[00:00.000 --> 00:05.480]  But I still believe, there's only enough for one.
[00:05.680 --> 00:06.720]  And it's lonely.
[00:07.600 --> 00:08.860]  Oh damn sweet.
[00:11.520 --> 00:13.900]  The journey's long.
[00:15.560 --> 00:18.560]  And the pain's so bad.
[00:19.000 --> 00:23.100]  I'm thinking back to the last day we had.
[00:25.830 --> 00:28.050]  Alright, we'll get started here in just a second.
[00:28.210 --> 00:28.890]  Just a reminder.
[00:29.270 --> 00:29.650]  Thank you.
[00:30.430 --> 00:36.230]  DVD sales of all the discussions are on sale in the vendor area, right out here on the 18th floor.
[00:36.530 --> 00:39.970]  If you haven't been down to the second floor, there's a lot going on down there.
[00:40.150 --> 00:42.550]  People soldering things, taking things apart.
[00:42.790 --> 00:43.970]  Lots of stuff for sale.
[00:44.830 --> 00:49.110]  Agent Steele's books are on sale in the DVD area as well.
[00:49.230 --> 00:54.210]  And he's giving some kind of 18 hour marathon discussion that starts at midnight tonight.
[00:56.910 --> 00:59.990]  Don't forget the fourth track, which is the room down the hall.
[01:00.190 --> 01:01.630]  You can sign up and give your own discussion.
[01:01.770 --> 01:05.130]  And we'll be announcing those as the day goes on.
[01:05.650 --> 01:07.850]  Stuff like stack overflow and exploits.
[01:08.210 --> 01:12.710]  And hacking the NYC power grid, which is good for blackouts I suppose.
[01:14.030 --> 01:15.970]  But let's get going with these guys.
[01:16.550 --> 01:18.690]  You've seen them at a lot of the HOPE conferences.
[01:18.690 --> 01:20.950]  Skip, Joe, Lynn, and Bernie S.
[01:21.110 --> 01:23.330]  This is off the grid voice data communications.
[01:28.450 --> 01:29.050]  Thank you.
[01:31.070 --> 01:32.570]  So Bernie, I guess you're up first.
[01:33.490 --> 01:36.650]  So first of all, this is an incredibly vast topic.
[01:36.870 --> 01:39.750]  It's going to be really difficult for us to cover anything in depth.
[01:39.970 --> 01:45.230]  This is going to be an overview of a lot of the technologies that you guys can use for communications without any infrastructure at all.
[01:45.650 --> 01:53.830]  So we're going to be talking about various types of radios, the methods with which they work, and some of the things that you can do to get started with radio communications.
[01:54.470 --> 01:58.630]  So in some of these, we put in some tiny URLs.
[01:59.090 --> 02:09.010]  So if you see a little bit of text with some big letters next to it, the big letters are slash tiny URL slash that set of letters.
[02:09.010 --> 02:26.190]  So if there's something that intrigued you, like Joe said, this is just skimming over the top of what all is out there and definitely not getting into any detail about how it works or issues and vulnerabilities or problems with it and things like that,
[02:26.390 --> 02:26.510]  okay?
[02:27.030 --> 02:30.070]  So how many of you guys are ham radio operators or have any expo?
[02:30.170 --> 02:31.310]  Wow, we have a good amount of those.
[02:31.570 --> 02:31.750]  All right.
[02:31.870 --> 02:33.650]  Okay, so all of us up here are as well.
[02:33.790 --> 02:43.110]  So we're coming primarily from the aspect of ham radio operators, but we're going to try to cover a lot of the part 15 stuff as well and just give you guys some theory on how it all works.
[02:43.890 --> 02:46.950]  So, Ed, do you want to go and explain some of the radio?
[02:46.950 --> 02:47.070]  Oh, yeah.
[02:47.650 --> 03:02.470]  Since a nice percentage of you are amateur radio operators and we really encourage you to get your ham radio license, which you can get pretty easily Sunday morning at the VE volunteer examination session on the sixth floor, 10 o'clock Sunday morning.
[03:02.850 --> 03:03.590]  Come to the elevator.
[03:04.190 --> 03:05.770]  This is on the wiki if you haven't seen it.
[03:05.770 --> 03:11.890]  Just go up to the sixth floor Sunday morning and you pay $14, which is the FCC approved price, whatever.
[03:12.170 --> 03:15.590]  And you'll probably pass it if you have even a smattering of technical knowledge.
[03:16.810 --> 03:22.850]  And if you go to the hope wiki, there's a link to all the actual questions and answers used on the FCC exam.
[03:22.850 --> 03:25.990]  So, if you just memorize them, you'll pass this thing.
[03:26.150 --> 03:28.290]  Yeah, I mean, it's...
[03:29.530 --> 03:41.430]  If you have technical background and technical knowledge and you review some of those questions for the technician exam, you have a high likelihood of passing it, drop $14, give it a shot, see how it goes.
[03:41.550 --> 03:45.610]  If not, then you know what to expect to come back and do it another time.
[03:46.510 --> 03:50.390]  It's not necessary to have a ham radio license to do two-way communications.
[03:50.730 --> 03:54.510]  There's a lot of options available to unlicensed individuals.
[03:55.070 --> 03:59.970]  And we're going to talk about some of them too, since the majority of the people here are not licensed hams yet.
[04:00.850 --> 04:02.950]  So, I just want to go over some of the categories.
[04:03.090 --> 04:04.430]  The question, do they expire?
[04:04.610 --> 04:06.270]  Like, I had to use mine in 30 years.
[04:06.590 --> 04:07.950]  Yes, 10 years.
[04:08.770 --> 04:09.390]  10 years.
[04:09.570 --> 04:14.110]  Now, you might be able to get your old call sign back, but you'd have to retake the exams.
[04:14.110 --> 04:14.610]  Yeah.
[04:14.610 --> 04:15.870]  Can you put this in the middle here?
[04:16.550 --> 04:17.450]  Can I put what in the middle?
[04:18.750 --> 04:19.230]  Yeah.
[04:20.610 --> 04:21.130]  All right.
[04:21.290 --> 04:35.950]  As far as communications options available to everyday folks who maybe didn't have any experience with radio communications or got a ham radio license, you've probably seen walkie-talkies and other things like that available in retail stores.
[04:36.290 --> 04:41.070]  And they fall under several different categories that the FCC has allocated frequencies for.
[04:41.670 --> 04:45.910]  The most common you've probably seen are these little family radio service radios, or FRS.
[04:46.110 --> 04:49.450]  They operate on UHF frequencies around 460 megahertz.
[04:50.010 --> 04:52.430]  They're fairly low power, maybe half a watt or so.
[04:52.610 --> 04:54.810]  It might give you a range of a mile or so.
[04:55.470 --> 04:57.390]  These are really commonly used.
[04:57.550 --> 05:02.150]  They're not legally used for business, but they're commonly used by families, hence the name of the service, family radio service.
[05:02.350 --> 05:04.430]  They're also used a lot by activists.
[05:05.110 --> 05:06.910]  Unfortunately, they're very easy to monitor.
[05:07.490 --> 05:23.030]  So if you're involved in any kind of direct actions and you're using a family radio service radios, you can be assured that the police are monitoring those communications and maybe even misdirecting them, jamming them, that sort of thing.
[05:23.150 --> 05:24.410]  I've seen this happen in Philadelphia.
[05:25.450 --> 05:29.930]  There are... that's a good example of an inexpensive family radio service radio.
[05:30.190 --> 05:33.210]  I picked this up for $5 at a drug store.
[05:33.470 --> 05:34.690]  So they're very inexpensive.
[05:35.530 --> 05:37.490]  They're just good for quick and dirty communications.
[05:37.870 --> 05:38.790]  They're not secure.
[05:39.050 --> 05:41.650]  They're fairly short range, maybe half a mile or a mile or so.
[05:41.790 --> 05:43.410]  But it's just something to use.
[05:44.870 --> 05:45.830]  There's higher...
[05:45.830 --> 05:49.010]  Those are some of the family radio service frequencies.
[05:49.010 --> 05:55.010]  And there's a URL at the bottom there, E5KRB, if you want to check that out.
[05:56.750 --> 05:57.410]  Next slide.
[05:58.190 --> 05:59.070]  Do you want to go to MERS?
[05:59.310 --> 05:59.570]  Yeah.
[06:00.630 --> 06:06.470]  There's another category of radio service that the FCC has authorized more recently called MERS.
[06:06.730 --> 06:08.290]  I forget what the acronym stands for.
[06:08.570 --> 06:10.270]  Multi-use radio service or something.
[06:10.550 --> 06:12.070]  They're on a VHF frequency.
[06:12.350 --> 06:13.970]  Bottom line is they're a little more power.
[06:14.130 --> 06:15.030]  I think they're about two watts.
[06:15.030 --> 06:18.490]  They give you more range, and they are...
[06:18.490 --> 06:21.830]  You can use them legally for business purposes, unlike FRS.
[06:23.490 --> 06:24.270]  Which one do you want to go to?
[06:24.290 --> 06:25.250]  So narrow band FM?
[06:25.410 --> 06:33.290]  They're all narrow band FM, which bottom line means the fidelity isn't high fidelity like an FM broadcast station.
