SuperPacket

Starlink and Emergency Communications

Initially, I wrote this for my newsletter Zero Retries 0063 (will publish Friday 2022-09-09 at 15:30 Pacific), but to avoid "Starlink isn't Amateur Radio fatigue" in the Zero Retries readership, I decided to move the article here and reference it in Zero Retries 0063 as optional reading. I believe that Starlink is poised to become a significant influence on Amateur Radio’s traditional role of providing emergency communications, thus this discussion is appropriate for an Amateur Radio audience.

I believe that by the end of 2023, every Emergency Operations Center (EOC) will have Starlink installed and have it set up as failover Internet. This includes not just local, regional, state, and national EOCs, but private defacto EOCs such as electrical suppliers, natural gas suppliers, water distribution, grocery retailers, trucking companies, healthcare… even garbage removal. Not to mention centers of information such as National Weather Service (NWS) offices, United States Geological Survey (USGS), airports, etc. In short, Starlink is poised to become the emergency Internet. In short, if it matters in an emergency, it will have Starlink connectivity. And the converse is true: in an emergency, if it doesn’t have Starlink… that facility / organization won’t matter (in managing the emergency).

That includes Mobile Command Centers (MCCs). I predict that by end of 2023, every MCC will have a “Starlink for RVs” unit installed. (Never mind that Starlink currently doesn’t offer a “mobile” unit - someone, or Starlink, will figure out how to make one optimized for mobile use because the market for that use case is enormous.) One attraction for doing so is that Starlink service can be suspended, and reactivated, via a web page, thus during the months that a mobile command center is unused, it’s not burning up the $135/month (retail) usage fee.

Tom Evslin makes this case in his article Every First Responder HQ in Vermont Needs Two Portable Starlink Dishes:

When tropical storm Irene lashed Vermont eleven years ago, many towns became islands. The roads and bridges to them were gone. Some towns were also cutoff from all communications. The poles that brought them electricity, phone, and some Internet service (if they had any) were gone. Cellular towers were blown down, lost their own wired connections to the communications backbone, and/or ran out of diesel fuel for their backup generators. repair crews did a fabulous job; but they couldn’t be everywhere at once – and some places were simply inaccessible to the trucks for weeks.

Some cut off towns sent couriers out on foot to get emergency medicine or arrange helicopter evacuations of sick and injured people. Sometimes people found there was one hill they could drive to and get spotty cellular coverage as long as they had enough gas to get there and run the car to keep the cellphones charged.

No matter what weather or catastrophe hits us in the future, there is no excuse for ever losing communications again. The difference is the ready availability of satellite communication. Satellites circling 200 miles above us and powered by solar power obviously aren’t affected by whatever terrestrial problem  afflicts us. As long as first responders have some source of 110-volt power and a view of the northern sky, they can keep on communicating during and after a storm or other catastrophe.

To be clear, wireline (especially fiber), fixed wireless, and cellular will all continue to be primary methods of broadband Internet access… when they are available. But all three of those methods of broadband Internet access (eventually) fail when there is loss of grid power and especially physical damage to infrastructure. Examples: hurricanes, loss of the Texas power grid last winter, wildfires, etc.

We haven’t seen this movement quite yet because:

• Budget cycles for most organizations are annual; Starlink wasn’t a significant factor in time for 2022 budgets submitted in 2021.

• Starlink has only matured as reasonably usable in 2022 with two key capabilities - Starlink Business (higher bandwidth and reliability) and Starlink for RVs (nomadic capability).

• In 2021, Starlink’s long term reliability and usability remained to be proven.

Why won’t anything that doesn’t have Starlink connectivity matter? Because once there’s a critical mass of Starlink users in emergency situations, the Broadband Internet capabilities of Starlink will quickly become the expected norm. Emergency managers will expect communications to just keep working - VOIP, email, websites for information dispersal (weather, wind), and especially video. Any communications system that can’t “keep up” with the reliability and usability (and relatively low cost) of Starlink just won’t be considered useful.

Will Starlink become saturated like what occurred with the early Iridium system? The “extreme test case” of the war in Ukraine, where there’s probably the most intense use of Starlink in the world, is evidence that despite intensive regional use, Starlink will remain usable. Starlink is sophisticated enough that it could, if needed, prioritize users. In fact, it’s already doing so with the offering of Starlink Business:

With a higher gain antenna, additional throughput allocation, and better extreme weather performance, Starlink Business helps ensure bandwidth for critical operations 24/7.

