[00:00.000 --> 00:06.880]  Ham Radio, I have this in the slide, the definition is a radio communication service.
[00:06.980 --> 00:14.120]  Service is an important part, basically for personal use, personal experimentation, and the like.
[00:15.160 --> 00:21.580]  Part 97.1 is the rules and regulations that govern Ham Radio here in the U.S., anyway.
[00:22.180 --> 00:26.060]  And there's five basis and five purposes laid out in that document.
[00:26.060 --> 00:28.380]  One of them is emergency communications.
[00:28.560 --> 00:31.600]  We'll get over that eventually, I hope.
[00:32.120 --> 00:39.420]  The others are to provide a pool of licensed, of trained operators and engineers.
[00:40.360 --> 00:45.440]  Then there's like personal use, how to, you know, for your own personal enjoyment.
[00:45.900 --> 00:49.460]  Then another one is for advancing the state.
[00:49.640 --> 00:55.480]  And in fact, it says this, because it was written in 1934, it says advancing the state of the radio art.
[00:55.480 --> 00:58.320]  So I take that to mean advancing the state of electronics.
[00:58.640 --> 01:03.080]  And then the fifth one is, and this is the one I like best, enhancing international goodwill.
[01:03.320 --> 01:10.080]  Well, you know, radio knows no bounds, so enhancing international goodwill is always a good one.
[01:12.380 --> 01:17.520]  One thing Ham Radio isn't is GMRS or Citizen's Man, right?
[01:18.140 --> 01:19.140]  And why is that?
[01:19.280 --> 01:22.680]  Well, you get a license to operate amateur radio.
[01:23.160 --> 01:29.500]  And you just basically buy those licenses for GMRS, and you don't even need a license anymore for Citizen's Man.
[01:29.860 --> 01:31.720]  And what does that get you?
[01:31.840 --> 01:36.740]  Well, Ham Radio allows you to really do some hacking, really allows you to do some experimenting.
[01:36.980 --> 01:41.020]  You get to use a lot more power than you could with either of the other services.
[01:41.020 --> 01:47.160]  You get to do a lot more different, what we call modes, you know, digital communications, as well as voice.
[01:47.460 --> 01:49.640]  And even, yes, even CW still.
[01:51.620 --> 01:55.980]  So that's the good thing about Ham Radio, right?
[01:56.140 --> 01:59.440]  Is that it gives you the ability to do all these different things.
[01:59.460 --> 02:02.020]  That's why you might want to consider getting a Ham Radio like...
[02:02.020 --> 02:11.640]  So, and I'd really like to have my slides to show you this, but there's hardware hacking involved, there's software hacking involved.
[02:11.920 --> 02:23.440]  And while Ham Radio has gotten a sort of a bad reputation as being, you know, a stodgy old hobby, it's really not that way if you dig a little deeper.
[02:24.480 --> 02:26.100]  Let's talk a little bit about radios.
[02:26.100 --> 02:30.140]  Radios, there's a project called the SBIDX project.
[02:30.280 --> 02:33.700]  It's done by a guy in India named Farhan.
[02:33.920 --> 02:38.720]  He's come out with a $400 radio based on a Raspberry Pi.
[02:39.400 --> 02:48.940]  And with that Raspberry Pi, you can either use his software to run that radio or design your own and run it...
[02:48.940 --> 02:49.800]  Oh, there you go.
[02:50.300 --> 02:53.580]  In fact, let me go back to my original slide here.
[02:53.580 --> 02:56.560]  Ham's actually are kind of the original hackers.
[02:57.360 --> 03:07.800]  You know, the mythology is that the original Ham's used Ford Model T ignition coils to power their spark gap transmitters.
[03:07.980 --> 03:11.000]  I'm not old enough to really vouch for that, although I'm close.
[03:12.240 --> 03:26.400]  I'm not old enough to vouch for that, but what I can say is that Ham radio operators made good use of discarded radio and television sets and military surplus equipment, especially after World War II, to get on the air.
[03:26.860 --> 03:31.160]  We were modifying those radios and getting them on the air even back then.
[03:31.160 --> 03:33.380]  So, now let's talk about the SBITX again.
[03:33.600 --> 03:36.440]  So, this is a high-performance HF radio.
[03:36.700 --> 03:37.920]  It's a software-defined radio.
[03:38.400 --> 03:41.080]  And it can do all these different modes.
[03:41.400 --> 03:44.800]  And it's built on a Raspberry Pi.
[03:45.600 --> 03:48.840]  And the Raspberry Pi is the development system, too.
[03:49.020 --> 03:52.900]  So, you can use the radio to develop the software for the radio.
[03:54.900 --> 03:57.000]  $300 without the Raspberry Pi.
[03:58.020 --> 04:02.120]  And the whole thing, you can buy the whole setup for $500.
[04:03.520 --> 04:06.760]  This is kind of an amazing price point.
[04:07.980 --> 04:12.420]  And I saw this at Dayton this year, and it's really a fantastic radio.
[04:12.720 --> 04:18.580]  I mean, it really competes with all the commercial radios on the market.
[04:22.040 --> 04:26.960]  Another thing that's gotten real popular here in Ham radio lately is this Quan Sheng radio.
[04:26.960 --> 04:28.800]  This is something new.
[04:29.520 --> 04:35.700]  In the past, there's been some handheld radios that you can modify the firmware on.
[04:36.700 --> 04:41.260]  Probably the biggest one is the OpenGD77 project, if you've heard of that.
[04:41.620 --> 04:50.980]  But with the Quan Sheng, you can actually get it on HF, the shortwave bands, as well as VHF and UHF.
[04:51.600 --> 04:58.420]  And what's allowed you to do that is that the fact that the firmware is stored in flash memory.
[04:59.280 --> 05:02.120]  You can do it right through the USB... it has a USB port.
[05:02.300 --> 05:04.100]  You can do it right on the USB port.
[05:04.620 --> 05:09.620]  And there's already a lot of mods on the web already, including one for a spectrum analyzer.
[05:10.240 --> 05:15.380]  And to make it an HF radio, you do have to hack in a little printed circuit board into the radio.
[05:15.380 --> 05:18.600]  But that's not hard, and that's not really expensive to do either.
[05:18.860 --> 05:21.580]  So this is a pretty cool project.
[05:22.040 --> 05:28.460]  I would actually have one of these myself already, but I already got too many projects I got going on to do it.
[05:29.000 --> 05:29.420]  But...
[05:30.580 --> 05:32.360]  Yeah, yeah, well, I don't know.
[05:32.780 --> 05:35.780]  But this is actually a very cool radio.
[05:37.620 --> 05:39.060]  And here's some links.
[05:39.180 --> 05:43.400]  I'll have all this on my website, or I guess it'll be on the video later.
[05:45.200 --> 05:51.240]  But this one's been written up in a lot of different places, in the IEEE spectrum, and on Hackaday.
[05:51.400 --> 05:53.860]  There's a couple posts on Hackaday about it.
[05:58.690 --> 05:59.570]  Hacking antennas.
[05:59.670 --> 06:02.610]  Antennas are like a big thing in ham radio, right?
[06:03.170 --> 06:06.150]  And you're always...
[06:06.150 --> 06:13.210]  And the nice thing about antennas, compared to hardware, is that the physics of antennas doesn't change, right?