[06:33.310 --> 06:34.450]  But it's perfectly understandable.
[06:34.890 --> 06:35.490]  There's also been...
[06:35.490 --> 06:38.450]  This service, general mobile radio service, has been around for decades.
[06:39.110 --> 06:42.810]  They're also on the UHF frequencies, some of which are shared by the family radio service.
[06:42.810 --> 06:46.650]  And these require an $85 license from the FCC.
[06:47.050 --> 06:52.370]  There's also GMRS base stations that are available up to 50 watts in power.
[06:52.610 --> 06:54.810]  So there are also GMRS repeaters.
[06:54.950 --> 07:03.050]  So people in a community could communicate, you know, 20, 30 miles away with a GMRS repeater on a mountaintop.
[07:03.130 --> 07:04.310]  But again, they require license.
[07:04.730 --> 07:11.470]  Most of the cheap GMRS, cheap FRS radios you buy in stores also have some GMRS frequencies in there.
[07:11.470 --> 07:17.290]  And you'll find a little note in the manual, a very tiny print saying, to use the GMRS frequencies, you must have an FCC license.
[07:17.770 --> 07:19.990]  But almost nobody does this.
[07:20.190 --> 07:26.310]  So the GMRS people are kind of upset that the FRS radios have sort of moved in on their band.
[07:30.190 --> 07:34.190]  You might have seen some of the HOPE staff members walking around with two-way radios.
[07:34.190 --> 07:37.650]  And the ones you're seeing pictured here are what we're using.
[07:38.570 --> 07:46.490]  These are made in China, and they're designed to compete with Motorola, who's sort of the king in radio communications equipment for government and military.
[07:47.110 --> 07:50.430]  And these radios operate over a very wide frequency range.
[07:50.630 --> 07:54.530]  There are four or five watts in power, depending on whether you're using a UHF or VHF frequency.
[07:54.930 --> 07:56.510]  They're programmable with a PC.
[07:57.590 --> 07:59.370]  And they also have some interesting features.
[07:59.650 --> 08:03.610]  It has 16 channels, but you can literally program any of the 16 channels.
[08:03.690 --> 08:05.270]  It could be any one of thousands of different frequencies.
[08:05.670 --> 08:12.070]  One of the interesting features of these radios is they invoice some form of voice privacy, something called the inversion scrambling.
[08:12.310 --> 08:19.050]  It's not super secure, but it makes a casual listener with a radio scanner unable to listen to the communications.
[08:19.370 --> 08:26.330]  And we weren't really that paranoid about that here at the HOPE conference, but it didn't cost anything to program that feature into these radios.
[08:26.330 --> 08:27.470]  So we did that.
[08:27.670 --> 08:31.570]  So those of you who are trying to listen to us and weren't able to, that's why.
[08:35.520 --> 08:42.600]  And this is the newest, most interesting option available to unlicensed radio operators in this country, I think.
[08:43.480 --> 08:49.400]  The FCC has a whole category of unlicensed radio services called Part 15.
[08:49.660 --> 08:51.420]  It's just the body of law called Part 15.
[08:51.660 --> 08:53.760]  And one of the services... it's not really a service.
[08:53.760 --> 09:15.580]  One of the rules they passed down, regulations, is that two-way radios can, using some of the unlicensed bands in the 900 megahertz band, the 2.4 gigahertz band, and the 5.8 gigahertz band, can use frequency hopping, which means that the channel changes very rapidly,
[09:15.640 --> 09:16.600]  several times a second.
[09:16.600 --> 09:18.420]  It makes it hard for someone else to listen to.
[09:18.520 --> 09:24.180]  It also reduces the chance of interference from from another user to almost nothing.
[09:25.100 --> 09:29.520]  These radios from a company called Trisquare came out about a year and a half ago.
[09:30.860 --> 09:33.620]  And we're going to put one of them up there.
[09:41.340 --> 09:43.400]  Okay, these things are really neat.
[09:43.620 --> 09:50.540]  You can get a pair of these with drop-in chargers and voice operated headsets for 80 bucks on Amazon.
[09:51.020 --> 09:52.880]  They're one watt, 900 megahertz.
[09:53.260 --> 10:03.120]  And the neat thing about these, one of the neat things about this radio is you can program the frequency hopping pattern into this using a 10-digit number.
[10:03.340 --> 10:04.360]  There's an algorithm in there.
[10:05.100 --> 10:06.360]  You choose a 10-digit number.
[10:06.460 --> 10:07.580]  It can be like a phone number, whatever.
[10:08.300 --> 10:13.680]  And unless someone else knows that 10-digit number, it's going to be very difficult for them to hear that communication.
[10:13.740 --> 10:27.360]  So if you're with an activist group or you're running a business that you don't want others to overhear your conversations or maybe your favorite fishing spot, you don't want anybody to hear what you're talking about, where the fish are, or that sort of thing.
[10:27.980 --> 10:30.320]  Is that fish with a PH or fish with an F?
[10:33.960 --> 10:34.400]  Exactly.
[10:34.400 --> 10:35.360]  It's not encryption.
[10:35.600 --> 10:36.160]  It's not encryption.
[10:36.340 --> 10:37.060]  It's frequency hopping.
[10:37.260 --> 10:42.580]  So theoretically it is possible to determine the hopping sequence if there aren't a lot of users in the band.
[10:42.580 --> 10:51.400]  It's akin to encryption because there's so many different virtual channels.
[10:51.680 --> 10:55.480]  Literally 10 billion channel possibilities.
[10:55.700 --> 11:14.900]  They use 700 different frequencies in the 900 megahertz band, but the different hopping sequences between those, it hops like 2.4 times per second, make it virtually impossible for someone with, unless you're government or have a lot of resources at your disposal,
[11:15.480 --> 11:20.400]  or maybe a few thousand dollars to buy a GNU radio project.
[11:20.540 --> 11:22.640]  We're demonstrating that at the W2H station yesterday.
[11:24.020 --> 11:27.700]  Unless you have a lot of resources and time on your hands, it'd be very difficult to monitor these.
[11:28.300 --> 11:29.940]  And for the price, you can't beat them.
[11:30.460 --> 11:34.760]  There's also some things on the market called simplex repeaters.
[11:34.960 --> 11:54.160]  You can plug a little box about the size of a pack of cigarettes into one of these radios, or any of the other radios I've just shown, and put it on a high point, either like the top of the Hotel Pennsylvania, or on a mountaintop, or anywhere else, and then other people can use that as a repeater to communicate over a wider distance.
[11:54.560 --> 12:01.860]  So if one of these radios were on top of a mountaintop, you could talk 20, 30, 40 miles away through this to someone else equally far away.
[12:02.200 --> 12:07.020]  So the only one of those that legally you cannot do that on is MERS.
[12:07.280 --> 12:13.680]  The FCC specifically addressed that on MERS, that they did not want people building repeaters on MERS frequencies.
[12:13.940 --> 12:24.180]  So when it first came out, they didn't have that, and a whole bunch of people put up these MERS repeaters, and a few people, and the FCC went back and said, no, this is not what we intended.
[12:24.700 --> 12:26.820]  Yes, the FCC changes... But that's the only one.
[12:27.080 --> 12:30.800]  The FCC tends to change rules as they go along, but that's at the FCC.
[12:31.860 --> 12:33.020]  So check these things out.
[12:33.100 --> 12:34.700]  If you go to Trisquare.us, you can read about it.
[12:34.800 --> 12:39.920]  I'm not selling them, but the company has donated a pair of these to give away at the conference.
[12:40.100 --> 12:43.620]  We'll figure out a way at the end of the talk to figure out who's going to get these radios.
[12:45.540 --> 12:55.360]  One last thing I want to talk about is communicating to a large group of people one way, and that would be broadcasting.
[12:55.640 --> 13:01.340]  This device here is sort of informally referred to as a grenade.
[13:01.340 --> 13:05.500]  It's a 10-watt shortwave radio transmitter.
[13:05.840 --> 13:14.000]  It operates around 6.955 MHz, but there's a crystal, you can see on the front, you can plug in for different frequencies.
[13:14.160 --> 13:25.480]  This is homemade, and this particular transmitter was used a while ago to make a broadcast, which was heard 500 miles away in two different directions.
[13:25.840 --> 13:29.780]  So you're talking about a diameter of broadcasting of maybe about a thousand miles.
[13:29.960 --> 13:48.820]  Now, depending on the propagation conditions, this may or may not work, but this is a technique that's used by intelligence agencies around the world to get messages, not necessarily low power transmitter like this, but higher power transmitters, intelligence agencies used to broadcast encrypted messages in five number groups.
[13:48.980 --> 13:50.860]  It's like a one-time pad encryption system.
[13:50.860 --> 14:04.040]  So if you need to get it, if you have like a group of people around the country, around the world, you want to get messages too securely, you could use one-time pad encryption with a low power or even a high power shortwave transmitter and get that information out to them,
[14:04.240 --> 14:05.620]  and it's fairly secure.
[14:06.480 --> 14:11.820]  So we can have more questions and answers after the end of this talk, but that's pretty much all I wanted to talk about.
[14:12.200 --> 14:16.600]  I'm going to go over a little bit about how that actually works, if you could switch back to the slides.
