SuperPacket

New web page - A Brief Survey of Technological Innovation in Amateur Radio

This is a paper I wrote for the ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference 2022.

A Brief Survey of Technological Innovation in Amateur Radio

By Steve Stroh N8GNJ¹
ARRL and TAPR 2022 Digital Communications Conference Charlotte, North Carolina, USA 2022-09-16 thru 18

Abstract

In recent decades, the perception of Amateur Radio within the general public has shifted from Amateur Radio being useful, innovative, and an interesting technical activity, to Amateur Radio being perceived as an anachronism and largely irrelevant (except in the direst of communications emergencies). Summarized: “Ham Radio – that’s still around?”

Amateur Radio’s service to the public for emergency communications is being supplanted by improved commercial and government communications capabilities such as improved Iridium² satellite phones, the FirstNET³ public safety cellular system, and most recently, the nomadic capability of the Starlink⁴ broadband satellite system.

Amateur Radio has continuously developed unique technological innovations in radio technology, and that has not only continued in the modern era but has accelerated. However, that ongoing, unique contribution to technological society is, increasingly, unrecognized. That is unfortunate. If regulators, lawmakers, industry, the general public... and the Amateur Radio community itself understood the unique contributions to technological innovations in radio technology that Amateur Radio continues to develop, perhaps such recognition might improve Amateur Radio’s perception that it remains a valuable part of society, worthy of continued access to portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Keywords

Amateur, Radio, Operator, Ham, Wireless, Technology, Innovation, Spectrum, Digital, VHF, UHF, SHF, Microwave, Communications, ARDC, Techies, Makers, Hackers, Zero Retries Newsletter, Experimentation, Research and Development, FlexRadio, Steve Stroh N8GNJ

Background

For decades, I have been an admirer of technological innovation in Amateur Radio. Not just new technologies like Packet Radio emerging in the 1980s, but new techniques for old problems such as digital techniques enabling reliable communications via unreliable mediums such as the High Frequency (HF)⁵ (aka Shortwave) portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Amateur Radio’s unique culture, the varying characteristics of various portions of spectrum allocated to (or shared with) Amateur Radio operations, and the many highly capable and skilled Amateur Radio Operators, have resulted in a fertile, and welcoming “experimental zone” for technological innovation in radio technologies. Until recent decades, that culture of technological innovation was widely recognized, and encouraged. In the last few decades, the recognition of

1 Email – [email protected]
2 https://www.iridium.com/network/
3 https://firstnet.gov/network
4 https://www.starlink.com/rv
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency

A Brief Survey of Technological Innovation in Amateur Radio

Amateur Radio’s utility and contributions to technological innovation have been deprecated to near irrelevence... at least in popular perception... by ubiquitous Internet access, mobile phones, caricatures of Amateur Radio as “Grandpa sitting in the basement tapping on a Morse Code key”, and most notably, the removal of old barriers to individuals communicating across international borders.

A primary reason that this is a concern for society is that it has become irrevocably dependent on radio technology as the primary method of communications for mobile devices, most notably cellular technology, wireless local area networks (Wi-Fi), and most recently, direct-to-user satellite communications. For many people, their mobile phone is their only method of communications and media consumption. Much of that technology has been developed and manufactured in China. Dependence on China for such a critical infrastructure function is proving to be fraught with peril. To counter that peril, the US and other Western nations must quickly develop additional expertise, and personnel, “in nation” to better develop and support this now-critical wireless infrastructure. Amateur Radio can be a “training ground” for developing familiarity and expertise with radio technology, leading to careers in developing and supporting radio technology... but only if Amateur Radio is recognized as a useful and interesting.

