SHF Ham Radio: No, not SHTF!

Icom engineers are working hard to research and develop a number of never cleared challenges within the SHF band, such as large cable loss and higher frequency stability requirements. The ultimate goal is to bring it to the market as a new radio product.

SHF is short for Super High Frequency is used to describe 3 to 30 GHz spectrum and not the much (much) lower high frequency (HF) spectrum  from 3 to 30 MHz makes up less than 0.0163% of all available amateur radio spectrum.

I just want to buy something, not make it!

If companies are looking for more opportunity, they can make amateur radio products that can be used on more of the total 23,126.7731 MHz of spectrum available to amateur radio operators.

Icom is striving to bring to you a new era in fun and possibilities of an SHF band amateur radio, which to date has had high technical and equipment hurdles to overcome, and they hope to make these bands more attractive and active so that anyone can easily operate on them. 

For anyone interested in the other spectrum available such as the 13cm (2400 MHz), 9cm (3400MHz), 3cm (10 GHz) and 1.2cm (24 GHz) plus more so feel free to check out this article and spectrum database for United States Amateur's.

Sadly, the 9cm band has already been lost to commercial users in the last few years because amateur radio was not using this as much as they should.

Thanks Icom for giving this a try and we look forward to what you bring to market! 

HVDN Satellite Spectrum Presentation

HVDN Amateur & Satellite Spectrum Database

Part 1:  10 GHz on a Budget

Use it or lose it: Death of 3.4GHz

Wireless spectrum is what makes amateur radio valuable. Without the ability to experiment at different frequencies, "ham" radio will stagnate into being known only for what was up until today 0.0163% of its total available spectrum. This is totally NOT fair! 

What else beyond HF?

The high frequency HF or "shortwave" bands which are used for long range communications is what much of the public know amateur radio for. In times of emergencies or most any regular day or night, very low speed data or narrow band voice communications can be heard across a variety of sub-bands that are only to be used for amateur radio mostly between 1.8 MHz and 30 MHz.  Moving higher up the spectrum chart, much higher speed data and digital voice communication has been gaining in popularity globally.

As noted in a past presentation on satellite communications given at the Trenton Computer Festival when humans were able to gather in social settings with no fear of global pandemic,  Steve K2GOG shared an overview of how much discontinuous spectrum is available to all three classes of amateur radio operators in the United States.

Amateur radio satellite communications

While ham radio is known for its long history surrounding the so called "short waves", once you get beyond 30 MHz, the actual wavelengths get much, much, much shorter and commercial users have long used spectrum just above or below where amateur radio operations live in the VHF, UHF and SHF spectrum. Within these higher bands, there are specific portions set aside for satellite communications.

While there are some tiny portions of amateur radio spectrum that are dedicated for only satellite communications, they add up to over 300 MHz in what could be considered the more easily accessed spectrum between 7 MHz and 47 GHz.

While there is no commercial users likely looking to take back spectrum under 30 MHz, there are a few HF satellite frequencies in use, with examples being the very old AO-7 satellite and a few new Chinese satellites that will start using the 21 MHz band. 

Most amateur radio operators have been exposed to educational school contacts or narrow band picture sharing known as "slow scan television" by way of the International Space Station which mostly uses the 145 MHz spectrum.   

More specific satellites that act as "bent pipes" or repeaters often use 435 MHz as an uplink frequency and 145 MHz for a downlink.  To date, there is limited use of other frequencies above the 435-438 MHz satellite band, with satellites such as AO-91, AO-92, SO-50, FO-29 and RS-44 as a few of the more popular satellite destinations for amateur radio experimenters today that use these frequencies.

The AO-92 satellite also uses a 1.2 GHz uplink during specific times to help show use by the amateur radio community in an otherwise less frequented portion of spectrum, which much like the 3.4 GHz band, has been under attack from commercial users who could benefit from valuable amateur radio spectrum.  

The QO-100 satellite relies upon a 10 GHz downlink and 2.4 GHz uplink and this makes it the most advanced satellite that is accessible to amateur radio operators today, but just not in the United States due to its stationary position covering all of Europe, Asia, Africa and parts of South America.