[14:16.960 --> 14:25.600]  Okay, so the radios that he was demonstrating before, which are the handheld radios operating the VHF and UHF frequencies, which is probably what most of you guys are familiar with.
[14:27.320 --> 14:35.340]  Cellular phones are a little bit above that, and a lot of the FRS radios are... well, they are VHF UHF radios.
[14:35.540 --> 14:40.160]  So what Ed was talking about with the grenade, that's actually an HF radio.
[14:40.280 --> 14:48.080]  So it transmits on the shortwave bands, which actually have unique propagation characteristics when compared to the VHF and UHF bands.
[14:48.600 --> 15:00.340]  So actually, when he's transmitting with that grenade transceiver, and people are hearing it 500 miles away or so, they're not actually hearing... they're not actually receiving a direct line of sight from that transmitter.
[15:00.420 --> 15:08.240]  They're actually receiving a signal that's bounced off of the ionosphere, back to Earth, off the ionosphere again, and back to Earth, maybe multiple times.
[15:08.380 --> 15:10.340]  Sometimes it's a single hop, sometimes it's a few hops.
[15:10.340 --> 15:20.580]  But the ionosphere is basically a layer of the atmosphere way, way, way up in the outer atmosphere that has particles that get ionized by radiation from the sun.
[15:21.320 --> 15:33.780]  And it basically creates a reflective layer at different times during the day, and depending on the amount of solar activity that's occurring at the time, and allows different frequencies to reflect or pass through at various times.
[15:34.080 --> 15:40.060]  And at the frequency that Ed was transmitting on, usually, typically, they open up at the night time.
[15:40.220 --> 15:42.460]  That's very close to the 40 meter ham radio band.
[15:42.760 --> 15:49.160]  So it's a very good evening band, and if you transmit on that, you're very likely, with only a couple of watts, and what is that, a 5 watt radio?
[15:49.320 --> 15:50.320]  It's actually 10 watts.
[15:50.420 --> 15:50.900]  10 watt radio.
[15:51.020 --> 15:53.700]  And I should point out that it's not, that was not a legal broadcast.
[15:54.140 --> 15:59.640]  This is, unless you're a licensed amateur radio operator, you can't, you can't do these types of transmissions.
[16:00.460 --> 16:02.760]  You actually can't broadcast on amateur radio anyway.
[16:02.900 --> 16:05.420]  You have to have an intended one-to-one communication.
[16:06.000 --> 16:08.320]  But, so using something like this actually is illegal.
[16:08.520 --> 16:09.220]  So I just wanted to mention that.
[16:10.260 --> 16:14.100]  So, for instance, you can actually communicate all across the world.
[16:14.200 --> 16:23.840]  And that's one of the things that really interests me about amateur radio, is the fact that you can be using radios that are less powerful than some of the handhelds that he was demonstrating, that in the city only get you a couple of blocks.
[16:24.300 --> 16:28.380]  You can actually use at lower frequencies to get you literally around the world.
[16:28.780 --> 16:33.120]  So, there are a couple of other methods of propagation that are used as well.
[16:33.340 --> 16:48.560]  And on VHF and UHF, there are some tropospheric modes, which rely on the differences in the index of refraction of various layers because of heat differences and stuff like that, that actually allow VHF and UHF signals to travel long distances.
[16:49.060 --> 17:05.640]  And what a lot of people used to do before, well, they won't be able to do it after 2009 anyway, but with FM DXing for receiving television signals, VHF and UHF signals from cities many, many miles further than you'd normally be able to receive.
[17:08.120 --> 17:19.980]  You know, you can depend on modes like this to actually somewhat unreliably because they're not as predictable, but they can carry radio waves much, much further than you would normally get.
[17:20.180 --> 17:29.840]  Sporatic E is another mode, which relies on very, very densely ionized patches in the atmosphere to carry VHF and UHF signals.
[17:30.200 --> 17:35.700]  Again, in the same way that the HF signals are typically carried through the F layer of the ionosphere.
[17:36.460 --> 17:47.680]  So, every once in a while, you'll be listening to, you know, the two meter band or the 440 meter band on the amateur radio frequency locations.
[17:47.820 --> 17:57.000]  And you'll hear people from, you know, around here, you might hear someone from Maine, or you might hear someone from Maryland or something, somewhere that you would typically not be able to normally receive.
[17:57.220 --> 18:07.140]  And you can pretty much bet that that would be something like sporadic E or ducting mode that's actually carrying that wave to you.
[18:07.760 --> 18:15.320]  So, another thing that really limits your ability to communicate is the absorption characteristics of RF as the frequency increases.
[18:15.620 --> 18:29.900]  So, at HF, you can really rely on a lot of ground wave propagation and propagation that's not really interfered with by buildings as much as VHF and UHF frequencies are.
[18:30.060 --> 18:40.720]  So, for instance, communicating with a radio like this, you know, from here to maybe the second floor or the lobby might be a little bit difficult because of all of the obstructions in the way.
[18:40.880 --> 18:50.240]  Now, you can't really use HF on a portable radio because as as the frequency decreases, the antenna size increases proportionally.
[18:50.400 --> 19:04.240]  But if you had a radio outside with a dipole antenna or with a vertical antenna that was suitable to the frequency that you're using, buildings might not be as much of a problem because you can actually have a takeoff angle that clears those buildings,
[19:04.400 --> 19:10.440]  bounces off the ionosphere and comes down somewhere else, sometimes predictably, sometimes unpredictably.
[19:10.640 --> 19:25.520]  So, for instance, I've had conversations with people in Germany and Holland and other places in Europe with only one or two watts transmitting power from a crappy antenna in my backyard.
[19:27.140 --> 19:30.020]  Actually, this is a radio that Skip has.
[19:30.200 --> 19:35.980]  This is very common amongst what people call QRP hobbyists in amateur radio.
[19:36.080 --> 19:39.520]  And QRP stands for low power operation, typically less than five watts or so.
[19:39.680 --> 19:42.480]  And this is a radio that was actually built in an Altoids can.
[19:42.480 --> 19:43.860]  Do you know what model that is?
[19:44.560 --> 19:46.700]  That's the Freakmite, I think.
[19:47.420 --> 19:48.180]  I'm not sure.
[19:48.360 --> 19:50.980]  Okay, this actually looks like the Rockmite.
[19:51.280 --> 19:59.280]  So, a Rockmite is a very popular transceiver that's kitted by, I forget, the K1SW, is that right?
[19:59.500 --> 19:59.640]  Yeah.
[19:59.860 --> 20:07.040]  So, he produced all these kits that are very popular and it's a crystal controlled CW radio.
[20:07.380 --> 20:09.940]  So, that means that basically you're limited to using Morse code.
[20:11.300 --> 20:24.700]  But the bandwidth that Morse code uses in relation to other modulation schemes like AM and FM is very low, which really increases the signal to noise ratio and allows you to use really tight filtering to pull in signals that are otherwise incredibly weak.
[20:24.860 --> 20:32.860]  So, if you guys want to learn Morse code or use computers to generate and decode it, you can actually even extend the range even further.
[20:34.300 --> 20:41.620]  So... To be licensed as an amateur radio operator in the United States no longer requires the CW test.
[20:41.960 --> 20:46.040]  But CW is still a popular mode for the very reasons Joe just mentioned.
[20:46.260 --> 20:50.740]  And by the way, there was a... I believe it was on Jay Leno.
[20:51.020 --> 20:52.140]  We might have mentioned this last time.
[20:52.140 --> 20:53.180]  Oh yeah, there was a contest.
[20:53.500 --> 21:06.760]  There was a contest on Jay Leno between the world's fastest text messengers and two ham radio operators to see who could get a message across faster with Morse code versus texting.
[21:08.220 --> 21:11.240]  The... The more... The... You're keeping them in suspense.
[21:11.500 --> 21:14.300]  The... The... The SMS guys got completely smoked.
[21:15.120 --> 21:16.700]  Completely smoked, okay?
[21:17.880 --> 21:26.500]  Which... Which begs the question that... That... Is Morse code a better way to enter your text message on your cell phone than...
[21:26.500 --> 21:30.000]  And... Then going around and hunting and pecking for these keys.
[21:30.440 --> 21:33.740]  And so... Actually, I just... I just got... Yeah, I have to say...
[21:33.740 --> 21:36.020]  I stood in line two and a half hours to get my iPhone.
[21:37.100 --> 21:40.520]  And... There's actually a program that you can input text...
[21:40.520 --> 21:42.700]  Using Morse code into your iPhone.
[21:43.700 --> 21:47.560]  So... You know... I think it's an interesting... You know, it's an interesting turn of events.
[21:47.880 --> 21:48.160]  You know?
[21:48.300 --> 21:48.520]  Right.
[21:48.680 --> 21:49.700]  Where do you plug in the key?
[21:50.540 --> 21:50.980]  Huh?
[21:50.980 --> 21:52.220]  So, there's no external key.
[21:52.420 --> 21:53.520]  So, I need a blue... Oh, sorry.
[21:53.660 --> 21:55.240]  I need a Bluetooth, um...
[21:55.240 --> 21:56.060]  Morse code key now.
[21:56.360 --> 21:56.540]  So...
[21:58.520 --> 22:03.820]  So... So... So it's a really efficient mode and... And really, really, really power efficient relative to...
