[TriLUG] Linux and HAM radio questions

[William Sutton]

Thanks...this is very useful info.

-- 
William Sutton


On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, William Sutton wrote:
> 
> > For you amateur radio operators, I have some questions
> > 1. What is the data capability of packet radio
> 
> I haven't done any of this for about 10yrs, but here's the 
> general idea
> 
> bandwidth (==data rate) is determined by regulations. The 
> higher the freq, the more bandwidth you're allowed. At 2m 
> you can get 1200 baud (some band you can do 9600, not sure 
> where).
> 
> expect for a small minority, hams aren't experimenters 
> anymore and so hams use commodity (ham) radios to transmit 
> data. These radios are for voice only and usually have a 
> bandwidth of 3kHz. You can't get much data rate out of this.
> 
> Some experimenters have built decoders to operate at the 
> 28MHz and plugged these into the back of hacked radios. They 
> get more data rate. At 10GHz you get get about 10Mbps, but 
> you have roll your own and you have to understand microwave
> RF.
> 
> The ARRL, which loudly proclaims its wish for ham radio not 
> to be a technical hobby, only interest in increasing the 
> technical level of packet radio, has been to exhort 
> commodity ham radio manufacturers to make their radios 
> packet-able.
> 
> At the time when 1200bd was the rage on 2m I was getting 
> 14,4k over a phone line to my local DOS BBS. I decided that 
> ham radio was not the place to put effort into data 
> transmission.
> 
> > 2. What facilities are there in Linux for 
> > transmitting/receiving audio streams over radio?
> 
> the protocols are in the kernel. Just turn them on an 
> rebuild. You have some console program that allows you to 
> type and you then send the ham radio ready packets over a 
> serial line to and from your packet-able radio, the replies 
> coming back on the screen. (I haven't done this with Linux - 
> but it must be similar to the way you did it in DOS - since 
> the interface to the radios is the same).
> 
> Joe
> 
>