The neighbors have better stuff

Over the past two years, European regulators such as CEPT and OFCOM tried to to make a case to take away parts of the 145 MHz, 1.2 GHz, 2.3 GHz and 3.4 GHz allocations to help expand different commercial services such as long range aircraft positioning and different "Internet of Things" applications along with different applications that can be considered as part of the 5th generation of mobile communication, often shortened to 5G. 

While fending off the recent attacks on the important bottom part of the L-Band from 1240-1300 MHz was successful as well the somewhat distracting 145 MHz allocation battle,  the spectrum just below the common 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band was lost to commercial users in Europe. 

Within the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has decided to "delete" the ability for amateur radio operators to use its allocation in the 3.4 GHz band due to the needs of 5G, especially that of CBRS which will drastically change the way spectrum is licensed moving forward.

We need to change

There is nothing wrong if HF focused operation is what is of most interest to you or anyone looking to get involved in amateur radio today. Those that decide to just spend a casual weekend enjoying the already well understood and no longer innovative 3.7 MHz, 7 MHz and 14 MHz bands are akin to being a bunch of "home bodies" and those that are easily pleased and that is ok.

While it is possible to take HF equipment out in the field and operate from battery power and make contacts with others using voice, Morse code or digital data modes such as  PSK31, FT4 or JS8CALL, this does not advance the hobby if we are trying to defend our spectrum. This use case demonstrates a level of converged activity.

In the next few decades, the novelty of HF based communication will be much harder to entice a next generation of amateur radio operators to unless they first are shown all the amazing things that can be done across other frequencies and applications such as satellite based communications.

We owe it to the next generation of prospective amateur radio enthusiasts to find differentiated applications for the 144 MHz, 435 MHz, 1200 MHz and all the way up to 60 GHz if we wish to remain relevant  rather than as a forgotten hobby deep rooted in the evolution of electronic innovations we have seen over the last 100 years.

HASviolet: What color is your spectrum?

The entire United States amateur radio community are relative late comers to using or even understanding what LoRa is.

However, the "maker" community in the United States and elsewhere has embraced this weak signal spread spectrum technology much quicker and has been doing some interesting things with it.

This article will highlight where both communities of hobbyists can learn from each other and inspire some really nice projects enabled by LoRa technology thanks to HVDN's HASviolet project.

Black & White: What is LoRa?

Amateur radio or "ham" radio people usually love to talk about history and sometimes forget to look forward.

LoRa actually has some roots going back to the German radio company Telefunken and the underlying thinking of LoRa as a general concept was even described in part of a 1903 US patent by Nikola Tesla.

During World War II,  both the Axis and Allied powers experimented with "frequency hopping spread spectrum".

The smart minds of the day such as Leonard Danilewicz, Willem Broertjes and actress Hedy Lamarr being just a few to read about to learn the history of spread spectrum communication to help level up when it comes to learning about LoRa and technology like it.

While frequency hopping spread spectrum or FCSS can be useful for both data or voice transmissions,  only "chirp spread spectrum" or CSS is useful for sending short bursts of data over multiple frequencies.

This is one reason why the "maker" community has adopted LoRa because they generally care more about actionable use cases versus "talking for the sake of talking", which is what a lot of "ham radio" people enjoy most.

LoRa is not meant for voice transmission and it even requires some fancy manipulation to get it functioning for basic "chat" sort of communication.

The good news is that the HVDN team and our HASviolet project went a few more steps where others gave up when it comes to use case exploration.

The lack of voice communication via LoRa does not matter much for non-amateur radio users as other electronics hobbyists are more interested in using LoRa to relay sensor data or control the status of different devices, like a gate, mailbox or even as a fault indicator for a 3-D printer. But, not all amateur radio people use voice to communicate so this is ok.

The "Continuous Wave" or CW mode for short involves Morse Code and is still highly practiced within the amateur ranks today.

Even much newer modes  like WSPR, JT-65, JS-8CALL and PSK31 are some other choices with different use cases, but all really only focus on chat functions and not anything more use case driven beyond that. This now starts to make some amateur radio and maker people not very different from each other, aside possibly from age.