[22:03.820 --> 22:07.240]  to some of the other modes because the... When the transmitter is on, it's... It's really...
[22:07.240 --> 22:10.580]  It's transmitting at the full power, uh... That the transmitter is capable of.
[22:10.720 --> 22:12.980]  And when it's not, it's... It's... It's completely off.
[22:12.980 --> 22:14.360]  So it's a very power efficient mode.
[22:14.520 --> 22:30.540]  It can really help you communicate far distances with really, really very... I mean, it's almost... it defies logic to believe that you can actually build something in a weekend that can communicate, you know, thousands and thousands of miles.
[22:30.540 --> 22:47.680]  It's effectively magic that you can run... you can communicate without any infrastructure from one point of the planet to somewhere on the opposite side of the planet using just a tiny battery and an antenna.
[22:48.020 --> 22:48.480]  It's incredible.
[22:48.720 --> 22:55.760]  It's truly magic that you could... that's just a little battery-powered thing that could fit in your hand, you could communicate without any infrastructure around the world.
[22:55.760 --> 22:57.380]  So think about that.
[22:57.660 --> 23:05.900]  It's... and... and the reliability of being able to use a network that doesn't rely on a corporation or a government agency to maintain.
[23:07.960 --> 23:13.940]  So... so real quick, I'm gonna go over a couple of the antennas that you can expect to use with some of the HF... HF... what was that saying?
[23:14.040 --> 23:14.480]  W2H?
[23:14.600 --> 23:14.900]  Is that right?
[23:16.440 --> 23:20.160]  So... so... so this is... so this is the radiation pattern of a dipole antenna.
[23:20.320 --> 23:22.460]  And this is looking at the axis of the dipole antenna.
[23:22.460 --> 23:25.320]  So typically, these are cut for half a wavelength.
[23:25.620 --> 23:28.700]  So the lower in frequency you go, the larger the antenna is going to be.
[23:28.860 --> 23:35.420]  But... but they're... they're... they offer pretty... pretty predictable radiation patterns, which allows you to...
[23:35.420 --> 23:40.900]  to direct... to set up the antenna so that the radiation pattern is directed toward where you want to communicate.
[23:42.080 --> 23:43.400]  If you want... go to the next one.
[23:43.960 --> 23:44.400]  Okay.
[23:44.560 --> 23:50.240]  If you add a couple of more elements to a typical dipole antenna, you end up with a directional antenna called a Yagi.
[23:50.240 --> 23:51.160]  And these are really common.
[23:51.320 --> 23:54.820]  You'll see them on rooftops for... for reception of TV signals.
[23:56.600 --> 24:03.280]  Typically... typically you can null out signals that are causing interference or... or... or undesired.
[24:03.860 --> 24:08.240]  And... and... and really, really concentrate your... your energy with... with a high gain.
[24:08.380 --> 24:15.200]  Which gives you... more power to the... to the intended recipient than a dipole normally would... with an antenna like this.
[24:15.200 --> 24:18.300]  They're... they're... they're a little bit bigger and bulkier, especially at the HF frequencies.
[24:18.520 --> 24:23.820]  But... they really do help for... for... for... for... getting the message to where you want it to go.
[24:24.300 --> 24:26.380]  In... in conditions that aren't exactly desirable.
[24:26.860 --> 24:28.820]  The only one is the middle one's connected element?
[24:28.960 --> 24:29.200]  Right.
[24:29.340 --> 24:30.800]  The... the driven element is... is in the middle.
[24:30.900 --> 24:33.020]  The director's in the front and the reflectors in the back.
[24:33.280 --> 24:33.420]  Yeah.
[24:33.540 --> 24:37.980]  So... so... so the director's a little bit smaller than half-wave and the... and the... uh... reflector's a little bit larger.
[24:38.680 --> 24:44.720]  And... and they're... I mean, other than just being grounded together, they're absolutely... there's... they're absolutely not connected.
[24:44.900 --> 24:45.980]  You could just hang a wire...
[24:46.720 --> 24:47.920]  They're passive elements, yeah.
[24:47.920 --> 24:48.440]  In fact, I built one that way.
[24:48.600 --> 24:58.400]  I... I built one in an attic that way, where it was just... you have a director that's a wire behind it, and... and... and then you've got the driven element, and then a whole bunch of directors in front of it, down the peaks of an attic.
[24:58.980 --> 25:00.340]  And that's another aspect of it.
[25:00.680 --> 25:06.880]  Typically, you see these things mounted on rooftops, and they're really huge, and... and... and... and kind of bulky, and you wouldn't expect to be able to discreetly...
[25:06.880 --> 25:08.380]  uh... deploy them anywhere.
[25:08.720 --> 25:13.160]  But actually, you can... you can make these antennas out of 30 gauge magnet wire, which is...
[25:13.160 --> 25:16.640]  incredibly hard to see if... if it's just hanging and you're not looking for it.
[25:17.220 --> 25:24.440]  Um... if... if you can... if you can find a couple of trees that are... that are spaced the way you want it to, you can... you can set up an antenna like this really, really stealthily.
[25:25.160 --> 25:26.640]  And... and... and... and really nobody would know.
[25:26.760 --> 25:29.060]  I've had... I've had an antenna like this at my apartment building.
[25:29.340 --> 25:34.060]  Not a Yagi, but... but an NFED, and... and a couple of dipoles, that nobody's ever seen.
[25:34.220 --> 25:38.460]  Because the... the... the wire that I'm using is so thin, and... and you can transmit with 100 watts into them easily.
[25:39.140 --> 25:41.080]  And... and... and... and literally communicate around the world.
[25:42.240 --> 25:42.560]  So...
[25:42.560 --> 25:43.200]  There were...
[25:43.200 --> 25:44.260]  Want to talk about rubber ducky?
[25:44.420 --> 25:45.800]  There were a couple of... yeah, go ahead.
[25:46.440 --> 25:46.880]  Do you have more?
[25:47.040 --> 25:51.080]  No, when he's done talking about the rubber ducks, there should be a couple more radiation patterns that you can show depending...
[25:51.080 --> 25:51.300]  Okay.
[25:52.160 --> 25:52.480]  Um...
[25:52.480 --> 25:55.160]  Well, we started talking about this a while ago.
[25:55.420 --> 25:56.800]  The thought experiment was...
[25:57.480 --> 26:01.480]  practical use of radio for activists and activist situations.
[26:01.980 --> 26:02.380]  And...
[26:02.380 --> 26:08.840]  uh... most... uh... gatherings, demonstrations, meetups, mashups, whatever you want...
[26:08.840 --> 26:15.580]  uh... are probably going to take advantage of some of the radios that... uh... that... uh... Bernie was suggesting.
[26:16.420 --> 26:20.740]  GMRS, FRS, or... or ham radio, or... uh... CB, or various things.
[26:20.880 --> 26:22.700]  Whatever... whatever is available to people.
[26:23.360 --> 26:26.080]  Uh... when people gather, they use what they have at hand.
[26:26.260 --> 26:30.620]  But... there's a couple things that... that... even though... with most of these talky radios...
[26:31.780 --> 26:35.540]  the common antenna... is what we call a rubber ducky.
[26:36.920 --> 26:38.560]  Uh... you can see why they do that.
[26:39.800 --> 26:45.560]  Um... but the practical matter of that is that... a rubber ducky is a negative gain antenna...
[26:45.560 --> 26:46.560]  under most circumstances.
[26:47.320 --> 26:50.700]  So... five watts in... this radio produces five watts.
[26:50.820 --> 26:54.280]  I'm really only getting a... a radiated power of 1.58.
[26:54.620 --> 26:56.580]  Thanks to RedBird for correcting my math.
[26:58.340 --> 26:58.900]  Um...
[26:58.900 --> 27:01.980]  And... the way you see most people operating with them...
[27:01.980 --> 27:03.700]  is they hang them on their belt.
[27:04.100 --> 27:05.640]  And then they use a...
[27:05.640 --> 27:08.480]  uh... well... my body's an attenuator.
[27:08.680 --> 27:12.560]  So I'm cutting down that 1.58 watts that much further.
[27:12.560 --> 27:16.740]  And I'm trying to communicate... and keep a group organized...
[27:16.740 --> 27:17.900]  to keep them out of trouble.
[27:19.080 --> 27:20.240]  Um... that's problematic.
[27:20.380 --> 27:24.320]  The right way to use a radio like this... to get the best use out of it...
[27:24.320 --> 27:25.100]  is to do this.
[27:25.860 --> 27:29.680]  Get the radio higher... get the radio away from your body attenuation...
[27:29.680 --> 27:30.880]  and that's what you use the mic for.
[27:32.720 --> 27:34.340]  Um... just a practical aspect.
[27:34.340 --> 27:40.900]  The other thing you can do... with any... any... and this... this applies to any of these radios...
[27:40.900 --> 27:46.300]  if you cut the right frequency... is do what's called a tiger tail... piece of wire.
[27:46.860 --> 27:50.460]  I'm an old rag... an old romantic... this is a telephone hookup work.
[27:52.340 --> 27:55.340]  Um... and you just... cut it to a quarter wave...
[27:57.920 --> 28:01.720]  and... put it around... the base section of the ducky...
