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

 

What I Would Say to the FCC

On a Facebook group called Amateur Radio Satellite Service, Michelle Thompson W5NYV posted this query:

Call for Comment:

Are there any technical topics you want the FCC to know about?

I have an opportunity to make a presentation. I would like to hear from you about technical issues in the service that the FCC should hear more about.

This won't cover topics related to self-regulation or operating.

It is not that those things are less important. It would simply be a different presentation.

If you want to reply privately, please mail me at (email redacted - see the post).

...

As I write this, the group and the post is public - you don't have to be logged in with a Facebook account to see it.

Michelle is one of the Directors of Open Research Institute.

If I had the same offer, I would use the opportunity to discuss:

• The changing role of radio communications from "building radio hardware" into "writing radio software" (software defined radio),
• The need for the US to become more "self-sufficient" in engineers that have hands-on exerience in conceptualizing, designing, manufacturing, and building new generations of radio technology
• The role that Amateur Radio could, and hopefully will, play in providing a "training ground" for those future engineers and technicians with these new generations of radio systems.

The good news is that creating new radio systems is now largely a matter of software, such as the ubiquitous GNU Radio.

The bad news is that creating new radio systems is now largely a matter of software, such as hardware that supports GNU Radio.

Why bad news? Because there are many, many real world issues in radio systems that can't be relegated to "largely a matter of software". It's quite possible to write radio software that works fine on the simulator, compiles perfectly into the target hardware, and utterly fails to function as a real world radio system.

Thus, even with mad skills in writing radio software, there's still a need for real world, hands-on, empirical experience with radio systems. An Amateur Radio license is, literally, a license to experiment with radio technology. You can build systems, you can experiment with antennas, you can deploy multiple units in a network, you can even do things purely for fun like bounce your Amateur Radio signals off the moon.

Involvement in Amateur Radio can help fill address the need to fundamentally understand radio technology. In the US, technological literacy and capability is increasing as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) subjects are being emphasized. In previous eras, youth that eventually became engineers began learning by tinkering with farm machinery or cars. In this era, youth that eventually become engineers are learning from STEM training and hands-on by becoming "Makers". Amateur Radio can be the "radio" element of  "Making".

Amateur Radio in the US needs to be brought out of radio systems paradigms of the 1950s into the paradigms of the early 21st century.

 

Related - The National Science Foundation is taking this issue semi-seriously:

Spectrum Innovation Initiative: National Center for Wireless Spectrum Research (SII-Center)
PROGRAM SOLICITATION NSF 21-558

(Semi-seriously - the budget for this iniative is a "mere" $25M.)

Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-05-12
Portions Copyright © 2021 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

 

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

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

Welcome TAG IT Readers

I gave a talk (not a presentation - no slides) on Tuesday evening April 6, 2021 to the TAG NW IT Group. TAG NW is a not-for-profit association headquartered in Bellingham, Washington for individuals and organizations interested in or operating in technology fields. It is a very interesting group and I'm enjoying being a member of TAG NW.

My talk was titled "Fundamentals of Wireless Communications" but a little overzealously described:

Our guest speaker for April 2021 is Steve Stroh, a licensed HAM radio operator and electronics enthusiast. Steve will present the fundamentals of wireless communications using amateur radio principles as a foundation for understanding all wireless technologies, including newer technologies such as Bluetooth and wireless computer networking. The result? A general understanding of how all wireless technologies work!

Here are some followup notes for those that attended and would like to know more about the topics I spoke about.

Disclaimer: In my statements below, and my overall activities, I don't claim to represent Amateur Radio as a whole.
There are a lot of aspects of Amateur Radio that do not interest me and that I don't participate in. My personal interests in Amateur Radio are mostly operating on the "VHF / UHF" bands about 50 MHz, and primarily experimenting with and operating data communications and networking via Amateur Radio (formerly called "Packet Radio").

Personally, I find wireless technology overall to be fascinating. I remember watching television programs as a kid in the 1960s, and I focused on the radios in the police cars, the portable EKG transmission unit used on a show about paramedics, etc. Other people enjoy birdwatching, or model trains, or cooking. Amateur Radio is a perfect way to scratch my particular mental and technological itch. 

Why does Amateur Radio still exist? Here's the FCC's justification for Amateur Radio:

§97.1   Basis and purpose.

The rules and regulations in this part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles:

(a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications.

(b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art.

(c) Encouragement and improvement of the amateur service through rules which provide for advancing skills in both the communication and technical phases of the art.

(d) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts.

(e) Continuation and extension of the amateur's unique ability to enhance international goodwill.

