A few years ago I wanted to get a ham radio license to do real time tracking with with a high altitude balloon after seeing tons of amateurs doing it. I couldn't imagine a worse time to do it than now with the Chinese spy balloon nonsense. Even back then they had to label the camera payload box with things like "THIS ISN'T A BOMB please call ###".
I can't recall a prior instance when the FCC (or any other regulator) fined a ham for interfering with amateur radio activities. Pretty cool to see! 73 VE3EQL
Non-hams when they see an FCC enforcement action against a ham behaving badly (a “lid”): “isn’t that a bit much? Maybe it was an honest mistake…”
Hams: “Good, serves him right. Jerk knew exactly what he was doing.” (and anyone with a US 1x3 callsign is hardly a newb who just got their Technician license)
Absolutely ridiculous. That makes me want nothing to do with the hobby, period.
These hams are behaving like animals with a dominance hierarchy. With "newbs" and status in that hierarchy based on license class / callsign. And reacting aggressively, completely out of proportion, to outsiders who intrude on their territory. Akin to a dog with behavioral issues. This attitude in amateur radio is so common, we are supposed to be better than that.
Many years ago I built a high voltage power supply to drive a metal halide or sodium lamp from batteries, and one of my coworkers who was a radio ham, was threatening me that I could get fined thousands for interfering with amateur radio. That was my direct experience, and I have heard this kind of thing happening so many times to others.
It's always the hams making the bulk of complaints to the authorities, as well. And if I remember correctly it's actually tying up FCC resources...
Makes you want to use powerline Ethernet for everything, which happens to stomp on the HF radio bands. Perfectly legal to install and use, a nice replacement for all those trailing cables.
Yes, civil disobedience is how these draconian rules get changed, assuming everyone does it. Notice ham antennas down the road? Then get some powerline Ethernet adapters, ensure they are fully regulatory approved for the country you are in.
And that is perfectly legal civil disobedience too, which is likely to cause utter hell for that amateur operator, who likely supports this draconian punishment for such a trivial matter.
Some amateur radio operators are jerks, so you should go well out of your way to sabotage operators you've never met? As "civil disobedience"?
This is an absolutely insane take. I mean, this is like slashing every tire in your work parking lot because someone drove by your house with an obnoxiously loud muffler.
There's nothing illegal about installing powerline networking adapters. Doing that to protest the absolutely outrageous fines being dished out there. And that so many radio amateurs support this kind of punishment for relatively trivial behavior, that has caused no physical harm to anyone. It's like a sit in protest, to disrupt it, without breaking the law.
It's not hams being jerks that's the problem. It's that their threats have the backing of the law. They have many petty rules, which if you break you can find yourself in trouble. With fellow amateur radio operators being the ones notifying the authorities. That's what really riles me up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20294483
This guy here is being fined $24,000 for what is essentially petty harassment, which is ridiculous.
> There's nothing illegal about installing powerline networking adapters.
Nobody said there was.
> It's like a sit in protest, to disrupt it, without breaking the law.
Sit-ins work better if the subject is aware that a protest is happening and why, and also if the subject is the one who actually did the thing you're protesting.
Some ham operators did shitty things, and you've decided based on zero evidence that every single ham operator everywhere is equally responsible and deserves to be punished, by you. In sit-in terms, this is like you heard about a racist lunch counter in Mississippi, so you decided to strike a blow for justice by throwing a brick through the window of a bistro in New York.
What you're talking about isn't a protest. You're not raising awareness, you're not applying pressure to change behavior or change the law. You're just mad about something and you're venting it on a random bystander who reminds you of the guy you're mad at.
If you're unhappy about radio laws, there are ways to organize and fight to get them changed. This isn't one of them.
He wanted to use the Baofeng radios on license-free FRS frequencies and got so much shit for that. He very much sums up how I feel about it. As long as it's programmed for the correct frequencies, who cares?