The rise of technology specialists, especially those trained in Information Technology (IT), the “Maker culture”⁶, and the “Hacking Culture”⁷ have breathed new life into Amateur Radio. “Techies” have discovered Amateur Radio as an enabling technology for supporting experimentation with Information Technologies (such as building hobbyist / not-for-profit wide- area microwave networks). Makers have discovered that there are incredibly interesting things that they can add to their personal knowledge base and practical projects based on capabilities Amateur Radio has long taken for granted, such as long-range communications via VHF / UHF repeaters. Hackers have discovered Amateur Radio as a fertile “playground” for their experiments and expansion of knowledge about radio technology, such as Software Defined Receivers... and Transmitters (with an Amateur Radio license).

I started the Zero Retries Newsletter⁸ in July, 2021 out of frustration that the totality of technological innovation in Amateur Radio wasn’t being recognized by the Amateur Radio community, its regulators, and especially the public at large. Specifically, I was worried about the growing public perception that Amateur Radio is irrelevant, or worse, an anachronism. Such a perception, if it is to continue for much longer, may prove catastrophic to Amateur Radio, most notably in the loss of Amateur Radio access to various portions of spectrum. To date I’ve published more than fifty weekly issues of Zero Retries, and each issue highlights some aspect of technological innovation in Amateur Radio.

Literally, Amateur Radio is a license to experiment with radio technology and a welcoming “innovation zone” to develop new and exciting technological innovations in radio technology. I hope to make that point with the vignettes in this paper.

 

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture
8 https://zeroretries.substack.com (will eventually migrate to https://zeroretries.org)

...

Read the rest of the paper at:

https://www.superpacket.org/n8gnj_dcc_2022_final_for_web.pdf

 

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

The MIT Radio Society's Big Dish is Saved

Photo of the Big Dish radome exterior courtesy of W1MX, the MIT Radio Society 

Nomenclature Alert - Dish vs Radome... the DISH is the active element - a 18 foot wide parabolic antenna that's steerable in azimuth and elevation. The RADOME is what you see on the outside - a fiberglass (?) shell that protects the (relatively fragile) dish from the weather. The radome is transparent to radio frequencies - the dish does all the "work".

I've known of the "Big Dish" for several years now since I visited Boston to visit my daughter. We were touring Cambridge and I glanced up and saw the Big Dish's radome on top of a tall building on the MIT campus. I web searched it and found W1MX and learned that it uses the Big Dish for a lot of interesting Amateur Radio activities.

From W1MX: The WR66 radar was once a research prototype for the NEXRAD system. Today, we use the dish for Earth-Moon-Earth communication on the 23cm band and hydrogen line radio astronomy. Getting it up and running was an incredible project involving both complex RF engineering and learning to interface to many different generations of control systems built over the past 55 years.

What makes the Big Dish so unique is a combination of factors:

• It's 18 feet wide - that allows for a great diversity of frequencies and focus points.
• It's steerable in azimuth and elevation.
• The fiberglas (?) radome protects it from weather. That radome must be pretty sturdy considering severe "Nor'easters" that periodically batter the Boston area.
• It's on top of a 22 story building - it has great views to a larger horizon than a similar size dish that's ground mounted.
• It's available for (relatively) unrestricted use by engineering students.
• Because it's not encumbered, it can be used for interesting or "just for fun" activities like Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) or Moonbounce communications during Amateur Radio contests.

Thus, the Big Dish was well worth saving, if possible. But, for one thing, while the Big Dish looks in pretty good shape, the radome as you see it in these photos, especially the one below, looks every bit of those 55 years old.

Photo of the Big Dish and its enclosing radome interior courtesy of W1MX, the MIT Radio Society 

But the radome wasn't the biggest problem - the roof of the Green Building was due for repair and refurbishment. As part of that repair, the Big Dish had to be removed. Restoring it back to the rooftop once the roof repairs were complete was another matter. Since "only" W1MX and some academic programs used it (but not a "paying customer" like developing a national weather RADAR prototype), it wasn't (initially) contemplated that the Big Dish would be returned to the rooftop.

From W1MX - Update on Radome Project (March 18th, 2021)

Our perseverance is beginning to pay off! After much discussion and collaboration with MIT Facilities and various contractor groups involved in the Green Building renovations project, we have completed an initial design and project cost for the renewal of our Large Radome.

