2025-02-28 — Zero Retries Store!, Other Amateur Radio VOIP Services, Why Hasn’t Anyone Tried to Develop Something Like IP400 Sooner?, Amateur Radio Over Different “Radio” Mediums, DigiPi Version 1.9-3
Martin - I'm convinced that we will - Indeed! Thanks for putting your efforts into this project. It was a long wait to find someone of your skills, but it was worth it.
Bald Yak sounds very interesting. I have made a couple of attempts to learn GNU Radio, but between the lack of (coherent) documentation and the breaking changes between some version increments, I haven't really made any headway.
This project looks promising, from what little I've seen. Unfortunately, it looks like all of the information is in a podcast, which is not a great medium for me.
Tony - Agreed that podcasts can be tedious, but Onno implements something that I would also like to do when I resume podcasting - posting a full text transcript of the audio. See https://groups.io/g/FoAR/message/292 - you can subscribe to that email list to get the text on a weekly basis.
Let me call to your attention the recent telecom experience in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. AT&T and Verizon have been soliciting PTT business and investing in network robustness. Nevertheless, about 80% of their networks in the affected area went down. Not just for a day. For five to ten days. In one county, 19 out of 20 cellsites were down for a week.
Why? Most cellsites are now connected to the network core with fiber cables instead of digital microwave which could no longer handle the volume of data. All those fiber cables crossed creeks and rivers underneath highway and railroad bridges. But hundreds of government-maintained bridges, thousands of privately owned bridges, and entire railroad lines for mile after mile were washed out. All those fiber cables were broken.
Worse, the destruction of so many bridges meant that cellsites could not be reached by road to replenish the diesel fuel in their backup generators. So even the cellsites that still had fiber connectivity went dark when their fuel depleted.
The state-run 800 MHz network for first responders and emergency management, known as Viper, performed better. However, even they had problems getting fuel to some radio sites. At some places, fuel had to be helicoptered in and fuel drums were being manhandled through mud in order to keep their network somewhat operational. By intent, Viper does not handle "health and welfare" traffic.
Who came out smelling good in all this? Lowly ham radio. A repeater on Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Rockies, played a very important role early on. I spent a day relaying messages off HF to NC Emergency Management HQ here in Raleigh. What eventually saved the day was helicopter delivery of enough Starlink terminals into the affected area to handle the traffic.
NCEM is considered one of the best emergency management agencies, and their experience over the last 10 years with hurricane flooding in eastern NC had indicated that Viper and the public networks were sufficiently robust. Ain't so.
Chuck - I defer to your boots on the ground experience on the utility of Amateur Radio communications in that emergency. But next time I suspect that first responder communications will be better prepared with the layering of services I spoke of - FirstNET (and Viper) even more hardened (likely with backup satellite backhaul), Iridium phones and PTT devices (no ground infrastructure to be disrupted), and a lot of Starlink terminals in reserve ready to be activated and deployed on a hours notice, especially the backpack'able Starlink Mini and battery packs. One of the biggest game changers I've seen is a Starlink Mini installed in a frame that can be mag mounted to a vehicle roof, with 12 volt power.
I agree that Starlink is likely to play a much larger role going forward, although the extent to which Starlink deflates 3GPP MCPTT and FirstNet remains to be seen. I can say that I would much rather be a Starlink sales rep than an AT&T sales rep at this moment. However, I worked in the satellite industry once upon a time and those systems have their weaknesses too. It's also unclear how politics, international relations, etc will influence the trajectory of Starlink (pardon the pun) over time. Iridium is still out there, modestly growing, now turning a real profit, and advocating L-band over K-band. Sell what you've got! But the U.S. government is Iridium's single largest customer, and I don't know what politics will do to them.
Generals always prepare to re-fight the last war instead of fighting the next one. Anticipating the next emergency is not easy. Personally, I had been pessimistic that ham radio would ever again have a significant role in disaster recovery in the U.S... but then Helene came along. Was this a last gasp for ham radio in emcomm, or will there be another unforeseen type of catastrophe that exposes new flaws in mainstream emcomm and needs ham radio to fill a gap? I guess we wait and see. Helene even put some wind in the sails of the AM broadcast industry. That might be short-lived too.