It's not just some operators, it's a large part of the ham community that's bent on policing "intruders" like that. I don't really care what other people think about my actions here. We can all have different ways we protest this issue, as long as it's lawful.
I'm just hoping that there's a tiny chance that idea might spread. As one of the many ways of fighting back against these draconian measures, without breaking the law. And I'll continue to come up with more entirely legal ways of countering this.
While I don't personally think it's hazardous to health, some people do believe that having a multiple hundred watt transmitter in the neighborhood might have health effects, and it could be especially harmful to small children. Lots of people used to complain about smart meters, and those are only 1 Watt at most, which is tiny by comparison.
Or even better, refuse to participate in the ham community and find something else to do, as the guy in the YouTube video does.
I think maybe it shouldn't be legal to operate high power amateur stations in built up areas, due to health and safety concerns?
That there might be enough people out there, once they are aware of the very high power levels used by amateur radio operators, that might absolutely not want this going on, because they have children around, and they don't want these extreme power levels inside their homes.
These hams are so willing to police people potentially intruding on their bands, but that's there's a chance that their very high powered signals, which are intruding onto nearby homes, are putting peoples' children at risk. I think we don't really know the full risk of it is right now, that the debate's out on it?
And it's worse than 5G microwave signals, because those are dramatically attenuated by the walls of the home. Which is not the case for amateur radio, which uses much lower frequencies, especially HF.
In the UK they have already passed legislation regarding EMF safety for amateur radio stations.
High power ham radio has also been found to interfere with medical equipment, such an insulin pumps, apparently a ham got shut down over this. Although it's somewhat the fault of the pump manufacturer there. Another potential reason to prohibit it.
Just have a look at the comments in the video, that says everything about the ham radio community. Not all of them of course, but there are so many individuals with that mentality.
The video shows him having an Ameritron AL-811H, which is an 800W linear amplifier. I'm not surprised at all it's affecting her insulin pump, with those power levels being emitted just 3 doors down.
By the way, it's really worth watching the ending of that video... My God.
When you start hearing about $19,000 fines for a single incident, it's no surprise you feel like wanting to encourage people to get those nice, perfectly legal, Comtrend powerline networking adaptors. With that manufacturer being fully approved, and happening to be one of the worst offenders. Not surprising one bit.
Those threats incite disobedience and rebellion. Meanwhile hams complain about being shut down because their 800 Watt linear amplifiers (11:14 into that video) are interfering with insulin pumps. Not giving a damn about the victim, and even blaming the victim.
And I will continue campaigning about such injustices in society, not only limited to amateur radio, using my legally protected right to freedom of speech, while fully staying within the law.
" If on the other hand you thought you'd be a smart alec and jump on the bands to say hello or to wind up the Amateur community, then according to this link…
You could be fined $10,000 as an initial fine, and then multiple fines of $7,000 for each infringement. So it can get expensive very quickly.
You can also be sent to jail — particularly if you cause harmful interference to services such as Fire, Police etc.
And for those who believe you won't get caught, bear in mind that the Amateur Radio community are quite capable of easily tracking down anyone who screws with the licensed bands, and passing that information on to the FCC along with evidence such as recordings or logs of transmissions. "
Let's come up with some more ideas: Can we train an AI to imitate amateur radio operators???? That sounds interesting... We can capture large chunks of spectrum in one go, identify channel frequencies and train on everything simultaneously....
It would be quite a lot of fun to make such an AI operate on the CB band, supervised and in compliance with the regulations, as a joke. A bunch of hams would quite easily freak out, hearing amateur style operation complete with valid sounding callsigns, that don't actually exist.
But we have to be really careful we don't really use a valid amateur's callsign there.... We don't want to spoof someone, which might be illegal. Again this all needs to be double checked that it's 100% in compliance with the law.
Anyway I'll take my ranting over to places like 4chan, rather than continue to spam this site.... And I'll continue to remain 100% within the law.
> It's not just some operators, it's a large part of the ham community that's bent on policing "intruders" like that.
