On Sunday, the Federal Communications Commission issued a very peculiar statement.

Basically, they warned people not to use Amateur Radio, CB, Family Radio Service, etc. to break the law. Apparently, they are responding to chatter on social media involving using these services to organize mobs. I wonder if their concept extends to organizing right leaning and perfectly legal events.

The largest ham organization in the US, the American Radio Relay League, released a concurring statement.

Well, I'm glad we got the big issues solved already.

I'm sure they issued similar warnings back in the summer...🤪

They know it's easier to tear down Parler than all the ham operators.

Mobs?

Are those the same as peaceful protesters?

Another scare tactic/silencing technique. Can you think of a more law abiding bunch of old men than Ham radio operators? Now they will be scared to say ANYTHING legal about the subject because it will be interpreted as inciting criminal behavior. They will be arrested and shut down. These people don’t want anything spoken about Trump that they cannot control. No independent thought. They must stop Trumpism. This is an example of how far they will go to do it.

I was gonna build a crystal set anyway....

100%

Mostly peaceful.

Didn't you get the script?

Wait...
We have a ham here, I can't remember who though.

I do know he was expounding on the legality of cranking
up a CB, hooking it to a linear, useing sidebands without a license.

And how strictly it was enforced.


This old truck driver just giggled.

So basically the FCC is saying:

The first rule of patriot club is you don't talk about patriot club.


Prove me wrong....]🤣🤣🤣

My Dogs don't know CW but I'll have to keep them away from the Mic. I can't seem to control their language. It seems our current government is terrified of free speech.

uh oh uh yeah i just lost my CB in a canuuing accidentz - shore did huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh

LOL I see what you did there.

That and Free Speech.

I listen to the hams during the day at work sometimes. Almost all of them are over 70, and basically they talk mostly about their radios, trees and landscaping, airplanes, getting their covid vaccine, and the weather. Not exactly a hotbed of radical Right Wing Extremism... unfortunately.

They don’t like that it’s a way to circumvent and bypass the govt intercept of communication like they can do via phone or internet.

I've been licensed since 1960. Back then, the hobby didn't have nearly as much gray hair as it does now.

There is a joke that if your main topic of conversation is your health and your medical conditions, you're a geezer. Lots of us fit that description.

If you are up to no good, trying to coordinate it on ham frequencies is probably a very bad idea. Unless it involves hemorrhoids.

Denton, I have been a Ham less than 10 years now. I remember studying for the exams and how armature radio operators are supposed to be "ambassadors of good will "..... basically not talking about politics religion or sex. I have also read that Central American countries have a zero tolerance policy about bad mouthing their Governments and the ability to triangulate stations that do so quickly. Response ranging from confiscated equipment to disappearing the operators....

I'm thinking about learning to raise and fly passenger pigeons

Ham operators are licensed, so they know who you are already. Communication by radio of any kind will not work very well for very long anyway. Radio signals can be tracked and your location discovered. Any radio signals would have to be limited to short, coded messages on ever-changing frequencies, and there would have to be a lot of organization in place to have times and codes worked out.

Unless you have a very powerful pirate station outside the US, you're not gonna be able to continue broadcasting seditious material for very long.

For that matter, you won't last long even if you are outside the US...

2ndwind.....

Indeed there are countries that absolutely do not tolerate unfavorable speaking about the government. I had a group of guests in my living room once from Taiwan, Malaysia, and China. Without thinking, I said something disparaging about our US government, and everyone's mouth dropped open. I laughed and told them that in the US criticizing the government is the national pastime. Then they relaxed and talked frankly about their governments.

When we had such visitors, we always tried to arrange for them to do things that they couldn't at home. Shooting ranges were a popular opportunity, and getting a private flying lesson was another popular one. Many countries have zero private aviation. In Malaysia, possession of either a firearm or one round of ammunition is an automatic life sentence. Possession of both is an automatic death sentence.

My wife and I got a transceiver a few Months before we were licensed I listened a lot before making my first transmission. In addition to avoiding talk about politics religion or sex I swore I was never going to be one of those guys that spoke at length about health related stuff. I'm now 10 years older and the no yucky health details vow didn't hold up to well.