[28:03.460 --> 28:11.340]  here I have the figures... uh... 9.5 inches... for 2 meters... 6.5... for 440...
[28:11.980 --> 28:14.720]  and that's going to improve the efficiency of the radio as well...
[28:14.720 --> 28:16.020]  even though that's loose and flexible.
[28:16.020 --> 28:18.160]  Do you have to wrap it around a bunch of ducky?
[28:18.500 --> 28:21.020]  Oh... well... you have to secure it in some way... to the ground side.
[28:21.200 --> 28:21.700]  It's not induction.
[28:22.180 --> 28:24.780]  No... no... it's... it's... it's... it's actually connected to the ground side.
[28:25.540 --> 28:29.360]  Basically... a rubber ducky is a monopole... one half of a dipole.
[28:29.500 --> 28:31.240]  You're... you're adding the other half of the antenna.
[28:32.000 --> 28:33.580]  But there's metal there to connect to it.
[28:33.940 --> 28:36.000]  Yeah... yeah... um...
[28:36.000 --> 28:37.760]  He... he's jamming it between the connector basically.
[28:37.980 --> 28:38.000]  Yeah...
[28:38.000 --> 28:39.180]  He's tightening it around that way.
[28:39.820 --> 28:42.360]  Uh... it's practical.
[28:42.700 --> 28:46.780]  So... so... typically these... these antennas rely on your body... to complete the other half of the antenna.
[28:46.780 --> 28:52.240]  And it doesn't usually work so well in practical situations when it's clipped to your belt.
[28:53.000 --> 28:54.520]  Is that upside down or backwards?
[28:55.060 --> 28:57.220]  So that's the SMA connector on his radio.
[28:57.380 --> 29:00.880]  And what he's doing is actually wrapping that wire around it and then tightening the antenna.
[29:01.420 --> 29:02.500]  And then I would just screw that in.
[29:02.620 --> 29:08.560]  You can also secure it if you have access to the radio circuit port, you can secure it to the ground side of the antenna.
[29:09.680 --> 29:12.180]  The idea is just to improve your efficiency that little bit.
[29:12.180 --> 29:12.960]  Microphone microphone.
[29:13.300 --> 29:17.380]  To improve that efficiency a little bit, you're going to extend the ability.
[29:17.840 --> 29:23.240]  If you're talking a gathering of people in a public place, you're talking hundreds of yards improvement.
[29:23.700 --> 29:25.380]  But hundreds of yards may be important.
[29:26.240 --> 29:34.440]  The other option is if your radio, some of the FRS, GMRS radios don't have disconnectable antennas, you can make them disconnectable.
[29:37.440 --> 29:41.260]  And they make antennas that do other things to improve efficiency.
[29:41.260 --> 29:46.980]  This is basically a quarter wave at 440.
[29:48.700 --> 29:50.140]  Now it's 5 eighths wave.
[29:51.140 --> 29:59.360]  You wouldn't walk around carrying this, but if you had to extend your communication for whatever purpose, you can do that.
[30:00.160 --> 30:08.480]  People also make J-pulls out of twin lead and a piece of coax, throw them up in a tree, and have them at locations around where their gathering is.
[30:09.300 --> 30:11.420]  So replacement antennas are another option.
[30:11.680 --> 30:13.320]  These are all things that are fun to try to do.
[30:13.940 --> 30:20.440]  To go back also to what Bernie was talking about, about using FRS, GMRS, various types of radios.
[30:20.640 --> 30:30.380]  My wife and I got into recreational kayaking a couple years ago, and I'd go on these trips, and some people on the trip would have FRS, some would have GMRS, some would have marine radio.
[30:30.380 --> 30:37.700]  Well, the older Yaesu RD50, the earlier serial numbers, you can modify to do all of those.
[30:37.880 --> 30:40.020]  So I have one radio that does them all.
[30:40.820 --> 30:43.140]  You're not supposed to do that with marine radio.
[30:44.020 --> 30:46.080]  But that doesn't stop people from doing it.
[30:46.300 --> 30:46.440]  No.
[30:46.540 --> 30:54.380]  I just want to mention that radio Skip has is probably one of the most hackable two-way radios ever designed by Yaesu.
[30:54.380 --> 30:56.960]  It was very popular in the hacker community.
[30:57.340 --> 30:58.800]  You can still find them on eBay.
[30:59.100 --> 30:59.460]  It's the RD50.
[31:00.100 --> 31:00.540]  Is it...
[31:01.400 --> 31:01.840]  RD50.
[31:02.040 --> 31:02.120]  Okay.
[31:02.360 --> 31:02.640]  I have one...
[31:03.340 --> 31:03.780]  FT50RD.
[31:03.900 --> 31:04.340]  Right.
[31:04.680 --> 31:06.200]  FT50, FoxTango50.
[31:06.460 --> 31:08.620]  And there's also called the FoxTango50R.
[31:09.060 --> 31:11.200]  If you do find one, though, be careful.
[31:11.280 --> 31:14.260]  The later serial number ones aren't as hackable.
[31:15.180 --> 31:18.820]  There's a lot of information about that on the web if you actually do run across one.
[31:18.940 --> 31:21.180]  They can also receive a very wide range of frequencies.
[31:21.180 --> 31:28.880]  And back when analog cellular was still active up until a few months ago, you could listen to cellular phone calls on these things.
[31:29.040 --> 31:30.020]  There's a voice recorder.
[31:30.160 --> 31:32.040]  There's an audio recorder built into it.
[31:32.400 --> 31:33.940]  It's really amazing little radio.
[31:34.100 --> 31:35.300]  They don't make them anymore, unfortunately.
[31:35.920 --> 31:38.360]  Not that listening to cell phones is legal.
[31:38.800 --> 31:39.140]  Just...
[31:39.140 --> 31:39.920]  That would be wrong.
[31:39.920 --> 31:40.520]  Just so you know.
[31:40.620 --> 31:41.300]  That would be wrong.
[31:42.820 --> 31:44.680]  Nobody up here has ever done that.
[31:47.560 --> 31:48.000]  Today...
[31:56.020 --> 32:07.220]  The other part I wanted to talk about in practical communication, again, going back to the idea of an activist gathering, is make sure you understand the limits of your equipment in terms of power.
[32:07.500 --> 32:10.080]  Power transmission, power consumption.
[32:10.620 --> 32:16.520]  There's nothing worse than gathering a bunch of people together for an important demonstration or an important activity.
[32:16.960 --> 32:20.980]  And just when things start to get a little interesting, have the batteries crap out on your radio.
[32:21.820 --> 32:22.660]  Not a good thing.
[32:23.260 --> 32:27.240]  So, first thing, know the practical power consumption of your radio.
[32:27.360 --> 32:28.860]  Go back to what we were saying earlier.
[32:29.200 --> 32:30.420]  You know, it's not 5 watts.
[32:30.580 --> 32:31.580]  It's 1.58.
[32:31.800 --> 32:33.080]  Do what you can to improve that.
[32:33.300 --> 32:37.480]  But then on the other hand, know the power consumption factor of your batteries.
[32:37.480 --> 32:43.200]  Whether it's nickel metal hydride, nickel cadmium, alkaline, whatever you're using.
[32:44.180 --> 32:49.100]  Find a radio where you can do quick and dirty battery replacements.
[32:51.120 --> 32:54.040]  Keep... if you're using rechargeable stuff, keep it recharged.
[32:54.900 --> 33:07.890]  A lot of units will sell a battery pack that lets you use a field expedient of just adding regular alkaline batteries.
[33:08.290 --> 33:17.770]  So, if your rechargeable circuits have failed you for the day, you find the local convenience store and you just pick up some batteries and you can keep your...
[33:18.310 --> 33:23.430]  Unfortunately, most models tend to limit the output power when you're using alkaline cells because you can't draw as much current from them.
[33:23.830 --> 33:23.930]  Right.
[33:24.130 --> 33:24.470]  But...
[33:24.470 --> 33:25.790]  It's a good option.
[33:26.970 --> 33:38.730]  And just so you know, the tri-square, the 900 megahertz spread spectrum radio comes with rechargeable batteries but then you can pull that pack out and put double A's in it.
[33:38.930 --> 33:43.250]  And I forgot to mention on these... on these radios you can get two for 80 bucks on Amazon.
[33:43.550 --> 33:44.790]  Also... they also do text messaging.
[33:45.010 --> 33:50.230]  You can do fairly secure text messaging between radios maybe a mile or so away.
[33:50.470 --> 33:54.270]  You can store canned messages and it's... they're really worth checking out.
[33:54.350 --> 34:01.330]  The only drawback to the text messaging that I found out when my wife and I used them was that it does not tell you that it got delivered.
[34:01.470 --> 34:04.230]  It's just transmitting it in the blind, unconnected.
[34:04.430 --> 34:08.270]  So, if the message doesn't go through, the message didn't go through.
[34:08.470 --> 34:13.270]  And you have no way to know that... you get no acknowledgement back that it came through.
[34:13.450 --> 34:16.930]  Which I think is an... you know, which is an area of improvement for them.
[34:18.130 --> 34:18.830]  But... okay.
[34:18.990 --> 34:28.310]  The one other thing is, if you think about it, most radios have some ability to plug in a wall ward circuit or a...
