What for?
Me, personally, I would like to see the bands filled to capacity and it be common/everyday that ordinary people use 2m/70cm data modes for things besides DX’ing.
In fact, the most reliable traffic is the one narrow APRS frequency full of generally indecipherable digital packets from all the proprietary over-landing rigs.
I think something like that coupled with something like https://hamwan.org/ to route high-bandwidth traffic could be a great combo, almost like an adaptive bandwidth.
One place that extra space would be useful is for digital walkie-talkies, as an expansion of FRS.
Or use of existing internet protocols, yes.
Here's an example: I was in an amateur rocketry group. One of our primary telemetry connections was wifi; 802.11b channel 1 is in an amateur band. We used directional antennas on the ground, cylindrical patch antennas on the rocket, and 1W of power (which is why we needed amateur licenses, to exceed the standard 100mW for wifi) and we could reliably communicate via standard IP while the rocket was a long distance away and breaking the sound barrier. The ESSID was one of our callsigns.
Our standard telemetry protocol was unencrypted packets, because ham radio. But a common need while debugging the rocket on the launchpad was to SSH in (it ran Linux). So our options were:
- Use something obsolete with much worse UX, like telnet.
- Use SSH and try to convince it to run without encryption, an option which is a bad idea for every other use case and which modern SSH rightfully refuses to contemplate.
- Use SSH with published keys, and hope that suffices to meet the spirit of the regulation.
- Add some complexity to the system to reduce power level while on the pad so that we weren't actually using a ham license.
- Safe the engines, go out to the pad a mile away, and hook up to the wired umbilical for debugging.
Removing the encryption restriction would allow using standard SSH and similar systems.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.215
It seems to me encrypted ssh is totally within the rules in this case.
Those statutes might provide the necessary exception but that's not unambiguous.
I can't say I understand the rest of the first paragraph - Part 97 doesn't actually ban encryption, just "codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning of the communication", from which "telecommand of model craft" is specifically exempted.
I'm not as familiar with the Part 15 rules - do they allow high gain antennas? Since this case is about stationary command and control, I wonder if lower power + high gain wifi antennas at both ends would close the link.
> Since this case is about stationary command and control
It's not; this was the same system used while the rocket was in motion, and part of the point of using the same system was to make sure it's working before launching.
> I wonder if lower power + high gain wifi antennas at both ends would close the link
We were using high-gain antennas already, and IIRC that didn't suffice within the 100mW power limit.
thinking about it, presharing keys and then using gpg to authenticate the message should work. just need client and server programs to make it convenient.
Failing that, would a repeater or two have helped?