I've made enough on air friends over the years that I guess it's sort of natural to want to check up on each other.... however there maybe some sort of contest points system for who can give the most graphic "The night before prep for a colonoscopy" descriptions. There are some very eloquent Hams

Most amateur radio operators are technicians on the 2 meter repeaters. The range is generally about 100+ miles or line-of-sight. It takes a second or third exam to be licensed for phone modes on HF where most international DX happens. On the local 2m repeaters it's characteristically civil but it can get pretty raunchy. It might be compared to CB in the 70's when it was popular and any given channel provided a big audience for a drunkard or other fool. I've got at least a dozen local (within 100 miles) repeaters programmed into my radios and there's really only one repeater network that's bad -- the biggest one with the most traffic. Fools love an audience. Any of the raunchiest trash and personal attacks you've see here on the fire has been on the radio just as ugly or worse. The other repeaters are very civil indeed. Most of the time they're completely quiet with the exception of a few scheduled nets where the participants are typically elderly. 2m and 70cm are also popular with off-roaders that equip their 4x4's with radios for trail communications, and most of that isn't even on the repeaters, but on simplex. That's what got me into it, but now I'm an Extra and managed to persuade my whole family to get licensed. Then I ditched my cell phone -- hallelujah!

The bottom line is if you want to organize a failed insurrection or just promote sedition, use the business or broadcast frequencies. Don't punish those that enjoy the amateur radio avocation or provoke the FCC to shut it down. Using the radio "senior center" to organize your insurrection is just inconsiderate. Use NPR's frequencies. They deserve it.

Unlike business and broadcast radio, amateur radio is more akin to the radio equivalent of a town hall, community center, senior center, or public park -- but that isn't to say licensed operators can't experiment with novel modes. Operators are free to invent their own modes, digital or otherwise, and innovate new methods of radio communication -- it definitely isn't restricted to a bunch of old farts talking about their back ache from climbing on the roof to change out their 60 year old co-ax. Almost all the new radios coming onto the market in the last 10 years have been software-defined radios and writing code is a fast growing part of the avocation. Digital modes using a computer like JT65, PSK31, and APRS have exploded in popularity over the last 15 years. You could write the next new mode.

I'm 100% for encrypted/coded/steganographic communications, but not on Amateur frequencies. It's lawlessness. The way the law works right now is the use of the EM spectrum is regulated. Nominally, the FCC regulates it in the US and the ITU internationally. Within the US, the ARRL and affiliated clubs coordinate most of the frequency use -- amateurs basically self-regulate within broad guidelines from the FCC. Encrypted communications is one of the things prohibited, along with commercial business (pecuniary interest). There is a place for "secret codes" and messages on short wave broadcast and commercial frequencies. Just go there.

It is quite practical to have some degree of privacy through mere obscurity with Amateur radio.

Back in the 90's most cellular phones used analog modes and most radio scanners (like police scanners) could tune in and receive cellular conversations that were within range. Cordless phones were also analog and easily demodulated on a common scanner, though the range was typically only about a mile. In the movies and on TV, critical conversations were often deferred to "landlines" because they were harder to intercept. Back in the day when operators made long distance connections, even the landlines weren't private and it was a common thing to pick up the receiver and hear someone else's conversation. Using amateur radio in the traditional way for casual conversations isn't any less private than telephones were throughout the 100 years of the 20th century.

There's more to amateur radio though. For one thing, you could just use any digital voice mode and it's doubtful that anyone but Big Brother will be listening with a receiver using the same mode. It's furthermore completely lawful and practical to use spread spectrum techniques on amateur radio -- so long as your goal isn't to obscure the meaning of the communication. If your goal is simply to spread your transmission across various frequencies to make them more jam-proof, or to get the benefit of process gain, then it's totally within the bounds of part 97. Now using SS, you're not going to foil the NSA. They can listen and record everything all at once and piece it all together if they should need to. But unless you're trying to conceal something from the NSA, you'll almost certainly have kept your benign traffic between you and your intended recipient.