[06:13.210 --> 06:19.350]  So the physics in the 1920s for antennas is the same as today in the 2020s.
[06:19.650 --> 06:22.650]  And it's relatively cheap to hack on antennas.
[06:23.590 --> 06:24.730]  I'll give you an example.
[06:27.610 --> 06:32.250]  I enjoy making versions, homebrew versions, of commercial antennas.
[06:32.470 --> 06:34.910]  And I like to lord it over my friends.
[06:35.030 --> 06:37.470]  I say, oh, yeah, you bought that thing for $150.
[06:37.470 --> 06:39.230]  I'd built this for $25.
[06:40.830 --> 06:41.950]  And it's true.
[06:42.090 --> 06:43.330]  That's about the ratio.
[06:45.450 --> 06:48.650]  I do a lot of parks, what's called parks on the air.
[06:48.750 --> 06:50.290]  That's the P-O-T-A there.
[06:50.590 --> 06:54.210]  And I'm always sort of working on my parks on the air antenna.
[06:54.610 --> 07:01.830]  You know, I started out with a simple doublet antenna that I'd connected some twisted pair wire to use as feed line.
[07:02.370 --> 07:04.950]  Well, so over the years, it's morphed.
[07:05.410 --> 07:06.770]  I got some better...
[07:06.770 --> 07:07.530]  Oh, and I used...
[07:07.530 --> 07:10.150]  Actually, I used wire wrap wire.
[07:10.430 --> 07:12.730]  If any of you remember what wire wrap was.
[07:12.930 --> 07:15.230]  I used wire wrap wire for the antenna elements.
[07:15.470 --> 07:20.990]  So the first improvement I made was to actually get some real antenna wire for the elements.
[07:21.390 --> 07:27.470]  And the last thing I've done is substituted some actual 300-ohm twin lead for the twisted pair.
[07:27.470 --> 07:32.770]  So anyway, the point here is, is I'm always hacking on it and trying to make it work better.
[07:33.090 --> 07:37.390]  And it really has worked out better.
[07:37.610 --> 07:48.250]  I got a friend to 3D print a center insulator for it before I was just using a dog bone insulator and sort of messing around with it.
[07:48.550 --> 07:53.090]  But antennas are always a big thing that we can hack in ham radio.
[07:54.650 --> 08:07.790]  You know, one of the other things, if you have a license, you can do is, if you have neighbors that had those DISH TV antennas, there's a lot of projects for converting those DISH TV antennas into ham radio antennas.
[08:07.870 --> 08:09.490]  So that's another thing to think about.
[08:13.640 --> 08:14.120]  Microcontrollers.
[08:15.020 --> 08:21.140]  So as you can imagine, you know, Arduinos, for example, have gotten into a lot of different areas, right?
[08:21.140 --> 08:24.580]  And the ham radio is no exception.
[08:25.560 --> 08:31.620]  What you see here is called, is an example of the K3NG keyer.
[08:32.320 --> 08:35.160]  K3NG keyer, his name's Anthony Goode.
[08:35.360 --> 08:42.280]  He's done really a heck of a job in writing an Arduino sketch to do what's called a keyer.
[08:42.540 --> 08:49.900]  A keyer is a device that does the dots and dashes automatically in Morse code.
[08:49.900 --> 08:56.480]  So it's a pretty simple project to do with an Arduino microcontroller.
[08:56.700 --> 09:00.140]  So I built one of these kits, and I use it all the time.
[09:00.220 --> 09:02.160]  I'm a big Morse code guy, actually.
[09:03.460 --> 09:07.760]  But there's many other amateur radio projects for Arduinos.
[09:08.380 --> 09:11.960]  He has a... K3NG has a rotor controller that he's done.
[09:12.900 --> 09:25.220]  Other folks have done antenna analyzers, and you can even do DSP using Arduino with a type of Arduino called the Teensi, because that has a little bit more computing power.
[09:27.360 --> 09:38.500]  But, having said that, there's now being a shift in ham radio to go to Raspberry Pi Picos instead of Arduinos, because they offer a lot of advantages.
[09:39.340 --> 09:41.800]  They do have more computing power.
[09:42.060 --> 09:46.940]  You know, and these little Picos, they actually have a dual-core processor in them.
[09:47.000 --> 09:54.420]  So if you're, you know, good enough to do multi-core programming, you can really squeeze a lot of power out of them.
[09:55.960 --> 10:00.980]  You can get versions with a built-in Wi-Fi, and they're less than 10 bucks.
[10:01.260 --> 10:02.840]  You know, they're less than 10 bucks.
[10:03.440 --> 10:11.440]  This here is a Raspberry Pi Pico version of that K3NG keyer.
[10:12.140 --> 10:14.820]  And I've been fooling around with this.
[10:14.980 --> 10:18.420]  I'm trying to write the same kind of...
[10:18.420 --> 10:23.320]  write Python code with the same functionality as in the K3NG keyer.
[10:23.320 --> 10:25.640]  And that's a work in progress.
[10:25.960 --> 10:32.440]  I've got all the basic functionality working, but I don't have, like, the sort of more advanced stuff.
[10:32.600 --> 10:34.900]  Like, I'm not using the USB port yet.
[10:35.040 --> 10:37.940]  You can control the other thing over a USB port.
[10:39.940 --> 10:44.660]  But Raspberry Pi Pico, man, that's what a lot of hams are going toward now.
[10:49.440 --> 10:49.880]  Satellites.
[10:50.080 --> 10:52.880]  You know, hams have been doing satellites since the 1960s.
[10:53.600 --> 10:55.360]  That's a picture of Oscar 1.
[10:56.540 --> 10:58.020]  What does it stand for?
[10:59.480 --> 11:01.720]  Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio.
[11:01.960 --> 11:04.240]  That was launched in December 12, 1961.
[11:05.740 --> 11:07.780]  And we've been doing them ever since.
[11:09.060 --> 11:11.300]  AMSAT is the group that's currently doing them.
[11:12.640 --> 11:14.600]  And they've got lots of plans.
[11:14.780 --> 11:23.540]  If you're into satellites, they can always use some hand and developing code, developing hardware, testing, all kinds of things.
[11:24.980 --> 11:25.940]  Doing satellites.
[11:29.540 --> 11:30.020]  Balloons.
[11:30.220 --> 11:33.300]  Now, this is really a cool project, I think.
[11:33.560 --> 11:39.600]  So, a lot of schools and a lot of programs will send up weather balloons.
[11:39.600 --> 11:44.600]  Yeah, you know, that's kind of, you know, that's a cool thing to do.
[11:44.760 --> 11:46.020]  And, yeah, people do it.
[11:46.320 --> 11:51.780]  And they track it with APRS, which stands for Automatic Packet Reporting System.
[11:51.800 --> 11:53.620]  It's a type of pack of radio.
[11:54.960 --> 12:00.700]  But what I think is even cooler, this guy here, and I forget his call sign off the top of my head.
[12:00.700 --> 12:01.500]  I should have wrote it down.
[12:01.700 --> 12:04.200]  He's doing what he calls Pico balloons.
[12:04.460 --> 12:09.080]  And he gets just plain old helium balloons that you, you know, buy at Dollar Tree.