MIT has informed us that, if we raise $1.9 million before May 1st, 2021, the restoration of the radome can be included in the Green Building renovation project. While this is an enormous challenge, we believe it is not insurmountable.

W1MX conducted a fundraising drive, but raised only a fraction of the $1.9 million that was needed.

Fortunately... Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is now up and running and providing grants and gifts for projects involving Amateur Radio, small (like Operation Hamulanche) and now, pretty large, like restoring (saving) the Big Dish. MIT just announced that the Big Dish will be restored with help from an ARDC gift:

To secure the large dish’s future and replace the deteriorating radome, the MIT Radio Society spearheaded a fundraising effort and immediately got to work. Building on the momentum of a previous successful fundraising campaign among Radio Society alumni that helped refurbish their equipment on the roof, they further mobilized the MIT community of alumni and friends by organizing a second campaign. The students also pulled together a successful grant application in record time to Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), a non-profit private foundation supporting amateur radio and digital communications science, resulting in ARDC’s largest-ever philanthropic contribution, made in memory of the organization’s founder Brian Kantor. This lead gift brought the MIT Radio Society across the finish line to successfully meet their fundraising goal.

Read the rest of MIT's Press Release - Saving the radome - Student-led efforts preserve iconic campus landmark for future generations of education and research.

As one of the volunteers on the ARDC Grants Advisory Committee, I'm proud to have played a small role in this, and I'm very proud of ARDC for stepping up to this challenge (and especially, acting quickly enough to save the Big Dish). That couldn't have been easy. I'm glad that ARDC has proven it's willing to tackle big (and small) challenges in Amateur Radio.

Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-05-09

 

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

 

Updated Interesting and Advanced Projects / Products in Amateur Radio page

I made a number of additions to my web page Interesting and Advanced Projects / Products in Amateur Radio.

There is no change log or diff available - it's intended as a cumulative list of Interesting and Advanced Projects / Products in Amateur Radio.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-04-20
Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh

Thought Experiment - Western Hemisphere Amateur Radio Geosynchronous Satellite

Es'hail 2 / QO-100
Up front - I'm envious of my fellow techie Amateur Radio Operators in Europe, Africa, and Eastern Brazil because they have access to Amateur Radio transponders onboard the Es'hail 2 satellite in geosynchronous orbit directly above Africa. Those transponders are referred to as Qatar OSCAR 100 - the 100th "satellite" that made it to operational status and was formally declared to be an Obiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio (OSCAR). Because the payload was sponsored by Qatar, it gets to add a prefix to OSCAR-100 - QO-100. See the excellent AMSAT-UK article Es'hail 2 / QO-100 for more details.

Update 2021-04-22: One minor nitpick - QO-100 is often referred to as a satellite. It's not. QO-100 is a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite. That's an important distinction - Amateur Radio does not have a dedicated satellite in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO). Nor, do I think it could; those orbit slots are simply too valuable. For a satellite to operate at a GEO slot must be highly capable and function for years, even decades, including among many other things, sufficient station-keeping fuel to correct its orbit to stay stationary as viewed from Earth. The reality is that Amateur Radio simply isn't in that league. 

I'm envious because those techie Amateur Radio Operators are having fun experimenting with homebrewing satellite uplinks to work QO-100, despite being spread over three continents. They have a common "watering hole"* to gather at in geosynchronous orbit. With a geosynchronous satellite, the barriers to entry are much lower because experimenters can spend their time and energy working on the radio systems rather than tracking systems. The more common low earth orbit Amateur Radio satellites have limited availability and are constantly moving across the sky, requiring active antenna tracking systems.

