Hams in the Scheme of Things to Come

I've thought about hams' place in the scheme of things for a long time, and today I've had some new thoughts I feel some urgency to share given the way our world is turning.

For the sake of discussion, let's filter out best we can politics, religion, economics, all the rhetorical angels and demons, and try focus on how our technical brother/sisterhood might be instrumental in preserving and protecting what's good about life --the core goodnesses that spring from sovereignty of the individual.

When, as Yeats described, "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold," when belief in central authority decays, regardless of political flavor, individuals need to stay in touch more than ever. The Net nourishes that need, but its feeding tubes can be selectively pinched, and its mains shut off, so it seems, with no more than a wink and a nod.

That leaves hundreds of thousands of individual ops with rigs and antennas...and not a few with off-grid power. Us. The donut eaters, the county hunters, me and you, as Mad Magazine once characterized its staff, the usual gang of idiots. For all the uninentional humor of "When All Else Fails," the goofy whacker hype seems, gasp!...true. Sure, central authority knows where we live. Sure, a burst of EMP here, a jammer there, you geeks can probably a supply a mile long list of how we all could be shut down -- and yes, I'm aware just how cheezy romantic and self-flattering such scenarios can be. But I'll bet effectively shutting us down...and, here's the kicker...plus individuals we empowered with hybrid hacked phones and tablets...might not be so easy. And right now, while our active numbers are legion and growing, there's still AC power and big bandwidth. Hmmm.

No, this is a not a call to soldering guns. I think this would happen organically. Just like gardners will garden, cooks will cook, hunters will put meat on the table and teachers will get back to A, B, and C. Our clan, I think, would communicate the info and inspiration we'd all need to share. Plus a lot of bullshit. Ain't nothin' new under this sun.

About those empowered individuals. Every new licensed ham is one of those. And if at some point, the FCC gets shed like a snakeskin, the brother and sisterhood would carry on, just like it did before the Federal Oligarchs muscled-in.

About those hybrid hacked radio phones and tablets. Now I'm moving from out of my depth to open ocean. I tried to think what could be done outside the internet, without cell towers, little radios networked independently, with current, familiar phones and tablets as the interface. I dunno. Perhaps your mind doesn't boggle.

Now I'll shut up. Burst my bubble, chime in, take the thread and run, please. Of all places to ask for incoming, this be the place.

Interesting. Let me give this some thought Jeff.

If you don't mind, I think this would make an interesting newsletter article.

The thing which you seek to describe is an Alternet.

Let it not touch the Internet directly, else it can be corrupted or controlled.

Somewhere between the Liberty Net and the Free Wheelers?

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Originally Posted by WØTKX

Somewhere between the Liberty Net and the Free Wheelers?

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Ten-forty (meters). ;)

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Originally Posted by N8YX

Ten-forty (meters). ;)

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Get into Form, Ten Forty.

"No, this is a not a call to soldering guns."
I hope not, after burning holes in PC boards and my classic Weller getting stuck to PL-259s my soldering tools became a bit more specialized. Then there's THIS ham!

On edit: I'm wondering how the .gif image got screwed up here when it has a white background.

"I think this would happen organically."
Would happen? Maybe you never heard of an antenna farm.

"...and teachers will get back to A, B, and C."
Careful, that's an invitation to a political shit storm.

"Our clan, I think, would communicate the info and inspiration we'd all need to share. Plus a lot of bullshit."
I'm sure you're talking about Misfit Island, but what we need is a callsign prefix and recognition as a DX entity.

"About those empowered individuals. Every new licensed ham is one of those."
You'll find them on RadioReference dot com, I'll let you check them out for yourself and you just MIGHT end up thinking of ways to DEpower them.

"...the usual gang of idiots."
I'm sure we all know where to find THEM.

"Of all places to ask for incoming, this be the place."
Well, you did ask and now you're scratching your furry head trying to figure out which cheek my tongue is in or if I'm just being cheeky.

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Originally Posted by W3WN

Interesting. Let me give this some thought Jeff.

If you don't mind, I think this would make an interesting newsletter article.

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Tnx! You're welcome to use/reference/sample.

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Originally Posted by kb2vxa

"Of all places to ask for incoming, this be the place."
Well, you did ask and now you're scratching your furry head trying to figure out which cheek my tongue is in or if I'm just being cheeky.