[12:10.180 --> 12:13.500]  And seriously, seriously, I'm not kidding you.
[12:14.240 --> 12:18.640]  He gets these Dollar Tree balloons and puts this electronics on it.
[12:18.700 --> 12:21.880]  And he can track these things all over the world.
[12:22.840 --> 12:29.140]  He just sends them up and, you know, he can track them all over the world.
[12:29.580 --> 12:36.700]  In fact, I don't know if you remember, a year or two ago, there was a story about a balloon that the U.S.
[12:36.860 --> 12:40.520]  military shot down somewhere over North Dakota, I think.
[12:40.760 --> 12:44.060]  And it wasn't a Chinese balloon, but it was another one.
[12:44.140 --> 12:44.920]  There was like two of them.
[12:45.320 --> 12:54.640]  Well, I think, it's not confirmed, but I think one of those was actually one of these Pico balloons.
[12:57.300 --> 13:00.740]  And so, you might ask, well, what's the point?
[13:00.820 --> 13:05.080]  Well, you know, I'm talking to the wrong crowd here, because you know what the point is, just because you can do it, right?
[13:08.280 --> 13:15.200]  But, you know, when I talk to other groups, I can see in their eyes, why the heck is they doing that?
[13:15.380 --> 13:17.440]  Well, we do it because we can do it.
[13:17.520 --> 13:18.960]  You know, that's the whole thing.
[13:18.960 --> 13:24.500]  But these Pico balloons are really cool, and this guy's got a lot of experience doing this.
[13:24.820 --> 13:26.780]  He shows up at Dayton every year.
[13:30.380 --> 13:31.500]  Digital communications.
[13:31.680 --> 13:34.740]  So, digital communications is becoming more and more a part of ham radio.
[13:35.040 --> 13:36.800]  And, you know, with good reason.
[13:37.520 --> 13:43.360]  There's several projects that are doing some interesting work in digital communications.
[13:44.260 --> 13:46.120]  One is the M17 project.
[13:47.180 --> 13:56.540]  They're developing open-source hardware and open-source software, and, as it says, will offer a complete digital radio protocol for data and voice.
[13:56.960 --> 14:01.700]  And the cool thing about this is, it's going to be all open-source.
[14:03.480 --> 14:07.720]  Right now, we do do digital communications in ham radio.
[14:07.900 --> 14:12.480]  You know, if you do DMR, you know those systems.
[14:12.480 --> 14:17.760]  There's ICOM that has, I forget what they call it, DSTAR.
[14:18.320 --> 14:19.500]  Yesu has system fusion.
[14:19.800 --> 14:31.260]  But the problem with all those systems, while they're not, they'll say they're open-source or not proprietary, but they kind of are because they all use a proprietary vocoder chip.
[14:31.860 --> 14:35.760]  Well, the M17 project is going to be completely open-source.
[14:36.900 --> 14:40.800]  And so, that's an ongoing project.
[14:40.800 --> 14:47.420]  It's being funded, actually, by a private foundation that I used to work for called Amateur Radio Digital Communications.
[14:48.980 --> 14:56.780]  And Amateur Radio Digital Communications was founded to promote amateur radio projects just like this.
[14:57.420 --> 15:03.780]  And, yeah, it actually has some money behind it.
[15:03.780 --> 15:05.440]  So, that's sort of the point here.
[15:05.680 --> 15:11.900]  It's not like a lot of open-source projects where a developer will get a certain way and then just totally abandon it.
[15:12.000 --> 15:14.420]  At least, we hope this one won't be totally abandoned.
[15:15.380 --> 15:16.800]  Another one is FreeDV.
[15:17.200 --> 15:20.080]  They're doing a digital voice for HF radio.
[15:20.260 --> 15:21.440]  That's shortwave radio.
[15:21.440 --> 15:32.180]  The challenge there in difference to the M17 is that they're working on HF where you have a more severe bandwidth limitation.
[15:32.460 --> 15:39.940]  So, the FreeDV is going to hopefully, you know, be useful on HF.
[15:40.760 --> 15:42.220]  And one of the things...
[15:42.220 --> 15:44.300]  They're also being funded by ARDC, in fact.
[15:44.540 --> 15:51.000]  And one of the goals of this project is to actually get this protocol built into commercial radios.
[15:51.160 --> 15:56.300]  And we think that that will really help that take off.
[15:58.580 --> 16:07.440]  And talking about ARDC, ARDC was formed because...
[16:07.440 --> 16:08.860]  And this is kind of an amazing story.
[16:09.300 --> 16:18.640]  Back in the day, when the Internet was first being formed, one ham had the foresight to request a block of IP addresses for amateur radio.
[16:19.200 --> 16:22.980]  And he was given a full block.
[16:22.980 --> 16:26.980]  They would get whatever IP addresses started...
[16:26.980 --> 16:27.120]  What?
[16:27.320 --> 16:28.280]  Class A.
[16:28.280 --> 16:28.860]  Class A.
[16:28.980 --> 16:30.960]  That's what I was trying to think of.
[16:31.860 --> 16:32.660]  And so...
[16:33.620 --> 16:34.420]  I know.
[16:34.580 --> 16:36.060]  It's kind of an amazing story.
[16:36.260 --> 16:44.620]  And it was being administered on sort of an ad hoc basis by, you know, a group of six ham's or seven or eight ham's.
[16:48.520 --> 16:54.360]  And the Internet authority asked them to become a real non-profit organization.
[16:54.440 --> 16:55.200]  Which they did.
[16:55.400 --> 16:57.160]  That's when ARDC was formed.
[16:57.740 --> 17:03.700]  And about five or six years ago, they determined that they were really never going to use that whole block.
[17:03.900 --> 17:08.100]  And they sold off part of it to a large retailer who I cannot name.
[17:08.320 --> 17:10.600]  For a sum of money, which I cannot name.
[17:11.780 --> 17:13.520]  But you can probably guess.
[17:13.660 --> 17:15.720]  And you can find it on Wikipedia, I think.
[17:16.360 --> 17:23.700]  And with that money, they've been able to fund all these projects to the tune of about five or six million dollars a year.
[17:24.180 --> 17:27.780]  So you can guess at what the sales price was from then.
[17:29.140 --> 17:33.480]  But they still, to this day, they still do administer the 44 net.
[17:33.620 --> 17:38.300]  There's still, you know, three quarters of that address space that hasn't been sold off.
[17:38.300 --> 17:45.720]  And you can request a block of addresses and have at it.
[17:45.760 --> 17:47.520]  Whatever you like to do with it.
[17:47.660 --> 17:49.340]  As long as it's ham radio related.
[17:51.600 --> 17:54.120]  So that's digital communications.
[17:56.300 --> 17:56.900]  Software.
[17:57.200 --> 18:00.460]  There's the GNU radio for software-defined radio.
[18:00.720 --> 18:03.520]  I don't know how many of you know about this project.
[18:03.520 --> 18:07.780]  But they're doing, like I say, this is all open-source, too.
[18:08.880 --> 18:11.060]  Partly being funded by ARGC, as well.
[18:11.500 --> 18:16.880]  But it has a whole sort of toolkit, if you will, for doing software-defined radio.
[18:17.600 --> 18:18.880]  And there's a...
[18:20.640 --> 18:22.240]  This is kind of a busy slide.