If you think you need privacy from the NSA, I can't advise on that. On the other hand, if you'd just like wireless communications where you don't get abused, sold-out, exploited and ripped-off by corporations sending you bills for scooping up every kind of surveillance data on you to sell it to any buyer that will pay, and you're tired of getting spam calls, telemarketers, calls about an extended warranty on your car, fake scams about social security or your credit score, then amateur radio is a pretty cool space to be in. Maybe you just want to keep spending $50 to $100 or more every month to get that abuse.

This. They want to head it off at the pass.

its all to stop any kind of organized movement from taking place against those idiots.

John, has a long mustache.

John, has a long mustache.

I am sure the issue is from people using the cheap boefang Ham radios from amazon. You do need a Ham license to operate them. I have seen many people having them, most likely are not legal.

You are supposed to have a license to use the more powerful half of Motorola walkie-talkie radios, but literally nobody ever got one. I think those are what the statement is aimed at - likely because Antifa has been known to use those radios during an event to control tactics. They're cheap, almost ubiquitous, and able to be heard by more than one "callee" at a time. Ideal for group coordination.

I saw news photo of a guy holding a Boefang, from my understanding they were transmitting on FRS or GMRS frequencies.Those CCR’s are everywhere. I can always tell when someone is using one on the local repeater by that annoying chirp at the end of transmission.

Ya gotta be carefull of this HAM stuff..Years ago, my then M.I.L. bought a new electric piano. She turned it on first time to play it. I was there..the next door neighbor was a HAM operator..he keyed his mike and sent his call sign, everything came through the electric piano!! We all junpped about four feet in the air!

CGPaul I’ve had a CB in house and various vehicles for 30 years. I lived in town back then and got a linear that boosts your power just like the ham guy that came over the piano. I was talking one night and a neighbor knocked on the door and said I don’t know what your talking on but I can hear everything you say on my TV!!! Wasn’t long after that a cable company came through town and ran cable and most people got rid of antennas and you could run some power and get away with it. We all had linear amplifiers and only knew of one guy that got shut down and he deserved it. We would only run on 120 channels and he had a tube type amplifier the size of a small refrigerator and would wipe us all out, nobody could talk unless you were on the same channel as him because the bleed over was so bad. He got a letter from the FCC telling him he had 30 days to comply so he sold it all and the world of CB was glad of it.

We have a ham here, I can't remember who though.

I do know he was expounding on the legality of cranking
up a CB, hooking it to a linear, useing sidebands without a license.

And how strictly it was enforced.


This old truck driver just giggled.[/quote]
All the Ham guys I know are the types of guys that if they catch you talking on the wrong channel they will come on and ask you for your call sign. I wouldn’t expect much from the older crew of Hams if SHTF other than turning you in for talking on their channels. If you stay on regular channels you won’t get in trouble from anyone.
https://www.rightchannelradios.com/blogs/newsletters/cb-radio-frequencies-and-channels

The only choice now is for the states to break away from the union. Best way to regain any power is to stop shipping food into the big cities. That is not a violent act, just a decision farmers make. It would force the democratic strong holds to go outside the country. By the time they did that they would be shooting each other.

For Ham frequencies, you need a license to transmit. The handheld radios are pretty much line of sight for a few miles. All kinds of things like hills, buildings, and bodies of water can enhance or degrade your signal. The 40 mile range advertised is under ideal conditions with someone probably on top of a mountain.

For most purposes, the handheld radios need a repeater to get their signal further out. Those towers you see and think they're only cell phone? Nope. They have all kinds of things attached to them including Ham radio repeaters. If I remember correctly, some local agencies allowed ham access to the towers because ham radio is often used in communications during disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes.

If you want to listen or monitor only, the FCC can't stop you. Short wave is making a comeback too. 73

When farmers did that, Stalin sent trains out into the country to confiscate the food and murder the farmers; it didn't end well for the farmers.

Before long we'll all be wearing ankle bracelets that monitor what we say. Oh wait....they don't need to do that, they're using all of your cell phones.