A. Emergency communication - this element is still valid, though as I discussed, there's less need for Amateur Radio emergency communications in 2021 because new, more robust communications technologies have been developed that (unlike previous systems) are likely to remain functioning in an emergency.:

• First Responders Network Authority - FirstNet now provides a hardened, prioritized cellular network to first responders for broadband data and voice services.
• Iridium Next is a significant upgrade to the Iridium satellite system that was really suitable only for voice, and was easily saturated in an emergency. The upgrade in 2020 replaced every 1990's era Iridium satellite and the new satellites resulted in capacity increases and broadband(ish) data capability. In any given area, Iridium has no dependence on ground infrastructure because Iridium satellites can route between satellites in orbit. Thus, if you have a view of the sky, an Iridium (Next) ground terminal, and power, you can communicate.
• Another satellite system that's been used for emergency communications, even though it's currently still in beta trials, is SpaceX Starlink. Starlink offers true broadband (50 - 100 Mbps) almost anywhere in the Northern hemisphere where you have reasonable view of the sky. Like Iridium, all you need for for broadband Internet connectivity is a Starlink ground terminal, sky, and power.

B. Advancement of the radio art. 

C. Advancing communications skills and technical skills.

D. Creating more operators, technicians, and electronics experts.

E. Enhancing International goodwill. For most of the 20th century, Amateur Radio was a significant mode of international goodwill. I'm old enough to remember how remarkable it was that US Amateur Radio Operators were able to exchange pleasantries and signal reports with their counterparts in (what was then) the USSR. Almost every other direct communication between US citizens and USSR citizens was at least borderline illegal. In 2021, the Internet has rendered this element a bit moot.

So, my personal interpretation / conflation / estatement of elements B, C, and D, relevant for 2021:

Amateur Radio exists to provide a portion of spectrum for personal, hands-on experimentation with radio technology and systems, as well as training for operation of radio systems and radio-based networks.

One example of Amateur Radio experimentation becoming a commercial product / system is APRS and AIS. Amateur Radio's Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) beginning in 1984 wasn't a "prototype" for the marine industry's (now required and ubiquitous) Automatic Identification System (AIS), but it was undoubtedly an inspiration for AIS. Vessels equipped with AIS automatically report their position, bearing, and other information via radio transmission - just like Amateur Radio operators began doing with APRS in 1984.

Amateur Radio and Techies
I respectfully suggest that becoming licensed as an Amateur Radio operator and doing various hands-on activities in Amateur Radio is an excellent complement to technical career, especially Information Technology (IT). Through Amateur Radio a techie can develop a thorough understanding of wireless technology instead of being forced to treat wireless systems as an inscrutable "black box" that mostly works, except when it mysteriously doesn't.

A lot of hackers have come to agree with this perspective. It's instructive that the largest Volunteer Examiner (VE) Amateur Radio license testing session was at DEFCON 22 in August 2014 (see pages 8 and 9). 205 hackers took their Amateur Radio test at DEFCON 22; the number that passed wasn't noted in the article.

Obtaining an Amateur Radio license for personal experimentation and hands-on training in radio technology is especially applicable to youth and students interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. Amateur Radio is a very broad field that can touch physics, engineering, design, electronics, communications, hands-on (building), etc. Even physical activity is encompassed within Amateur Radio, including hiking and bicycling.

In the beginning, There Were the (Only) Experimenters
Guglielmo Marconi began demonstrations of the practicality of radio in the 1890s. Before then, all radio activity was experimental - technically curious people playing around. At that time, there was no commercial / business interest in radio. The first practical application of radio was between shore stations and ships at sea. The first regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum in the US was the Radio Act of 1912. Note how closely this correlates with the sinking of the Titanic - not a coincidence. After that, "Amateur" operation was codified into the Amateur Radio Service, with countries coordinating frequencies and other technical issues so that Amateur Radio Operators in all countries could communicate with each other.

In the succeeding century, and continuing, all portions of the electromagnetic spectrum in the US have been allocated to some specific use. Many portions of spectrum are allocated for multiple uses. To put it a different way, there is no "open" portion of spectrum that has not already been assigned some previous, current, or future usage.

Thus to create a new radio-based service, a previous usage of a portion of spectrum has to be changed. The most momentous such change was the reallocation of broadcast television channels 70 - 83 (806 to 890 MHz) to create a dedicated portion of spectrum for cellular telephony (1G, then called "Advanced Mobile Phone Service - AMPS) in 1983.

