FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

Re:FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio? by mmaunder on Friday October 19, 2018 @01:04PM (#18258136)

I'm a regular on HF and I've found the community to be welcoming and I've learned a lot from people with half a lifetime more experience than I have. Retired doctors, aerospace engineers and other interesting fields. There are many younger contesters who move very quickly and just work to make contacts.

Bad actors? There are a handful, but FCC has taken enforcement action against several. https://www.fcc.gov/general/amateur-radio-service-enforcemen...

Weak signal modes have been around for a while. And voice is a different part of the spectrum.

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Re:FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio? by AWildC182 on Friday October 19, 2018 @01:18PM (#18258253)

You're definitely right that there are a lot of really cool people out there. I had a similar experience joining an EAA chapter to discover that a whole bunch of them had worked on Hubble.

That said, the FCC in my experience has been pretty lax about policing the amateur bands. You can go to any online SDR and tune around to find obnoxious, toxic, and illegal behavior within minutes. I've also found that if you're lucky enough to find someone under 50 on the airwaves, there's a >25% chance they're a crazy prepper.

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Re:FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio? by tormeh on Friday October 19, 2018 @02:23PM (#18258809)

> You can go to any online SDR and tune around to find obnoxious, toxic, and illegal behavior within minutes

Ah, so 4chan for old people.

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Re:FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio? by AWildC182 on Friday October 19, 2018 @03:14PM (#18259183)

This...is strangely accurate. Minus the anonymity since some of them will still ID with their callsign which links to a public database with their name and address.

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