Update 2021-04-27 - A friend alerted me that there is an interesting article on what it's like to operate QO-100 from Europe. It was written by Bill Dzurilla NZ5N and published in the May/June 2021 issue of ARRL QEX. If you're an ARRL member, you can access it here. If you're not an ARRL member, you can't see QEX or any other ARRL publication. (Growing Amateur Radio, indeed. Paywalls are just the thing to get people interested in Amateur Radio.) At the moment I am an ARRL member and I was able to read the article, and operating QO-100 looks like just as much fun as I imagined it would be. In the article there's mention of an interesting hybrid mode - build up your station as transmit-only, and receive via one of several Internet-connected receivers (generically called Web Software Defined Receivers - WebSDRs) such as the one operated by the British Amateur Television Club (BATC). I suppose that's almost the next best thing to being in the footprint of QO-100.

Amateur Radio Geostationary Satellite Project
The Western hemisphere almost had an equivalent to QO-100 - a project begun (I think) in 2015, and discussed in 2016 by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) called Amateur Radio Geostationary Satellite (ARGS) / Phase 4B. The video presentation about it at the 2016 Digital Communications Conference was exciting! It was an exciting concept and would have been more sophisticated and more capable than QO-100. Unfortunately, the ARGS project / Phase 4B quietly faded away, with no conclusive explanation about what happened to it (that I can find online).

Update 2021-04-27 - A friend sent me an article which mentioned this page - AMASAT Project Status Overview where something of an answer was offered:

AMSAT / Virginia Tech Geostationary Satellite Project (Phase 4B) Status
Virginia Tech continues to investigate opportunities to fly an amateur payload aboard a geostationary or geosynchronous satellite. A Payload Accommodation Study showed that an amateur payload could be carried on a U. S. Government satellite, but that satellite has been delayed indefinitely. While Virginia Tech was offered a spot on a government satellite, the cost, duration of mission, and lack of guarantees that the payload would be activated resulted in that spot being declined. Discussions continue.

...

To be fair, it was made clear at every presentation that the project was speculative, and depended on the "never quite committed" launch of an experimental satellite.

Sadly, from my reading, there is no current, feasible possibility of an Amateur Radio payload in geosynchronous orbit above the Western hemisphere. The requirements of Amateur Radio are such that a geosynchronous satellite payload would have to be specifically engineered for Amateur Radio usage, including antennas, because the frequencies that Amateur Radio can use for satellite communications are very different than commonly used for geosynchronous satellites. The cost of such a unique payload (I'm told) runs to the hundreds of millions of dollars. (The ARGS / Phase 4B project would have been much less expensive because its satellite host was to be a research satellite rather than a "production" satellite.) Even though Amateur Radio, especially US Amateur Radio, now has a venture fund of sorts, a dedicated Amateur Radio payload for a geosynchronous satellite is beyond its capabilities.

ORI's Phase 4 Ground Station and Phase 4 Space
There was some activity that came out of the ARGS project. Open Research Institute (ORI) was founded, in part, to develop an open source Ground Station reference design - Phase 4 Ground Station. ORI decided to work on a satellite payload - Phase 4 Space. From my reading, there is no "ready to go" satellite payload available from ORI that could be placed on a satellite opportunity. They're working on it, but amateur labor comes with an amateur labor timeline.

Experimentation on Commercial Geosynchronous Satellites is Limited
I remember reading an editorial (Never Say Die) by Wayne Green, W2NSD/1, editor of the late, great 73 Magazine proposing the idea of "Amateur Radio" collectively ponying up the cost to rent a transponder on a geosynchronous satellite. (I wish I could find the reference to quote Wayne definitively.) It sounds fun, but in the end it's not that feasible to buy (time on) an existing transponder on an existing geosynchronous satellite above the Western hemisphere for Amateur Radio experimentation. No satellite operator wants "amateur experimenters" inexpertly transmitting at their precious geosynchronous satellites. Operating a geosynchronous satellite is expensive (there are only so many orbital slots in the Western hemisphere - precious real estate). Every geosynchronous satellite is a careful balancing act of juggling multiple antennas (spot beams) and multiple transmitters and receivers. That's why anything that transmits to a geosynchronous satellite must be installed by a "professional" and there are protections in place to turn off the transmitter remotely to only transmit if authorization is received from the particular transponder to be used. Even if we did do so... to what end? If we want "turnkey" communications amongst ourselves, unlike in Wayne's day, we now have the Internet.