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Point-by-point, laser-guided, yet vaguely friendly fire. I expect nothing less from the valley of the the shadow of the Osprey Bar. HIHI Warren.

BTW, I still use the same Weller with which I built my Ocean Hopper 50 years ago. It's all but mummified in black electrical tape, but, knock on plastic wood, we both still work.

Attachment 7060

Ten-40, Alternet, Free Wheelers, Liberty Net. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Did some links that were here last night go away? I couldn't get in to comment last night, was off site and forgot my durn password. Anyway, my silly scenarios aside, I'm curious if such "alernets" exist and what sort of technology is used. Could one have a automonous, decentralized yet national wireless HF/VHF network with enough oomph to handle pictures, maybe video? Something "self-healing," robust and smart enough to reroute around dead...nodes?....I don't savvy the lingo, never mind the hardware needed to support such a thing if it were possible. Two flavors I guess, one legal, using ham frequencies. Some, strictly playing what if here Big Sis -- extralegal, tucked in here and there along the RF spectrum as necessary.

I've always thought if civilization has a downturn, Ham Radio folks could help it keep together. Like "The Postman". And many of us do have a pretty extensive library. Mine is mostly Science Fiction, the best of which does show a certain philosophy.

There have been some nights on 75 where a group gathers and we talk for hours about technical coolness and deeper forbidden subjects.

Unfortunately it gets QRM'd a lot. But I get it. As a participant of good nights on the Possum Net, Elite Hams (Art Bell and the Gang LOL), The Ol' Mike dudes on 20, etc... it does happen. Falls apart because of those "usual suspects" though.

The best foil for this is having an online real time chat (sometimes video) where we can hide out from shit storms.

As I get back on the air in the next few weeks/months, it would be fun to promote these discussions again. Best to stay cheeky about it all, IMHO.

I'll have to check those nets out. BTW, love the Franklin avatar. Been thinking lately about those Jack-of-All gentlemen of the Englightment and beyond, partly because I've just applied for a tour guide job at the Morse Mansion, Locust Grove http://www.lgny.org in Poughkeepsie NY. Hope my Morse fluency counts for something. Morse bought a Federal Style house and had it done over into this McTuscan villa , after he hit the telegraph jackpot. Well into adulthood, his ambition was to be a rock star painter, and while he made something of a mark after studying in London and Paris, his stuff was not a commercial success back home, which at the time involved displaying very large, dramatic canvases and charging admission. Like so many of his sort, Franklin with this Leyden jars, Jefferson with his folding chairs and pantographs, Morse tinkered with this and that on the side and got inspired by the French semaphore tower communications system while he was painting in France circa 1830s. He caught a break in the patent fight, and hit it big at last, albeit not as a painter. That Englightenment DIY ethos carried on, I think, in the technical self improvement boom in the trade unions through the industrial revolution and went thermonuclear as radio freaks began to bubble up in basements and attics,as the breadboard tsunami washed past Marconi and wasn't damped until the government/military/corporate Death Star put the clamp down in WWI. One of these centuries the individual will triumph, free will trumps all. Like the Modern Lovers' song says, Radio On!

That'd be a pretty cool gig.

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One of these centuries the individual will triumph, free will trumps all.

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Although I think that's a little too optimistic :angry:

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Originally Posted by Jeff K1NSS

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For the sake of discussion, let's filter out best we can politics, religion, economics, all the rhetorical angels and demons,
...
About those empowered individuals. Every new licensed ham is one of those. And if at some point, the FCC gets shed like a snakeskin, the brother and sisterhood would carry on, just like it did before the Federal Oligarchs muscled-in.

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:) :) :)

"Things to Come"? What things are those, if you don't Mayan me asking?

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Originally Posted by KJ3N

"Things to Come"? What things are those, if you don't Mayan me asking?

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You don't need to be a Weatherman or read the Popol Vuh know which way the breeze is blowin'.

