I've often said that history could rightly be called The Revenge of the Nerds. After all, who else has relegated the huge brutal guy with the horned helmet to the football field and wrestling match and wrested the control from their hands? Some guy with a tube of Clearasil in his pocket operating from a cubicle in Fort Knox wields more power than all the Vikings, the Hordes of Genghis Khan and the generations of Crusaders added together and more.
Nerds rule and of course nowadays, it's hip to be a nerd. As with all hipdom, however most of what you see is imitation and pose. That "tech-savvy" kid who just walked out of the cell phone store with a new gadget, quacking app, app, app like the AFLAC duck? a real nerd? I don't think so.
I'm increasingly often the recipient of obnoxious snark from people whose fragile egos depend on the complexity of their cell phones, knowledge of the features of the latest Japanese consumer toy and number of things owned with the letter i tacked on to the front. Most couldn't read the schematic for a flashlight much less tell you how semiconductor devices work or how they're made, yet they proudly assume the mantle of nerd. Tell you how a Hartley differs from a Colpitts or how to calculate the resonant point of a tank circuit? That's kid stuff to a real nerd. You can't even get a Technician license without knowing such things. Real nerds were making phone calls from their cars over 30 years ago, sending text messages a hundred years ago and are doing things today you wouldn't understand if I told you about it.
Is it a big deal that I can talk to someone in Australia with a hand held device? Not any more, but doing it for free is still a lot of fun. I got a kick out of contacting a Yuri Gagarin special event station in Kazakhstan the other day and some Mexican guys on an uninhabited volcano in the Pacific and that sort of thing is even more fun when you're doing it with something you designed and built connected to a wire up in the palm trees. But that's just me and it's a me who isn't interested in what the pierced and tattooed kids at the mall are doing at the moment, which of course is how we nerds are.
Anyway, it's April 18th and that's World Amateur Radio Day, which commemorates the founding of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) this year on it's 78th anniversary. There are about 3 million of us in the world; over 600,000 in the US, and we've pioneered and developed nearly every form of electronic communication there is, most of which you're unaware of, thank you very much. We have our own satellites, we bounce signals off the moon and the Northern Lights and the ionized trails of meteors. We can send a photo of the grand kids and text messages to Timbuctu with 20 watts and keep in touch when all else fails, but for the most part we can communicate anywhere and without the fragile and expensive infrastructure you need to send gibberish to the kids at the other end of the hall.
But hey, I gotta go. ZB2FK is CQing from Gibraltar on 10 and that's a new one for the log book.
Showing posts with label Amateur Radio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amateur Radio. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2011
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Nerds to the rescue -- again
Well here we go again. On the Florida Amateur Radio Emergency Service nets this morning, I learned that the Florida contingent of radio Amateurs is wrapping up operations in Haiti. Most phone service is still out on the island, with cell towers destroyed and lines cut and power out. The same goes for the internet. Of course the military has it's own communications, but nobody else does.
Haiti is too poor to have a resident base of radio operators, so volunteers from the US have been living there in squalid conditions without any pay.
Hams have been using techniques like Winlink2000, a digital PACTOR III based system which allows users in Haiti to send e-mail and data to a remote internet node elsewhere in the world and High Frequency voice communications using SSB are carrying the rest. Somehow the press thinks this is hilarious and despite the cutting edge technology none of them can understand, "low-tech." Yes, we've been sending text messages for a hundred years and making phone calls from our cars for nearly 40 years.
I'm sure the Chile earthquake this morning will have severely disrupted communications in that country and perhaps the inevitable tsunami will have terrible effects all over the pacific rim and islands. I'm listening to the SATERN net, run by the Salvation Army - now on alert condition 2, and the Intercontinental Traffic Net this morning, but so far I'm not hearing anything coming out of Chile. I'm sure that will change as the day goes on and I'll be listening in. If you have a radio that can receive 14,300 MHz and 14,255 MHz Upper Side Band, those are the primary US frequencies at the moment.
Yes, we're just funny old nerdy dinosaurs with our expensive microprocessor controlled digital equipment, our Amateur satellites and our Echolink internet radio protocols, but in 2004, my local friends were handling all the communications in West Central Florida after hurricane Charlie. It took a month for phone and internet communications to be restored in my county after Francis that same year. Guess who filled in. After Katrina, President Bush had to rely on Hams to send a message to the Governor of Louisiana because those cellphones you think work anywhere didn't work anywhere. No, you didn't hear that on CNN, but you should have.
When everything else fails, as it so often does, it's hams to the rescue.
Haiti is too poor to have a resident base of radio operators, so volunteers from the US have been living there in squalid conditions without any pay.Hams have been using techniques like Winlink2000, a digital PACTOR III based system which allows users in Haiti to send e-mail and data to a remote internet node elsewhere in the world and High Frequency voice communications using SSB are carrying the rest. Somehow the press thinks this is hilarious and despite the cutting edge technology none of them can understand, "low-tech." Yes, we've been sending text messages for a hundred years and making phone calls from our cars for nearly 40 years.
I'm sure the Chile earthquake this morning will have severely disrupted communications in that country and perhaps the inevitable tsunami will have terrible effects all over the pacific rim and islands. I'm listening to the SATERN net, run by the Salvation Army - now on alert condition 2, and the Intercontinental Traffic Net this morning, but so far I'm not hearing anything coming out of Chile. I'm sure that will change as the day goes on and I'll be listening in. If you have a radio that can receive 14,300 MHz and 14,255 MHz Upper Side Band, those are the primary US frequencies at the moment.
