Jason - VE3MAL

I agree, a low power SWL license scheme would be fantastic. If you think you can convince your representative to advocate for it, go for it. Currently, even low power community FM is barely tolerated as a license class, and regulators tend to think of SWL as REQUIRING that the targeted audience be non-domestic.

God the Klingon thing was silly. Do we need an explanation as to why the TOS ship had plastic, 1960s themed furniture? Do we need an explanation for improved camera resolution over the years? Why did we need a silly explanation for the improvement in makeup artistry so many decades later? And the explanation doesn’t even work. Genetics don’t work like that. It’s taking themselves too seriously. Either ignore it, or hang a lantern on it with an inside joke once, and be done with it.

It mirrored the contemporary idea of the “End of History”, where all the existational crises were done with, the federation (was basically moving into a time of refinement rather than having to worry that the experiment might still utterly and completely fail. TNG was basically one long, slow lesson of why that was a flawed notion. You don’t build a cruise liner, fill it with families, and then intentionally send it into the kind of peril that regularly befitted the Enterprise D. In retrospect, it was completely ridiculous.

That’s basically what shortwave pirates are. Usually former ham transceivers modified to transmit out of band. The cost of licensing and building a shortwave broadcast station are immense. And there’s the pesky problem of finding advertisers when the license scheme basically requires you to at least look like you are targeting non-domestic audiences. Hams have occasionally purchased time on existing transmitters when it’s cheap, but as far as “experimental modes” go, it would typically have to be something that can be modulated by an AM transmitter.

It cannot be parity because, unlike the fiber Internet, it’s fundamentally limited by the HF spectrum and the cost of this type of operation. Most traders will not have this option and will get fleeced by those with the resources.

Agreed. This isn’t a responsible use of spectrum, unlike, say commercial shortwave broadcasting. This practice is purely about gaining a pay-for-play advantage in high frequency stock trading over traders that can “only” communicate across the country via fiber internet links. No net benefit, even for the stock traders, who will be hurt by this more often than they can take advantage of it. Sure, sell HF licenses to commercial users, but this is a bad idea.

That manual is written by Jordan, but the key point is not the manual, it’s the software and protocol.

JS8Call has a few bits it can devote to “special” group calls that save a lot of bandwidth, and saving bandwidth improves how much you can send in a single cycle, improving both communication speed AND fidelity. But there are only a few of them because they are limited by the protocol design, so Jordan necessarily has to be selective. He chose to devote one of those to a group with christofascist and insurrection ties. That is an implied endorsement, or special assistance rendered to that group that turns off a LOT of hams. It’s quite literally baked in to the software. If that doesn’t bother you, fine, but I hope you can see why many of us would rather just stay clear of something like that.

The relaying is also a problem. Though most people don’t automatically relay, it’s worth being aware that if you turn that feature on, you could be carrying water for AMRRON. It could also be illegal at a point. Without the network features of JS8Call, it doesn’t actually bring a while lot of fancy features beyond existing digimodes.

Star Trek discussion /usually/ tends toward anything new being bad, and always has. SNW and lower decks are exceptions because they do so much fan service and return to a more classic Trek format. Discovery was groundbreaking in a way that I’m sure Roddenberry would have enjoyed, but groundbreaking also implies jarring change and throwing away things that work for experiments that sometimes don’t.

This is a really good take. I have enjoyed the serialized shows -but they are a juggernaut of emotion and intensity to watch. You tend to watch them once, and it’s a fairly wild ride, but then it’s done. I suspect that I will be re-watching episodes of SNW and lower decks for years to come, as I have for TOS and TNG. That’s how Trek wormed it’s way into my brain in the first place.

Is this for FM? Most people are using vertically polarized antennas for that. You could turn it on it’s side, and feed that coax sideways for at least a few feet.

The trick with a friend and JS8Call would be to utilize heartbeats and script up some sort of notification alert when a path opens.

If you don’t have trees and want an easy, portable solution. Buy a $20 20 foot “crappie” fishing pole on your favorite online retailer, and run a 20m 1/4wave vertical wire up it. Add between 4 and 8 radials on the ground, and craft up a simple guy system with some rope and tent pegs. Cheap, lightweight, and highly effective, especially at this point in the solar cycle. Cut some shorter wires for higher bands and you can pick and choose which one to hoist on a given outing. The only downside is that right now, specifically js8call activity is still heavily on 40m. You will make boatloads of ft8 contacts on 20 though.

An EFHW can be oriented as an inverted-V, it’s just that it’s fed at the end rather than in the middle (at the top). If that’s how you set it up, the main difference is some transformer losses in the EFHW, but it can operate on all harmonics rather than just odd harmonic bands. A center fed inverted v may be a little more tolerant with regards to tuning the length. Centre-fed is going to be more “idiot proof” in that respect and possibly easier as a first antenna.

The great thing about the fediverse is that you can rage-quit 100 different instances!

I think watching all those hours may actually change your brain wiring. Hopefully for the better.

I couldn’t really tolerate the animated show, or Babylon 5. But everything else has passed through these neurons at one time or another. Fortunately, it’s been so many years, I sometimes come across an episode I can’t remember and it’s like getting a new one.

Strange new worlds is amazing. It feels actually true to TOS, without just being nostalgic. I feel like Gene Roddenberry would be so happy to see it, and recognize it as his universe far more than any of the other 21st century trek.

It’s about being able to watch transactions on, say the west coast, then buy or sell in NYSE before those transactions can traverse the Internet across the continent and change the price. It would be very simple “buy now” commands, used to essentially cheat less resource rich traders. They have used dedicated fiber lines try to do the same thing, but this would be quicker sometimes. There’s absolutely no public value to it, but money to be extracted.

See the note on the home page: https://smsgte.org/

These new regulations have messed up a lot of SMS stuff, but I understand the need to do something with all the spam people get. Hopefully they get the support they need to re-start smsgte.