[34:28.310 --> 34:34.250]  a car, what we used to call a cigarette lighter, now we call a utility plug or something.
[34:34.410 --> 34:34.970]  Whatever it is.
[34:36.650 --> 34:39.170]  Find... whatever... whatever radios you're using.
[34:39.530 --> 34:47.470]  Find a way to get from 13.8 volts, 12 to 14 volts, to the voltage your radio needs some way.
[34:47.810 --> 34:53.930]  Because you're all... there's always a car around, you can always pop the hood and just hook up.
[34:53.930 --> 34:58.430]  Most amateur radio equipment... most amateur radio equipment accepts 12 volt supplies.
[34:58.810 --> 34:59.910]  It's... it's incredibly common.
[35:00.190 --> 35:00.750]  So...
[35:00.750 --> 35:03.830]  And even other equipment that doesn't use... like... uses batteries.
[35:04.130 --> 35:07.490]  There's little voltage converters you can get that'll convert 12 volts down to...
[35:07.490 --> 35:11.150]  four and a half volts or six volts or whatever the radio happens to use.
[35:11.830 --> 35:14.510]  This... I'm gonna go over to the screen again.
[35:16.550 --> 35:17.270]  Um...
[35:17.270 --> 35:19.650]  I've modified this cable...
[35:19.650 --> 35:20.290]  Oops, sorry.
[35:21.010 --> 35:21.390]  Uh...
[35:21.390 --> 35:23.950]  In addition to just being to the utility plug.
[35:24.730 --> 35:29.550]  Uh... common... radio connectors for power are something called power poles.
[35:30.010 --> 35:30.930]  Drop it down low.
[35:33.050 --> 35:37.670]  And the more... the earlier tradition before power poles were invented was something called Molex.
[35:38.330 --> 35:43.390]  So I built this cable so I... I... I have the common standards all in line.
[35:43.610 --> 35:51.890]  So if I run across another group of people who are doing radio and they have the... I have the ability to draw power from them, I can just pop out that cable.
[35:52.030 --> 35:58.390]  But like I said, in the long run, in a real emergency, just being able to... to tap a car battery is a great way to go.
[35:59.810 --> 36:06.570]  And it's all about just, you know, keeping your communication lines open and working throughout the... the extent of your... your gathering.
[36:06.970 --> 36:09.370]  What about... what about solar power, Skip?
[36:09.590 --> 36:09.870]  Oh, that's right.
[36:09.870 --> 36:11.150]  This is my absolute favorite.
[36:11.370 --> 36:13.970]  Now, Ed showed this to me like a year ago or something.
[36:14.150 --> 36:14.390]  It's...
[36:14.390 --> 36:15.850]  See, I think Ed, you can do this.
[36:17.810 --> 36:18.370]  Go ahead.
[36:18.730 --> 36:26.170]  Oh, um... as Skip was saying, uh... being able to... the whole point of this... this... this... this panel was off-the-grid radio communications.
[36:26.170 --> 36:38.190]  That didn't mean... that... that means not only are you off the... of the grid of a communications infrastructure that relies on corporate government, um... networks.
[36:38.490 --> 36:43.250]  This is completely wireless and using no other infrastructure.
[36:43.670 --> 36:46.930]  Um... there's the power infrastructure, too, that we all are reliant on.
[36:46.930 --> 36:56.630]  But you can use batteries and... and rechargeable batteries and photovoltaic... photovoltaic panels or solar... solar panels like this.
[36:56.910 --> 37:00.450]  This happens to be a military surplus unit, which is really nice.
[37:00.570 --> 37:01.470]  It folds up like a notebook.
[37:01.670 --> 37:03.590]  It generates about 15 watts of power.
[37:04.030 --> 37:08.270]  Um... that would... that would easily charge batteries for any of these devices we've just shown here today.
[37:09.090 --> 37:15.850]  Um... so... if you really want to be off-the-grid, you can be free of any infrastructure between you and the party you're communicating with.
[37:16.050 --> 37:19.690]  And free of any... uh... infrastructure as far as the power grid goes.
[37:19.890 --> 37:22.150]  So... off-the-grid communications is really possible.
[37:22.950 --> 37:28.010]  Now... the... the... the actual output power of the radio is significantly less than the input power that you supply to it.
[37:28.010 --> 37:32.430]  So... for instance, if this is a 15-watt, uh... panel, you may only get a couple of watts out of the radio.
[37:32.710 --> 37:37.990]  But... when you're using shortwave bands or... or line-of-sight VHF UHF communications, that's... that's... that's almost enough.
[37:38.090 --> 37:40.290]  You almost don't even need a... a battery in a lot of cases.
[37:40.630 --> 37:45.350]  So if you only have solar panel, last-ditch, kind of... need to get the message out, it's... it... it... it works.
[37:48.520 --> 37:49.540]  I think we're good.
[37:49.800 --> 37:50.680]  Uh... you want to ask questions?
[37:51.380 --> 37:52.040]  Is that me?
[37:52.500 --> 37:52.720]  Yeah.
[37:53.260 --> 37:53.640]  All right.
[37:54.360 --> 37:59.280]  So... so... we... we talked about some stuff where you're... you're completely off-the-grid.
[37:59.280 --> 38:00.080]  Okay?
[38:00.260 --> 38:02.500]  You're not relying on anybody else to do anything.
[38:02.680 --> 38:05.280]  Now, of course, you could build your own grid.
[38:05.780 --> 38:06.380]  Sort of.
[38:06.560 --> 38:06.680]  Right?
[38:06.940 --> 38:07.240]  Okay?
[38:07.400 --> 38:11.280]  So you're... you're... you're gonna connect and you want to have long-distance communications between...
[38:11.800 --> 38:13.160]  two different locations.
[38:13.620 --> 38:14.320]  Let's just say.
[38:15.000 --> 38:18.800]  So... or you want to have... you want to put your own repeater up.
[38:19.480 --> 38:20.780]  Um... in the handband.
[38:21.260 --> 38:22.620]  Maybe not in the handband.
[38:22.980 --> 38:23.280]  Okay?
[38:24.480 --> 38:32.680]  So... D-Star is a... is a new mode... is a new... is a modulation technique that was developed by...
[38:32.680 --> 38:39.280]  um... the Japanese... um... amateur radio... uh... or actually relay league.
[38:39.820 --> 38:47.480]  Um... and they... they own the standard, although the... the... one of the problems with it is that only one manufacturer is making the radios right now.
[38:48.400 --> 38:51.100]  So... the price is maintaining itself.
[38:51.360 --> 38:54.100]  Not really... um... at a good level.
[38:54.180 --> 38:58.720]  To put a whole stack... of all three bands with a high-speed data side...
[38:59.080 --> 39:02.500]  is about fourteen or fifteen thousand dollars just for the radios.
[39:02.920 --> 39:04.760]  Which is... very expensive.
[39:04.760 --> 39:06.420]  It's not because it's proprietary.
[39:06.700 --> 39:07.460]  It's because other manufacturers... It's not... Yeah.
[39:07.460 --> 39:08.480]  It's not because it's proprietary.
[39:08.820 --> 39:09.900]  It's just...
[39:09.900 --> 39:11.620]  it's... the price has not come down.
[39:11.820 --> 39:12.800]  It's brand new technology.
[39:13.080 --> 39:17.700]  It's... it's... you know... it's only... it's only really now starting to get more widespread utilization.
[39:18.280 --> 39:21.760]  I mean, there's only a couple of these in New York City at all.
[39:21.920 --> 39:23.560]  And there's... I believe there's only one...
[39:23.560 --> 39:27.580]  that's hooked to... a gateway... that can put it out on the Internet.
[39:27.720 --> 39:28.800]  But we'll talk about that in a second.
[39:29.520 --> 39:34.240]  Uh... hand-held radio is less than about three hundred and seventy-five dollars, depending... uh... new.
[39:34.840 --> 39:41.580]  And then... and then... so... this is one... this is one of those radios.
[39:41.700 --> 39:42.200]  I've said, yeah.
[39:44.980 --> 39:46.260]  So is that...
[39:48.120 --> 39:51.400]  You know, this... this camera thing really messes you up if you're listexic.
[39:52.680 --> 40:01.740]  Um... so... so... so... um... here's one of these radios and... and... and... I don't want to get too much in D-Star, but it gives you the capability...
[40:01.740 --> 40:09.580]  um... going through the Internet or a backbone that you create... using Wi-Fi... they even have a ten gigahertz... um...
[40:09.580 --> 40:14.420]  hand-band link... that you can link at... um... ten megabits between sites.
[40:15.440 --> 40:31.680]  Um... and you can talk digital voice... um... between two people, without a repeater... between a repeater... covering a large area... or repeater-to-repeater linking... or repeater-to-reflector... which is like... multiple repeaters... connected together.
[40:32.340 --> 40:33.760]  Covering a large area.
[40:33.880 --> 40:51.960]  Now you, like I said, you can connect that to a gateway that can connect to the Internet, you can just dial-up a repeater in a far away place, you're dialed up to your local repeater, you change the settings, and you're popping out in London on a frequency,
[40:52.260 --> 40:57.120]  you're in New York, you're popping out on a frequency in London, just like that.
