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Ham It Up!

If there's any current trend in tech that I love right now it's that people are constantly finding new ways to repurpose old technologies. Along those lines, we're going to talk about the world of people who have built an alternative internet over amateur radio, often called ham radio.

Before we dive in, we need to talk a bit about what radio and

amateur radio are. On a physical level, radio is electromagnetic waves—the same as light— broadcast out in all directions and picked up by antennas. Antennas are material, often pieces of metal, that get "shaken" by these waves in a way that creates electricity.

The electricity in the antenna can then be used for all sorts of things: for a radio station it becomes the signal that drives a speaker so you can listen to music; it can become the data that forms a webpage you access on your phone; or it can be individual frames that make up a television signal. What isn’t a radio?

standard of communication that takes place on specific radio frequencies that have been reserved all across the world to be freely used by everyone. In most countries you do need a license to legally broadcast, but licenses generally are free, available with a very low or no minimum age limit, and easy to get When you're licensed, you also Even though, when we say get a call sign, which is almost radio, we usually mean "a thing like an internet IP address. For that broadcasts music or talk", from amateur radio, a call sign identifies the perspective of science, radio the broadcaster. It's assigned to a is actually a huge range of things person, not the radio. including: your Ham radio is often used for wi-fi, the cell people to talk to each other WIKIMEDIA COMMONS network a phone hundreds, even thousands, of miles connects to, and apart. But that's not all the ways the free tv stations amateur radio is useful. that exist in a lot Since ham radio is, on a physical of places that only level, the same kind of thing as wishow fifty year old fi, it should be possible to convert tv shows and the the sound-oriented radio signals news. These are into digital signals computers use all types of radio. with wi-fi. Then you have a reach We're just of miles and without needing to constantly pay an ISP for internet access. swimming in all these signals; this light that has waves so big A typical amateur radio set-up. The term "ham" was not only can we first used in professional wired telegraphy during the not see them 19th century to mock operators with poor Morse code- but the waves sending skills ("ham-fisted"). (Wikipedia) pass through us like visible light through clear glass. From the radio signal's perspective, humans don't even exist. It's pretty cool, but maybe a little weird if you think about it too hard. So if wifi is a kind of radio, have we reached the end of this article? Admittedly, it'd be pretty funny if I said "to use the internet over radio, turn on your phone" but instead we’re going to talk about something much cooler by far: amateur radio. Amateur radio is a very old What’s your call sign? There are a few different ways to use the internet over the radio. One of the most popular is the automatic packet reporting system (APRS), a system people have set up where everyone tunes into the same frequency and uses software or hardware to convert their radio signals into packets, just like the bits of data that get sent over the normal internet. The same way an IP address on the normal internet is used to find the computer that's supposed to get a message, the call sign of the radio operator is used to let someone's computer know if a packet sent out across the radio is meant for them. APRS technology predates wi-fi entirely. People commonly set up raspberry pis to manage encoding and decoding the APRS signals and to help provide infrastructure to

boost signals. People use APRS to send emails and messages, as well as sending texts cell phones can receive.

In addition to APRS, people also use mesh networks, which are a little different. You create your own private network with a group of people and even use modded wi-fi routers to signal-boost your radio-based network. These mesh networks can be huge as your signal hops from radio enthusiast to radio enthusiast all who have routers and antennas set up to pass along signals, covering tens to hundreds of miles per person. Are we there yet?

Probably the single biggest disadvantage of doing something like this is that it's slow. Like capital S slow, Snail's-Pace slow. Like waiting-for-a-pot-of-water-to-boil slow. Like don't-even-think-about -streaming-video slow.

And if it's so slow, why use it? There are both practical and philosophical reasons to broadcast internet traffic with radio technologies.

The most basic reason is that it's kinda fun to try making something like the internet with a group of friends. But, also, a lot of people care about this because it's useful for disaster relief. These radio networks are slow but they are low-power, can be maintained by a handful of people with some batteries, and still be used to keep communication going when cell phone towers go down and big areas lose power.

The last reason to broadcast the internet is that some people don’t want to feel locked into infrastructure they didn't make. They want to have control over it, and that makes a lot of sense to me: it's the maker movement distilled down to include the internet we use daily. b My name is

Guglielmo Marconi, and I'm thrilled that the wireless technology I invented is still relevant in 2021!

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Right: U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Adrey Garret uses a ham radio at Williams Air Operating Facility during the 1956 winter. Ham radio was the only means of voice communication with friends and family back in the U.S. for navy personnel living and working in Antarctica in the days before satellite telephone technology became common. (Wikipedia)

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