[18:22.400 --> 18:24.940]  But it shows you kind of what you can do with it.
[18:26.140 --> 18:30.060]  This is a block diagram for an FM receiver.
[18:30.060 --> 18:39.440]  And you can either program some of these blocks yourself or use pre-existing blocks and just configure it.
[18:39.560 --> 18:41.560]  Configure it almost like a Lego set.
[18:43.280 --> 18:46.200]  And, you know, do whatever it is you'd like to do with it.
[18:48.040 --> 18:54.760]  A lot of people use it for simulating, as well as actual radio systems.
[18:54.760 --> 19:03.980]  And, like in this case, for example, this is like a source, the block in the middle.
[19:04.200 --> 19:11.380]  So, you can simulate an RTL SDR receiver and then feed it into the different blocks to do your signal processing.
[19:11.780 --> 19:15.360]  And then, at the end, have some kind of output.
[19:17.720 --> 19:33.960]  So, I know I went over these things kind of fast, and that was my intent, is just to go over these things quickly, show you what you can possibly do with ham radio, and then sort of get you thinking about what you might want to try in ham radio.
[19:34.220 --> 19:36.080]  Like, what can...
[19:36.080 --> 19:38.080]  If you had a license, what would you do?
[19:38.820 --> 19:40.240]  Here are some ideas here.
[19:40.240 --> 19:48.740]  I think that using some kind of artificial intelligence in some kind of ham radio project is like the next thing.
[19:50.420 --> 19:51.540]  I don't know what.
[19:51.700 --> 19:59.180]  I'm not an expert in AI, but I just have a feeling that there's something out there that'll make ham radio more fun.
[19:59.520 --> 20:01.440]  AI agents for contesting.
[20:01.820 --> 20:02.080]  Right.
[20:02.640 --> 20:03.200]  Yeah.
[20:04.040 --> 20:08.420]  You know, having said that, though, I wonder how much fun that would be.
[20:08.420 --> 20:10.460]  I mean, you know what I'm saying?
[20:10.740 --> 20:18.960]  It's like, I don't know if you know what FT8 is, but FT8 is a digital mode that was developed by a guy named...
[20:18.960 --> 20:20.280]  What's the guy's name?
[20:20.280 --> 20:20.680]  Joe Taylor.
[20:20.940 --> 20:21.620]  Joe Taylor.
[20:21.940 --> 20:27.940]  And, you know, it's a very cool thing from a technological point of view.
[20:28.440 --> 20:28.920]  It can...
[20:28.920 --> 20:44.460]  You know, it's a way to make a communication between two stations where conditions are very poor, and you're using poor antennas, and, you know, it's almost magic the way that software can pull a signal out of nothing.
[20:44.840 --> 20:46.540]  But is it fun?
[20:46.780 --> 20:47.380]  You know?
[20:48.900 --> 20:49.380]  Okay.
[20:49.620 --> 20:50.120]  Well, good.
[20:53.360 --> 21:01.860]  You know, I mean, in contesting, you know, it seems to me like you want to be something you do yourself.
[21:01.860 --> 21:03.540]  But, you know, maybe that's me.
[21:04.620 --> 21:06.020]  But anyway, that's it.
[21:06.320 --> 21:15.920]  You know, another thing I thought of is, you know, you might go down to your radio station and say, okay, Sparky, you can call it Sparky instead of Alexa.
[21:16.280 --> 21:18.040]  You know, what are band conditions today?
[21:18.400 --> 21:24.500]  You know, what band should I use to talk to somebody in Turkey today?
[21:24.680 --> 21:24.900]  You know?
[21:25.040 --> 21:25.980]  I mean, that kind of thing.
[21:25.980 --> 21:30.340]  Like, maybe that's something that could be tacked on a little bit.
[21:32.080 --> 21:41.940]  You could maybe have it monitor your radio to say, you know, and have it say, hey, Sparky, what's my radio, how's my radio working today?
[21:42.000 --> 21:45.080]  Say, well, you know, it looks like the finals are getting a little weak.
[21:45.220 --> 21:46.480]  You might want to check that out.
[21:46.480 --> 21:50.020]  Or, you know, the SWR in your antenna system seems a little bit high.
[21:50.020 --> 21:52.980]  You might want to check those connections or, you know, something like that.
[21:53.140 --> 21:56.900]  You know, let your imagination run wild on that.
[21:58.580 --> 22:04.780]  When I was going to start to give this talk, I thought, well, let me get some input from some people.
[22:04.900 --> 22:08.000]  And I put this out on Mastin and I said, you know, I'm going to be giving this talk.
[22:08.840 --> 22:16.240]  What can, what could I say that would maybe spark some interest in people in this hacker community?
[22:16.520 --> 22:18.820]  And one of them, and I never even thought of this.
[22:18.820 --> 22:22.200]  One of the folks said, make ham radio equipment more accessible.
[22:22.860 --> 22:28.120]  I think that would, that might be a great project for somebody who's interested in doing that.
[22:29.660 --> 22:39.600]  You know, currently there's some radios that will talk to you, but, you know, there's got to be something to make it more, make them more accessible.
[22:40.920 --> 22:44.040]  And then reverse engineer data modes.
[22:44.740 --> 22:50.020]  This person was obviously interested in reverse engineering the Russian data modes.
[22:50.220 --> 22:53.820]  But, but yeah, you know, you could always do something like that.
[22:54.040 --> 22:59.020]  You know, there's, there's, there's a station called the buzzer out there.
[22:59.180 --> 23:11.020]  And somebody says that people are saying that it's a Russian spy station and nobody's been able to quite, able to figure out what the purpose of those buzzer transmissions are.
[23:11.020 --> 23:15.140]  Well, that's a, that's a good thing to try and hack, right?
[23:15.260 --> 23:17.400]  So let me talk a little bit about getting a license.
[23:18.900 --> 23:22.620]  You know, here in the U.S., there's, there's three levels of amateur radio license.
[23:23.060 --> 23:23.460]  Yeah.
[23:23.640 --> 23:26.660]  The technician class, the general class, and the extra class.
[23:27.700 --> 23:30.720]  And you have to take a test for each one of those three levels.
[23:33.120 --> 23:40.240]  To get a license, if you're currently don't have a license, you can get a copy of my free study guide, just right off my website.
[23:41.380 --> 23:42.840]  Then find a test session.
[23:42.980 --> 23:44.160]  That's, that's easy to do.
[23:44.260 --> 23:45.920]  There's test sessions all over the country.
[23:46.140 --> 23:47.820]  You can even take the test online.
[23:49.420 --> 23:54.140]  And if you've got the time tomorrow, you can take my, my class.
[23:54.140 --> 23:59.300]  I'm going to be teaching a one-day tech class tomorrow here, I think across the way somewhere.
[24:00.140 --> 24:05.680]  And the problem is it takes all day, but I do have a pretty good success rate with it.
[24:07.860 --> 24:10.220]  So you can, feel free to come and join us.
[24:10.960 --> 24:19.840]  And, and if, and if, if you already have a license and you want to try and upgrade, you can probably, you can come to the, to the test session, which will probably start about 5 PM.
[24:20.360 --> 24:21.800]  Uh, that's what I'm guessing.
