Cross Reference of Radio Services Avalable to the Individual

 The CERT group in my hometown has become interested in radios for its members.  It always comes back to the question of "who do you want to talk to and how far do you want to talk?"  Therefore, I generated a basic chart of radio services available to the average person (that is, not business band or anything esoteric).  I tried to cite CFR where available, but keep in mind when reading this, it is a generalization.

 

 

	Citizens Band (95.901)	FRS (95.501)	MURS (95.2701)	GMRS (95.1701)	Amateur Technician Class (Part 97)
Frequency Range	Low VHF 27MHz	UHF 460MHz	VHF 150MHz	UHF 460MHz	Low VHF and up 29MHz+
Channels	40	22	5	30 Note: shared with FRS except for repeater channels	Unlimited (Subject to local band plan agreements)
License Required	No.  License by FCC rule	No. License by FCC rule.  Secondary user, so subject to interference from primary licensees.	No. License by FCC rule. Secondary user, so subject to interference from primary licensees.	Yes. $35 license for 10 year term. No test required. License covers licensee + 'family' (95.1705)	Yes. $35 non-refundable fee and 35 question test for 10 year term. License covers individual only.
Maximum Power / Expected Range	4 watts (AM) 12 watts (SSB) Realistic range in rural environment 10-20 mi?	2 watts. Range arbitrarily limited by fixed antenna requirement. Realistic range in rural environment 3-5 mi?	2 watts. Range may be extended by improved external antenna, but no repeaters permitted. Realistic range in rural environment 5-7 mi?	50 watts. Range may be extended by external antenna and repeaters. Simplex range in rural environment 15-25 mi?	1500 watts. Sub bands may have lower limits. 50+mi range simplex in ideal conditions. Repeaters and linking can arbitrarily extend range.
Data	No (95.971)	Yes (95.531(a))	Yes (95.2731 (a) and (b))	Yes (95.1731 (d))	All analog and digital emission types permitted*
Type Accepted Equipment Availability	Inexpensive vehicle mount systems commonly available. Handheld units uncommon with relatively poor performance due to antenna size.	Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Units capable of data transfer uncommon.	Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Units capable of data transfer uncommon.	Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Vehicle mount systems available. Repeater systems commercially available.	FCC type acceptance not required.

Ham projects for 2025

 2025 has dawned with a fresh list of aspirations for myself.  While some goals, such as a new job, are outside the scope of this blog, there are multiple items that deserve to be listed here, mostly to hold my feet to the fire.

Site Summit BBS:

 I've managed to convince holdouts on the KL7AA board to let me move forward with an upgrade/replacement of the packet node on Site Summit.  The plan is to install a full featured linBPQ based packet node with BBS, forwarding, and Winlink capabilities in its place.  There will be a 1200bd port on 145.010MHz and a 9600bd port on 440.050MHz.  Ideally, this will also be links to the Wasilla node too, although I haven't yet approached the MatSu club on this matter.

Robust Packet HF APRS igate:

 The radio running the Robust Packet HF igate on 10.1473MHz USB has apparently seem to have gone deaf, although I have not dedicated time to in-depth troubleshooting of the system.  For the time being, the igate has been pulled offline, pending future troubleshooting efforts.  The future of this system is, at this time, unknown.

Home shack master plan:

Utilizing my current Hermes Lite 2 and shack pc running Linux Mint, plus hopefully a Hardrock50 amp if I manage to save up the money, my purely personal goal is to have a fully remote HF operating position.  I also plan to bring my VHF igate back online.  I also have a SEA-222 marine HF transceiver, which, if it is stable enough, I plan to press into service as an HF packet node on 14.105MHz LSB (technically 14.102MHz USB, since packet doesn't care, but who's counting).  If all this jank actually ends up working, I may crosslink the HF packet and VHF APRS port, but that's much further down the line.

There's a lot up there, when you start dissecting each piece, and that's before you factor in other obligations, but I think I can pull it off.

~moose

AREDN Mesh Access via PFSense Firewall

After several months of wrestling with integrating an AREDN node into my home network, I finally arrived on an iteration that I think I am content with.  It isn't perfect, and I will detail the limitations below, but to sum it up, I am treating the AREDN node as a second WAN, with a bit of tomfoolry to get DNS working properly.

This guide will only allow for access to resources on the mesh.  It will not allow access to the wider internet via the mesh.

Most of the configuration followed the PFSense dual-WAN guide word for word (which can be found here).  As seen in the screenshot above, the connection is set up as DHCP.  One area where I deviated from the guide is unchecking both boxes under the 'Reserved Networks' header, as AREDN utilizes the 10.0.0.0/8 private address space.  On a side note, your home network better not be using the same address space or you're probably going to have a bad day.

The most important key to making all this work is DNS.  If you try and enter your AREDN node's IP address as a DNS resolver for the AREDN connection gateway, PFSense will puke out an error.  This leads to my workaround utilizing PFSense's internal DNS resolver, Unbound.

In PFSense 'services' menu, select 'DNS Resolver' and scroll all the way to the bottom where you will see the header 'Domain Overrides'. Add an override for the domain "local.mesh" pointing at the IP address of your local AREDN node.  This allows unbound to redirect all DNS queries ending in local.mesh to the mesh node.

And that's it! Point your browser at your node and browse around the mesh to make sure everything works as expected.  Note that this is not a perfect solution.  For example, if you host a service behind PFSense that you also wish to expose to the mesh, you will have to add a second set of rules to expose that device and specific port.  In that scenario, it would also be beneficial to add a static IP in your mesh node as well.  However, for simple access to the larger mesh, this solution is hard to beat.

~ moose

Hermes Lite 2 on the air

I spent last weekend tromping through the woods to get a wire antenna up.  It ended up being longer than I expected, and I eventually would like to get it up higher. Maybe this weekend?  Point being, I have a working receiver. Shown in this picture is SparkSDR, a host program compatible with the HL2, running 8 digital skimmers across 4 different bands simultaneously.

I can't get over how cool SDR'S are.

Next step is getting the antenna higher and after that, transmitting. Hope to be checking into sniper's net soon!

KL1V