One of the primary attractions of Starlink, versus Amateur Radio, is that you don’t need (Amateur Radio) specialists and their licenses to use Amateur Radio spectrum. Starlink providing broadband Internet is “just another Information Technology (IT) function, and every organization already has IT specialists on staff or quickly on call. Unlike previous satellite communications systems, Starlink’s self-aiming capability doesn’t cost a premium of thousands of dollars, so “specialist installation” isn’t needed.

Starlink has not sought this role, but it’s rapidly proven that it’s usable in such extreme situations because of its highly visible use in the war in Ukraine. A recent article in the Kyiv Independent - How Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet keeps Ukraine online provides a testament to Starlink’s usability and reliability:

Among the Ukrainian military, Elon Musk, the richest tech entrepreneur in the U.S., is often half-jokingly referred to as “Saint Elon.”

The reason is Starlink, Musk’s satellite communication system that keeps many Ukrainians, most importantly the military, online despite power outages and Russia’s attacks on the country's internet infrastructure.

Starlink allows access to the internet even during power outages or in the absence of other internet infrastructure. It is also more secure than other types of communication: Experts say that it’s nearly impossible for Russian troops to intercept.

Lastly, I suspect that Starlink for RVs, or just the existence of Starlink in general, combined with the corporate sponsorships and the abundance of IT professionals with time on their hands, will “supercharge” Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (ITDRC) in the next few years. ITDRC’s tagline is “America's premier team of volunteer technology professionals - Connecting Communities in Crisis” Think of ITDRC as ARES, but showing up with Starlink, lots of Ethernet cable, and Wi-Fi units instead of Amateur radios.

I asked a friend with experience in Amateur Radio and operating Emergency Operations Centers and Mobile Command Centers for feedback on this article and their primary feedback was that Starlink does work as I describe, especially in the field… but for EOCs and MCCs, the monthly billing is a major pain point, requiring approval paperwork to be submitted every month. It would make their life much simpler if Starlink offered an annual billing plan.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
Portions Copyright © 2022 by Steven K. Stroh

Nice Discussion about RadioMirror by KE9V

I've admired the writing of Jeff Davis KE9V for some time. Jeff "thinks different" and his long-time blog reflects that. I particularly enjoyed Jeff's (fictional) audio series "Cornbread Road" (now, unobtanium, as Jeff stated; you won't find mention of it on Jeff's blog. Jeff is remarkably unsentimental about his previous writings.)

Jeff heaped some praise on my article about RadioMirror:

I’m interested. Very interested. Nothing about this concept is outside current amateur radio capabilities. It doesn’t require some pie-in-the-sky new geo satellite or yet to be imagined software. It could be implemented right now in 2021 if the idea caught some fire…

Thanks for your interest Jeff!

Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
Portions Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh

 

July 2021 QST Had Some Interesting Technical Content

Image courtesy of ARRL

I was pleasantly surprised by the July, 2021 issue (Volume 105, Issue 7) of ARRL's magazine QST. It was a welcome change to see some content with some technical relevance (circa 2021), such as:

