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Comment by RobCodeSlayer | Hacker News Reader

This would be amazing for backcountry communication - e.g when backpacking with a large group.

Is there any way to enable this for iOS?

I'd recommend something like a couple $25 Quansheng radios instead. More reliability, more range, less finicky, more durable and about the same size as this add-on.

(For some reason the radios are showing as $30 right now)

https://www.amazon.com/QUANSHENG-200Three-Frequency-Receivin...

I own one of these, easily the worst radio I have. Fine for receive but please don't hit that transmit button.

Only N=2 but mine have worked great for the 2 meter and FRS/GMRS bands, which is what one is probably going to use while in the back country.

Definitely don't try 27 MHZ, or perhaps outside of the above bands at all.

Are these Yaesu, Motorola, or Icom quality? No, but they're $25.

Yeah I have 4 that are great 2m/70cm, which is what the included antennas are optimized for. Even better with a cheap Nagoya antenna and non-stock firmware.

Unfortunately people don’t realize that even if you install a firmware that allows down to 11m, even connected to a $1200 base antenna the power output will be in the milliwatt range while throwing off on harmonics.

There’s also the case of hardware inconsistency and fakes. When I hook up 4 of the included antennas to my VNA there’s pretty big variance, and I recently tested a fake Nagoya that was clearly tuned for air band and not 70cm/2m as advertised.

Why? What happens?

The Qansheng's that I've tested have been fine, first harmonic down 44dB, which is OK for the FCC.

However, if you hack the firmware and transmit outside the bands the radio's RF is designed to transmit on, then you will probably see all sorts of spectral weirdness.

Sure, of course, that's to be expected.

I have one too, and it gives off tons of spurious emissions (RF interference).

I pretty much only use it for experimentation and receive.

Did you actually see the spurious emissions on a spectrum analyser?

The old Baofengs had that problem, not Quansheng which are actually clean and the harmonics are within FCC specs.

Another issue is people were “testing” them using an RTLSDR which very easily gets overloaded and shows harmonics where there are none. Even my local FM station shows up on my SDR at frequencies I know they’re not actually transmitting on.

I admit that I have not. But I have used it near other equipment and it causes interference. My Kenwood HT does not.

Ah, ouch. I have two Baofengs as well, I think they're a bit better, but probably not too much better.

I think it's poor practice for the seller to advertise those simply as a "Walkie Talkie," as that Amazon link does, without making it clear that it is an amateur radio transceiver that requires a license with an FCC-issued call sign to operate. I wonder how many people buy a pair of those and then just start transmitting without quite knowing what they are doing.

Using GMRS requires a $15 license that has no test and is good for 10 years. But nobody ever gets the license. GMRS is constantly full of chatter everywhere you go. Nobody ever mentions needing to get a license. You see YouTubers constantly using and promoting "Rugged Radios" which are just rebadged Baofengs. They are sold by the thousands.

Might want to consider the meshtastic, something like a lilygo t-echo. A few advantages over the standard ham radio:

  * Nodes automatically forms a mesh
  * works with any android/IOS widget, simple text message like interface
  * store and forward means all nodes don't have to be online at the same time.
  * Cheap, no soldering, and no ham license required.
  * Can use phones GPS, makes it easy to track other nodes
  * Don't have to program in repeaters, every node can repeat.

Meshtastic(Lora) also doesn't require a license since it's in the ISM bands.

Lora also has really good FEC and other things that make it work incredibly well(at the cost of throughput). Honestly I wish we saw more things like that in the ham bands(other than FT8).

There's a couple Lora radios out there that are USB serial based and can be controlled with AT commands that would let you so something similar if you want to build up from scratch.

This isn't true, it is not exclusive to the ISM bands. You can run it on any band you choose so long as you have a license to do so. Case in point: the ham bands

Sure, that's "technically" correct but most usage of Lora is going to be in ISM since that's where they are traditionally deployed. That doesn't require a license which can be a hurdle if you don't already have one.

I've got a ham license so not a big deal for me but for those wanting to try radios without a huge investment a pair of $20 Lora AT serial radios are a great way to dip into digital radio.

Note that various ham bands have limitations on what types of emissions are allowed. For example some only allow RTTY and data, so no phone or image. And some allow phone or image but no data. Even if the type of information is allowed there might be technical restrictions prohibiting some forms of modulation.

So before using something that was designed depending on some non-ham part of the regulations for its legality, such as part 18 (ISM) in the US, on a ham band I'd want to look into the details and make sure it is not doing something under that part but not allowed under the ham regulations.

Also, the ham bands as a whole cannot be used for profit-motives or any financial gain. People often forget this rule. Not to mention the (kind of absurd, IMO) rule against any form of encryption.

Encryption is permitted for remote control of space borne systems.

Repeaters may use any method to limit access and control to authorized users.

I forgot about that one use case. But it's not allowed for most practical purposes in the U.S. at least.

almost every single repeater I know of uses this method for remote control. I even remember listening to someone sending long strings of high speed DTMF, presumably to try and brute force control of the repeater. One of the managers said they weren't successful

However, I don't believe there's a rule against steganography.

In the US, there certainly is. The rule doesn't mention encryption specifically, it just prohibits "encoding for the purpose of obscuring meaning". The intent is what matters not the method.

would oblivious transfer qualify as OK? if the sender provably doesn't know what's transmitted, will the law rule it a form of obscuring meaning?

You're thinking criminal court standards, like beyond a reasonable doubt for a conviction.

It's a procedural thing. The FCC will tell you did it & tell you the penalties. Your options are zero.

Yes, the FCC would (theoretically) just revoke your license to prevent you from doing it again if they so wanted.