[24:22.380 --> 24:32.160]  And, uh, and if you don't even have to take the test class to take the test, like I've been telling some people, they just get a copy of my study guide, read through it a few times.
[24:32.400 --> 24:34.400]  You can take some practice tests online.
[24:34.640 --> 24:39.140]  And if you feel confident enough to take the test, you can just come and take the test period.
[24:40.320 --> 24:40.720]  Yeah.
[24:40.840 --> 24:41.740]  And the test is free.
[24:41.900 --> 24:42.100]  Right.
[24:42.480 --> 24:42.700]  Right.
[24:43.100 --> 24:46.840]  And so, so since the test is free, you know, if you pass it, great.
[24:47.020 --> 24:47.680]  If you don't, well...
[24:47.680 --> 24:48.500]  Who's testing today?
[24:49.040 --> 24:49.440]  Tomorrow.
[24:49.840 --> 24:50.200]  Tomorrow.
[24:50.540 --> 24:50.940]  Tomorrow.
[24:51.540 --> 24:52.140]  Free testing.
[24:52.600 --> 24:52.800]  Free testing.
[24:52.800 --> 24:53.480]  Maybe today too.
[24:56.620 --> 24:57.020]  Right.
[24:57.220 --> 24:58.560]  There's a fee for the license.
[24:58.720 --> 25:05.100]  Once you pass the test is $35, but that's nothing I have control over.
[25:05.300 --> 25:08.840]  So we can only, we can only give you the test for free.
[25:08.940 --> 25:10.420]  That's 10 years for 35 bucks.
[25:10.500 --> 25:10.620]  Yeah.
[25:10.800 --> 25:11.180]  10 years.
[25:12.660 --> 25:13.060]  Right.
[25:13.260 --> 25:13.460]  Right.
[25:13.920 --> 25:14.640]  And you know what?
[25:14.880 --> 25:16.080]  That's the other thing about that.
[25:16.260 --> 25:19.140]  The FCC, which is the federal communications community mission.
[25:19.820 --> 25:22.340]  Which, which governs amateur radio here in the U.S.
[25:22.540 --> 25:24.080]  They didn't even want to charge that fee.
[25:24.200 --> 25:25.740]  That was imposed on them by Congress.
[25:26.640 --> 25:26.740]  So.
[25:27.620 --> 25:28.400]  Shock face.
[25:28.580 --> 25:29.040]  Take, yeah.
[25:29.280 --> 25:31.340]  Take, take that for, disgusted face.
[25:31.620 --> 25:32.720]  Take that for what you will.
[25:33.440 --> 25:35.800]  I mean, that, that concludes my talk.
[25:35.800 --> 25:41.280]  I don't know if you guys have any questions or, I'm feel, feel.
[25:41.600 --> 25:44.300]  Thank you.
[25:44.720 --> 25:44.940]  Thank you.
[25:45.600 --> 25:45.700]  Thank you.
[25:45.920 --> 25:46.880]  Thank you.
[25:46.880 --> 25:47.300]  Thank you.
[25:47.620 --> 25:47.960]  Thank you.
[25:48.360 --> 25:49.060]  Well, good idea.
[25:49.320 --> 25:51.400]  So how many of you already do have licenses?
[25:52.360 --> 25:52.780]  Wow.
[25:52.800 --> 25:53.280]  That's great.
[25:54.380 --> 25:55.320]  That's really good.
[25:56.480 --> 25:59.660]  So, so, so, you know, we have a, we, the ham radio village.
[25:59.820 --> 26:01.240]  There's, we have a little table down there.
[26:01.320 --> 26:03.660]  You can, we should have, we should have a guest book there probably.
[26:04.580 --> 26:06.540]  But, uh, stop by and say hi to us.
[26:08.060 --> 26:10.720]  We also have a ham radio repeater on site here.
[26:10.760 --> 26:12.220]  So if you want to use it, please do.
[26:12.820 --> 26:13.420]  I don't know.
[26:13.420 --> 26:14.480]  I don't have the frequency.
[26:15.120 --> 26:16.200]  I got a picture of it.
[26:16.200 --> 26:17.680]  There are, there are those sorts of pictures.
[26:18.280 --> 26:26.320]  In your opinion, what are some of the things we should be able to do with our licenses or without them that government prevents us from doing?
[26:26.480 --> 26:27.720]  Oh, well, that's a good point.
[26:27.900 --> 26:32.580]  So the question is, what, what does the government really prevent us from doing with a ham radio license?
[26:32.800 --> 26:37.160]  Well, of course, if you have a license already, you know, there's a rule against encryption.
[26:37.260 --> 26:40.120]  We can't send encrypted transmissions.
[26:41.000 --> 27:01.280]  I, I'm always of the opinion that we should be able to do it at least on some portion of some band somewhere, you know, like even, even, uh, so, so for example, you know, I, I would be in favor of, uh, allowing encrypted transmissions on a small portion of the 900 megahertz or 1.2 gigahertz band.
[27:01.520 --> 27:12.300]  You know, you're not going to get, it's not really very, you know, it's not, not a long distance communication and, and, well, yeah, but not, not that far.
[27:12.480 --> 27:16.140]  But, yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty much line of sight.
[27:18.380 --> 27:27.040]  But, but, but I, I think, I think that goes along with the, uh, the, uh, one of the purposes, which is to encourage experimentation, right?
[27:27.040 --> 27:33.300]  And so, I don't know, I don't know, you can ask this guy what the ARRL is going to do about that.
[27:36.560 --> 27:44.540]  So, if you use the M17 project in a country outside of the United States, there is encryption built into it, so you can experiment with that.
[27:44.680 --> 27:45.480]  Well, that's a good point.
[27:45.620 --> 27:46.480]  That's a good point, too.
[27:46.640 --> 27:46.740]  Yeah.
[27:46.740 --> 27:46.760]  Yeah.
[27:47.320 --> 27:50.800]  So, let me just, let me, before I get to other questions, let me, let me say...
[27:50.800 --> 27:59.780]  Versus a, just any kind of digital mode, like anytime you're doing anything digitally already, you're converting analog to digital and you have some kind of algorithm that...
[27:59.780 --> 28:00.220]  Well, right.
[28:01.040 --> 28:02.140]  Right, right, right.
[28:02.580 --> 28:02.780]  So...
[28:02.780 --> 28:04.880]  I mean, that's kind of inherently encrypted already.
[28:05.020 --> 28:07.420]  What kind of a mode can you have that isn't called encrypted?
[28:07.640 --> 28:07.900]  Right.
[28:08.320 --> 28:19.320]  So, so the difference between encrypted and encoded is that the code, the coded transmission, an encoded transmission is one where the protocol is publicly available.
[28:19.660 --> 28:21.280]  So, you just put it on the web and that's good?
[28:21.420 --> 28:22.120]  You can broadcast it?
[28:22.120 --> 28:22.340]  Yes.
[28:22.860 --> 28:23.140]  Yes.
[28:23.340 --> 28:23.660]  You can.
[28:23.920 --> 28:25.480]  By the way, there is one exemption.
[28:25.540 --> 28:29.500]  I've got a flag somewhere on something, something, something.tw or whatever.
[28:29.620 --> 28:32.080]  As long as I publish my thing there, I can transmit with that.
[28:32.180 --> 28:32.660]  You can.
