Colonel Panic 🌻🇺🇦 
Kit Rhett AultmanFCC DOES AWAY WITH BAUD LIMITS ON HF! OMG! I can't believe they finally did it! This is a huge, huge win for hobbyist digital radio communications. #hamradio
Moto 
@roadriverrail @LambdaCalculus At last! 300 baud is fun for remembering my old BBS days, but not much else.
At 1200 baud you can actually reasonably read netnews! Or even run a whole dang visual editor like vi!
@cmdrmoto @LambdaCalculus It's been an *EXTREMELY* long time coming. The rule should always have been "do whatever you want, but sign your signals and keep it to a bandwidth comparable with SSB (e.g. 2.8 kHz)". We're free to experiment with the available bandwidth slot like we always should have been.
@roadriverrail @LambdaCalculus For some reason my gut is telling me that if I dig deeper into the “why”, I will discover that it was influenced by heavy lobbying from AT&T, back when folks were buying second phone lines just for their modems
@cmdrmoto @LambdaCalculus I honestly suspect it was a rule made at a time when the main digital mode was RTTY and there was a strong correlation between symbol rate and bandwidth use, and it's just sat there as a fossil rule ever since.
@roadriverrail @LambdaCalculus Yeah, my biases are showing, I think you’re right.
I was halfway down the rabbit hole and moving towards a similar conclusion.
@cmdrmoto @LambdaCalculus AT&T and the Bell System were total shitheads and it's reasonable to want to blame them first. Like...that time they sued a company for putting a little cup on phone receivers? Shithead move.
But if it was about kneecapping data transmission on radio, they'd have gone after VHF/UHF, too. Ham packet networks on those bands were massive and used as essential infrastructure.
Ben Bradley@roadriverrail @cmdrmoto @LambdaCalculus I agree, it would have made sense to do this when ASCII was made legal on ham bands, back in 1980 or so.
Canageek
Vx. Princess "size_t queen" Grace 
@Canageek @roadriverrail Hell yeah, you love to see it!
@BestGirlGrace @Canageek YOU FUCKIN' DO!
@roadriverrail @BestGirlGrace is this international or does it just cover the US?
@Canageek @BestGirlGrace FCC rules apply only to US licenses. I'm not familiar with the state of the rules in other countries. I see you're Canadian; your rulemaking body is Industry Canada, IIRC.
@roadriverrail @BestGirlGrace I was wondering how it worked, I would have guessed there was some international community for HAM since the radio waves cross borders
@Canageek @roadriverrail There are ITU standards and agreements and such, but they don't cover every contingency- iirc, there's at least one band where Canadians can transmit but Americans can't (or maybe I'm thinking about ITU Region 2 countries?)
@BestGirlGrace @Canageek Yeah, there are a couple of these little ins, outs, and what-have-yous. The ITU sets a lot of broad alignments but I think ITU member countries still have to make the rules that put them in effect. Countries have free reign to implement their own licensing schemes, etc. I think in the UK, as your license level goes up, you're allowed to operate higher power, while in the US, as your license increases, you get access to more frequencies, for example.
@roadriverrail @BestGirlGrace who controls what happens in international waters? I remember reading this article about this guy who tried to broadcast from every ham radio zone, including the island at the farthest point from any other land, so he was like the 6th person to ever stand on it or something like that and only stayed for long enough as it took him to broadcast his message
@Canageek @roadriverrail Yeah, DXpeditions and such! Cool shit.
(My first thought is, like, "you have access to the bands described by your ITU region and still have the rights and responsibilities of your home country license", but I'd wanna read the rules before trying it, lmao)
@BestGirlGrace @Canageek I want to do a DXpedition as a bucket list thing. They look amazing.
@roadriverrail @BestGirlGrace Found it! https://mikedashhistory.com/2011/02/13/an-abandoned-lifeboat-at-worlds-end/ (search the comments for HAM. that's probably why there was so much detritus there, but didn't explain the whaling boat which was founder of come from a Soviet expedition that had to be evacuated by helicopter)
The HAM who went their in the 60s was Gus Browning, any hitch to ride on an icebreaker who picked him up on their way back
@Canageek @BestGirlGrace In international waters, you're under the jurisdiction of the country whose flag the vessel bears. If you're in international waters on a US-flagged vessel, you are considered to be operating under US rules; if it's a Dutch-flagged vessel, you're under Dutch rules. If you're a US operator on a Dutch vessel in international waters, then you need to adhere to the rules (and possible permitting) of the reciprocal operating agreement with that country. 1/2
@Canageek @BestGirlGrace As for remote locations, there are regular "DXpedition" trips people take to extremely remote places to put up stations and operate for days or even weeks. Many ham radio societies issue awards for contact with a certain amount of the globe (e.g. I have awards for working all 50 US states). DXpeditions let you "collect" rare locations.
People who do so are generally on foreign territory and are operating under reciprocal operating agreements between the countries. 2/2
kb@roadriverrail feel free to infodump to me about what this means kjlsadfjkl
@donkeyblam okay, so the HF bands allow for global propagation of signals to propagate globally without infrastructure. I can reach New Zealand from Atlanta with 100W output. But there was a rule that digital communication had a hard limit of 300 baud regardless of bandwidth used. The FCC changed the rules to 2.8 kHz bandwidth overall regardless of effective baud rate, opening the door for all kinds of experimentation.
@donkeyblam Like, imagine being able to send a file halfway around the world at slow-but-tolerable speed. And anyone with an antenna, radio, and laptop could get it. They might be on solar power and miles from "civilization" and still get it.
re: calibrating@roadriverrail now it's just physical limits? sweet
@amsomniac Yes, a bandwidth of 2.8 kHz, basically saying "do all the data you want, but don't take up more space than an SSB transmission," which is far more fair.
@roadriverrail hell yea. I need to put up an antenna
@amsomniac I'm reinstalling mine the moment the leaves stop falling. The lawn guys accidentally destroyed my last one (weed eaters hit the tie down lines, antenna fell out of the trees, lawn mower drove over it)
@roadriverrail good luck!
@amsomniac Hanging a wire from the trees is like 85% luck, so thanks. 
@roadriverrail I've been throwing paracord tied to a lock for weight but I've seen some use slingshots
@amsomniac I seriously might consider a compressed gas gun this time, though it's also about finding some new trees. too many branches, and it's hard to get the lines up.
Jeremy_N1ZZZ@roadriverrail We just have to remember that this comes into effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register. I am estimating around the New Year.
sxpert@roadriverrail @mmu_man why was there a dumb limitation like that to start with, impeding the experimentation part of the hobby ?
@sxpert @mmu_man I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's a fossil from an era when modulation rate was tightly coupled to bandwidth. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a rule based on old RTTY hardware.
Note the FCC has proposed rulemaking out now for VHF/UHF too, so we might see a Renaissance in packet radio there, too.
Juliet Merida, Dum Tran Elf 🏳️⚧️@roadriverrail Hooray! No more taking five minutes to check for Winlink emails!