How to send LoRa:  Straight key optional

CSS also not only helps obscure messages as Hedy Lamarr exploited in her work more than 70 years ago with torpedoes and the US Navy, but also helps increase transmission range and control of torpedoes.

While encryption on amateur radio spectrum is not permitted, LoRa is easily demystified once you know how to look for the signals and decode them.  This makes LoRa and CW not really that far different from one another.

An amateur radio person may known Morse Code and a maker will not. Conversely, a maker may know how to probe packets and reassemble messages where someone who lives only in the ham radio world will not.

Perhaps the shared merit of LoRa and CW as  "DX" or "Long Distance" communication capabilities is worth exploring within amateur radio, but with value added use cases for a change beyond making contact for the sake of it.

This is where both communities can share and learn different skill sets and what HASviolet is all about.

LoRa implements CSS mostly in a default configuration which takes up about 250 kHz of spectrum,
but can be easily modified by changing the spread and bandwidth settings, which may be advantageous for certain applications.

This may sound crazy compared to sub 2 kHz wide CW signals, but LoRa can offer so much more.

What makes LoRa unique compared to other "spread spectrum" methods of transmission is that it is focused on relative narrow band use cases and thus better suited for sub-GHz spectrum use.

Comparatively, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are also spread spectrum based, but use much wider bandwidth and would be troublesome to be used at frequencies such as 433 and 868 MHz as well as 900 to 928 MHz.   Since Bluetooth and Wi-Fi live at 2.4 GHz and above, this is a non issue since the higher you go in frequency, the shorter they travel when not including "Line Of Sight" communications.

The HASviolet project's goal is to utilize LoRa in the 900 to 928 MHz band also known as 33cm and to take advantage of the different characteristics this unique mode offers.

And because how well LoRa works very far into the "noise floor"  the communication distance when thought about as a function of transmit power, range and antenna size becomes pretty interesting.

There are ways to shrink the bandwidth which LoRa uses for single channel communication and will also be explored via the HASviolet project too at a sub 6 kHz levels and possibly even further with correct precision timing.

LoRa: Made better with fruit?

One major challenge with LoRa is that it uses proprietary modulation offered by Semtech and is not considered an "open source" mode like what NB IoT uses, which is a competing wireless standard along with SIGFOX as popular "Internet of Things" type of applications that commercial and maker enthusiasts are using.

A company started in 2005 by Lady Ada (Limor Fried) called Adafruit Industries helps the educational "STEM" and maker communities through open source development of fully functional and semi-complete products which incorporate components made by company like Semtech.

The modern electronic hobbyist or "maker" can easily purchase what Limor and her team creates and use them in any number of projects, just like our HVDN HASviolet project.

And there is one thing that the "ham radio" community really loves, and it is anything that involves "low cost".   LoRa easily becomes a low cost way to experiment with something very fun.

A side benefit beyond cost is that it makes a perfect platform to start the "ham radio" crowd to essentially start to "level up" on some areas of interest that the maker crowd has already zoomed far ahead on. Some of these include things to do with "Raspberry Pi",  "ESP32", "MicroPython", "IoT"

Full integrated Semtech LoRa chips such as the SX1276, SX1272 and SX1261 can all be generally had on preconfigured breakout boards for under $10 USD, so lets dive into what each community can learn from each other in upcoming articles.

So what is HASviolet?

When the HVDN HASviolet team came up with an idea to make something which the maker and amateur radio community could use together,  they started thinking about how to highlight underused spectrum where licensed and unlicensed users may overlap.

Originally, the amateur 50-54 MHz "6m" band and its nearby unlicensed 49 MHz spectrum was thought to be a good starting point due to the ability to easily design something that could use the popular Raspberry Pi with an add on RF filter board.

This proved pretty quickly even after discussion with other amateur radio enthusiasts as far away as Arizona and Germany to not be a path to start down first as others have done it, but failed to get a lot of interest.

Instead, it became clear  that going much higher in frequency would still offer what the HVDN team was looking for.