• Page 9 - Second Century - EmComm: It's In Our Purpose by ARRL CEO David Minster NA2AA. I don't agree with him about the relevance of Amateur Radio for Emergency Communications in the 2020s and beyond (basically, we're not). However, it's interesting to see the ARRL's perspective on the tenets of US Amateur Radio in the CEO's own words.
• Page 21, 26, 27 - FlexRadio full page ads. I'm a fan of FlexRadio because they're the only "all in on Software Defined Radio technology" manufacturer in the Amateur Radio industry (in the same way that Tesla is all in on battery electric vehicles). I particularly like FlexRadio's approach to linking their various units - Ethernet.
• Page 38-42 - Review - Icom IC-R30 Portable Communications Receiver Mark Wilson K1RO. K1RO did a nice review, and I learned several things about the IC-R30, such as:
  • The IC-R30 has a Li-Ion battery pack which can be charged the USB connector,
  • The IC-R30 antenna connector is SMA (easily adapted to external antennas),
  • The IC-R30 can be programmed (like a scanner or portable transceiver), either with a .csv file, or Icom's IOS or Android app,
  • The IC-R30 has an onboard GPS receiver
  • The IC-R30 has a microSD card that can store frequency memories and received audio files,
  • The IC-R30 can be controlled via the IOS or Android App via Bluetooth
  • The IC-R30's audio output can be routed to a Bluetooth audio device
  • The IC-R30's list price is $600.
• Page 47-49 - Review - Garmin inReach Mini Satellite Communications Device by Bruce Prior N7RR (yay - a fellow Pacific Northwester). Some of the things I learened about the InReach from this review:
  • It's tiny - 3.9" x 2.04" x 1.03" and 3.5 ounces!
  • It uses the Iridium Low Earth Orbit satellite system (thus works anywhere you have a view of the sky),
  • Has a built-in GPS, and position data is included in any messages sent from the InReach
  • The InReach can be used standalone or paired with a smartphone via Bluetooth,
  • Canned messages can be pre-defined for easy recall and transmission,
  • The price of the InReach is $350, plus varying expense for subscription packages (required, not optional).
  • No, there's no Amateur Radio overlap with this device, other than N7RR includes it with his lightweight Amateur Radio equipment that he takes on hikes.
• Page 54-55 -  Microwavelengths - Understanding Feed Horns for Parabolic Dishes by Paul Wade W1GHZ. He explains the physics of parabolic dishes in an approachable way.
• Page 56 - Eclectic Technology - The Rise of LoRa by Steve Ford WB8IMY. He gives a decent summary of LoRa technology. W8IMY observes "... you're unlikely to be passing voice video data through a LoRa network." At a maximum data rate of 22 - 50 kbps, that's correct, but that's a (potentially) significant improvement over typical packet radio data rates. It's an interesting crossover between license-exempt operation and Amateur Radio operation that's possible with LoRa. In my memory, this is the very first mention of LoRa technology in QST.
• Page 60-61 - AREDN at the US Marine Corps Marathon by Mark Braunstein WA4KFZ. This was the real shocker of QST content. This was a good overview of the tactical (as opposed to infrastructure) use of AREDN systems to support the popular, and large US Marine Corps Marathon in the Washington DC area. Again, in my memory, this is the very first mention of AREDN in QST. 
• Page 103 - A full-page Icom advertisement, but Amateur Radio isn't mentioned. The four Icom radios mentioned are (portable) IC-SAT100 Satellite radio (operates on the Iridium Low Earth Orbit [LEO] satellite network), the IP501H Portable LTE radio, the IP501M Mobile LTE Radio, and the VE-PG4 RoIP (Radio over Internet Protocol) Gateway.

All in all, this issue is definitely a keeper!

Unfortunately, if you're not an ARRL member (most US Amateur Radio Operators aren't members) you'll likely never see these articles unless a friend who is an ARRL member chooses to share them with you (or passes along the entire issue). If you're not an ARRL member, and able to view QST, there's always the entire run of 73 Magazine that's completely accessible online to everyone.

Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
Portions Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh

 

 

Open Source Wireless Telephony

This isn't quite about Amateur Radio, but it's about wireless technology in a related area. In addition, this discussion is part of a larger article that I've been working on about the need for "Neighborhood Area Networks". Thus it's fodder for inclusion here on SuperPacket.

The genesis of this article is that I'm involved with a private discussion about the potentials of Open Source Wireless Telephony (my loose description). Basically the idea that a small wireless telephony network could be created using open source technologies and some alternative spectrum so that an independent wireless telephony network could be created in a place that wouldn't otherwise have wireless telephony service. Our pocket computers have become such a fixture of life that being in a place where we don't have access to the Internet or being able to make a telephone call seems nearly unthinkable now. But that situation is reality, even in "first world" North America. So there is a need to think about this.

My sense is that the private discussion I'm participating in isn't going to go anywhere, at least in the direction I consider productive, and I don't want the research I've done for that discussion to just age out into obscurity, so I'm capturing my thoughts here.

It's Complicated
In the larger, picture, telephony is such a complicated ecosystem, I'm personally skeptical about DIY and Open Source Cellular Telephony. The entire ecosystem seems too thoroughly locked down to really make an impact. GSM seems to have been effectively recreated in open source implementations including in GNU Radio, but GSM isn't being used that much any more and support for it is being dropped (all the commercial networks are migrating to 4G and 5G).

While it's possible to build a DIY Open Source mobile telephony network, it's daunting to keep it running and fix it when it breaks and expand it to all the places it should be. Most people would rather use a network than run one.