I will add that the big gap in Helene from the public perspective was health and welfare traffic. Where's Grandma and is she alright? Etc. It was clear to everyone during Helene that H&W takes a back seat to emcomm when the system is under great stress. But I think we already knew that from Katrina. Ham radio might have a long-term role if it focuses on H&W. But the Part 15 community is aware of that opportunity.
Chuck - While I think that served agency emergency communications will largely be supplanted by FirstNET / Iridium / Starlink... I think that Amateur Radio remains highly significant in PERSONAL emergency communications. An example is getting a dispersed family licensed and having regular practice on repeater use, perhaps even HF use. "Communications discipline" is a very real thing that needs regular practice.
Boots on the ground experience here. Most cell tower backhaul is single fiber to a hub where it then gets on a regional ring architecture. In many rural areas, that ring is actually in the same fiber cable because there is no other path built and it will never be cost effective to build a ring properly. Unfortunately accountants look at payouts for downtime under SLAs as cheaper than building out a robust network. And often times there just isn't another right of way available.
This is the real problem with rural telecom networks. When it was a permissible monopoly (ma bell) there were guarantees to stockholders and people willing to buy 30 year bonds to pay for the buildout. These days investors want an 18 month ROI and the only long bonds are Treasuries. A truly sad state of affairs IMHO.
Eric - It's a bit out of scope to dive into the economics of how rural telecom (few customers per square mile) has evolved after the breakup and AT&T and its (and other telcos such as GTE) mandate of universal service. In my opinion, the rural Broadband Internet divide has been decisively fixed by the emergence of Starlink. With Starlink being available, and working so well, the job is, just, done.
While the Icom ID-1 is long gone, the IC-9700 and the IC-905 have the ability to use DStar DD mode with a 128 KBps rate.
As I own both radios, I've experimented with setting up a link on the 23cm band. It works as expected, however the rapid TX/RX switching sound using mechanical relays is quite annoying. Why Icom used mechanical relays and not some PIN diode for TX/RX switching is beyond me.
Yoram - You're correct that the IC-9700 and IC-905 include D-Star DD mode, so it lives on, and laudably, Icom continues to offer a repeater that supports DD mode... but I don't hear of many people actually using it in repeater mode. It's in there, but (my impression is) that it's largely unused.
The Icom D-Star DD mode was only implemented in Icom radios on the 1240-1300 GHz bands, so range was limited (though repeaters are available). The Icom ID-1 radio was expensive ($600+) and is now discontinued. Icom continues to support DD mode with a repeater and incorporating DD mode into the Icom IC-9700 and Icom IC-905 radios.
The Kenwood TH-D75 will do a form of PTT over IP today. Unfortunately Android/Windows only.
Really wish more amateur developers would work on platform agnostic applications!
From the Kenwood Operating Tips manual:
3.4 Reflector Terminal Mode
NOW the most impressive feature of the TH-D75A/E is called Reflector Terminal Mode. You don’t need a hotspot or access point to use the Reflector Terminal Mode. To use Reflector Terminal Mode, you will
need an Android phone or Android tablet, a free download from Google Play, called Blue DV Connect.
Install the application on your Android Device pair the device to your TH-D75A/E. Put your radio in
Reflector Terminal Mode. Make sure you have Internet access on your Android device and you’re ready to go. The RF section of the TH-D75A/E is turned off, all voice and UR CALL fields information is transmitted via Bluetooth back and forth to the radio. You can access reflectors as you do with a repeater or hotspot (access point). If you’re using an Android phone with internet access, you just slip your phone in your pocket and control everything on the radio.
Another option is to use a Windows PC and BlueDV for Windows to use Reflector Terminal Mode.
Eric - Oh, my. I'd heard that there was some such capability in the TH-D75A/E... but I didn't know the specifics until your comment. That is... an interesting... twist... in the evolution of Amateur Radio over Internet.
DJ - Thanks for your note, and your patience as we worked on getting the Zero Retries Store up and running. Glad you're wearing your ZR Polo shirt with pride!
To paraphrase Jean-Luc Picard "Let's make it happen". de VE6VH.
