Mastodawn

@RealGene Thanks for bringing up the question of our radio use in the National Radio Quiet Zone!

Some other folks in our conservation society have been playing with GMRS and amateur radio in the NRQZ area where we do cave exploration, plus there are some VHF, UHF, and GMRS repeaters within the zone, so I had assumed what we're doing is OK. However, you're right to question it, and it's good to confirm that we're not causing any problems.

Here's the info about what power thresholds are allowed within the NRQZ:
https://info.nrao.edu/do/spectrum-management/national-radio-quiet-zone-nrqz-1

A quick back of the napkin calculation to see if we're near any point of causing a problem:
- GMRS at 462.5625 MHz
- Max power: 5W (via handheld radio)
- Distance from Green Bank Observatory: just over 20 miles

Using an [online RF radiation density calculator](https://www.pasternack.com/t-calculator-power-density.aspx), the power density from our handhelds as measured at the observatory (assuming it wasn't attenuated due to terrain) would be on the order of 1e-10 W/m², which is higher than the 1e-14 W/m² threshold.

Interesting. So, the next step is to check with the NRQZ Program Administrator to see whether this level for occasional handheld (not fixed transmitter) use is a problem for them based on where we are out in the Zone 5 area.

I don't _think_ this will be a problem - in my reading through web pages and looking at info about radio use in the NRQZ, I came across the ham radio club in the same county as the Green Bank Observatory, and they use their radios for active communication. But I'll check anyway, to be sure.

@cannibal

National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) — NRAO Information

🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)1d ago

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🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)1d ago

#MakeShitMonday, another #meshtastic edition...
This past weekend, @llorenzin and I were in western Virginia at a get-together for a cave conservation society that we're members of, and we worked on making more #mesh connections. Rather than testing in-cave like L shared above, we were testing how far we could get LoRa signals to reach above ground to see if we can connect the different properties / preserves in the area that the society owns. This would be a big win, since the entire area is in the national radio quiet zone for the Green Bank Observatory, so there's no cell phone reception, and two of the three properties we're trying to link together don't have landline service.

We started with the two closest properties: about .5 miles apart as the crow flies, with a significant hill between the two. L stayed at the first site (and hiked around and up and down one of the hills), and I drove to the other site (and stopped at various places then hiked around and up and down one of the hills).

We were armed with a couple of mesh radios, and we also had #GMRS radios so we could be in voice communication in parallel to discuss the testing as the mesh messages worked and didn't work and coordinate our movements.

Overall, the connectivity between our two radios worked much better than I was expecting! We were able to get messages through at many - but not all - of the points we tested, and we have a good idea about where to put a couple of nodes up in trees to get good connectivity between those two properties. (I was also pleased that the GMRS radios didn't have any problem talking at any of the points we tested.)

Next time we're in the area, we plan to do similar testing to see how best to connect in the other property. That one's a bit farther away so we'll probably need a bit more planning for where to position radios and may involve asking intermediate landowners whether we can put a radio on a hill in a tree.

@cannibal

🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)1d ago

Lisa Lorenzin (she/her)1d ago

#makeShitMonday, #meshtastic edition, in which we made #mesh #radio connections... in a #cave!!

@mbroome and I just completed a weeklong vertical cave rescue certification course, complete with a full-day simulated rescue scenario at the end. Standard comms for cave rescue is over wired field phones - but for this one, we had mesh radios all the way down to one of the main caverns that needed vertical rigging for the rescue.

I was Entrance Control (tracks who goes in / out of the cave, relays comms from the cave to Incident Command on the surface) and had my new MeshPocket on their dark mesh, based on [Vangelis]( https://github.com/semper-ad-fundum/vangelis). @mbroome was on comms *in* the cave - and also had my little Muzi R1 mesh radio.

It's definitely not ready to be primary comms - the radios struggle with low-airspace passages and corkscrews - but it's pretty darn close! Need to add some wired bridges like [the Flamingo project](https://github.com/rbreesems/flamingo) - that project has a really [neat video](https://youtu.be/R3LtLcnrpAk) from a test in Tumbling Rock...

Mesh radio is definitely a new paradigm for cave rescue, and I think doing it in parallel with existing field-phone tech will need separate operators. I had a pretty comfy setup with a field phone to the cave in one ear and an FRS radio to Incident Command on the surface in the other - which was fine, they're both auditory processing and push-to-talk so the only challenge was making sure I pushed the right button each time. 😁 Taking notes was additional cognitive load, and adding mesh comms (visual processing / type to talk) pushed it well beyond anything I could have tracked in a real emergency!

Which is great to know in advance, and I really do think that when this tech matures, it will make a solid replacement for the field phones and comms wire that's been used for the past several decades...

@cannibal

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🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)1d ago

#MakeShitMonday, another #meshtastic edition...
This past weekend, @llorenzin and I were in western Virginia at a get-together for a cave conservation society that we're members of, and we worked on making more #mesh connections. Rather than testing in-cave like L shared above, we were testing how far we could get LoRa signals to reach above ground to see if we can connect the different properties / preserves in the area that the society owns. This would be a big win, since the entire area is in the national radio quiet zone for the Green Bank Observatory, so there's no cell phone reception, and two of the three properties we're trying to link together don't have landline service.

We started with the two closest properties: about .5 miles apart as the crow flies, with a significant hill between the two. L stayed at the first site (and hiked around and up and down one of the hills), and I drove to the other site (and stopped at various places then hiked around and up and down one of the hills).

We were armed with a couple of mesh radios, and we also had #GMRS radios so we could be in voice communication in parallel to discuss the testing as the mesh messages worked and didn't work and coordinate our movements.

Overall, the connectivity between our two radios worked much better than I was expecting! We were able to get messages through at many - but not all - of the points we tested, and we have a good idea about where to put a couple of nodes up in trees to get good connectivity between those two properties. (I was also pleased that the GMRS radios didn't have any problem talking at any of the points we tested.)

Next time we're in the area, we plan to do similar testing to see how best to connect in the other property. That one's a bit farther away so we'll probably need a bit more planning for where to position radios and may involve asking intermediate landowners whether we can put a radio on a hill in a tree.

@cannibal

🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)1d ago

Mar Hicks 2d ago

Look at this baby beaver and feel better briefly

🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)1d ago

Emily 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️5d ago

My biggest problem with the concept of LLMs, even if they weren’t a giant plagiarism laundering machine and disaster for the environment, is that they introduce so much unpredictability into computing. I became a professional computer toucher because they do exactly what you tell them to. Not always what you wanted, but exactly what you asked for.

LLMs turn that upside down. They turn a very autistic do-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean commmunication style with the machine into a neurotypical conversation talking around the issue, but never directly addressing the substance of problem.

In any conversation I have with a person, I’m modeling their understanding of the topic at hand, trying to tailor my communication style to their needs. The same applies to programming languages and frameworks. If you work with a language the way its author intended it goes a lot easier.

But LLMs don’t have an understanding of the conversation. There is no intent. It’s just a mostly-likely-next-word generator on steroids. You’re trying to give directions to a lossily compressed copy of the entire works of human writing. There is no mind to model, and no predictability to the output.

If I wanted to spend my time communicating in a superficial, neurotypical style my autistic ass certainly wouldn’t have gone into computering. LLMs are the final act of the finance bros and capitalists wrestling modern technology away from the technically literate proletariat who built it.

🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)1d ago