That said, here are some of the most promising projects that, if one was interested in making a real difference, could "energize" with contributions, especially financial:

Community LTE Project - https://blog.colte.network/ These folks at the University of Washington did create a largely DIY Open Source mobile telephony network. I don't see any current progress on this, but in my reading the usual source of such "stalling" on a promising project is the original funding runs out and the team disbands as the individuals seek other projects that are funded. This project did all the work to prove out the concept and it seems to me, with some funding, it could be replicated nearly anywhere it's needed.

Pinephone - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ Unlike some previous efforts to create an open source mobile phone, this one seems to have some legs. There's amazing energy in the Pine 64 organization.

Village Telco - https://villagetelco.org - This was a project that ended up creating a new type of telephone network. It incorporated Wi-Fi, Mesh Networking, telephony routing (including the ability to connect to a gateway to the worldwide telephone network) and simple, cheap, Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) telephones. The idea was that the radio was put up on a pole, and a simple cable ran down the pole for power (could also be powered by a solar panel / battery) and a telephone. You could dial any other phone in the village. The network could be constructed by local folks - there was some installation with IP configuration, which could actually be done by Interactive Voice Response on the phone. All the telephone work was done with embedded Asterisk. This project just seemed to coast down and is no longer active. In my research about Village Telco, I was told that because the grant ran out and no one financially "guaranteed" the continued production of the unique Village Telco hardware, or was able to pay the developers, the project has effectively gone into "stasis" - no one has officially declared Village Telco dead, but there are no signs of life.

Wildernets - https://villagetelco.org/get-started/wildernets/ - Wildernets is a follow-on project by one of the developers of Village Telco that considerably modernized the Village Telco paradigm including making it possible to use a mobile device on a Village Telco network by the simple expedient of having a VOIP SIP client app and using the Wi-Fi capability of the phone instead of carrier connectivity. Given that Village Telco could easily provide coverage for a village, this seemed a great idea. Wildernets also created the ability to do Instant Messaging on a Village Telco network. This project stalled because, again, the hardware to host it went out of production and there was no source of funding for continuing the work for new hardware. If there was funding, then perhaps Village Telco hardware and Wildernets firmware could be recreated and be made available to the world again.

Unlicensed Long Term Evolution (Unlicensed LTE) / MulteFire - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum ULTE / MulteFire is the idea of operating wireless telephony networks in the various license-exempt 5 GHz bands much like is done in licensed spectrum. The difference is that the 5 GHz bands aren't "owned" by any one carrier so interference is not just possible, but likely, and there are technical limitations that must be observed when operating in the various 5 GHz license-exempt bands. Theoretically, if ULTE were a reality, an entity could construct their own private LTE network using only 5 GHz spectrum. I have no information about whether ULTE / MulteFire was ever completely incorporated into the LTE standard, and of course, the migration into "5G" is now well underway and any extensions to 4G / LTE technologies might well be moot.

Also, the Wi-Fi Alliance cried foul over ULTE / MulteFire and caused a bit of a stir. 

Wi-Fi is the open source equivalent of spectrum
A general observation about wireless technologies - for all the hue and cry about the deficiencies of Wi-Fi... it works. If you want it to go long distances that's tough, but doable. What's needed in the real world is hackable devices and those are getting scarcer and scarcer. If one wants to see open source wireless technologies be made more pervasive, perhaps consider contributing to one of the open source Wi-Fi firmware efforts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_firmware_projects) especially OpenWRT.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-05-04
Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh

 

Amateur Radio and the Internet

This was an old draft from 2007, and in cleaning up this blog I almost deleted it. But it's actually relevant from a recent discussion, so I decided to dust it off and finish it.

The genesis of this article is a presentation by Scott Currie NS7C - Winlink, Digital Voice and Tech Based Comms - When Infrastructure Fails at the (online) Communications Academy 2021, which I reference in a previous article.

In the past, there was ample discussion about the merits of using Internet connectivity as part of Amateur Radio systems. In places, that discussion is still ongoing. I think that discussion is now moot. Internet connectivity is a requirement of modern life, and Amateur Radio is very much a facet of modern life, thus using Internet as part of Amateur Radio systems is usually a given.

One of the most prominent uses of Internet connectivity in the US is interconnecting Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) repeaters. Another such use is "personal hotspots" instead of connecting directly to a repeater via radio. There are many, many other uses of Internet connectivity in Amateur Radio.