[28:32.860 --> 28:32.980]  Yep.
[28:33.360 --> 28:33.520]  Yep.
[28:33.700 --> 28:33.780]  Yep.
[28:33.860 --> 28:35.380]  It's a, it comes down to intent.
[28:35.760 --> 28:36.860]  That was a follow-up.
[28:37.180 --> 28:43.080]  By the way, there is one exception to the encryption rule, which is for communicating after satellite.
[28:43.080 --> 28:43.600]  Right.
[28:43.780 --> 28:44.320]  Right.
[28:44.540 --> 28:44.900]  Right.
[28:45.520 --> 28:45.920]  Right.
[28:46.320 --> 28:46.460]  That's...
[28:46.460 --> 28:55.760]  For command and control, also, if non-encryption would put life or property at imminent risk and no other means of communications allowed, you would get away with it.
[28:55.840 --> 28:56.240]  I heard that would make sense.
[28:56.420 --> 28:56.620]  Okay.
[28:57.060 --> 28:57.400]  Yeah.
[28:57.900 --> 28:58.720]  There's a...
[28:58.720 --> 29:05.520]  What I say about that rule is, there's a rule that you have to always abide by FCC rules.
[29:05.520 --> 29:13.080]  Except when property or human life is involved, then the rule is you can break the rule.
[29:13.480 --> 29:13.700]  Yeah.
[29:14.180 --> 29:14.760]  There's an exception.
[29:15.320 --> 29:15.420]  Yeah.
[29:15.560 --> 29:15.960]  It's a catch...
[29:16.520 --> 29:18.400]  I call it the ham radio catch-22.
[29:20.120 --> 29:20.280]  Yeah.
[29:21.580 --> 29:23.860]  Are there limits on machine-to-machine communication?
[29:25.680 --> 29:27.420]  Not that I can think of, really.
[29:27.700 --> 29:31.240]  For example, a rate limit for how quickly you can transmit or is good?
[29:32.720 --> 29:33.640]  Well, so...
[29:33.640 --> 29:34.020]  Right.
[29:34.140 --> 29:35.000]  So, that's a good point.
[29:35.140 --> 29:37.200]  So, there is a bandwidth limitations.
[29:37.440 --> 29:40.560]  And the rules for that have just changed, right?
[29:40.560 --> 29:45.760]  So, yeah, you have to look at the rules because I'm not an expert on that.
[29:45.880 --> 30:04.360]  But, like, I know on HF now, as long as the bandwidth is less than, like, 2.8 kilohertz or 2.6 kilohertz, whatever a standard single-side band signal is, then you can do whatever you want in that bandwidth.
[30:06.080 --> 30:09.620]  So, anyway, the...
[30:10.980 --> 30:14.240]  And, Tom, we have a question in from the Matrix as well.
[30:15.280 --> 30:15.740]  Hang on.
[30:15.940 --> 30:21.020]  Let me get the repeater frequencies here.
[30:21.200 --> 30:28.040]  It's 447.875 minus 5 megahertz and 169.7 PLO.
[30:28.140 --> 30:28.940]  Did you guys get that?
[30:29.180 --> 30:29.360]  No.
[30:29.760 --> 30:31.420]  447.875.
[30:31.860 --> 30:32.280]  Hold on.
[30:32.280 --> 30:33.400]  We've got to get paper out.
[30:33.660 --> 30:34.360]  It's in the book.
[30:34.680 --> 30:35.000]  It's in the book.
[30:35.000 --> 30:35.580]  It's in the book.
[30:36.160 --> 30:36.780]  It's in the book.
[30:37.360 --> 30:37.740]  All right.
[30:37.780 --> 30:39.140]  Look at the last page of the program.
[30:39.500 --> 30:40.420]  Use the repeater.
[30:40.580 --> 30:40.880]  Thank you.
[30:40.920 --> 30:41.600]  You win a prize.
[30:42.300 --> 30:42.600]  Okay.
[30:42.740 --> 30:42.820]  What?
[30:44.180 --> 30:48.300]  So, the question information is that they'd like to hear a bit about AM frequencies.
[30:48.620 --> 30:52.300]  I'm using AM as an amateur radio.
[30:52.680 --> 30:55.300]  Well, so, AM is an allowable mode still.
[30:55.460 --> 30:56.320]  Amplitude modulation.
[30:58.720 --> 31:07.520]  There's sort of an agreement amongst AMs that certain frequency ranges will be only used for AM.
[31:07.940 --> 31:12.160]  And so, for example, on the 40-meter band that's around 7290 kilohertz.
[31:13.620 --> 31:17.540]  You know, the rules don't say anything about where you need, where you can use them.
[31:17.600 --> 31:20.900]  As long as it's allowable for a phone transmission, you can use them anywhere.
[31:20.900 --> 31:30.040]  But mostly, the AM guys stay up around 7290, and they leave the rest of the band to the side band.
[31:32.420 --> 31:39.460]  I love the idea of getting obsessed with the technology to such a point that we don't really talk about what you talk about on him.
[31:39.680 --> 31:40.040]  Yeah.
[31:40.160 --> 31:41.660]  What do you share as far as information?
[31:43.780 --> 31:44.400]  Wait, wait.
[31:45.120 --> 31:46.280]  Run there by me again.
[31:46.280 --> 31:46.680]  I'm sorry.
[31:46.880 --> 31:48.400]  What conversations do you have?
[31:49.240 --> 31:51.120]  Well, so that's a good question.
[31:51.380 --> 31:53.720]  So, we do talk a lot about ham radio, right?
[31:53.820 --> 31:56.780]  I mean, we talk about, you know...
[31:57.460 --> 32:00.320]  I try to talk a little about the weather as possible.
[32:00.620 --> 32:02.800]  But I'll give you an example.
[32:04.500 --> 32:15.380]  So, while we do talk a lot about our equipment and our antennas and stuff like that, you know, if you dig a little deeper with folks, they're willing to talk to you about whatever, right?
[32:15.380 --> 32:21.380]  I mean, it's like meeting someone at a bar or just here at HOPE.
[32:22.180 --> 32:24.820]  You know, you ask them about themselves.
[32:24.820 --> 32:25.760]  They tell you.
[32:26.400 --> 32:29.660]  If they're interesting, then you can dig a little further.
[32:30.300 --> 32:32.280]  You know, some people are not quite so interesting.
[32:32.280 --> 32:33.180]  So, that's fine.
[32:33.340 --> 32:33.900]  You know, that's fine.
[32:34.000 --> 32:36.380]  But I'll give you really one big example.
[32:36.380 --> 32:40.720]  So, there's a guy I started talking to on the radio.
[32:40.720 --> 32:46.460]  And he's an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina.
[32:47.100 --> 32:49.340]  And we got to talk about that a little bit.
[32:49.360 --> 32:52.980]  And I like to consider myself a little bit of an educated person.
[32:53.040 --> 32:55.200]  I said, okay, you know, tell...
[32:55.200 --> 33:01.760]  He had written a book, which as it turns out, is like the book for Anthropology 101 across the country.
[33:02.400 --> 33:04.020]  And he told me the name of the book.
[33:04.180 --> 33:05.720]  I got the book out and I read it.
[33:05.900 --> 33:06.020]  Right?