There are some small portions of spectrum such as the 2.4 GHz band that are allocated for "license-exempt" use included (but not limited to) the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands (often referred to as "the junk bands"). Radio Local Area Networks (RLANs) - the technology that eventually became Wi-Fi - was permitted in the ISM bands in only in 1985 in FCC Rule Part 15.247.

Getting up to speed on Amateur Radio

• An excellent book about Amateur Radio in general is Ham Radio for Dummies. As with every "for Dummies" title, it provides an excellent overview and the content isn't actually "dumbed down". The author Ward Silver N0AX is an excellent writer and provides an unbiased overview of Amateur Radio.
• To learn more about getting your Amateur Radio license, start at http://www.arrl.org/licensing-education-training
• If you want a book to study for your Amateur Radio license, Dan Romanchik KB6NU writes good ones - https://www.kb6nu.com/study-guides/
• If you want to just dive in and practice taking your Amateur Radio Test, flash-card like, my favorite such site is https://hamexam.org.
• Shopping at the Ham Radio store - Michael Gan marveled that "stores for ham radio" actually exist, where you can just walk in and buy Amateur Radios. The nearest one to Bellingham is Ham Radio Outlet (one of a chain) in the Portland area - https://www.hamradio.com/locations.cfm?storeid=11. There used to be several Amateur Radio stores in Vancouver, BC but on a trip to Vancouver in 2019, I was curious about them and found that all of them had closed.
• If you want to dive deep down the Amateur Radio rabbit hole, and like books, the ARRL Handbook is published annually with some refreshed content every year. It's kind of an encyclopedia for Amateur Radio, especially the technical aspects of the various operating modes, antennas, some electronic and radio projects, etc.
• Although it ceased publication 40+ years ago, Ham Radio Horizons magazine was just excellent at introducing Amateur Radio to those with no previous exposure. Some of the articles are admittedly dated (home computers were bleeding edge technology then) but many articles in HRH are timeless. If you have the time, reading Ham Radio Horizons is recommended.
• There are many YouTube channels about Amateur Radio. Just search for "Amateur Radio" on YouTube and you can easily lose an entire weekend. From my perspective, for the TAG IT audience, the best Amateur Radio channel on YouTube is AmateurLogic.TV. It's a good mix of intro material, fun projects, and nice hosts.
• Hackaday's $50 Ham series is an excellent tutorial series about Amateur Radio from a techie's perspective.
• "Hamfests" (swap meets / flea markets) are absolute institutions within Amateur Radio. The canonical joke about hamfests is that you bring your electronics "junk" to a hamfest to sell, so you can get money to buy more junk at the same hamfest. In the Seattle area, the largest hamfest is the Mike & Key Amateur Radio Club Swap Meet. It's typically held in March (2021 excepted) at the Western Washington Fairgrounds (Puyallup Fair).
• Amateur Radio Field Day is an annual "emergency communications test" cleverly disguised (in plain sight) as a contest. The idea is to simulate "the big one" that has destroyed power, normal communications, and other infrastructure. To fully embrace Field Day, you carry all of your equipment, including power source (generator, battery, solar panels, etc.) into a field and set up a communications station (typically, in a tent) to communicate with the rest of the world. Field Day is a lot of fun (except for 2020 and 2021, of course).
• Bellingham has several Amateur Radio Clubs. Mount Baker Amateur Radio Club is a pretty traditional general interest Amateur Radio club. A subgroup of MBARC is the Digital Group, which does some pretty interesting things. There's also the Whatcom Emergency Communications Group and  Sudden Valley Amateur Radio Club. The San Juan Country Amateur Radio Society is particularly welcoming, even to us "off islanders" (though they're befuddled by the interest).

The American Radio Relay League - ARRL, QST, and Now You're Talking
The ARRL is omnipresent in US Amateur Radio. Given that the ARRL is now more than a century old, there is some truth in the nickname "American Radio Reenactment League". The ARRL is the largest US national radio society; tthere are a number of others, but they have much smaller membership. Given the average ARRL member's age is well into retirement, it's to be expected that the ARRL focuses on "traditional" Amateur Radio activities such as operating on HF, contesting (it publishes dozens of pages of contest results) and DXing (more pages of DX records). The ARRL publishes QST Magazine, and to subscribe to QST you must join the ARRL; membership and a QST subscription are inseparable. ARRL offers QST in an electronic version in addition to a print magazine, but there's no cost savings with the electronic version - again, not surprising given the membership demographics of ARRL. Candidly, there is not a lot of content in QST of interest to techie Amateur Radio operators, other than getting familiar with Amateur Radio vendors from the many ads in QST. In recognition that QST's content wasn't that "compelling" to many new Amateur Radio operators, the ARRL began a new magazine called Now You're Talking which is a step in the right direction. But, even the title "Now You're Talking" reflects the ARRL's bias of "traditional" Amateur Radio activities like talking on the radio instead of the more progressive activities like data communications - see below. Bottom line is that the ARRL and QST aren't synonymous with US Amateur Radio, and you don't need to be a member of ARRL to get a lot of benefit from Amateur Radio. If you want to get a feel of the content of QST and Now You're Talking, you can purchase recent issues from Ham Radio Outlet.