I understand that your argument is "some hams are jerks, therefore all hams deserve to be punished." It's not the "some hams are jerks" part that I'm doubting, nor the intensity and unfairness of their jerkiness. It's the "therefore..." part. No amount of anecdotes proving the former is going to make the logic work in the latter.
And no amount of secret jamming is going to change any laws or influence anyone's attitudes. If you want to protest, stand up in public and protest. If you want to get petty revenge on a stranger for sharing a hobby with some obnoxious assholes, you can do that instead. But don't tell yourself that you're just like sit-in protestors. It's embarrassing.
I don't really care if it's embarrassing or not. As long as my actions are entirely legal, anything pretty much goes. Encouraging people to install regulatory approved powerline networking adapters is completely legal. As it's likely I'm not the only one outraged about this here, the idea to do that might spread. If that happens it won't be secret anymore.
And we have the right to freedom of speech, to get emotional, angry, and even irrational when we see outrageous punishments being dished out by the government, for people being persistently rude on the radio. Especially so when we hear of other people supporting such draconian punishment.
And even more so when large parts of the amateur radio community agree with these punishments and also behave like they are the radio police and have the right to threaten those who might break the rules. When I see other people threatened in that manner it really strikes a nerve with me, and I vent publicly on the forums in response, as I'm doing here.
And if I want to think it's like a sit in protest then it's my right to do so. Under human rights, freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. I might be wrong about thinking that way, but I have the right to be wrong, to be incorrect. As long as I don't break the law.
It's like sit in protesting climate change, or a particularly bad corporation who pollutes the environment, the blockades are going to cause a nuisance for other people not involved in it, but again these protests are legal. This is how change happens.
Many of these amateur radio stations might pose a health and safety hazard to nearby homes. Having thousand watt power levels in residential neighborhoods, while legal, might not be safe for people, especially children. And the amateur community in general turns a blind eye to that. So yet another reason for protesting. Actually, in that case I feel lobbying to get that prohibited might have a better chance of success.
And if it does become prohibited, we don't need to fine offenders $24,000, the FCC can get a warrant, and come in and seize their equipment instead, if they don't stop when requested.
Even better if some product came onto the market, that used wideband powerline communications for its functioning, and practically everyone's got one. I think some electric car chargers might do so in the future. That would not go down well with amateurs, at all! When everyone down the street would have, in effect, legal jammers.
MaxLinear have some nice ones, complete with datasheet, it also works in MIMO mode, not for just powerline but pretty much anywhere.
Update: I think solar inverters are causing big problems here already, so it's only a matter of time now as they become increasingly popular. So we can kiss those amateur radio enthusiasts and their utterly draconian punishments goodbye in the long term.
It's been like this already, for quite some time (!), at lest here in the UK, VDSL2 to thank for that:
https://rsgb.org/main/technical/emc/vdsl-interference-report...
So it's already being jammed, with the noise floor going up, although not to the point of being unusable.
i dont want to actually attack thier media, the cultural experience felt toxic, and the hobby felt needlessly constrained.
there is angst between commercial operators and ham radio; its seen as wasted bandwith that should be used to make money; every transgression is ammo in possible future decisions to de allocate ham spectrum.
it wasnt my idea of fun. know the rules and you can avoid attracting attention, from FCC or [foxhunters] looking for unlicensed operators breaking convention,rule,or law. there is that greyzone for consumer electronics to swing your elbows a little more.
Maybe they got lost? That's valid use in EU, but not in US.
From Wikipedia:
"The upper portion of the band, which is usually used for phone (voice), is sometimes referred to as 75 meters. In Europe, 75m is a shortwave broadcast band, with a number of national radio services operating between 3.9 and 4.0 MHz."
