Comments on: Threats to Amateur Spectrum, winnable battle or game over? http://www.innismir.net/article/429 Pointless, vapid ramblings of a surly information security engineer Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Ben Jackson http://www.innismir.net/article/429/comment-page-1#comment-216 Ben Jackson Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:22:41 +0000 http://www.innismir.net/?p=429#comment-216 I don't think we'll lose 70cm for the same reason we can't use it in southeastern MA and RI: PAVE PAWS. Government has an insanely expensive system there and they won't want to change bands. I also don't think 1.25M would be greatly sought after due to the relatively low amount of MHz it occupies. I think that if we're going to lose bands, it will be 33cm and above. Easiest way to get on 2.4GHz is to go on eBay and pick up an older WRT54G and start reading here: http://www.n5oom.org/hsmm/wrt54g.htm. Go and make that packet network look like a relic. :) I don’t think we’ll lose 70cm for the same reason we can’t use it in southeastern MA and RI: PAVE PAWS. Government has an insanely expensive system there and they won’t want to change bands. I also don’t think 1.25M would be greatly sought after due to the relatively low amount of MHz it occupies. I think that if we’re going to lose bands, it will be 33cm and above.

Easiest way to get on 2.4GHz is to go on eBay and pick up an older WRT54G and start reading here: http://www.n5oom.org/hsmm/wrt54g.htm. Go and make that packet network look like a relic. :)

]]> By: Allen KE7IQQ http://www.innismir.net/article/429/comment-page-1#comment-214 Allen KE7IQQ Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:47:42 +0000 http://www.innismir.net/?p=429#comment-214 In the county where I live 70cm is used more than 2m and 1.25m is used daily by our EMCOMM Packet network and voice Hospital network at least monthly. We also have a lot of voice use on 1.25m by commuters. I would like to try some of the other bands but have a learning curve to put togeather the equipment for the GHz bands. We need more than the little information in chapter 14 of the handbook to get some of us going in these bands. I am sure we will end up losing some of the bands. I don't think HF is what they are looking for. I would hate to lose the 2300 to 2310MHz or 2390 to 2450MHz bands before I get a chance to play in them. I have been looking at a TX and RX board advertized in Nuts and Volts for 2.4GHz and would like to try and use them if I can find someone else locally interested in playing in that space. In the county where I live 70cm is used more than 2m and 1.25m is used daily by our EMCOMM Packet network and voice Hospital network at least monthly. We also have a lot of voice use on 1.25m by commuters.
I would like to try some of the other bands but have a learning curve to put togeather the equipment for the GHz bands.
We need more than the little information in chapter 14 of the handbook to get some of us going in these bands.
I am sure we will end up losing some of the bands. I don’t think HF is what they are looking for. I would hate to lose the 2300 to 2310MHz or 2390 to 2450MHz bands before I get a chance to play in them. I have been looking at a TX and RX board advertized in Nuts and Volts for 2.4GHz and would like to try and use them if I can find someone else locally interested in playing in that space.

]]> By: Andrew K8DJK http://www.innismir.net/article/429/comment-page-1#comment-213 Andrew K8DJK Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:01:20 +0000 http://www.innismir.net/?p=429#comment-213 Who cares. I mean, that's the surly way to say it, but it's not far from the truth. Now that you have the digital mindset infiltrating just about every aspect of ham radio, you're left with bands not used, bands not cared for, and in some cases, forgotten or even never known about. Do we need all the bands, or at least the bandwidth, that we have? Probably not. It's nice to have enough HF bands that we can communicate during any type of atmospheric and solar condition, but aside from that, we don't need anything else. If anything, we have created this problem for ourselves by favoring technology that makes it easy for the FCC to argue we don't need anything else. The cold, hard, truth is that hobbies make very little money compared to any commercial use that might come along, and that most definitely include ham radio. If we stick to our guns and wind up pissing off the wrong people, we could lose more than a few bands we don't use anyway. Who cares. I mean, that’s the surly way to say it, but it’s not far from the truth. Now that you have the digital mindset infiltrating just about every aspect of ham radio, you’re left with bands not used, bands not cared for, and in some cases, forgotten or even never known about. Do we need all the bands, or at least the bandwidth, that we have? Probably not. It’s nice to have enough HF bands that we can communicate during any type of atmospheric and solar condition, but aside from that, we don’t need anything else. If anything, we have created this problem for ourselves by favoring technology that makes it easy for the FCC to argue we don’t need anything else.

The cold, hard, truth is that hobbies make very little money compared to any commercial use that might come along, and that most definitely include ham radio. If we stick to our guns and wind up pissing off the wrong people, we could lose more than a few bands we don’t use anyway.

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