While I think that Internet connectivity in Amateur Radio systems is a given, I also think it's a valid discussion about how dependent Amateur Radio systems should be on Internet connectivity. Specifically, thought should be given to the possibility of failure of Internet connectivity. One reason that not much thought is given to the possibility of failure of Internet connectivity is that Internet connectivity is a complex topic. Amateur Radio is all about the radio (not Internet access), and most people, including most Amateur Radio operators assume that Internet access is an omnipresent utility akin to commercial power. We as Amateur Radio operators give ample thought to the possibility of power failure, which backup battery systems and generators. We even do the annual Field Day exercise / contest which is built around the assumption that commercial power has failed and you must be able to communicate using alternate means of power. But we usually don't give the same level of thought to the possibility (eventuality, actually) of Internet access failure, which can cripple Amateur Radio systems that haven't planned for loss of Internet access.

Before I start discussing Internet robustness / reliability, permit me a small rant. It drives me nuts when I hear someone worry about planning for "The Internet Being Down". Whenever someone says that, it's obvious that they have no conception about what the Internet actually is. The Internet, literally, is a network of networks. While one network (such as your cable system) might go down, or especially individual access methods might go down, the Internet as a whole remains functional. What you have to plan for is any individual method of Internet access going down. 

The first decision point about the robustness / reliability of Internet access is should you care? How important is the service or system? For example, using a personal hotspot for chatting with your buddies where you used to live isn't an important service or system (except to you personally). Thus, if you lose Internet connectivity to your personal hotspot, it's no big deal, and thus the reliability of the Internet connection used for the personal hotspot also doesn't really matter.

But if the service or system you're providing is important, then you need to think about and plan for potential failure of the Internet access your system depends on. There are three things you can do:

• Use a form of Internet access that is (reasonably) robust, or
• Have backup or redundant methods of Internet access, or
• Ensure that the Amateur Radio system can continue to operate without Internet access

Or you can do all three (but that's hard, and expensive).

Reasonably Robust Internet Access
One form of reasonably robust Internet access is to use commercial or government Internet access that's engineered to be reliable, such as Internet at an Emergency Operations Center (EOC). Typically connectivity at such facilities that couldn't / shouldn't go down uses multiple methods of Internet access like microwave plus fiber from multiple providers, with the idea that any one failure doesn't result in a complete loss of connectivity. 

Another form of reasonably robust Internet Access is satellite. Satellite Internet Access such as Viasat and HughesNet that use geosynchronous satellites have gotten a (justifiably) bad reputation during the demands of COVID-19 working / schooling from home in 2020 and 2021. Those issues are real, mostly for realtime communications such as video conferences. But if your primary usage is non-realtime, such as sending email, providing Internet connectivity for, example, a Winlink gateway, geosynchronous satellite Internet access should work fine.

A better, newer form of satellite Internet access is Starlink. In contrast to geosynchronous orbit, Starlink uses many more satellites in low earth orbit, which solves the latency issues. The Starlink "ground terminal" (named Dishy McFlatface) uses a motor to orient itself to the optimum angle to track Starlink satellites at that location, and then phased array antenna technology to track the individual satellite. Starlink broadband speeds often exceed 100 Mbps downlink / 10 Mbps uplink, at latency good enough for seamless videoconferencing. At the time this article is written, Starlink is in "beta testing" but commercial service is scheduled for "late 2021" for anyone who wants Starlink service (in rural areas of the US, and eventually the entire Northern Hemisphere).

Geosynchronous satellites have a slight advantage over Starlink in that the earth station used for geosynchronous satellites can be some distance away from the user, so likely not affected by any local or regional disasters impacting the user terminal. In 2021, Starlink uses a "bent pipe" architecture where the earth station and the user terminal have to be within the same (smaller) footprint of the satellite the user terminal is connected to. Thus, Internet connectivity via Starlink could potentially be impacted by a regional disaster.

Another form of reasonably robust Internet access is microwave links. Amateur Radio uses three different "flavors" of microwave links:

• HamWAN - Engineered, static links and networks using modified Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) equipment to use Amateur Radio spectrum at 5.9 GHz and no encryption
• AREDN - Ad-hoc, dynamic links and networks using using modified Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) equipment to use Amateur Radio spectrum at 2.4 GHz and 5.9 GHz and no encryption
• "Part 15" devices - Engineered or ad-hoc, static or dynamic links and networks operating in license-exempt (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical - ISM) portions of spectrum and thus acceptable to use encryption. There are low-end devices that are essentially modified Wi-Fi access points, and high-end devices that don't use Wi-Fi protocols and are intended for use by Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) and thus require some expertise to install and manage.