Yes, we're just funny old nerdy dinosaurs with our expensive microprocessor controlled digital equipment, our Amateur satellites and our Echolink internet radio protocols, but in 2004, my local friends were handling all the communications in West Central Florida after hurricane Charlie. It took a month for phone and internet communications to be restored in my county after Francis that same year. Guess who filled in. After Katrina, President Bush had to rely on Hams to send a message to the Governor of Louisiana because those cellphones you think work anywhere didn't work anywhere. No, you didn't hear that on CNN, but you should have.
When everything else fails, as it so often does, it's hams to the rescue.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Hams in Haiti
Amateur radio is "low tech" says CNN. Isn't it interesting that in this day of "high tech" cell phones a few Haitians were able to contact people outside of Haiti using that funny, nerdy old thing: amateur radio? How quaint.
For some of us who have invested tens of thousands on extremely complex, digital signal processing communications equipment: transceivers, computers, amplifiers, tuners, towers, stacked rotating antenna arrays would find that condescension infuriating. Many of us who belong to organized emergency communications groups who hold regular drills; many of us who man worldwide radio nets and are trained to expeditiously handle messages, routine or emergency from land based and maritime stations, find this insulting in the extreme.
Low tech? It's a meaningless phrase. Cell phones are limited low power radios and nothing more. They only operate as far as the nearest tower which needs a power grid and a working phone system. Ham radios have worldwide range. Your cell phone can't operate from above the AM broadcast band up to microwaves. It can't access the amateur satellites ( yes, there are a bunch of them.) It can't handle AM, FM, SSB, RTTY, PSK-31, Packet, Video or a host of other digital modes hams have available. If your phone company's tower is down, you can't re-rout your own calls through a neighboring state - or country. You can't build or jury rig your own cell phone. Hams can and we don't charge.
Yes, only a few Hatians managed to contact the outside world before outside agencies arrived, but there are only a handful of operators in that impoverished country. When they did make contact, an organized net was already in place with translators and technical advisers and it was able to immediately forward messages anywhere -- free of charge. The day after the quake, I listened as a Ham calmly advised a Missionary in Haiti how to adjust his equipment to compensate for run down batteries. I heard the same missionary advise the US of a severe aftershock, of large groups leaving the capitol on foot. I heard another asking for emergency insulin and report that he was fleeing in a radio equipped jeep while being hunted by "men with guns." American hams helped him to report his position without giving it away to the gang chasing him. Do I resent being described as some crackpot with archaic equipment just accidentally being of use? You bet.
No, your cell phone may play games and even mix drinks for you, but the communication ability is through the ordinary phone system only and that's almost always the first thing to fail. Comments at the CNN article seem to think the problem was with charging dead phones, but of course a cell phone without the huge, fragile infrastructure is useless. If the lines are down, if the power is out, you phones won't work -- end of story. After any Hurricane, you'll notice people flipping light switches again and again and staring at their useless iPhones in disbelief -- realizing they can't call the police, the fire department, an ambulance or check with the outside world in any way. I know, I've been through three of them. I'm an assistant emergency communications coordinator for my county and an official emergency station and if we have yet another one, I or someone like me, could save your life. That "high tech" enough for ya?
For some of us who have invested tens of thousands on extremely complex, digital signal processing communications equipment: transceivers, computers, amplifiers, tuners, towers, stacked rotating antenna arrays would find that condescension infuriating. Many of us who belong to organized emergency communications groups who hold regular drills; many of us who man worldwide radio nets and are trained to expeditiously handle messages, routine or emergency from land based and maritime stations, find this insulting in the extreme.
Low tech? It's a meaningless phrase. Cell phones are limited low power radios and nothing more. They only operate as far as the nearest tower which needs a power grid and a working phone system. Ham radios have worldwide range. Your cell phone can't operate from above the AM broadcast band up to microwaves. It can't access the amateur satellites ( yes, there are a bunch of them.) It can't handle AM, FM, SSB, RTTY, PSK-31, Packet, Video or a host of other digital modes hams have available. If your phone company's tower is down, you can't re-rout your own calls through a neighboring state - or country. You can't build or jury rig your own cell phone. Hams can and we don't charge.
Yes, only a few Hatians managed to contact the outside world before outside agencies arrived, but there are only a handful of operators in that impoverished country. When they did make contact, an organized net was already in place with translators and technical advisers and it was able to immediately forward messages anywhere -- free of charge. The day after the quake, I listened as a Ham calmly advised a Missionary in Haiti how to adjust his equipment to compensate for run down batteries. I heard the same missionary advise the US of a severe aftershock, of large groups leaving the capitol on foot. I heard another asking for emergency insulin and report that he was fleeing in a radio equipped jeep while being hunted by "men with guns." American hams helped him to report his position without giving it away to the gang chasing him. Do I resent being described as some crackpot with archaic equipment just accidentally being of use? You bet.
No, your cell phone may play games and even mix drinks for you, but the communication ability is through the ordinary phone system only and that's almost always the first thing to fail. Comments at the CNN article seem to think the problem was with charging dead phones, but of course a cell phone without the huge, fragile infrastructure is useless. If the lines are down, if the power is out, you phones won't work -- end of story. After any Hurricane, you'll notice people flipping light switches again and again and staring at their useless iPhones in disbelief -- realizing they can't call the police, the fire department, an ambulance or check with the outside world in any way. I know, I've been through three of them. I'm an assistant emergency communications coordinator for my county and an official emergency station and if we have yet another one, I or someone like me, could save your life. That "high tech" enough for ya?
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