"The European 75 m broadcast band overlaps the North American 80 m ham band allocation. When it is night on both ends of the transmission path some broadcasters in Asia and Europe can be heard in North America between 3.9 and 4.0 MHz"
A big part of amateur radio operations is knowing what the allowable frequencies are for where you are - when I first put the “DL” (for Germany) ahead of my US callsign, it was a) to let everyone else know I was operating in Germany, and b) to acknowledge that I knew what the rules were for operating in Germany.
“Don’t play music over amateur radio” is another big one that is literally a question on the Technician (entry-level) license exam.
Also, broadcasting (transmissions intended to be listened to by non-hams) under an amateur license is illegal in ordinary conditions. That’s what broadcasting licenses are for.
And trying to bump people off a frequency is considered the height of jerk behavior.
So, good for the FCC, an excellent use of our license fees.
No, they are constrained by the laws that authorize their existence and activity.
Better to look those up and call your congress rep if you don't like it than make random unfounded "govmnt bad" accusations, but those do seem to be all the rage these days.
I don't think such a huge fine is justified, how about confiscating his equipment, and banning him from using radio equipment capable of transmitting on amateur frequencies for a period of time?
It didn't cause any harm to emergency services, or disrupt anything other than a hobby. Fining him such a large amount for disrupting a hobby is ridiculous. And it makes me want nothing to do with amateur radio, and stick to unlicensed bands only.
The guy fined likely has children, a family to raise, which are all much more important than someone's hobby. You cannot impose such financial hardship for essentially what is trolling someone, on the radio. It's ridiculous.
Draconian penalties may only encourage miscreants to disrespect amateur radio, in an act of rebellion? And those miscreants might be able to get away with jamming it legally, by using powerline Ethernet adaptors, which will typically cause interference for the whole neighborhood. There's no law saying you can't have a really long piece of electrical wiring in your home, with absolutely nothing connected to it at the end? http://gm4fvm.blogspot.com/2018/06/power-line-adapter-noise-...
Maybe we non-amateurs should lobby the government to open up the VHF/UHF amateur bands for unlicensed operation at low power, just like 2.4GHz, and consign this hobby to the dustbin of history? How about getting industry involved in the lobbying as well? Can we find any good commercial use cases for those bands? In Europe we can already use a large part of the 70cm band (433MHz) at low power levels.
The radio spectrum is supposed to belong to all of us? Not just a privileged few who possess a license, and are so willing to punish others so excessively for relatively minor infractions?
How would you feel about a group preventing the public from entering Yellowstone so that they could do whatever they wanted with the park? Should they be fined for that or should we just take away the trucks they blocked the roads with?
Amateur spectrum is public property, just like a national park. The rules are in place so that it remains available for the public’s enjoyment.
> lobby the government… open up the bands… commercial use cases
This same sentiment would lend support to the building of a Walmart and condos around Old Faithful.
> The radio spectrum is supposed to belong to all of us? Not just a privileged few who possess a license.
It’s like $50 (and I’m pretty sure there’s financial hardship waivers) to get your tech license and it’s easy material. There’s a wealth of free resources to learn it. The roads all belong to us too, but we make people get drivers licenses so we can ensure they know how to properly use that public resource.
Yes, and those drivers licenses are obviously because cars are dangerous machines that can cause severe harm to someone if they are driven improperly. And the legal system surrounding it has penalties which are usually proportionate to the harm caused.
While low power transmitters, 100mW or so, are generally not dangerous, and thus should be deregulated in the VHF/UHF ham bands, so that the general public can use spectrum it legitimately owns. The "listen before talk" principle should be required by the regulations, and thus implemented in firmware. And even if misused and hacked to transmit on emergency frequencies, the harm a low power transmitter can cause is still limited.
In the end it comes down to if the industry and general public is a more powerful lobbyist than the amateur radio community, which is tiny by comparison. Who has more political power. And I think the general public might be the one with more political power here, and rightfully get to make the decision?
The radio spectrum is a shared space. In a democratic country, a small minority should not be dictating the rules for the majority here?