Martin - I'm convinced that we will - Indeed! Thanks for putting your efforts into this project. It was a long wait to find someone of your skills, but it was worth it.
Bald Yak sounds very interesting. I have made a couple of attempts to learn GNU Radio, but between the lack of (coherent) documentation and the breaking changes between some version increments, I haven't really made any headway.
This project looks promising, from what little I've seen. Unfortunately, it looks like all of the information is in a podcast, which is not a great medium for me.
Tony - Agreed that podcasts can be tedious, but Onno implements something that I would also like to do when I resume podcasting - posting a full text transcript of the audio. See https://groups.io/g/FoAR/message/292 - you can subscribe to that email list to get the text on a weekly basis.
Let me call to your attention the recent telecom experience in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. AT&T and Verizon have been soliciting PTT business and investing in network robustness. Nevertheless, about 80% of their networks in the affected area went down. Not just for a day. For five to ten days. In one county, 19 out of 20 cellsites were down for a week.
Why? Most cellsites are now connected to the network core with fiber cables instead of digital microwave which could no longer handle the volume of data. All those fiber cables crossed creeks and rivers underneath highway and railroad bridges. But hundreds of government-maintained bridges, thousands of privately owned bridges, and entire railroad lines for mile after mile were washed out. All those fiber cables were broken.
Worse, the destruction of so many bridges meant that cellsites could not be reached by road to replenish the diesel fuel in their backup generators. So even the cellsites that still had fiber connectivity went dark when their fuel depleted.
The state-run 800 MHz network for first responders and emergency management, known as Viper, performed better. However, even they had problems getting fuel to some radio sites. At some places, fuel had to be helicoptered in and fuel drums were being manhandled through mud in order to keep their network somewhat operational. By intent, Viper does not handle "health and welfare" traffic.
Who came out smelling good in all this? Lowly ham radio. A repeater on Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Rockies, played a very important role early on. I spent a day relaying messages off HF to NC Emergency Management HQ here in Raleigh. What eventually saved the day was helicopter delivery of enough Starlink terminals into the affected area to handle the traffic.
NCEM is considered one of the best emergency management agencies, and their experience over the last 10 years with hurricane flooding in eastern NC had indicated that Viper and the public networks were sufficiently robust. Ain't so.
Chuck - I defer to your boots on the ground experience on the utility of Amateur Radio communications in that emergency. But next time I suspect that first responder communications will be better prepared with the layering of services I spoke of - FirstNET (and Viper) even more hardened (likely with backup satellite backhaul), Iridium phones and PTT devices (no ground infrastructure to be disrupted), and a lot of Starlink terminals in reserve ready to be activated and deployed on a hours notice, especially the backpack'able Starlink Mini and battery packs. One of the biggest game changers I've seen is a Starlink Mini installed in a frame that can be mag mounted to a vehicle roof, with 12 volt power.
I agree that Starlink is likely to play a much larger role going forward, although the extent to which Starlink deflates 3GPP MCPTT and FirstNet remains to be seen. I can say that I would much rather be a Starlink sales rep than an AT&T sales rep at this moment. However, I worked in the satellite industry once upon a time and those systems have their weaknesses too. It's also unclear how politics, international relations, etc will influence the trajectory of Starlink (pardon the pun) over time. Iridium is still out there, modestly growing, now turning a real profit, and advocating L-band over K-band. Sell what you've got! But the U.S. government is Iridium's single largest customer, and I don't know what politics will do to them.
Generals always prepare to re-fight the last war instead of fighting the next one. Anticipating the next emergency is not easy. Personally, I had been pessimistic that ham radio would ever again have a significant role in disaster recovery in the U.S... but then Helene came along. Was this a last gasp for ham radio in emcomm, or will there be another unforeseen type of catastrophe that exposes new flaws in mainstream emcomm and needs ham radio to fill a gap? I guess we wait and see. Helene even put some wind in the sails of the AM broadcast industry. That might be short-lived too.
I will add that the big gap in Helene from the public perspective was health and welfare traffic. Where's Grandma and is she alright? Etc. It was clear to everyone during Helene that H&W takes a back seat to emcomm when the system is under great stress. But I think we already knew that from Katrina. Ham radio might have a long-term role if it focuses on H&W. But the Part 15 community is aware of that opportunity.