We would like to introduce you to the HVDN backed HASviolet project, our journey and lots of great documentation to inspire others to come along for the ride using violet shared spectrum.

If you want to learn something cool involving hardware, antenna or software, we think you will like what you are about to find.

HASviolet Team

• Joe Apuzzo N1JTA - General Do'er & HASviolet HW Certification Guy

• Steve Bossert K2GOG - Antenna & RF Design Lead & UI/UX Hamster

• Joe Cupano NE2Z - Core Software Developer & Git Hub Jedi Master

HASviolet General Details

• General Information -  https://hvdn.org/violet 

• Git Hub Repository - https://github.com/hudsonvalleydigitalnetwork/

FiPy > Raspberry Pi: Wireless Rumble

Imagine 5 networks in one perfectly-formed, same-small-foot-print development board that is MicroPython enabled. The Pycom FiPy board includes WiFi, Bluetooth, LoRa, Sigfox and dual LTE-M (CAT M1 and NBIoT)  In one product, the FiPy gives access to all the world’s LPWAN networks on one tiny board.

Processing Details

• Espressif ESP32 SoC

• Dual processor and WiFi radio system on chip

• Networking processor handles the WiFi connectivity and the IPv6 stack

• Main processor is entirely free to run the user application

• An extra ULP-coprocessor that can monitor GPIOs, the ADC channels and control most of the internal peripherals during deep-sleep mode while only consuming 25uA

• 2 x UART, 2 x SPI, I2C, micro SD card

• ANalog channels: 8_12 bit ADCs, 2_8 bit DAC

• Timers: 2_64 bit with PWM with up to 16 channels

• DMA on all peripherals and up to 22 GPIO

Physical Interface Details

Additional Details

There is far too many great specifications to list, so have a look a look below for details.

Ground Hog Day: Why does HVDN care?

If we think about the last 100 years of wireless technology and development, amateur radio has often been closely aligned with the latest innovations and finding ways to leverage them across our globally aligned licensed spectrum. 

Today,  far too many within the amateur radio ranks are complacent in only spending time with applications long since established and keep doing the same thing, over, and over, and over.

While there is still much innovation taking place within amateur radio that the general public is not aware of, our goal within Hudson Valley Digital Network (HVDN) is to focus on what is next and find ways to bridge that back into our hobby interests.

If we can share that with other communities such as those interested in programming, making and every possible convergence of hobbies ranging from agriculture to astronomy, that would be amazing

So now what?

Many of us involved in the formation of HVDN also work for a variety of well known technology organizations and somehow still find some time to unwind in our off hours in experimenting with new things. 

The upcoming Pycom New York event on September 9th 2019 seemed a perfect way to dive in even further, so expect good detailed review of this fascinating workshop. 

Spoiler alert

Timing wise, this was also perfect as we have been busy experimenting with ways to leverage LoRa technology within amateur radio and how to integrate it in to many well known amateur radio related practices.  

Be sure to watch this space closely as we transition much of our focus towards Micropython, IoT, LoRa and a few other related themes to keep up with the digital and innovation themes we have worked hard to build.  

Upcoming Event Notice

On October 24th 2019 at a soon to be determined location will be the first HVDN official involvement in "Open Source Hardware" month along with our good friends from "Squidwrench" where we collaborated on the oscilloscope build project earlier this year and HV Open, which offers great monthly presentations mostly around open source software.  

P.S:  Would be nice if we could somehow get Bill Murray to attend since he still appears to live nearby within the Hudson Valley, even though his house is for sale. Kegger at Bill's? :) 

Presentation: Radio Astronomy

It was fantastic to get invited to the Mid Hudson Astronomical Association meeting and be given an opportunity to present about radio astronomy on August 20th 2019.

What is radio astronomy?

People staring up at the night sky or through a telescope has been around for practically forever.  As early as 1860 was it speculated that wireless signals may be received from the universe. 

While the earliest forms of wireless communication were only just starting here on planet Earth,  this form of now ubiquitous communication did not start to see major exploration until the 1900's and get more interesting just before the outbreak of WWII.