That said, there is some experimentation going on with receiving data from commercial geosynchronous satellites. One such project is Othernet (formerly, Outernet). Othernet doesn't really involve Amateur Radio, but it is some experimentation with receiving data from geosynchronous satellites - datacasting. There is a stream of data originating on a satellite transponder that Othernet has bought time on. Othernet has developed their own receiver hardware, and has published enough of the details of its data format to allow receiption with other Software Defined Receivers.

"Brave? Yes. Experimenters? Maybe."

There is one... remote... possibility of Amateur Radio experimentation on an existing geosynchronous satellite(s) in the Western hemisphere, and the possibilities of experimentation have already been proven out by "brave experimenters".

 

The US Navy's Fleet Satellite Communications System (FLTSATCOM) is a set of remarkably long-lived (launched between 1978 and 1989) geosynchronous satellites that provide "bent pipe" transponders operating between 240 MHz and 400 MHz. Remarkably, there is no encryption, authentication, or access controls on these transponders. You transmit up to them, they transmit back down. They're wideband transponders, supporting whatever mode is transmitted to them - SSB, FM, data, etc.

 

Update 2021-04-20- I recently found an additional article about FLTSATCOM.

 

The US military supplanted FLTSATCOM with the more capable, and presumably more secure Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Follow On (UFO) satellite system. (Yes, you read that right. Apparently, there are actual "UFO"s in geosynchronous orbit, and the US military put them there.) 

 

Despite being deprecated by "UFO", two of the FLTSATCOM satellites are still operational. I'll guess that the US military is loathe to discontinue any communication system such as FLTSATCOM that's still minimally usable. 

 

FLTSATCOM is so usable, so accessible, that "pirate users" in Brazil (the Brave? Yes. Experimenters? Maybe. I alluded to) apparently use FLTSATCOM with relative impunity. See the great 2009 article in Wired - The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown. Apparently, despite the "crackdown" described in the article, the "Brazilian pirate users" are still active.

 

Thought Experiment - Amateur Radio use of FLTSATCOM

If there are (apparently, inevitably) going to be "secondary users" of FLTSATCOM, perhaps it's worth consideration that US Amateur Radio Operators would be better "secondary users" of FLTSATCOM than "Brazilian pirate users". There's some precedent in such an idea of sharing spectrum and interoperating between US government and US Amateur Radio Operators - the sharing of the 60 meter (5 MHz band) between FEMA and US Amateur Radio Operators.

 

Why US Amateur Radio operators? First, the FLTSATCOM satellites are owned by the US military. Second, US Amateur Radio Operators generally respect the rule of law and especially cooperation with US military regarding shared spectrum. One recent example is an interference issue within 420 - 430 MHz in New Mexico.

 

One benefit of permitting US Amateur Radio Operators to use FLTSATCOM is that they could act as volunteer "stewards" of FLTSATCOM, monitoring FLTSATCOM and when there are "Brazilian pirate users" operating, "discourage" them from doing so. In return, US Amateur Radio Operators might be permitted to use FLTSATCOM for casual conversations and data communications experiments. For example, I'll guess that VARA FM would work great with FLTSATCOM.

 

If US Amateur Radio Operators were to be "deputized" to operate on FLTSATCOM, here are some ideas for formalizing the arrangement:

• There would be a (nominal) sponsor organization to provide a clear, direct line of communication between US military and the participants.
• There would be a formal plan similar to an Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Special Temporary Authority (STA) authorization such as the STA that permitted experimentation with Spread Spectrum in Amateur Radio spectrum in the 1990s. Among other things, such a plan would document the participants, their participant's equipment, and issue regular status reports. 
• The only participants would be licensed US Amateur Radio Operators.
• The participants must agree to a code of conduct, including non-commercial use, non-interference to USG communications.
• The participants must participate in an "out of band" communication system (such as an Internet email distribution list) that could quickly notify them of any change in status of their use of FLTSATCOM.
• Each participatant would be required to maintain logs of operation (perhaps online).
• Each participant must participate in regular drills to prove efficacy.
• Each participant must report their use of their station hardware.
• Each participatnt must insure that their station hardware operates optimally (no spattering from poorly designed or built transmitters, etc.).