> because cars are dangerous machines that can cause severe harm to someone if they are driven improperly
Okay, pick another example of licensure to protect natural resources, since we probably won’t be able to get away from the “cars are dangerous” distraction.
Take fishing licenses, for example. Catching undersized lobster can net someone thousands in fines and possible jail time. Is this okay? If we seize their boat and traps, is that enough to guarantee they won’t do it again and discourage copycats?
> so that the general public can use spectrum it legitimately owns
One of the things covered in the license material you seem to feel is unnecessary is that amateur operators are secondary users on many bands and do not have an exclusive right to use those frequencies. Both the 33cm ISM band (900 MHz) and the 13cm band (2.4 GHz) are shared with unlicensed applications in a similar way to what you describe. If you want to use VHF, grab a MURS radio. UHF? Pick up an FRS radio. While those services do not overlap with amateur frequencies, it’s the same experience. What exactly are unlicensed users missing out on?
Lobster fishing is usually a large scale operation run by a business. Yes the fines are appropriate for a business, they wouldn't be for an individual though.
If an individual was to be fined excessively over a handful of lobsters, then again it's another example of overcriminalization and it's likely environmental pressure groups behind these laws, and it's completely wrong.
Yes, I agree with you about the secondary users of the ham band, though. I forgot about that one.
In fact in that post, I was actually advocating for the hobby to be phased out, and replaced with some other unlicensed system, given that so much of it's community is in support of such draconian measures and punishments for those who trivially violate the rules.
As I said, it should be consigned to the "dustbin of history" because of the draconian laws surrounding it. The laws have to be changed, or it's got to go.
Amateur radio, for better and worse, is self-policing, and passing the license exams is, among other things, declaring to your country’s communications regulator that you fully understand their rules for the use of certain parts of the spectrum, and in exchange, are allowed to use a lot more power than it would otherwise be a good idea to let non-EEs mess with. In the US, the entry-level exam can be passed by either remembering some of high school physics and carefully reading Section 97 of the FCC rules, or cramming a few hundred questions - hardly elite-level. Germany’s exams are harder and more of a logistical hassle, with the UK’s somewhere in between - I’ve not had any reason to see what the situation is like for anywhere else.
If the current amateur radio rules were done away with, I’m pretty sure whatever replaced them would be far more restrictive. The licensing rules have been changed a lot in most countries over the past 20 years - you no longer have to learn Morse Code.
Perhaps campaign for further revisions to your country’s licensing scheme if you find the current requirements to be irrelevant to safe, cooperative use of a limited bit of spectrum. Personally, I think it’s stupid that the most popular amateur frequencies are off-limits to German intermediate license holders, rather than just restricting their power levels (a valid safety concern). The UK gets this about right, from what I’ve seen.
Part of why amateur operators react so strongly when they hear, “I’m fixing to do something ill-advised with RF” is that we’re afraid of more legal restrictions being placed on us (and anyone else who bothers to pass an easy physics and rules test). Another part is that a lot of us don’t want you to get in trouble for something you might not have known was wrong (it’s a hobby that has long attracted introverted nerds, so the delivery sometimes leaves something to be desired). Your colleague freaked out at you, but he didn’t call the FCC-equivalent down on you.
For playing music 5 years ago, that is still disproportionate, no emergency frequencies were disrupted, in any of his activities.
Did he cause any quantifiable harm here? Did the harm he cause ever justify that degree of punishment? My stance is no in both cases.
What is concerning to me is that some ham had to make the complaint there, maybe fully knowing the FCC would hand out a very large fine, causing him severe disruption to his family and childrens' lives, that far exceeds the nuisance caused by playing music on the radio.
Thus the ham that made the complaint is perhaps morally culpable in the excessive punishment. He acted, in conjunction with the state, to ruin this guy's (and his family's) life there. It doesn't matter if it's legal to do so, it is still morally wrong.
Fining the guy obviously causes him extreme stress, which he might end up taking out on his spouse or children afterwards, which far, far exceeds the harm from playing music on amateur radio bands. So the disproportionate punishment has knock on effects in society.