Backup or Redundant forms of Internet Access

Robust Internet access can be achieved by using commercial Internet (such as a cable modem) and a secondary form of Internet access (such as microwave or satellite, discussed above) and failing over to microwave or satellite when the primary Internet access fails.

Ensure that the Amateur Radio system can continue to operate without Internet access

I think this is the best approach; in my opinion Amateur Radio should be capable of providing robust communications without requiring Internet access within the zone of a disaster. This is called "The edge of the disaster" theory and posits that most disasters are localized. Within the zone of a disaster, normal communications will likely be disrupted. Outside the zone of a disaster, normal communications are available. Thus, the job for Amateur Radio (and any "emergency communications system) is to "bridge" communications to the edge of the disaster, and "hand off" communications to normal communications as soon as that's a viable option.

For example, a DMR repeater that's within a zone of disaster should function normally (RF access via radio) without Internet access.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-04-21
Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh

 

Communications Academy 2021

A bit of background; through 2019, Communications Academy was a weekend event held at a community college in the Seattle area. It was a unique event that brought together first responders and emergency managers and often US government (such as Federal Emergency Management Agency - FEMA, National Weather Service - NWS, etc.) personnel and Amateur Radio operators who are, or who were, involved in Amateur Radio emergency communications. It was a good event, with ample value created just in the cross-fertilization and the education opportunities. One of the nicer bonuses of attending Comm Academy was the Saturday "show and tell" tours of various agencies' emergency communications vehicles. (The FEMA vehicles were particularly impressive.)

Communications Academy 2020 was going to be another in-person event until the outbreak of COVID-19 (which began in the US in nearby Kirkland, Washington) made that impossible. At that late date, it was impossible to put together a virtual version of Comm Academy, so it was simply canceled. Everyone understood.

Apparently, the Comm Academy principals (not listed on the website, though they were disclosed in the videos) decided not just to put on a virtual analog of in-person Comm Academy, but make Comm Academy into a virtual-first event with high quality production values and ample support for the virtual aspects, such as emcees, multiple people scanning the various live feedback channels for questions. Comm Academy's principals succeeded - Comm Academy 2021 was a stellar event, watched by thousands worldwide, instead of the few hundreds that attended the in-person version from around the Pacific Northwest and a few from outside the region.

I can't say enough good things about the production quality (and overall quality) of Comm Academy 2021 - see for yourself on YouTube.

I'll disclose that I only "attended" (watched) a few of the presentations live, mostly because weekends are precious time at home given a hectic travel schedule at the moment, and knowing that all the presentations would be archived for later viewing. I'll be watching all the presentations (except one - see below) later this week.

The two presentations I made time for were both people I knew, and presentations I've already heard in other conferences. I made time to watch these two presentations because I knew that the presenters would provide good information and they represent a realistic perspective of Amateur Radio emergency communications in 2021. I was curious how they would tailor their presentations for the Comm Academy 2021 audience, and they didn't dissapoint.

The first presentation I watched was Winlink, Digital Voice and Tech Based Comms - When Infrastructure Fails by Scott Currie NS7C. Currie discussed how much "infrastructure" has crept into Amateur Radio systems that are intended to be used for emergency communications. Currie is one of the few that explains from authority that just because you decide to put a Winlink node from your home (or other locations), if that node is dependent solely on commercial power and typical Internet access (cable modem, DSL, etc.), and does not have access to backup power and "hardened" Internet access, then it's unlikely to remain online and accessible during a widespread emergency (when Winlink will be needed most). Currie also pointed out that the extensive networking of repeaters (especially Digital Mobile Radio - DMR) repeaters is also a vulnerability. Even if the repeater is connected to Internet via a "hardened" Internet connection such as HamWAN (common here in the Pacific Northwest), the DMR controllers (C-Bridges) are installed in commercial data centers. The likelyhood of those Internet connections remaining intact are not high given the hazards here in the Pacific Northwest - tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even cyber attacks (not to mention the remote possibility of the many military installations in the Pacific Northwest being targeted for attack.) But I digress. Currie also dived a bit deeper and pointed out that repeaters are potentially vulnerable infrastructure - they need reliable power, occasional maintenance (winters on mountaintops can be severe for tower-mounted antennas). Thus repeaters (not just the remote linking) also can fail when you need them the most.

