That and anyone using this would need a ham radio license
Yeah, it doesn't scale to the moon, but that's the whole point: it's a proving ground, not a moon rocket.
People expect a modicum of privacy which ham radio, to its detriment, denies.
I think it is worth asking why modern digital radio standards (e.g. P25, DMR, LTE, 5G) were largely developed outside the ham community. My survey level understanding is they came from the communication needs of their users and are not a natural evolution of something that hams would build, with or without encryption. When I was researching DMR, there's a lot of stuff that is unnecessarily clunky when considering the use case of a ham QSO. Conversely, the business users of DMR want more structure than what's provided with amateur-designed digital modes. With 5G, I think there are some real technical and capital barriers, i.e., very few amateurs have access to the grade of test equipment needed to engineer and experiment with systems at those frequencies.
That level of permissiveness can be problematic because some technologies are by their nature not compliant. FHSS comes to mind. Its not encrypted but if you don't know know the sequence it might as well be. WiFi, bluetooth and most cell protocols use FHSS. So if you wanted to experiment with digital data transfer and make it in any way robust in a congested area you could not do so as a Ham. Its implicitly illegal.
To your second point I agree. DMR, P25, TETRA etc were developed with police departments and such in mind. To get the full use out of them requires a heavy investment infrastructure for trunking systems. And their programming models assume a set it and leave it use case where the operators are not trained or even savvy to RF comms.
This makes them at best clunky for Hams. DMR has caught on not because its the best, but I think because its easier and cheaper for radio makers to license it. In Europe Type 1 is also allowed unlicensed which gives the market momentum.
No one cares...
You're only allowed to transmit square on center of the allotted channels, and, this is the important bit, one person at a time. All the modes that JT invented flat out ignore both rules for 60 meter transmissions.
I don't care, but I get sick of people telling me that my pactor modem is "illegal".
Also these modes being ok or not on 60m has nothing to do with the question I asked?
The sad part is that the FCC has been more interested in maintaining the status quo than actually continuing the spirit of the hobby. There is nothing experimental or ground breaking about talking to someone states away using an HF transceiver that cost $4k in analog FM. That stopped being innovative 80 years ago. There are a lot of interesting things being done with RF that are off limits to amateurs because they require a business license.
But you are talking about normal people using radio for normal conversations. That's a distinct use case. Its something worth discussing, the FCC has lagged behind there too but its not the same thing as Ham.
> What it actually gets used for is Boomers chewing the fat
I'm only one data point, but I doubt my generation would 'chew the fat' on a call that anyone else in a wide radius would be listening in on. Not, at least, about anything that's personal. That's the point of my postcard analogy.
Uh, they might LARP in your neck of the woods but my county HEAVILY relies on amateur operators for weather related emergencies all year long (tornado country plus snow country).
It's the primary reason my wife and I are getting into amateur radio.
Sadly nothing is really stopping anyone from buying radios online and transmitting garbage. Sure the FCC will come knocking if someone flagrantly transmits without regard for others.
I don't mean "chase a squealer with a truck and a dimensional antenna," either, I mean persistent always-on infrastructure to plot emissions on a map. That's a hobby thing now.
I'm working 60-70 hours a week, plus class, plus church responsibilities and I'm consistently getting 70-71% correct on the General already just from using the app for a half hour or so a day and listening to the question pool via KB6NU's book while I work since Monday morning. I probably won't get up to passing it Saturday but I can just do an online test in the next few weeks once my Tech is in the database Monday or Tuesday.
Getting the General gives you plenty of room to do stuff like this.
I don't want to discourage anyone, but the investment in effort and money between tech and general is in the 4-5 digit range of dollars and hours.
By all means study. But cramming the test questions isn't studying and will leave you as an appliance operator that will constantly be told, if ever on the air, that they're doing something either rude, against the rules, or dangerous.
A good chunk of the questions are memorizing frequencies and wattages you're allowed to use for various things... something you can print off on a chart and tape to the wall.
Course if you want to work on the HF bands then it requires a bit more work to get the higher class licenses.