[33:06.260 --> 33:08.700]  So, every once in a while, we talk about anthropology.
[33:09.260 --> 33:09.600]  You know?
[33:09.740 --> 33:13.120]  I don't want to talk about it too much with him because I don't want him to bore him.
[33:13.200 --> 33:16.000]  You know, it's like ham radio is supposed to be a hobby.
[33:16.140 --> 33:16.240]  Right?
[33:16.560 --> 33:17.740]  But we'll talk about that.
[33:17.740 --> 33:23.180]  And, you know, I've written some books like text, not anthropology books, but I've got study guides.
[33:23.360 --> 33:27.600]  And so, sometimes we talk about book publishing and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[33:27.840 --> 33:30.800]  So, it's like just talking to anybody, you know?
[33:30.800 --> 33:33.000]  Sometimes you run across interesting people.
[33:33.120 --> 33:35.460]  Sometimes you run across not so interesting people.
[33:35.700 --> 33:37.520]  And, you know, you deal with it however.
[33:37.960 --> 33:38.060]  Right?
[33:39.020 --> 33:40.600]  I mean, that's...
[33:41.420 --> 33:45.600]  Unfortunately, ham radio has gotten into a rut, if you will.
[33:45.820 --> 33:52.240]  You know, there's a formulaic first transmission and then kind of formulaic second transmission.
[33:52.320 --> 33:55.080]  And the trick is to break out of that.
[33:55.520 --> 33:55.640]  Right?
[33:55.860 --> 33:57.200]  And how do you do that?
[33:57.200 --> 34:01.720]  Well, if you're a decent conversationalist, you can do that.
[34:01.840 --> 34:02.720]  And I'll tell you what.
[34:02.860 --> 34:05.040]  I even learned something today about that.
[34:05.200 --> 34:06.660]  Watching Ed operate.
[34:07.060 --> 34:07.380]  Ed...
[34:07.380 --> 34:09.360]  This is Ed Wilson, N2XDD.
[34:09.740 --> 34:15.760]  He's the Hudson division director now, almost, for the ARRL.
[34:16.060 --> 34:17.100]  And watching him...
[34:17.100 --> 34:20.780]  Honestly, watching him talk to people today, he's got that gift.
[34:20.780 --> 34:23.640]  Whereas, a lot of hams are more introverted types.
[34:23.760 --> 34:25.120]  We sometimes don't have that gift.
[34:25.660 --> 34:27.600]  But, you know, if you break...
[34:27.600 --> 34:29.080]  You got to do that yourself.
[34:29.300 --> 34:29.360]  Right?
[34:29.440 --> 34:30.640]  That's this thing you do yourself.
[34:31.260 --> 34:32.300]  You know, does that make sense?
[34:33.780 --> 34:34.180]  So...
[34:34.180 --> 34:36.980]  It's just not weather in our latest medical issues.
[34:37.400 --> 34:37.600]  No.
[34:38.460 --> 34:39.480]  That's the other joke.
[34:39.660 --> 34:41.480]  That's the other joke is that it's...
[34:41.480 --> 34:43.080]  And why is it that?
[34:43.260 --> 34:47.380]  Well, you know, a lot of hams are advanced in age, let's say.
[34:47.780 --> 34:51.000]  And so, we maybe have more medical problems.
[34:51.260 --> 34:56.020]  So, people like to complain about their medical issues.
[34:56.180 --> 34:56.240]  Right?
[34:56.320 --> 34:57.380]  I mean, that's just the way it is.
[34:57.820 --> 34:58.980]  Well, that's got...
[34:58.980 --> 34:59.900]  Ham radio is...
[34:59.900 --> 35:02.440]  In fact, there's a term for that in ham radio.
[35:02.560 --> 35:03.740]  It's called the geritol net.
[35:05.380 --> 35:06.960]  Can I add something to that?
[35:07.060 --> 35:07.240]  Sure, please.
[35:07.640 --> 35:11.500]  So, there are specialized, what they call nets, for people with the same interest.
[35:11.500 --> 35:18.080]  There's two of the DEF CON groups, the RF Sanctuary group, and the ham radio village group.
[35:18.220 --> 35:19.880]  They each have a net on DMR.
[35:20.040 --> 35:22.380]  So, you can go and talk about hackery things.
[35:22.680 --> 35:24.940]  And there's a Linux group out there.
[35:25.080 --> 35:34.140]  And pretty much anything that you would find interesting, there's probably a group of hams that are interested in the same thing that you can go and talk to them on the radio about.
[35:35.080 --> 35:35.540]  Yeah.
[35:36.180 --> 35:40.660]  Same night, same time, every week, so we can come and go with kids.
[35:42.340 --> 35:44.920]  And those DMR nets are repeated nationwide?
[35:45.400 --> 35:45.700]  Yeah.
[35:46.840 --> 35:51.700]  Or, as long as you know the talk group, and you have a way to access them, you can access them that way.
[35:52.160 --> 35:52.540]  Yeah.
[35:53.320 --> 35:54.560]  We'll be across the way.
[35:54.980 --> 35:57.460]  Come on by, we'll give you some frequencies and talk groups.
[35:59.060 --> 36:00.420]  We got another question over here.
[36:00.680 --> 36:01.180]  Any other?
[36:01.380 --> 36:01.640]  Yeah.
[36:02.900 --> 36:08.000]  So, I am in the process of putting up some hotspots.
[36:08.740 --> 36:10.320]  And sometimes they ask for geo.
[36:11.360 --> 36:15.020]  How do you, like, well, most of us have local ham shacks.
[36:15.180 --> 36:22.560]  But, like, how do you have, like, a publicly, like, announced hotspot without doxing yourself?
[36:22.720 --> 36:25.440]  I know, like, our call signs are enough of a dox.
[36:26.400 --> 36:27.500]  I did the P.O.
[36:27.500 --> 36:29.860]  box, as many a hacker do.
[36:29.860 --> 36:37.100]  But, like, how do I continue to not dox myself by running hotspots out of my ham shack?
[36:37.360 --> 36:39.440]  Do I just straight up not announce the geo?
[36:40.020 --> 36:43.180]  And just, like, if somebody finds it, surprise.
[36:43.960 --> 36:49.720]  Yeah, well, so I guess it's a matter of how much you want other people to use it, right?
[36:50.300 --> 36:52.320]  Like, you know, you can't expect...
[36:52.320 --> 36:55.540]  Like, say you weren't putting up a hotspot, you're putting up just a repeater.
[36:55.760 --> 37:01.300]  Well, if you didn't want people to use it, why would you give out the frequency?
[37:01.300 --> 37:04.360]  You know, isn't it sort of the same thing?
[37:04.880 --> 37:07.380]  Yeah, I'm thinking about, like...
[37:07.380 --> 37:10.620]  So, in my case, it's PyStar for YSF.
[37:10.760 --> 37:11.160]  Yeah.
[37:11.800 --> 37:15.100]  And right now, the geo's off just because it's for personal use.
[37:15.280 --> 37:15.480]  Yeah.
[37:15.480 --> 37:21.260]  But I noticed, like, there's lacking, like, coverage in certain areas.
[37:21.360 --> 37:23.080]  And I'm like, maybe I can spin something up.
[37:23.240 --> 37:29.020]  But then I also think, okay, if this gets announced, well, they know my address.