One major criticism I have with the ARRL is that despite their ostensible mission to promote and grow Amateur Radio in the US, almost all of their content is sequestered behind a paywall. You must be a (paid) ARRL member to access their archives. In 2021, that stance makes no sense, and the ARRL is diminished by persisting with that paid membership requirement instead of making their content publicly accessible for the overall good of Amateur Radio.

You don't have to talk on the radio to be an Amateur Radio operator
Speaking of The $50 Ham series, this excerpt from Digital Modes with WSJT-X in that series is particularly applicable and poignant to techies thinking about getting into Amateur Radio:

As it is generally practiced, [most activities in] ham radio [are] a little like going to the grocery store and striking up a conversation with everyone you bump into as you ply the aisles. Except that the grocery store is the size of the planet, and everyone brings their own shopping cart, some of which are highly modified and really expensive. And pretty much every conversation is about said carts, or about the grocery store itself.

With that admittedly iffy analogy in mind, if you’re not the kind of person who would normally strike up a conversation with someone while shopping, you might think that you’d be a poor fit for amateur radio. But just because that’s the way that most people exercise their ham radio privileges doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Exploring a few of the more popular ways to leverage the high-frequency (HF) bands and see what can be done on a limited budget, in terms of both cost of equipment as well as the amount of power used, is the focus of this installment of The $50 Ham. Welcome to the world of microphone-optional ham radio: weak-signal digital modes.

Author Dan Maloney N7DPM really nails this aspect of Amateur Radio! It is uncomfortable trying to strike up conversations with random strangers; that you're "broadcasting" on the radio as a new Amateur Radio operator can make such conversation attempts really awkward. "Get licensed, buy a radio, talk on the air" is the conventional advice on getting started in Amateur Radio, and Dan and I are here to tell you that as techies, there are a lot of other ways to enjoy what Amateur Radio has to offer than uncomfortably trying to strike up conversations with random fellow Amateur Radio operators.

Some interesting (data communications) projects / experiments going on in Amateur Radio:

• WSPR on a Raspberry Pi - The Raspberry Pi's high clock speed means that it can "modulate" (toggle) one of the Raspberry Pi's General Purpose Input / Output (GPIO) pins fast enough for that pin to create a signal within the Amateur Radio High Frequency (HF) (aka, shortwave) bands. The beauty of WSPR is that you can  see where your transmission been received around the world. The first link is to a $32 Raspberry Pi HAT that cleans up the signal coming from the Raspberry Pi GPIO pin. (You must be licensed as a General or Extra class Amateur Radio operator to use WSPR on the HF bands.)
• New Packet Radio (good overview) (details) is a new TCP/IP radio system from a techie Amateur Radio operator in France.
• Hams in Space! Amateur Radio has its own satellites in orbit, including a payload on a geostationary satellite above Europe and Africa. There’s an amateur radio station on the International Space Station. You can also build your own ground station to receive data from experimental research satellites.
• Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) is firmware for Wi-Fi and Wireless ISP hardware that enables mesh networking and uses some Amateur Radio only spectrum.
• APRS.fi is a worldwide aggregation of position reports from Amateur Radio APRS transmissions. It's not just vehicles - in the "Track Callsign" box, type in W5KUB-26. That's the callsign of an amateur high altitude balloon with an APRS "tracker" onboard. As I compose this article, it's above Northern Florida.

Winding up

The blog you're reading - SuperPacket.org is my blog for discussing "the big picture" of Amateur Radio. I try to post at least one article per week here.

My other Amateur Radio blog is N8GNJ.org where I discuss what I'm doing in my Amateur Radio activities, especially my experimentation with data modes, and my Amateur Radio station. For example, I'll discuss new developments about AREDN (see above) on SuperPacket.org, but my AREDN activities will be written up on N8GNJ.org. The posting frequency on N8GNJ.org is whenever I have something interesting to report.

I hope I've convinced you that Amateur Radio in 2021 isn't (just) old white guys sitting in the basement tapping on a Morse Code key.

Please reach out if you're interesting in the topics I've discussed above.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-04-08