Currie then encouraged us to get familiar with the peer-to-peer networking capabilities of Winlink - not just connecting directly between Winlink nodes, but also how to make use of the store-and-forward capabilities of Winlink. That was excellent food for thought. Setting up Winlink (as a client) is on my shack to-do list for the summer.

(Brief aside about Winlink's role in Amateur Radio and Emergency Communications. Winlink for better, or worse (by far the better, but it has some issues) has become the standard system for emergency data communications. By far it has the biggest user base, the most robust infrastructure, and the best mindshare of all the myriad methods of data communications in Amateur Radio. If you're going to participate in Amateur Radio Emergency Communications, you have to be familiar and comfortable with and able to communicate using with Winlink.)

Overall, Currie's presentation was excellent. As he admits, he's been presenting on these topics for a long time, and it shows - he's a subject matter expert on these topics. My only wish is that Currie had his own Internet presence for reference to his presentations and other materials for easier reference than parsing through his many presentations that are available online.

The second presentation I watched realtime was Emergency Wireless Internet following the Holiday Farm Fire by Randy Neals W3RWN. This presentation is remarkable and compelling precisely because it doesn't involve Amateur Radio (well, only very peripherally). In the wake of a major fire in Oregon during Fall 2020, several small central Oregon communities were left with essentially no Internet and no telephone service because their sole telecommunications connection was fiber cables on poles up a long, winding road through a forest which had experienced extensive wildfires, and the fiber cables, nor the poles, and some infrastructure (like a remote central office) did not survive. Although "cells on wheels" were quickly dispatched, they were only on site for a short time, and the communities were left with essentially no communications.  Neals was part of a small band of Internet professionals that became aware of this situation and thought "maybe we can do something". They pulled off a feat of telecommunications engineering that the telecom infrastructure providers were unable... mostly unwilling... to do and knitted together microwave links and other methods to allow these communities some Internet connectivity. It's inspiring to hear about what they did.

It's sobering to know that despite these communities experiencing a "telecommunications emergency", there's nothing within conventional Amateur Radio could have done to help this situation. Voice communications via HF or VHF/UHF repeaters wouldn't have helped. Winlink wouldn't have helped. Even setting up "Amateur Radio microwave" networks like HamWAN or AREDN wouldn't have helped because of the prohibitions on commercial use and encryption on those systems. What worked was just using license-exempt wireless links and a lot of knowledge about current telecommunications systems. These are a completely different type emergency communicators. This is a "we really better pay attention to this story" moment for Amateur Radio and their perceived role in emergency communications.

It's also instructive that "Oregon Internet Response" was essentially a made-up name for this ad-hoc group. Even now they still haven't formally organized, apparently because what they did is, at the moment, a one-off that could only come together that time with those individuals. To make any progress, they had to call themselves something to get in touch with various entities. Though this is entirely my imagination, I could guess that there's a marked difference in effectiveness between:

"I'm Randy Neals and I'm a Ham Radio operator trying to help restore communications to..." <click> goes the other end.
and
"I'm Randy Neals with Oregon Internet Response and we're trying to restore communications to several communities in Oregon." "Yes, Mr. Neals, how can we help?".

In explaining the story of "Oregon Internet Response" I'm not positing that OIR did something unprecedented - it's not. There have been other groups over the years that have provided "Emergency Internet" including a group of Wireless Internet Service Providers that helped restore Internet access after Hurricane Katrina.

Neals' presentation was also excellent. What I took away from Neal's presentation is to provide useful emergency communications in 2021 and beyond, that Amateur Radio needs to radically broaden its scope of what types of communications it's prepared to help with.

A small postscript to Neal's presentation. Two members of Neals' team that previously were not Amateur Radio operators, now are. They found Amateur Radio useful enough (again, Amateur Radio was used by Neals' team, but only peripherally) to become an Amateur Radio operator.

Bookending these two great presentations was another presentation that I won't link to. This presenter was tiredly reading a laundry list of "Amateur Radio served agencies" and specifically mentioned the American Red Cross as a "served agency". Apparently he was unaware that that in October, 2020 Alex R. Dieffenbach, CEO of the American Red Cross Northwest Region, had served notice that Amateur Radio operators directly serving the American Red Cross chapters in their Northwest Region "...that HAM radio will no longer be part of our communication strategy." (That's a direct quote.) This presenter then went on to read a laundry list of various modes that are in use in Amateur Radio that could be of use for emergency communications. Included in that list were AM (Amplitude Modulation) and CW (Continuous Wave... aka Morse Code). As far as I'm concerned, that total lack of real world perspective invalidated that guy's entire presentation. If he thinks that CW has any conceivable usefulness in a real emergency... 