[37:29.200 --> 37:29.800]  I have your answer.
[37:30.120 --> 37:31.460]  You start a radio club.
[37:31.640 --> 37:33.020]  It takes four members to start a club.
[37:33.180 --> 37:34.060]  That's what I was thinking.
[37:34.280 --> 37:35.120]  Do I need a club?
[37:35.800 --> 37:37.440]  And what's your threat model, though?
[37:38.180 --> 37:39.220]  What's your threat model?
[37:39.320 --> 37:40.900]  What are you really trying to mitigate here?
[37:41.340 --> 37:43.220]  I mean, I understand the risk.
[37:43.220 --> 37:49.980]  There won't be folks that send, like, you know, like, piles of shit to the doorstep and stuff like that.
[37:50.000 --> 37:51.020]  I don't think you're gonna call them.
[37:51.300 --> 37:51.520]  Yeah.
[37:52.380 --> 37:53.360]  What area do you live in?
[37:53.420 --> 37:54.160]  I'll go beat them all.
[38:00.800 --> 38:02.720]  Well, but, no, I understand.
[38:02.760 --> 38:04.140]  I understand what you're getting at.
[38:04.380 --> 38:07.840]  But I don't think that's been a problem in ham radio.
[38:08.080 --> 38:08.280]  Okay.
[38:08.580 --> 38:08.900]  You know?
[38:09.220 --> 38:11.460]  So, you know...
[38:11.460 --> 38:13.420]  I just make a club.
[38:14.560 --> 38:15.320]  Come see me.
[38:15.400 --> 38:15.980]  We'll get you a club.
[38:16.300 --> 38:19.940]  But even if you do make a club, right?
[38:20.100 --> 38:22.940]  I mean, if you're putting geolocation on it, you know where it is.
[38:23.180 --> 38:29.200]  So, the geolocation for the hotspots, I don't think it's absolutely necessary.
[38:29.500 --> 38:30.920]  You don't have to be precise.
[38:31.500 --> 38:31.620]  Okay.
[38:31.620 --> 38:31.700]  Yeah.
[38:31.860 --> 38:32.700]  You can...
[38:33.180 --> 38:35.060]  You know, within the same ZIP Code...
[38:35.060 --> 38:35.660]  Yeah.
[38:35.880 --> 38:38.780]  You can put a GPS coordinates within the same ZIP Code.
[38:38.920 --> 38:42.840]  I think, more or less, they want your grid square more than anything.
[38:42.840 --> 38:43.160]  Yeah.
[38:43.260 --> 38:45.340]  That's what I've been leaning on really hard.
[38:45.500 --> 38:49.100]  Just, like, always enabling ambiguity and grid square only.
[38:49.220 --> 38:53.440]  And if you're gonna use YSF, YSF uses GPS to begin with.
[38:53.440 --> 38:58.260]  So, if you're talking to somebody, your call sign is encoded with your location.
[38:59.160 --> 39:01.800]  But I can enable ambiguity on my agenda.
[39:01.800 --> 39:02.300]  Yes, you can.
[39:02.780 --> 39:03.220]  So...
[39:03.220 --> 39:03.620]  You can do...
[39:03.620 --> 39:05.700]  You don't have to be precise with the location.
[39:06.020 --> 39:06.040]  Yeah.
[39:06.980 --> 39:07.920]  And don't use Pistar.
[39:10.220 --> 39:10.660]  WPSD.
[39:12.000 --> 39:13.020]  What's your call sign?
[39:14.240 --> 39:14.680]  W2EKY.
[39:15.020 --> 39:15.160]  Okay.
[39:15.160 --> 39:16.240]  We know where you live.
[39:16.400 --> 39:17.240]  We're gonna get some stuff.
[39:18.300 --> 39:18.960]  I got that.
[39:21.080 --> 39:22.780]  What I was gonna say is...
[39:22.780 --> 39:22.900]  Okay.
[39:23.000 --> 39:24.980]  Now I know who not to talk to.
[39:25.080 --> 39:25.220]  Right.
[39:28.580 --> 39:30.960]  Do you have, like, a music radio or pirate radio?
[39:32.080 --> 39:32.820]  Well, no.
[39:33.060 --> 39:33.260]  No.
[39:33.460 --> 39:39.940]  So, one of the rules is you can't transmit, like, audible music over ham radio.
[39:40.080 --> 39:41.720]  And the joke I always make about that is...
[39:41.720 --> 39:47.460]  So, even if your mother was a ham radio operator, you can't sing happy birthday to her over the radio.
[39:47.780 --> 39:48.220]  Aww.
[39:49.260 --> 39:51.600]  Of course, the FCC might not...
[39:51.600 --> 39:56.160]  You know, your friends might not consider your singing to be music, but the FCC would.
[39:57.460 --> 40:01.920]  You find the appropriate touch tones that sound almost like it.
[40:02.320 --> 40:03.960]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[40:04.640 --> 40:07.800]  So, the other thing, though, talk about hacking, though.
[40:08.000 --> 40:09.800]  Here's the thing to bring this back a little bit to hacking.
[40:10.040 --> 40:18.440]  Because I always wondered why more amateur radio operators weren't involved with low-power FM stations.
[40:18.800 --> 40:25.200]  And, in fact, there's gonna be a talk about that here, which I'm gonna try and attend, about low-power FM.
[40:25.200 --> 40:29.380]  Because I think that this is an... you know, amateur radio is a service.
[40:29.700 --> 40:35.580]  I think this is one area where radio amateurs can help, you know, help community stations.
[40:36.000 --> 40:43.680]  So, you know, that... if you... I won't say whether or not you should start a pirate radio station, but...
[40:43.680 --> 40:50.680]  But, you know, if you had a low-power FM station in your community, maybe you could help them out.
[40:50.680 --> 40:51.560]  You know, that kind of thing.
[40:52.160 --> 40:52.580]  Somebody, yeah?
[40:52.940 --> 40:56.920]  So, there's a rule regarding the ability to be able to broadcast the space shuttle.
[40:57.100 --> 41:00.240]  They haven't updated that rule since we no longer fly the space shuttle.
[41:00.360 --> 41:01.720]  Well, that... no, there it... it is.
[41:02.020 --> 41:04.440]  Yeah, it does say something about a manned spacecraft.
[41:04.960 --> 41:05.980]  Oh, so it's all manned spacecraft.
[41:06.040 --> 41:06.940]  Yeah, all manned spacecraft.
[41:07.320 --> 41:07.720]  Docs.
[41:07.820 --> 41:08.260]  Thank you.
[41:08.560 --> 41:08.700]  Yeah.
[41:10.020 --> 41:15.980]  That... yeah, in fact, because, you know, the International Space Station is coming down in six years, so they really need the change.
[41:17.840 --> 41:18.780]  Any other questions?
[41:19.780 --> 41:20.380]  Somebody close.
[41:20.700 --> 41:21.800]  All right, well, thank you very much.
[41:21.900 --> 41:22.900]  If you... if you haven't...
[41:22.900 --> 41:23.260]  Woo!
[41:23.600 --> 41:23.980]  Thank you.
[41:23.980 --> 41:24.140]  Thank you.
[41:24.140 --> 41:24.160]  Thank you.