PaX

Fire alone can save our country....

MAinm

Entering my reposting images from other sites arc main main main

So you got your technician's license? You get to do such fun activities as: call out on simplex FM voice for no one to respond or talk to the 70-year-old+ "repeater guys" who are on every day from 6 am - 6 pm about uhhhh radios, grilling, ex-wives if you want..... and then listen to the silence when everybody runs out of things to talk about in the presence of an "outsider" (someone who hasn't been on the repeater every day for 10+ years).

Not interested? That's fine, instead you can just listen to the activity on the repeater when they think no one else is around and hear interesting conversation topics like what the repeater guys would do if someone they were dating had an abortion including, but not limited to, "putting 2 between their eyes".

Not interested in even that? Okay, if your radio is capable of digital operation, you can connect to a system of linked repeaters and make contact with a different set of 70-year-old+ repeater guys. Once you make contact and talk a bit (maybe even have a good time listening to their stories if you're into that), you can look up their callsign and find their Twitter and find out they're REALLY RACIST and that probably the only reason they spoke to you in a polite manner or at all is cuz you have a "normal-sounding" male voice.

If this is what the self-policing culture of amateur radio is like (at least where I am in the United States currently) then we need to give many, many more Baofengs to unlicensed zoomers immediately

Anyway, that has been my experience so far in a rural area in the US. It hasn't been all bad (making contact with the International Space Station was cool) but yeah. I'm going back to a city soon, maybe it will be better there.

I really do want to get into this hobby and I love the technology (need to find the money sometime to do more packet stuff) but a lot of this type of stuff has been off-putting

I had no luck, couldn't hear anything and they (they includes their computers lol) couldn't hear me even though I had perfect line of sight to the station

I heard they have an APRS digipeater and other amateur radio equipment on board... maybe they turned it off recently or something

Info is sparse on the English-speaking internet

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2781613

Do any of you have experience with community mesh networking? It seems like a fun time and a good way to connect with people (socially and technically lol) in the community. Not to mention the possibility of providing at least limited internet access to people who can't access it by conventional means for whatever reason. A community mesh network might also have organizing possibilities - especially because the state or the cops or a company can't just shut it off or look inside it as easily

A lot of hams think the Automatic Packet Reporting System is a system for broadcasting your location, and maybe your status. But the APRS is really a lot of local general-purpose low-speed message-switched* networks joined together by the big Internet (the one we're on rn) into another inter-network.

*Yeahh, it says packet in the name and is based on AX.25, but really the APRS is only capable of routing complete messages

It's primitive compared to the Internet but still very useful because of how widespread it is (I'm in some place you could describe as the "middle of nowhere" rn and there are still internet-connected APRS stations and digipeaters in range). The APRS is source-routed, meaning the sender of packets specifies the route they take through the network. You can specify a direct route for your packets to take through the network but most people leave this routing information set to the default on their radio, which is usually something like WIDE1-N,WIDE2-N where N specifies the number of times a packet is rebroadcast by any forwarding-capable station (digipeater) in range (this is how your position and status beacons get distributed to a wide area).

If you're familiar at all with the history of the APRS then you know its original purpose was to distribute information of local interest and it still does this but is now capable of so much more. You can send and receive text messages (including to the phones of non-hams), e-mails, get weather information, find out when satellites pass over your area, check into APRS nets, subscribe to groups and bulletins, and more.

Even if you're truly in the middle of nowhere with nothing and no one around, you can still keep in contact with people and beacon your location via one of the satellites carrying internet-connected APRS stations, no commercial satellite subscription and proprietary radio required (don't rely on it though lol). Even the International Space Station has an APRS station aboard

Kaepora Gaebora posting on main :did-you-get-all-that:

Artist is "Hail-NekoYasha", source at https://www.deviantart.com/hail-nekoyasha/art/O-RLY-NTNDO-33158110