The near future feels ominous as the intro to All Along The Watchtower. The potentials for world economic collapse and nuclear war in the Middle East seem higher by the day. Couple that with diminishing belief in central authority, be it government, media, corporate, religious, you name your Evil Doer, with all his ilk and inc., and we're looking at a shift, if not a landslide, to local, semi-autominous, do-it-ourselves. Sure, up to now, the drift has been in the opposite direction. Food, energy, medical care, commerce, public safety, every day brings another Triffid tendril of central control into the fabric of our lives. The system is large and complex and I'm not confident it could handle outside stress on the order of regional nuclear war and global depression. The end is near? No way. Clear away all the hand-wringing nonsense and this remains a country of strong, brave, resourceful individuals. And there's some new wrinkles in the social fabric, American as apple pie that will held bind us together as events conspire to rip us apart. As racism and sexism remain and boil up in modern grotesque ways, I think it's not Lincoln's 1865. Socially we do better. And when the going gets tough, we do best. If, at least for the purpose of discussion, you buy that premise, do you think the ham brother & sisterhood might engender a self-supporting, decentralized network? Yes, public safety would probably be part of that, but I'm thinking more of personal communication, that which we might want to share beyond the back yard fence. Text. Pictures. Video. Whatever we might still be able to share, given what remained at hand.

PS, Funny, I just remembered that The Old Man's "American Radio Relay League" was, essentially, an embryonic form of autonomous network. When I was a kid, I could never get my head around the need for "Traffic."

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Originally Posted by KG4NEL

I think that's a little too optimistic [/COLOR]:angry:

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Optimism is inherently too. ;)

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Originally Posted by Jeff K1NSS

You don't need to be a Weatherman or read the Popol Vuh know which way the breeze is blowin'.

The near future feels ominous as the intro to All Along The Watchtower. The potentials for world economic collapse and nuclear war in the Middle East seem higher by the day. Couple that with diminishing belief in central authority, be it government, media, corporate, religious, you name your Evil Doer, with all his ilk and inc., and we're looking at a shift, if not a landslide, to local, semi-autominous, do-it-ourselves. Sure, up to now, the drift has been in the opposite direction. Food, energy, medical care, commerce, public safety, every day brings another Triffid tendril of central control into the fabric of our lives. The system is large and complex and I'm not confident it could handle outside stress on the order of regional nuclear war and global depression. The end is near? No way. Clear away all the hand-wringing nonsense and this remains a country of strong, brave, resourceful individuals. And there's some new wrinkles in the social fabric, American as apple pie that will held bind us together as events conspire to rip us apart. As racism and sexism remain and boil up in modern grotesque ways, I think it's not Lincoln's 1865. Socially we do better. And when the going gets tough, we do best. If, at least for the purpose of discussion, you buy that premise, do you think the ham brother & sisterhood might engender a self-supporting, decentralized network? Yes, public safety would probably be part of that, but I'm thinking more of personal communication, that which we might want to share beyond the back yard fence. Text. Pictures. Video. Whatever we might still be able to share, given what remained at hand.

PS, Funny, I just remembered that The Old Man's "American Radio Relay League" was, essentially, an embryonic form of autonomous network. When I was a kid, I could never get my head around the need for "Traffic."

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I feel ya man.

We've never had a situation before in this nation, where one citizen took up arms against another EVAR!

And, dear god! War in the Middle East! Never has that been seen before in ALL of history...

On the central control thing... Well, the more power tries to consolidate, the harder it becomes to maintain. It's basic systems theory.

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Originally Posted by KC2UGV

We've never had a situation before in this nation, where one citizen took up arms against another EVAR!

And, dear god! War in the Middle East! Never has that been seen before in ALL of history...

On the central control thing... Well, the more power tries to consolidate, the harder it becomes to maintain. It's basic systems theory.

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Absolutely. There's no new bad news under the sun. History may not repeat itself, but it has a definite stutter. My rumination is not about the end of the world or who's to blame for this hell of a fix. Just asking how, if needed, hams might hack past and present to homebrew an alternate internet -- a wireless iMancipated IndyWeb so to speak -- fractionally hosted by its users, everywhere and all but nowhere. Could such a thing be done and defended? Yes, I'm talking through Major Amos Hoople's fez. Will gladly entertain informed dismissals or details sweated amongst yourselves.

I'm an appliance operator who never built anything more than an Ocean Hopper kit and a bunch of little oscillators, amplifiers and simple receivers from scavanged parts. Many of my ham friends have done and do much more. Most all of us, regardless of technical ability or operating prowess, carry on the tradition in great and small ways. Look past the DX pile ups and ten thousand dollar radios, the whackermobiles and all that silly stuff other hams do that we don't. There's a civilized gee-whiz core to our hobby that attracted me in the first place, long before I could begin to explain its appeal. Joining up was like becoming a Junior Faraday, Ohm, Ampere, Henry, part of something that went back centuries and led into, at the time, lower Earth orbit. That's still exciting to me, and might well be sustaining, in a stealthy way, for one and all.

