The whole point of this cheapo hardware is that it can be used for whatever just by setting switches and therefore achieves massive economies of scale. They sell the same hardware to the drone makers and the radio makers and so on.
IIRC these switches were not user accessible. The manufacturer set them in the right position.
They were definitely user accessible in at least some of the products. Here are a couple of the devices named in the FCC complaint which obviously had exposed DIP switches:
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/aomway-700tvl-cmos-hd-camera-nts...
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/1-2ghz-mg-500mw-8ch-a-v-wireless...
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/x40-l-25mw-tx-cnc-alloy-cas.html
There were undoubtedly a number of others which could be switched between frequencies in other ways, like with a pushbutton.
Because phone jammers cause serious problems to the phone companies, they have teams in the field actively tracking them down. And the phone base stations run software which automatically flag that they are present and log the co-ordinates.
The FCC doesn't even need to get involved.
The bits I've seen involving SDR transmission has been very clear that it's only to be done if you're a licensed operator.
Edit: If your device has any transmit ability, it falls under above. If your device ONLY has rx capability, it does not. Many of the USB SDR dongles DO have the capability to tx, albeit at only ~0.5 watts. This is generally not advertised in the device, but their chip does technically hav an amplifier capable of sending out signals, though usually you would also need an antenna with a shunt. I'm quite certain on this.
Again, in real life, it does not matter.
Note that this isn't the case everywhere. I believe in the uk it's illegal to listen to air traffic, but I would need to look up the specifics to give anymore detail.
It's a strange thing to see white-snow-static redigitized and then drop bit-rates.
Old-school white snow static is theoretically the most uncompressable thing, right? So some poor encoder is being told to "send this at 384kb!" and it just throws its little robot hands up and says, "fine, here's your super blocky bullshit. I'm going on break..."
Or something like that?
For instance, you can own one of those cheap handheld Baofeng radios that is capable of transmitting on all sorts of frequencies, so long as you never transmit (and you don't listen to any forbidden frequencies)
Happy to be corrected, but all the resources I've dug up say that it doesn't matter whether the device is capable of transmitting or not.
The reason being that they are based on a cheap Receive Only chip set.
Those that do have TX are much more complex and expensive.
BTW, you've pretty much discredited your own post by talking about a "antenna with a shunt". Whatever you think that is.
> I’m quite certain of this.
Hmmmmm
> shunt
LOL
> In its earlier Forfeiture Order, the FCC said it had made clear that “[d]evices used in the Amateur Radio Service do not require authorization prior to being imported into the United States, but “if such equipment can operate in amateur and non-amateur frequencies, it must be certified prior to marketing and operation.” The FCC investigation found that 65 models of devices marketed by HobbyKing did not have the required FCC certification.
It's also up to the equipment manufacturer or importer to make sure the equipment they sell in the United States is certified by the FCC.
Usually I would agree with you, but it's sort of like selling a laser pointer with a user-accessible switch that would make it a powerful directed energy weapon.
...I see no problem with this. In fact, I'll take 5.
People will buy this with the intent of misusing it, therefore the government should stop people selling it.
It's reasonable to expect the end user to not break the law because enforcement is possible. Even if enforcement was impossible, prior restraint of natural rights to just do stuff should not be on the table. Should we ban CNCs because you can use CNCs to build things that kill people?
After that, throw the book at them. I'm amazed they didn't claim that the FCC had no jurisdiction because they only recognize county sheriffs as authorities.
After all, what could possibly go wrong with remote controlled flying transmitters that interfere with GPS AND ATC navigation systems?
I'm ok with this.
Do you think the people who operate or use these things are completely helpless and have no contingency plans?
The people in here saying the sky is falling are insane. People who operate disruptive devices are caught, and then educated and/or fined all the time.
Low visibility. No GPS. Impaired ATC. How many additional separate systems have to be affected to be a real problem?
However having a piece of unlicensed radio equipment for use with unlicensed operators which has essentially a “flip this switch to break the law” the situation is quite different.
As an example of this, look at the explosion of cheap handheld radios that can operate across all different parts of the spectrum flooding in from China, enforcement has been... more or less non-existent except in the most egregious of cases. Generally the range on these things is only a few miles, and trying to pinpoint a single intermittent transmission even if it's static within that few miles can be _extremely_ time consuming.
And we're talking about a very limited shared resource that we rely on for many aspects of day-to-day life.
Where it _is_ possible to enforce at scale is at importation/sale.
Yes, any random yahoo can get the parts to put together an illegal transmitter. But the scale of that problem is a hell of a lot different than a product being mass marketed online for $50 with no indication that it's illegal to operate.
The simple fact is if the market gets flooded with cheap devices that don't follow the spectrum allocations, large swathes of the spectrum will very quickly become useless. It's pretty a straightforward example of the tragedy of the commons.