[40:57.120 --> 41:02.100]  It's very appliance operator oriented, not experimentation.
[41:04.480 --> 41:13.540]  Some other projects, some other things that are out there for digital communications is Project 25, P25.
[41:14.020 --> 41:18.880]  That was created by the Association of Public Safety Communication Officials.
[41:19.140 --> 41:26.940]  The intent here is to use this for police departments and public safety fire departments.
[41:27.120 --> 41:28.380]  to communicate with each other.
[41:28.520 --> 41:33.780]  But this stuff is just starting to hit the surplus market a little bit.
[41:35.180 --> 41:37.800]  But it's still very, very expensive.
[41:38.180 --> 41:41.060]  Used handheld will run you over $500.
[41:42.220 --> 41:46.480]  But it does have the ability to have encryption in it and turned on.
[41:47.360 --> 41:49.820]  You're not allowed to do that in the hand bands.
[41:50.080 --> 42:00.660]  But if you were to program it on MERS, then there's absolutely nothing that says you cannot use full-on P25 encryption on MERS.
[42:01.200 --> 42:07.020]  And, I mean, that's built to the level that police are using it.
[42:07.160 --> 42:09.480]  So you're using basically the same technology as the police.
[42:09.900 --> 42:16.340]  Now, the fact that they're going to P25, which is a digital mode, you know, everybody, oh, we've got to go digital.
[42:16.460 --> 42:17.120]  We've got to go digital.
[42:17.240 --> 42:18.220]  Everything's got to be digital.
[42:19.160 --> 42:25.020]  Interestingly enough, I believe the New York City Police Department is staying analog on UHF.
[42:25.120 --> 42:26.620]  Because it works better.
[42:27.500 --> 42:29.220]  It's much easier to monitor, too.
[42:29.520 --> 42:29.900]  Yeah.
[42:30.080 --> 42:31.440]  With, like, a police scanner.
[42:31.740 --> 42:35.320]  There are, like, scanners like this one here.
[42:35.500 --> 42:43.980]  But they generally cost between $300 and $500 that will allow you to listen to unencrypted digital APCO 25 transmissions.
[42:44.460 --> 42:57.180]  And, and, I mean, in, you know, the TSA, the TSA uses APCO 25 radios, Simplex, and they all bought and paid the money for them all to be encrypted.
[42:57.740 --> 43:00.280]  Nah, it takes too much effort to put the encryption keys in them.
[43:01.880 --> 43:03.540]  So, they're all wide open.
[43:03.720 --> 43:05.460]  I mean, I've never, really, I've never listened to them.
[43:05.540 --> 43:06.100]  I've never bothered.
[43:06.260 --> 43:08.020]  They don't really, it's not that interesting.
[43:08.360 --> 43:10.880]  But they, the, you know, they're using them.
[43:10.880 --> 43:15.880]  They, your government dollars paid several thousand dollars for each of these radios to have encryption.
[43:16.520 --> 43:20.580]  And we have yet, I've yet to ever hear of anybody who's actually using the key loaders.
[43:20.720 --> 43:40.860]  But what I was going to say is because a lot of these police departments are buying Project 25 radios, an interesting development is that these non-digital radios that work really well, like a Motorola Sabre, with encryption modules, are coming on to the used modules.
[43:42.000 --> 43:44.680]  And what used to be the problem was the key loaders.
[43:45.080 --> 43:46.720]  You could not find the key loaders.
[43:46.860 --> 43:49.640]  They were $800, $600.
[43:49.980 --> 43:54.280]  Now they're $150 because they're just flooding out on.
[43:54.560 --> 43:58.480]  Now you may have to make the cable and you may have to do a lot of stuff and a lot of reading.
[43:58.720 --> 44:01.880]  If you want to get into that stuff, go to batlabs.com.
[44:02.160 --> 44:02.900]  They're great.
[44:03.280 --> 44:03.480]  Okay?
[44:03.480 --> 44:04.700]  Batlabs.com.
[44:04.820 --> 44:07.520]  They will tell you everything you need to know about Motorola radios.
[44:08.180 --> 44:09.140]  Don't... Bat.
[44:09.260 --> 44:09.880]  B-A-T.
[44:11.140 --> 44:11.620]  Labs.
[44:11.960 --> 44:12.340]  Okay?
[44:12.700 --> 44:21.180]  Don't be afraid about the high price of the new technologies that are coming into radio because they all come down and they all hit the surplus market at some point.
[44:21.180 --> 44:32.600]  Most of us that began with two-meter repeaters in the 60s and 70s, it all started with surplus Motorola taxicab radios.
[44:32.920 --> 44:37.580]  As they came on the market, people... they showed up at ham fest for a couple of dollars.
[44:37.760 --> 44:39.740]  People changed them and made radios out of them.
[44:39.740 --> 44:46.800]  There's plenty, plenty of opportunities and there's no reason to believe this isn't going to occur with some of these new technologies in a fairly rapid fashion.
[44:47.000 --> 44:47.220]  Why?
[44:47.600 --> 44:55.900]  Because the commercial entities, the Motorola's and companies like that, they want to keep selling the government agencies new gear.
[44:56.420 --> 45:00.060]  So the old stuff hits the surplus market and we get to benefit from it.
[45:01.320 --> 45:03.860]  Really quickly, this is part of DSTAR.
[45:04.400 --> 45:15.280]  The gateway uses basically a Linux box running CentOS and the special software.
[45:15.760 --> 45:22.400]  There's also a DV dongle that's just been recently released at the Dayton Hamvention.
[45:22.660 --> 45:26.380]  And that allows you to play DSTAR and you don't even have to have a radio.
[45:27.080 --> 45:31.540]  Now, you have to have a call sign and they make sure you are who you say you are.
[45:32.220 --> 45:36.700]  But other than that, I mean, it's the same thing with some other modes like echo link.
[45:37.180 --> 45:38.780]  I'm just going to drop some names here.
[45:39.220 --> 45:39.660]  IRLP.
[45:41.180 --> 45:52.700]  Those are all ways to link, whether they're analog or digital, all of these places together over a TCP/IP connection, whether that be the Internet or private network or whatever.
[45:53.100 --> 45:55.580]  Chris, that's not off the grid communications, but it is pretty cool.
[45:55.580 --> 46:01.320]  Yeah, so not really exactly off the grid unless you're making, again, unless you're making the grid yourself.
[46:01.740 --> 46:07.720]  You know, you could tie two places together that are far apart with a 2.4 gig link that you've put in yourself.
[46:09.720 --> 46:14.880]  Here's, just to give you an idea, this is the DSTAR network as it stands right now.
[46:15.420 --> 46:21.580]  Believe it or not, Alabama has put in a massive system that's been partially funded by the state.
[46:21.580 --> 46:23.960]  Cape May, New Jersey has a full system now.
[46:24.540 --> 46:27.020]  Yeah, I mean, I don't know how up to date...
[46:27.020 --> 46:27.720]  July of 97.
[46:28.920 --> 46:33.240]  And there's one that just went on the Empire State Building, UHF one.
[46:33.520 --> 46:43.160]  And Georgia, where I'm from, is also working with Georgia Public Broadcasting, and they're going to have a system on every GPTV tower in the state.
[46:43.160 --> 46:49.660]  And that's going to be linked together with GPTV's private backbone over fiber.
[46:50.960 --> 46:57.620]  Now, of course, you're dealing with the state, so if you want to use this for protest, I can pretty much guarantee you they'd be listening.
[46:58.560 --> 47:19.800]  But there's interesting technologies out there, and whether they be digital voice, you can also use the DSTAR radios to do what you guys would consider very slow speed data transmission, 1200 baud or 9600 baud.
[47:20.820 --> 47:23.800]  Or the fastest one is 128k.
[47:24.440 --> 47:28.080]  And they call that, the 128k, they call the high speed data channel.
[47:28.400 --> 47:30.840]  Okay, so, it's all relative.
[47:31.160 --> 47:31.260]  Okay?
[47:32.200 --> 47:34.380]  But those are some of the technologies that are out there.
[47:34.580 --> 47:38.820]  If you have specific questions, you can hit us, come see us.
[47:39.000 --> 47:39.580]  Don't hit us.
[47:39.700 --> 47:41.400]  Come see us at the radio station.
[47:41.680 --> 47:42.360]  We have some time left.
[47:42.360 --> 47:43.400]  But if you have questions, ask some now.
[47:44.140 --> 47:45.020]  We're, there's going to be...
[47:45.020 --> 47:46.100]  Please come up to the mic, though.
[47:46.100 --> 47:49.220]  There's going to be an amateur radio station set up.
[47:49.500 --> 47:55.040]  We got a special FCC, special event FCC call sign for the HOPE conference called W2H.
[47:55.220 --> 48:02.260]  And that license station will be set up outside the conference, outside the ballroom here, probably in an hour or so.
[48:02.440 --> 48:04.760]  And we'll answer more questions up there for all day.
[48:05.000 --> 48:13.940]  And whether you're a ham or not, I encourage you to go Google for ham fest in whatever your local town is.
[48:13.940 --> 48:19.240]  And there's always some, I mean, they're going to be small, they're going to be big depending on where you are.
[48:19.800 --> 48:21.180]  But they're really great.