Yea, that was funny...think he changed channels after, as she never heard from him again!

Do ham operators still send contact cards or is that a relic of the past?

A lot don’t, they use an online service (Logbook of the World) to verify contacts. I still send QSL cards for any contacts made through amateur radio satellites and those made via the International Space Station repeater.

Intercept of radio transmission is one of the easiest things -- far less complicated than the phone or internet where they typically use the cooperation of the telecommunications companies.

What individually-controlled radios (as opposed to telecom company controlled radios) afford is they cannot simply be turned "off" remotely. Most of them can be easily jammed, however. Just blast the area with a powerful transmission on the frequencies being used and nobody else's transmissions will get through. For a concentrated riot situation, that's totally practical.

Another thing individually-controlled radios afford is convenient anonymity of carry, receive, and location (the degree of transmit anonymity is tenuous). "Burner" phones are another alternative but that option is being squeezed. I remember when the protests were happening in Ukraine and masses of people in the crowd received a message on their phone, "You have been registered as participating in an unlawful assembly..." They just grabbed all the registrations from the cells within range and recorded the ID and GPS data of every phone in the area. As far as I know, the announcement was used mostly for intimidation, but they could have subsequently rounded people up. I am sure that's what they did after January 6th. They just didn't send out the bluff text, and they also had far more video and images to corroborate their data with.

So individually-controlled radios (amateur, FRS, commercial, public safety, CB, etc.) afford some advantages, but circumventing and bypassing government intercept of the communication is not one of them. For the most part, handheld radios are just a gross simplification that does away with a lot of the intrusive technology and features that can be used to abuse people while also forgoing the benefits of those features to the user. It's theoretically possible to meld a more sophisticated device containing a powerful microprocessor (like a smartphone) with a more powerful radio for simplex (non-cellular) communications. That is not widely done because to package the cost of development, production, and profit into a device would result in a far, far higher price than what consumers are accustomed to paying up-front when their device also comes with a dependency on a contract with a cellular network provider, and the ability to gather and sell surveillance data, and promote targeted ads, etc. Apple, Facebook, Verizon, AT&T, Google, Twitter, Youtube, etc. don't have to bundle phones with a contract to make them cheap -- they just have to know that producing phones for their whole cellular and internet ecosystem will inevitably drive revenues. Individually-controlled devices could conceivably bypass that ecosystem, but since they don't come with comparable revenue streams, what company would develop them?

I see it more like "Don't talk on an open line"

The chair is against the wall. John has a long moustache.

People know their departments or entities will likely be weaponized by a political party or group and are getting the word out.

I bought a Texas Star 350 and hooked it up to the main power
in my truck. Actually was pushing 200+ Watts.
Damn thing would make the headlights get a little dim when
I keyed the Mic.

Anyway, one night I'm running with a few guys and get a headache.
Made a comment about how I have been getting one every time
I use the linear.

This old guy ask about my antenna, and where it is.

"Mirror mount, drivers side."
He about crapped, told me t o quit using it until I moved the
antenna, it was affecting my head.

So, I moved the mount to the right side.
No more headaches.

I think it really was too much power within arms reach.




One of those things a fellow doesn't even know what he doesn't know.

Some years back (2012) the FCC fined a CB operator in Alaska $12,500 for using an illegal radio and amp, they leave most folks alone but they will get serious. He was interfering with air traffic. There’s been more than a few over the years hit with fines starting at $10,000.

It happens more than most people realize. Truck stops are often the target of such action.

Also, if you are running AM and a linear, your output is much lower than you might expect. The maximum efficiency is 35% or less. So a real 200 watt linear will give you a piddling 60-70 watts out. With SSB, CW, and digital modes the efficiency is far better

Years ago I bought a used linear capable of 600 watts out. It was cool because my ham transceiver had 10 watts out. The fly in the ointment was that the amp was poorly designed, and I ended up redesigning every circuit in it. Even the filament voltage was wrong. In the end, I got it on the air and it worked splendidly. Should never have sold it.