Some benefits that I can imagine:

• Significantly reduce or eliminate the problem of "Brazilian pirate users".
• Develop "best practices" for an eventual Western hemisphere geosynchronous satellite with a wideband transponder such as FLTSATCOM.
• Generate additional excitement for Amateur Radio and especially Amateur Radio satellite activities (and space activities in general).
• Experiment with data modes for a geosynchronous satellite. For example, a datacasting mode such as Othernet (mentioned above) or even an evolution of RadioMirror.

Next Steps

Aye... there's the rub. I have no idea about next steps. I have no contacts to even explore the feasibility of this idea, even solely within Amateur Radio where this idea would have to be fleshed out much, much better than my thought experiment here. If you have any ideas, please contact me, even if only to suggest who I might talk to. Update - I thought of one such contact and reached out.

 

I'm very interested in your thoughts. (Gotta get that list server going!)

* The Watering Hole Concept is an article I have yet to write.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-04-03

Monitoring Satellite Navigation Signals for Interference

(This was originally published on N8GNJ.org, and copied here; SuperPacket is now my "big picture of Amateur Radio" blog for articles like this - see About SuperPacket.)

IEEE Spectrum published a 2021-03-03 article titled The Networks That Aim to Track GPS Interference Around the World.

(It's surprising that IEEE, despite its global membership and the worldwide audience of Spectrum, doesn't use the more accurate terminology of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). It's been years now that other GNSS systems besides US Global Positioning System [GPS] have come online.)

That GNSS systems can, and do, get jammed is well-known to the audience of this blog. I knew that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) monitors GPS and provides ground based and satellite based correction data. Of course, the US military monitors GNSS systems for potential jamming (including their own, to see how effective theirs is).

But I wasn't aware of several crowdsourced GNSS monitoring networks:

International GNSS Service (IGS)

OpenSky Network

This paragraph leapt out at me:

Another problem facing both these systems is the sparse distribution of sensors, says Todd Humphreys, Director of the Radionavigation Laboratory at UT Austin: “There are fewer than 3000 GPS reference stations with publicly-accessible data across the globe; these can be separated by hundreds of miles. Likewise, global coverage by ships and planes is still sparse enough to make detection challenging, and localization nearly impossible, except around ports and airports.” 

What if... Amateur Radio operators and others worldwide that were interested in wireless experimentation "crowdsourced" GNSS receiver data from an inexpensive GNSS receivers?

This sounds like yet another "fertile area of research" for Amateur Radio. Now that Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) has now issued their 2021 Request for Proposals (PDF), perhaps some enterprising grad student or wireless experimenter could create an organization such as Satellite Network Open Ground Station (SatNOGS) Project or Ham Radio Citizen Science Investigation (HamSCI) to create a website, infrastructure, and reference designs to create a open source hobbyist GNSS monitoring network.

Thanks for reading!

Steve N8GN
Bellingham, Washington, USA

Belgian Satellite to Feature D-STAR Technology

Students at the Universite de Liege in Belgium have built OUFTI-1 <http://www.leodium.ulg.ac.be/cmsms/>, a new Amateur Radio CubeSat featuring D-STAR digital-communication protocol that is used for control and telemetry. Amateur Radio operators from all over the world are able to listen in on the ON0ULG D-STAR repeater on 70 cm <http://www.jfindu.net/dstarlh.aspx?rptr=ON0ULG>; 2 meters will be operational soon. The objective of this nanosatellite project is to provide hands-on experience to students in the design, construction and control of complete satellite systems, ultimately serving as the basis for a variety of space experiments. The first satellite in the series, OUFTI-1, is a CubeSat -- a 10×10×10 cm cube weighing in at no more than one kilogram.

Information provided by the OUFTI Team