Chuck - While I think that served agency emergency communications will largely be supplanted by FirstNET / Iridium / Starlink... I think that Amateur Radio remains highly significant in PERSONAL emergency communications. An example is getting a dispersed family licensed and having regular practice on repeater use, perhaps even HF use. "Communications discipline" is a very real thing that needs regular practice.
Boots on the ground experience here. Most cell tower backhaul is single fiber to a hub where it then gets on a regional ring architecture. In many rural areas, that ring is actually in the same fiber cable because there is no other path built and it will never be cost effective to build a ring properly. Unfortunately accountants look at payouts for downtime under SLAs as cheaper than building out a robust network. And often times there just isn't another right of way available.
This is the real problem with rural telecom networks. When it was a permissible monopoly (ma bell) there were guarantees to stockholders and people willing to buy 30 year bonds to pay for the buildout. These days investors want an 18 month ROI and the only long bonds are Treasuries. A truly sad state of affairs IMHO.
Eric - It's a bit out of scope to dive into the economics of how rural telecom (few customers per square mile) has evolved after the breakup and AT&T and its (and other telcos such as GTE) mandate of universal service. In my opinion, the rural Broadband Internet divide has been decisively fixed by the emergence of Starlink. With Starlink being available, and working so well, the job is, just, done.
Hi,
While the Icom ID-1 is long gone, the IC-9700 and the IC-905 have the ability to use DStar DD mode with a 128 KBps rate.
As I own both radios, I've experimented with setting up a link on the 23cm band. It works as expected, however the rapid TX/RX switching sound using mechanical relays is quite annoying. Why Icom used mechanical relays and not some PIN diode for TX/RX switching is beyond me.
73 de Yoram 4Z1YR
Yoram - You're correct that the IC-9700 and IC-905 include D-Star DD mode, so it lives on, and laudably, Icom continues to offer a repeater that supports DD mode... but I don't hear of many people actually using it in repeater mode. It's in there, but (my impression is) that it's largely unused.
Yoram - Mention of DD mode now updated to:
The Icom D-Star DD mode was only implemented in Icom radios on the 1240-1300 GHz bands, so range was limited (though repeaters are available). The Icom ID-1 radio was expensive ($600+) and is now discontinued. Icom continues to support DD mode with a repeater and incorporating DD mode into the Icom IC-9700 and Icom IC-905 radios.
The Kenwood TH-D75 will do a form of PTT over IP today. Unfortunately Android/Windows only.
Really wish more amateur developers would work on platform agnostic applications!
From the Kenwood Operating Tips manual:
3.4 Reflector Terminal Mode
NOW the most impressive feature of the TH-D75A/E is called Reflector Terminal Mode. You don’t need a hotspot or access point to use the Reflector Terminal Mode. To use Reflector Terminal Mode, you will
need an Android phone or Android tablet, a free download from Google Play, called Blue DV Connect.
Install the application on your Android Device pair the device to your TH-D75A/E. Put your radio in
Reflector Terminal Mode. Make sure you have Internet access on your Android device and you’re ready to go. The RF section of the TH-D75A/E is turned off, all voice and UR CALL fields information is transmitted via Bluetooth back and forth to the radio. You can access reflectors as you do with a repeater or hotspot (access point). If you’re using an Android phone with internet access, you just slip your phone in your pocket and control everything on the radio.
Another option is to use a Windows PC and BlueDV for Windows to use Reflector Terminal Mode.
Eric - Oh, my. I'd heard that there was some such capability in the TH-D75A/E... but I didn't know the specifics until your comment. That is... an interesting... twist... in the evolution of Amateur Radio over Internet.
Steve, Congratulations to you and Tina for getting the Zero Retries Store up and running! I know Tina spent a lot of time and effort on this.
Coincidentally I was wearing my Zero Retries Polo shirt yesterday when you posted this newsletter announcing the store opening! :-)
DJ - Thanks for your note, and your patience as we worked on getting the Zero Retries Store up and running. Glad you're wearing your ZR Polo shirt with pride!