license and some cheap 5W handhelds to experiment with, but I'm not sure if that is the best option.

We might also have the option of setting up a "base station" at the trailhead (our cars or someone relaxing at a picnic table) to act as a higher powered repeater if that would help.

How much of it is frequency (radio type), wattage, line of sight, operator skill. etc.?

_justinfunk

> I had originally intended to spend this trip operating FT8 and CW, but for some reason I found myself really enjoying FT4 (a mode I had never used before), so I spent most of my day camped out on 14080Kc, and then shifted to 10136 and 7074 in the evening.

As a non-radio enthusiast, I was following along until this sentence.

throw0101d