Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThinkBeat | Hacker News Reader

I have been dreaming about something like this for a while.

Depending on local laws and regulations different technology could be utilized to optimize coverage.

If one would like to interconnect various meshes, I can't think of a way to avoid using the Internet to trunk traffic across the Atlantic let's say. Should that ever be done is a most excellent question.

perhaps proximity and a local mesh is where it should stop.

View on HN

In general, most high-band UHF RF is constrained by earths curvature.

Hams that operate in HF/CW bands simply rely on atmospheric or moon bounce to exchange Morse-code over long distances.

Amateur radio is a great way to gain a different perspective on electronics, physics, and our sun.

Have a great day, =3

> If one would like to interconnect various meshes, I can't think of a way to avoid using the Internet to trunk traffic across the Atlantic let's say.

Radio links with a regular 'ol dipole antenna? Although I think most countries prohibit encrypted traffic for amateur radio purposes, plus the link would be kinda spotty and depend on ionospheric weather

Crossing the Atlantic with radio is totally doable, even with low power if you accept communicating at a few bits per second (see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FT8 and https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx.html). As it's time-of-day dependent you'd need to have a way to switch bands (daily propagation patterns on 7 MHz are totally different from 14 MHz for example) depending on the ionospheric conditions, and a multi-band antenna. I'd rather use a pair of beams (this kind of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagi%E2%80%93Uda_antenna#/medi...) pointing to each other rather than a dipole, gain is much higher so you need less power. But even using multiple bands, there will be moments where no connection is possible at all.

There's also a satellite... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Es%27hail_2, but of course it would be a single point of failure.

> different technology could be utilized to optimize coverage.

One of the nicest advantages of the underlying network stack here is that it can run over almost anything (Ethernet, I2P, internet, WiFi ...)

> Should that ever be done is a most excellent question.

Baring your, indeed very valid question, I am sure some enterprising soul would come up with a way to run some microwave trunk or some such, if needed.-

You generally need line-of-sight for microwave links and the longest known link is something like 350km, and even using tropospheric scatter you can't go over ~500km, so you'd need multiple relay stations with microwaves.

Using a lower band and bouncing off the ionosphere gets you much further but only works if ionosphere weather is OK, and it'll have lower bandwidth (not necessarily a problem though), and encryption is a no-no for amateur radio in most countries

What would it be like - heaven forbid - to have weather-dependant transatlantic links?

(Decently fast, just ... periodically off ...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com