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Originally Posted by Jeff K1NSS

Absolutely. There's no new bad news under the sun. History may not repeat itself, but it has a definite stutter. My rumination is not about the end of the world or who's to blame for this hell of a fix. Just asking how, if needed, hams might hack past and present to homebrew an alternate internet -- a wireless iMancipated IndyWeb so to speak -- fractionally hosted by its users, everywhere and all but nowhere. Could such a thing be done and defended? Yes, I'm talking through Major Amos Hoople's fez. Will gladly entertain informed dismissals or details sweated amongst yourselves.
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HSMM.

The short answer: Sure we can. The long answer? Hams are so cliquish to begin with, most can't even collaborate enough to keep a repeater on the air past the lifetime of the equipment owner.

But, the bright spot? If you check out the Freeswitch and Asterisk dev channels on IRC, a shocking revelation will be seen: Many are hams. And, if you look at the MeshPotato project, lo and behold, the coordinator is a Ham!

There are bright spots. Hams need to actually standardize, standardize, standardize.

Case in point: I don't care what the standard is for packet radio (TCP/IP over RF, AX25, HSSM, etc etc etc). Let's just DO IT. I'm taking the lead (Once these god forsaken scumbag sellers pull their heads from their fourth point of contact) here, and setting up the beginnings of two mesh networks: Ham mesh, and Part 15 mesh.

That's the stuff. I have some homework to do.

HSMM. I'll be darned. I knew it was out there somewhere.

I might be gone awhile.

Hmmm... I got my license because I was interested in long-range communications, but also for Radio Astronomy.

I guess in my mind, that puts us between CB'ers and SETI.

That's channel 14 if I remember right.

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Originally Posted by N2NH

Hmmm... I got my license because I was interested in long-range communications, but also for Radio Astronomy.

I guess in my mind, that puts us between CB'ers and SETI.

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Both groups that haven't found intelligent life yet, but may yet in the future :lol:

Another thought. Suppose instead of a MESH network maintained by Postman-like Elmers and Apprentices, suppose this. Imagine an inner-directed Signal Corps of electromagnetic Johhny Appleseeds. They'd plant mini net nodes like geo caches here and there and everywhere, accessible by cellphones with minimal hacking. Such a network might be readily shut down, but sheer numbers might overwhelm any effective suppressive attempts, such that by hook or crook, the email got through. Again, I don't know enough about how cellphones work to guess how easy they'd be to repurpose, or how much autonomous, self-powered intelligence could be cheaply jammed into, say, a ping pong ball sized container. Short of cloned biologic radios with chlorophyl-based energy transverterting skins, might not be so easy to match the economical elegance of apple seeds. Still, people are clever. I might not bet on a lot of human endevors, this kind of stuff is what some of us routinely do.

They aren't a "network", per se, but USB dead drops are kind of like planting "seeds" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop

Just gimme a port for my brain. I want to plug in!

http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/upl...ain-739470.jpg

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Originally Posted by KG4NEL

They aren't a "network", per se, but USB dead drops are kind of like planting "seeds" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop

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This looks nifty :)

Those USB dead drops look interesting. Being hams we'd naturally use the wireless version on upper sideband of course.

"Just gimme a port for my brain. I want to plug in!"

In time we'll develop one that works with your positronic neural network... Data.

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Originally Posted by KG4NEL

They aren't a "network", per se, but USB dead drops are kind of like planting "seeds" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop

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Never heard of that either. Dead drops. Lotta vulnerabilities, but strength in numbers. Misfit intel strikes agn! tnx

Dead drop. Oh Jeff, surely you've heard about the Mafia graveyard. What better place to stash a flash? Just watch out for the buttons.

Anyone ever watch "Doomsday Preppers" on the National Geographic Channel? One ham in Tennessee (he lives about an hour away from me) has his ham shack in a Faraday cage. He seemed a bit nutty, but nowhere near the other loons that have been featured on that program

I also remember reading somewhere that the damage that EMP can do on a nationwide basis is fairly limited. It would take dozens of nukes detonated in an air burst in numerous locations throughout the U.S. to wipe out every electronic device.

But knowing how to grow your own food and keeping an alternate power source at the ready is something I've been doing for years. Being prepped for hurricanes is a hard habit to break. Now we just worry about tornadoes.