[48:21.540 --> 48:27.360]  There's a lot of used electronic gear that's on computer equipment that's not just ham radio stuff.
[48:27.500 --> 48:34.460]  But if you go to Dayton, the Dayton Hamvention, hamvention.org, that is the big one in the United States.
[48:34.460 --> 48:40.320]  If you are from Europe, the big one in Europe is Friedrichshafen.
[48:41.040 --> 48:44.760]  And they're both great experiences if you get to go over there.
[48:45.080 --> 48:48.120]  Friedrichshafen, Germany is right across the lake from Switzerland.
[48:48.340 --> 48:50.340]  You can fly into Zurich and then take the train.
[48:50.520 --> 48:52.920]  I've done it one time, wish I could go every year, but it's great.
[48:53.860 --> 48:58.540]  Those two events are the largest gatherings of communications geeks in the world.
[48:58.540 --> 48:59.560]  It's really fascinating.
[48:59.740 --> 49:02.120]  And you can buy a lot of surplus equipment there for a dirt sheet.
[49:02.380 --> 49:03.340]  And that's where I met Ed.
[49:04.080 --> 49:05.240]  He walked up to the booth.
[49:05.360 --> 49:06.100]  I'd never seen him before.
[49:06.220 --> 49:08.960]  I had heard him on off the hook and recognized his voice.
[49:11.080 --> 49:11.900]  We'll take questions.
[49:13.260 --> 49:13.660]  Okay.
[49:14.220 --> 49:22.300]  I have been wondering how specifically the type of material that radio waves have to go through affects it.
[49:22.300 --> 49:26.460]  I assume that metal is bad because it creates a Faraday cage.
[49:26.660 --> 49:31.620]  But, for example, I know that a lot of people stand near the window to use their cell phone.
[49:32.100 --> 49:34.600]  Is that actually a good thing to do?
[49:34.780 --> 49:35.000]  Right.
[49:35.140 --> 49:44.580]  Typically, as the frequency increases, the absorption increases as well.
[49:44.720 --> 49:52.000]  So, as you get higher in frequency in the VHF, UHF, and then up to microwave frequencies, you'll tend to find very high absorption in most common materials.
[49:52.000 --> 50:03.200]  So, cell phones are kind of probably close to the upper limit of where we're going to be able to be without having to be outside and being line of sight to the transmitter.
[50:03.300 --> 50:05.000]  2.4 gigahertz works pretty well.
[50:05.220 --> 50:08.340]  And much above that, the absorption starts to get pretty high.
[50:09.280 --> 50:09.640]  So...
[50:09.640 --> 50:10.740]  That's a good question.
[50:10.860 --> 50:13.100]  We have a lot of people to ask if they're here with questions.
[50:13.300 --> 50:14.560]  We only have like two minutes left.
[50:14.740 --> 50:17.840]  So, we're going to take the questions outside there because we have a couple things to give away.
[50:18.020 --> 50:21.300]  So, sorry you're in line here, but there's just not enough time to get all these questions.
[50:21.300 --> 50:22.680]  But you can ask them outside in a few minutes.
[50:23.140 --> 50:31.760]  There's a couple of magazines, a couple, three magazines out that address the topics we're talking about for both amateur radio and non-licensed communications.
[50:32.060 --> 50:33.360]  The latter, there's two magazines.
[50:33.500 --> 50:34.900]  One's called Monitoring Times.
[50:34.900 --> 50:36.020]  It's worth checking out.
[50:36.300 --> 50:37.800]  The other's Popular Communications.
[50:38.020 --> 50:39.000]  I hear they have a good writer.
[50:41.120 --> 50:44.100]  Popular Communications gave us three GIF subscriptions.
[50:44.100 --> 50:46.320]  So, we're going to have to give them away somehow.
[50:46.540 --> 50:46.780]  How are we going to...
[50:46.780 --> 50:49.440]  So, I guess what we thought about was...
[50:49.440 --> 50:50.800]  Can anybody tell me what that's saying?
[50:52.180 --> 50:52.580]  Yes.
[50:52.600 --> 50:54.080]  Put the camera...
[50:54.080 --> 50:54.580]  What does it...
[50:55.100 --> 50:55.840]  What does it say?
[50:56.580 --> 50:56.980]  HOPE?
[50:57.220 --> 50:57.800]  It says HOPE.
[50:58.440 --> 50:58.720]  All right.
[50:59.500 --> 51:00.020]  Come here.
[51:00.120 --> 51:00.900]  You got one...
[51:01.700 --> 51:02.100]  Congratulations.
[51:02.300 --> 51:02.880]  Thank you.
[51:07.300 --> 51:11.820]  We had to do one really, you know, kind of an old school way to win a prize, right?
[51:11.820 --> 51:12.140]  Two more...
[51:12.140 --> 51:13.640]  That's a talent right there.
[51:13.800 --> 51:15.560]  Two more GIF subscriptions to give away here.
[51:15.980 --> 51:16.580]  I don't know.
[51:16.740 --> 51:17.600]  How are we going to do this?
[51:19.000 --> 51:19.360]  That's...
[51:19.360 --> 51:22.500]  I'm afraid that if I change the message and try again, it's going to not work.
[51:22.520 --> 51:23.880]  Somebody raise your hand and I'll pick you out.
[51:25.040 --> 51:25.460]  All right.
[51:25.580 --> 51:26.580]  This guy here.
[51:27.340 --> 51:28.060]  And then...
[51:28.060 --> 51:28.740]  How about...
[51:28.740 --> 51:30.880]  How about the guy in the...
[51:30.880 --> 51:32.620]  The guy in the black shirt.
[51:32.880 --> 51:33.180]  What's...
[51:36.890 --> 51:37.530]  You're right there.
[51:37.670 --> 51:37.850]  Yes.
[51:38.330 --> 51:38.690]  Come on up.
[51:39.190 --> 51:39.550]  And...
[51:39.550 --> 51:40.510]  I saw you had a handy talk.
[51:40.510 --> 51:40.870]  We have...
[51:41.290 --> 51:42.230]  There's a box...
[51:42.230 --> 51:46.630]  We have a box here of 200 copies of various issues of popular communications to give away.
[51:46.830 --> 51:47.730]  So, we'll have...
[51:47.730 --> 51:50.270]  We'll be giving them away at the table up here with the ham radio station.
[51:50.450 --> 51:50.770]  And...
[51:50.770 --> 51:52.570]  The biggest prize is these...
[51:52.570 --> 51:55.490]  Is a pair of these Tri-Square Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum Radios.
[51:56.390 --> 51:58.670]  And we got to figure out some way to fairly give this away.
[51:58.930 --> 52:01.550]  I know everybody wants these things, so...
[52:02.750 --> 52:03.270]  You can...
[52:03.270 --> 52:05.170]  If you don't win them, you can still get them from Tri-Square.
[52:05.370 --> 52:08.350]  Let me just turn the speed up and see if we can get somebody who can read something.
[52:08.350 --> 52:08.590]  I don't know.
[52:08.590 --> 52:10.410]  We've got to figure out a quick, fair way to give these away.
[52:11.110 --> 52:11.930]  Just throw it.
[52:16.010 --> 52:20.250]  Maybe we should give one to one person and one to another person and see if they get to know each other.
[52:20.250 --> 52:21.690]  Then they have to talk to each other.
[52:22.250 --> 52:23.270]  I changed the message.
[52:23.450 --> 52:24.770]  You don't want to give it to just hams, though.
[52:24.910 --> 52:25.330]  Oh, okay.
[52:25.450 --> 52:25.990]  Yeah, that's...
[52:25.990 --> 52:27.650]  This is a non-amateur radio.
[52:27.790 --> 52:28.370]  Although, it's interesting.
[52:28.370 --> 52:31.950]  These radios share the amateur band, the 33-centimeter band.
[52:32.110 --> 52:34.310]  So they can use both for amateur and non-amateur communication.
[52:34.650 --> 52:37.630]  So you could, in fact, plug...
[52:37.630 --> 52:42.450]  You know, take this thing apart, plug it into actually a 10-watt amplifier legally.
[52:42.670 --> 52:43.150]  If you're a ham.
[52:43.350 --> 52:43.910]  If you're a ham.
[52:43.990 --> 52:45.930]  And don't burn yourself.
[52:45.930 --> 52:46.970]  Who wants to win these things?
[52:47.050 --> 52:48.490]  And I'll just pick somebody out that I don't know.
[52:53.010 --> 52:54.850]  This woman here in the second room.
[52:56.790 --> 52:58.870]  She was very enthusiastic about it.
[52:58.890 --> 52:59.430]  She really was.
[52:59.530 --> 53:00.470]  She was, like, all over the place.
[53:00.610 --> 53:01.290]  All right, I don't...
[53:01.290 --> 53:03.030]  Meet us up at the table here in a little while.
[53:05.490 --> 53:06.950]  All right, so...
[53:06.950 --> 53:07.650]  We're out of time.
[53:07.650 --> 53:08.610]  So I'm sorry we're out of time.
[53:08.790 --> 53:12.890]  But we'll be back at the table for a while in answering your questions.
[53:12.990 --> 53:15.290]  So just peel up to us.
[53:15.430 --> 53:15.690]  Thanks.
[53:16.270 --> 53:16.990]  Thanks for coming.