And these draconian measure are what so many hams find acceptable? I'm sure the general public doesn't though.
> He acted, in conjunction with the state, to ruin this guy's (and his family's) life there.
and yet, all Mr. Beaudet had to do to stop his life being ruined is to stop keying his mic/follow the rules. but he did not. in fact, given that this appears to be his 3rd FCC enforcement action, it appears he has been doing this for many years.
do you consider Mr. Beaudet's actions to be "morally wrong"?
Of course they are, but fining someone $24,000 for behaving rudely, even repeatedly, on the radio is far far worse. And so many amateur radio enthusiasts support these absolutely draconian punishments, which is damaging the reputation of the hobby.
Literally, actually, irrefutably, and unquestionably, it is impossible to attract an enforcement action accidentally. The FCC bends over backwards to accommodate mistakes, if they even deign to notice them.
This was his third strike.
Your comment is inverted.
It isn't fines that are damaging the reputation of the hobby, it is the almost rampant abuse of the rules by actors like Beaudet.
Literally, actually, irrefutably, and unquestionably, a grand total of zero people have ever thought "oh man I want to get into amateur radio but I'm not going to because the jack booted thugs at the FCC will fine me if I play music over nets in order to piss people off."
The vast, overwhelming, majority of people don't even think like that.
For the remaining microscopically-miniscule minority, the thought excites them.
Well, yes because I don't want to be involved in things that are so authoritarian in nature, with draconian punishments enforced by the government for what amounts to being stupid.
I want to be involved with hobbies where you can be more playful and carefree, where the threat of such punishment is not present. Where there's freedom for exploration and experimentation, like the ISM bands, which are what I use instead. Without authorities dictating to you every minor detail of what you're permitted to do or not, under threat of force by the state. And requiring you do identify yourself at all times, or be ratted out by a fellow ham and prosecuted. No thanks.
Also I've been personally threatened by a ham radio operator (in the UK), over me constructing a perfectly legal, non-interfering high voltage power supply. And hearing other people having the same experiences as well, as if hams consider parts of the radio spectrum their "territory". I know myself, and many other people do as well, that the amateur radio community has this authoritarian streak, which is so eager to call out those breaking minor rules. And back that up with threats of prosecution.
Yes, from personal experience, so many in the ham community are very rule oriented, which is counter to my personality and philosophy. That's another reason I want nothing to do with it as a hobby.
And no wonder there's a lack of innovation in the field, it's all tied up with rules and the personalities that thrive in such environments.
The radio spectrum is for everyone but needs to be regulated to minimize interference. Some talk about spread spectrum allowing everyone to share, but that requires regulations about the spread spectrum protocol and not jamming frequency with music.
The government divides up the spectrum for government, commercial, amateur, and public use. Amateur is not public use since it limits what can be done with it, like not playing music. It is more like public university. Ham radio has stagnated because it mostly uses analog or old digital modes for chatting and making contacts.
The VHF/UHF amateur bands wouldn't be that useful. They are too small for mobile data or Wifi. For unlicensed use, the power would have to low to prevent interference because they go to the horizon. It could be used the same as 433MHz and 900MHz but I don't think that those are overloaded like 2.4GHz. For commercial use, they could be turned into business walkie-talkies; I don't know if there is demand for those but would be pretty low value usage.
The one thing that they might be useful for is digital FRS, there is need for more public walkie-talkie frequencies. But that would have to be highly regulated in terms of protocol. And could turn into CB radio, making it useless for regular communication unless there are rules about jamming with music.
It isn't a huge fine for a one time thing but for doing it for years after being told to stop.
Parks are public property but there are lots of rules about what can be done to keep it available for all. What do you think about a guy standing in park yelling obscenities while kids soccer game is going on? Who keeps doing it after police tell him to stop and give him fine, and the fines eventually total some huge amount and he is banned from the park.
