Set up a long-distance (HF?) radio reciever on known frequencies & put on website

[m@…]

Okay, so the need/desire/user story is:

there are a bunch of hackerspaces that we've gotten in touch with/reached out to where they don't really have any fun way to get in touch that we can work with. the most actionable word we've got has been "Well, we have some radio/HAM folks. maybe that?"

going down the path of how would a radio link look like: internet HAM is *boring*, and having to DM eachother to figure out / agree upon frequencies beforehand is also very ehhh

Therefore, could we set up a radio to always be listening on either one or multiple freuquencies, with privacy codes to know someone is intending to get in touch with *us*, and then ping the chat / patch us into walkie talkies / a speaker / something else. so we can have a convo with folks far away

Queerious labs in SF is more HF-possible than layer zero / cyberia in minneapolis. but it's a good start.

[m@…]

And via a conversation last night, the technical details:

🐔 Wizard: well yes we could probably do it but we'd need a dedicated HF radio and probably antennas for it
🐔 Wizard: i dont think theres hf business band

🐔 Wizard: doing it in an automated way would be complicated, we'd need to publish a list of ALE frequencies on basically 10m-80m
🐔 Wizard: because band conditions vary throughout the day
🐔 Wizard: and finding a frequency that works between two places is trial and error sometimes
🐔 Wizard: it would be like, something in 28 mhz, 24mhz, 21 mhz, 18mhz, 14mhz, 10mhz, 7mhz, and 3.5mhz

🐔 Wizard: ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_link_establishment

🐔 Wizard: we have an hf rig that belongs to esther in the scn space
🐔 Wizard: we need coax so we can mount the antenna on the roof
🐔 Wizard: and a rotator would be nice because it is a delta loop, and semi directional

🐔 Wizard: for the ALE rig we'd want something omnidirectional that can cover multiple bands, so probably a good automatic tuner
🐔 Wizard: as well
🐔 Wizard: or we could possibly use a series of diplexers as automatic antenna switches
🐔 Wizard: but idk if there's hf band specific diplexers
🐔 Wizard: usually it's like splitting HF from VHF+ or VHF from UHF+

🐔 Wizard: it would be an extremely cool demo
🐔 Wizard: and we'd look like extreme hackers if we had an ALE list published on the site

🐔 Wizard: if we get the dmr repeater up we could maybe even do some hackery
🐔 Wizard: where someone establishes a link
🐔 Wizard: and we get notified on matrix
🐔 Wizard: and they get patched to a talkgroup on the DMR repeater
🐔 Wizard: however if the dmr repeater is business band then we have to make it clear that on that talk group you have to comply with amateur radio conventions, each person calling has to id themselves and have a license etc
🐔 Wizard: since it's being patched to HF ham space