Do they also prohibit sarcasm?

JS8call is pretty similar to FT8, but can do keyboard to keyboard chat. Not quite auto-mesh, but can store/forward through multiple other nodes.

Decent walkie-talkies are cheap. Cheap enough that I bought some for my kids to play with instead of a single channel garbage radio like I had as a kid. If you really want a cheap programmable radio Yaesu and BaoFeng are the brands most people go with.

Could you point me at such decent walkie-talkie?

I bought these[1] for my daughter. We use them while camping. Range is around 1-1.5 miles in hilly, wooded terrain.

[1] https://a.co/d/64LVWel

Midland Xtra Talk are the ones I got my kids.

Decent Walkies are FRS blister pack radios now.

> This would be amazing for backcountry communication

At 1W, you'd be better served with little FRS/GMRS radios. Better still, for less than the cost of building this yourself, you can buy ready-made a Baofeng UV-5R for under $20. The antenna is a little crummy, but you can buy that and _still_ be under the $30 build price. Further, the Baofeng isn't supporting a whole operating system so the battery will last much longer. I wouldn't want my "always-on" phone draining its battery until I need to transmit to someone. 1W is only going to be useful to hit repeaters in an urban environment - but because it's 2m (and not 70cm), it's even less likely to be all that useful beyond a neat/fun build.

I wonder how good the range would be. I was thinking that even if I didn't have the appropriate license, having something like this in a pocket on my backpack would at least give me one more signaling option in an emergency. I could deal with the fines later.

Generally speaking, line of sight. Assuming you're in the US, the FCC wouldn't come after you for using this in an emergency situation unless you were being absolutely egregious about stomping on other emergency comms, even then I seriously doubt you'd see a fine.

Having said that you're basically going to need enough knowledge to pass the test to make use of this anyway. Why not just take the test and be legal?

Don't you have to register with your personal address in a public database?

Yes. You can use a PO box, but since all past addresses and changes are visible in the database, you have to get the PO box _before_ you get your very first license, in order for it to be meaningful.

You mean like virtually everyone did, with phone books?

Well, for white pages, it used to be name to phone number lookup, not, you know, physical address, in almost all cases. Yellow pages were different ofc. And the tide against that turned 20 years ago, which congress banned that for cellphones.

In any case, sounds like "yes".

Not a deal breaker, but concerning. I know folks in my home would be opposed to my doing it.

> not, you know, physical address

White pages had physical address too.

In practice, even today without published phone directories, lookup from name to address is readily accomplished from public records.

If you have put in the effort to avoid all of those vectors, then it's equally possible to use a safe address for your FCC registration.

Sometimes yes, not always, and practice decreased as privacy concerns increased. The old one for our city that was still printed up to about a decade ago did not have them.

And yeah, could probably find some way to spoof.

And yes, people can find things, just makes folks here uncomfortable that it would be readily available to a random nut in a short list linked to a "pseudo" one might be using routinely.

Anyway. It's one more hassle and disincentive. I'm interested in its potential for an emergency out in the woods (I'd be carrying my phone anyway, so a tiny pocket dongle is far less weight than a radio), but if I learn how to use it, I probably won't go for the license.

Agreed -- I'm with you 100% on the opsec hygiene regiment.

But FWIW, I think "Firstname Lastname Postal_Address" has never been easily kept private (indeed, the winning strategy is subterfuge), and that adding "Callsign" does not change that equation.

Of course it does mean that you shouldn't use your callsign as a pseudonym online. And I am not a person who is comfortable with the idea of a ham vanity plate! :) But with proper hygiene, your callsign is just an arbitrary alphanumeric string that is attached in exactly one place, to another instance of your name/address in the wild.

One thing getting a license would do, is give you an idea of how to maximize your tx/rx options. Understanding RF propagation in varied terrain could be valuable in an emergency situation.

If you already know this stuff, then the license exams are very easy.

Yeah. It's something that interests me and that I wouldn't mind learning, I just don't have an enormous motivation to get a license and the archaic (IMO) requirements on public listing are a part of that. I wish they'd rethink that policy.

But, I could just get some training just to improve utility in an emergency then take the license thing under consideration. I know some hams so wouldn't be too tough to learn the basics.

See https://www.n1fd.org/2019/03/23/tape-measure-yagi/ for a upgrade to a 2 meter HT that will make it into a repeater 100 miles away under ordinary conditions and could go 300 miles under extraordinary conditions.

You need to know the squelch keys for repeaters and get some practice, it never hurts to get to know the people who run the repeaters, check in on the nightly net, know who is listening. So it is worth getting the technician license, there is no Morse code, just a multiple choice test run by friendly hams.

One rainy night I was talking to an amateur storm chaser who was reporting on conditions close to the inlet and asking why the repeater wasn’t so busy during storms like back in the day there were lots of storm chasers and I told him that NOAA advises people not to drive into flooding prone regions so most of us don’t do that because we don’t want to become part of the emergency.

Other times in the rain the air is silent but you know there is at least one ham monitoring who will call 911.

That range depends on the height of the antennaes(sender and receiver). I have been able to hear repeaters 150km away because it is on a hill.

VHF / 2m is basically line of sight. But it will go for long distances. I've worked the repeater on the ISS with a 5W handheld radio and a 1/4 wave antenna.

VHF is actually pretty good for non line of sight (at least, better than everything higher frequency).

Its not great for over the horizon communication, but its pretty good at getting through trees and other obstacles.

just get something that transmit on one of the emergency frequencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_emergency_frequency

so long as you use it for an actual emergency, there are no issues

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