It was not until 1932 by accident that radio interferometry was actually coined by Karl Jansky of Bell Laboratories.   At this time in history, so called "shortwaves" were the pinnacle of radio communication technology.

Mr. Jansky was tasked in finding a source of interference between 2 and 30 MHz.  While pointing a high gain antenna upwards did he then notice a signal source coming from somewhere else.

Fast forward to 1945 and the theory of Dutch scientist H C van de Hulst regarding the frequency of the most common element of  Hydrogen at 1420 MHz which may be used to determine the size of the universe and accurate location or formation of various interstellar bodies such as black holes or stars.

It only took six years for theory to become fact, thanks to a scientist at Harvard University named E M Purcell.  His use of the most sensitive radio receiver a the time along with a nine foot long "horn antenna" is all it took to become in some circles, one of the parents of "radio astronomy".

Modern Radio Astronomy

There has been way too much progress since 1951 regarding radio astronomy, so will leave that to you to further discover.

The rest of this article is only going to focus on how you can assemble a basic radio telescope using much lower cost equipment and obtain even better results.

Here are the slides that Steve Bossert K2GOG presented at the Mid Hudson Astronomical Association meeting for those interested in having a look.

Part 1: 10 GHz on a Budget

The HB100 microwave module has been around for a number of years. This inexpensive 10 GHz device is more often used as a motion detector, but is easily re-purposed as a transmitter, receiver, or both at the same time for all different types of signals, wide or narrow.

Amateur radio operators have a luxury that other hobbies that involve some form of wireless communications do not have.  With over 23,000 MHz of spectrum available via the easiest to obtain "Technician Class" license in the United States, there is a much wider world to explore.

Moving forward with amateur 3 cm band communication

Between 10,000 MHz and 10,500 is the 3 cm US technician amateur radio license band that falls into the SHF spectrum segment.

There are some interesting neighbors adjacent to the amateur spectrum according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum chart excerpt below just to see how in demand and valuable this spectrum is.

Here is a list of things you will need to get started to receive signals on 10 GHz:

• Ku band "FTA" LNB

• RF DC Bias T

• DC Variable Power Supply 

• USB SDR dongle (RTL-SDR V3 recommended)

• Appropriate cabling to hook this all together

Above links are just suggestions. The most critical things when shopping for above include:

Power Supply: The power supply must be capable of an output of 13 and/or 18 volts. The LNB changes antenna polarization based on the voltage powering it, so a supply capable of this range is required. A fixed voltage power supply would be best however in order to not damage your LNB.  Many laptop computer power supplies can easily re-purposed for this with appropriate additional circuitry.  Just be careful when making adjustments with a variable supply as going over 18 volts may damage your LNB.

Bias T:  The RF DC Bias T allows DC power to be sent one way to power the LNB while blocking the DC power from being back fed into your USB SDR receiver.  Being sure to follow proper connection direction is critical to not damage any of your 10 GHz equipment and also, your computer which will NOT like 18 volts being sent into the SDR and possibly into your laptop USB port. It is worth noting that the RTL-SDR v3 does have a built in DC bias T, but is not capable of outputs anywhere close to what the LNB needs.

LNB:  The LNB is what converts the 10 GHz signal down to a lower intermediate frequency that can be received by your SDR between the 600 to 900 MHz range. It is far easier to send this signal over common 75 ohm coaxial cable over 100 feet into your Bias T and then into your SDR than trying to transport a 10 GHz signal cheaply. 

Beyond above three items, the appropriate cabling for power and feed lines are needed.  Do not use multiple RF adapters to change from connections like SMA to BNC to BNC to F as you will lose precious signal as a cautionary note.

Optional, but mandatory once you get things working for short range is to use this  receiver with a dish antenna, such as the easily found "Direct TV" or "Dish Network" artifacts via Craigslist, Facebook Market Place and many other local sources. The dish will help concentrate signals for longer range reception or communication.

Your finished 10 GHz receiver should look like this:

Software for receiving 10 GHz signals

Here are where things become a matter of preference as there are many different software packages that will work for 10 GHz.  One of the easiest programs to get working is called SDR# where a more advanced and capable application is SDRangel, which also includes native video reception.

