[Hackaday] Helping Secure Amateur Radios Digital Future

[Hackaday via rec.radio.amateur.moderated Admin]

amateur radio - Hackaday

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Helping Secure Amateur Radios Digital Future

Posted: 15 Jul 2022 10:00 AM PDT
https://hackaday.com/2022/07/15/helping-secure-amateur-radios-digital-future/


The average persons perception of a ham radio operator, assuming they even
know what that means, is more than likely some graybeard huddled over the
knobs of a war-surplus transmitter in the wee small hours of the morning.
Its a mental image that, admittedly, isnt entirely off the mark in some
cases. But its also a gross over-simplification, and a generalization that
isnt doing the hobby any favors when it comes to bringing in new blood.

In reality, a modern hams toolkit includes a wide array of technologies
that are about as far away from your grandfathers kit-built rig as could
be and theres exciting new protocols and tools on the horizon. To ensure a
bright future for amateur radio, these technologies need to be nurtured the
word needs to be spread about what they can do. Along the way, well also
need to push back against stereotypes that can hinder younger operators
from signing on.

On the forefront of these efforts is Amateur Radio Digital Communications
(ARDC), a private foundation dedicated to supporting amateur radio and
digital communication by providing grants to scholarships, educational
programs, and promising open source technical projects. For this weeks Hack
Chat, ARDC Executive Director Rosy Schechter (KJ7RYV) and Staff Lead John
Hays (K7VE) dropped by to talk about the future of radio and digital
communications.

Rosy kicked things off with a brief overview of ARDCs fascinating history.
The story starts in 1981, when Hank Magnuski had the incredible foresight
to realize that amateur radio packet networks could benefit from having a
dedicated block of IP addresses. In those early days, running out of
addresses was all but unimaginable, so he had no trouble securing 16.7
million IPs for use by licensed amateur radio operators. This block of
addresses, known as AMPRNet and then later 44Net, was administered by
volunteers until ARDC was formed in 2011 and took over ownership. In 2019,
the decision was made to sell off about four million of the remaining IP
addresses the proceeds of which went into an endowment that now funds the
foundations grant programs.

So where does the money go? The ARDC maintains a list of recipients, which
provides for some interesting reading. The foundation has helped fund
development of GNU Radio, supported the development of an open hardware
CubeSat frame by the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), and cut a
check to the San Francisco Wireless Emergency Mesh to improve
communications in wildfire-prone areas. They even provided $1.6 million
towards the restoration of the MIT Radio Societys radome and 18-foot dish.

Of all the recipients of ARDC grants, the M17 project garnered the most
interest during the Chat. This community of open source developers and
radio enthusiasts is developing a next-generation digital radio protocol
for data and voice thats unencumbered by patents and royalties. In their
own words, M17 is focused on radio hardware designs that can be copied and
built by anyone, software that anyone has the freedom to modify and share
to suit their own needs, and other open systems that respect your freedom
to tinker. Theyre definitely our kind of folks we first covered the
project in 2020, and are keen to see it develop further.

John says the foundation has approximately $6 million each year they can
dole out, and that while theres certainly no shortage of worthwhile
projects to support as it is, theyre always looking for new applicants. The
instructions and guides for grant applications are still being refined, but
theres at least one hard requirement for any project that wants to be
funded by the ARDC: it must be open source and available to the general
amateur population.

Of course, all this new technology is moot if theres nobody to use it. Its
no secret that getting young people interested in amateur radio has been a
challenge, and frankly, its little surprise. When a teenager can already
contact anyone on the planet using the smartphone in their pocket, getting
a ham license doesnt hold quite the same allure as it did to earlier
generations.
Depending on how old you are, this might have been one of the most shocking
moments in Stranger Things.

The end result is that awareness among youth is low. During the Chat, one
participant recounted how he had to put Netflixs Stranger Things on pause
so he could explain to his teenage son how the characters in the 1980s set
show were able to communicate across long distances using a homemade radio.
Think about that for a minute in a show about nightmarish creatures
invading our world from an alternate dimension, the hardest thing for this
young man to wrap his head around was the fact a group of teenagers would
be able to keep in touch with each other without the Internet or phone
lines to connect them.

So its no surprise that John says the ARDC is actively looking for programs
which can help improve the demographics of amateur radio. The foundation is
looking to not only bring younger people onboard, but also reach out to
groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the hobby. As an
example, he points to a grant awarded to the Bridgerland Amateur Radio Club
(BARC) last year to bolster their youth engagement program. Funds went
towards putting together a portable rig that would allow students to
communicate with the International Space Station, and the development of
hands-on workshops where teens will be able to launch, track, and recover
payloads on a high altitude balloon. Lets see them do that on their fancy
new smartphone.

We want to not only thank Rosy Schechter and John Hays for taking part in
this weeks Hack Chat, but everyone else at Amateur Radio Digital
Communications for their efforts to support the present and future of
amateur radio and digital communication.


The Hack Chat is a weekly online chat session hosted by leading experts
from all corners of the hardware hacking universe. Its a great way for
hackers connect in a fun and informal way, but if you cant make it live,
these overview posts as well as the transcripts posted to Hackaday.io make
sure you dont miss out.