The contrast between "unliked presenter" and the Currie and Neals presentations couldn't be more stark. The "unlinked presenter" is, from my experience, more the norm for "Amateur Radio Emergency Communications". Show up with a radio and a license and expect to be given a commensurate task. But what happens in the real world is likely to be something like:
Emergency Coordinator: "You're a ham. Could you send this spreadsheet to FEMA HQ in DC?"
Ham: "Um, I can't right now, the bands aren't right / the Winlink gateway is down / the file is too big."
Emergency Coordinator: "Sigh. OK. Well, since you're here anyway, maybe you could make some coffee?"

We gotta fix that.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-04-12

Good Thing There's Amateur Radio...

Police Report That White Supremacists are Attacking Cell Phone Towers

The goal is “to incite fear, disrupt essential services, and cause economic damage with the United States and abroad,” according to the report.

Anagha Srikanth, writing in TheHill.com, March 18, 2021

In more than one case, [white supremacists] succeeded in interrupting resources for law enforcement and emergency services personnel, according to the report, which lists several recent cases. One involved a neo-Nazi chat group whose “members strongly supported exploiting civil unrest in the United States by attacking the country’s infrastructure," The Intercept reported, while another was tied to the 5G conspiracy theory, which claims without evidence that the electromagnetic waves put out by 5G towers are harming peoples' immune systems and are responsible for the coronavirus pandemic.

...

What's alarming is how easy... if you understand how such systems work... it is to cause degradation and damage to such communications systems. We saw a vivid illustration on Christmas Day 2020 when an "RV bomb" in Nashville, TN was detonated in front of a regional AT&T network hub and disrupted communications over a wide region.

A second vulnerability is one that's already reported here - jamming Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Signals from GNSS aren't just used for positioning. One of the signals available in GNSS systems is precision timing, which is used to synchronize multi-site wireless communications systems. The first generations of cellular communications systems used onsite precision timekeeping systems... which was expensive. As GNSS systems became more widespread, less expensive precision timekeeping systems were developed that used precision timing derived from GNSS.

Just like no one imagined that someone would detonate a RV full of explosives in front of an AT&T network hub... no one that decided to use GNSS-based precision timekeeping systems as a critical input to wireless communications systems imagined that the GNSS signals would be deliberately, maliciously interfered with.

Two decades ago, there were Federal Communications Commission (FCC) technical personnel in most states that could track down malicious interference within days at most. Now, there are a handful of FCC offices nationwide with that capability. Sometimes the FCC cannot be bothered to respond to malicious interference complaints.

Increasingly, Amateur Radio Operators are among the small pool of those with the skills to track down malicious interference to wireless communications systems. In fact, Amateur Radio Operators are probably the only group that practices those skills regularly, for fun, with their own equipment.

Good thing there's Amateur Radio... Yes?

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA

 

Imagine... A Demonstration of Amateur Radio

I heard an NPR report tonight about the meltdown of the cellular networks in Washington DC as a result of the record crowds present for President-Elect Obama's inauguration... and nearly everyone having (and trying to use) a cellphone.

It was comical listening to the description of the problem, especially knowing that access was barely half the problem - the other problem was the switching bottleneck. Another would be handling all the requests for IP addresses :-)

What would have happened if Amateur Radio had been there, providing a real-world example of Amateur Radio being relevant?

Something a lot of like highly localized Wi-Fi HotSpots (think 20' radius) all being fed by high-bandwidth links which are operating on (uncontested) Amateur Radio spectrum like 1.2 GHz using off-the-shelf Broadband Wireless Internet Access gear tuned to 1.24 - 1.30 GHz (60 MHz of spectrum there). A web splash screen briefly mentioning that it was being provided by Amateur Radio and you would have gotten a helluva lot of Blackberry and iPhone-toting techies to be really curious about Amateur Radio.

It would work gloriously.

But then... Amateur Radio wants to stay mired in the past - tube rigs, CW, contesting, analog voice repeaters occupying all VHF and UHF channels... all that.

Sigh...

73,

Steve N8GNJ