A list of software to be mindful of includes:

What about that HB100?

Sometimes it is easier to start with the harder part and that was the receiver component for those interested in 10 GHz signals. The good news on the transmitter part is that it is easy and cheap to make a basic transmitter capable of voice or video transmission.

Inside the HB100, is a rather simple circuit but very complex design.

All of the traces on the PCB and placement of the few components all play a part in how the HB100 actually functions. Here is a schematic description courtesy of All About Circuits.

By simply adding a signal that can ride on top of the power supply source, you can easily modulate the HB100 with either voice or video signals.

A simple circuit that provides regulated power, audio pre-amplifier and modulation for the HB100 is referenced below from the presentation "Build a simple 3cm transmitter" created by Cor Rademeyer, ZS6CR in 2018.

In the second part to this article, we will explore sending video signals with the HB100, increasing antenna efficiency and other reasons to experiment with the 10 GHz spectrum with or without your amateur radio license.


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Some recent popular SDR related HVDN Notebook pages

• Basic Overview: Tracking Radio Signals

• Easy SDRangel: Windows Executable

• LimeSDR Mini & SDR#: Yes, it works....

Presentation: Satellite Spectrum & Amateur Radio

Steve K2GOG presented on "Satellite Spectrum & Amateur Radio" at the Trenton Computer Festival on March 23rd alongside another 50+ technology and innovation focused topics.

The goal of the presentation was to cover the valuable radio spectrum available through amateur radio and promote its use through innovative communication applications on earth and in space thanks to underlying computer technology

How much spectrum do we have?

For those that are already licensed amateur radio operators, you may have a printed version of the below spectrum chart that the ARRL publishes or at least have seen it somewhere before.

In the United States and most other countries, there are different license classes of amateur radio operators. Some countries restrict the transmit power or operating modes as well as what frequencies can be used depending on your license restrictions.

Steve decided to add up all the spectrum that is accessible to the three current United States amateur radio licenses and further highlight just how much of the total 1.4 GHz of total discontinuous spectrum can be used for satellite related communications. The results are pretty interesting.

What really separates the Extra from General or Technician?

Sometimes it is good to be simple. Get the highest license possible and ensure you never have to worry about operating on the wrong frequency. Currently, the only thing that separates the highest from the lowest license class in terms of spectrum access is 3.9321 MHz of operating capability.

The difference in spectrum for the different license classes is mostly found in the HF bands ranging from as low as 135.7 kHz and up to 29.7 MHz. The only other spectrum not accessible to the technician class license is the 219 to 220 MHz portion of the under utilized 1.25m which many consider as being only from 222 to 225 MHz.

The remaining spectrum is all available to the Technician class license holder!

What if your not interested in long range "HF" communication?

With advances in radio receiver sensitivity and advanced low signal to noise ratio transmission modes, large antennas often associated with HF operation are not always needed.

However, even with specialized magnetic loop antennas and FT-8 digital text modes -nothing beats a full sized dipole for global communications on the 14 MHz or 7 MHz bands often referred to as 20m and 40m respectively and not everyone has the space or interest in such an antenna.

Radio propagation theory does not always guarantee communications are possible at all times of the day which may frustrate some people who only have limited times to "play radio" with HF spectrum.

RF HF propagation is just like the weather

A forecast is still just a forecast and is generally correct, but the difference between satellite communications and HF is the predictability.  For those with limited time to gain "radio communications" gratification, satellite communications may be worth a look.

You can easily calculate when a satellite will pass over head in the case of the "Low Earth Orbit" satellites covered in Steve's presentation for example. It certainly would be great if the weather was like that, wouldn't it?

Depending on satellites

One shortcoming of most satellite communications is that you are reliant upon a man made piece of technology flying over your location in order to make long range contact.

The other shortcoming is you can only make contact with other stations in the footprint of the satellite, which is different than HF since technically you can talk around the world and sometimes even hear your own echo under the right conditions.

Benefits of satellite communication is that you can get a lot of "ham radio" done in a very short amount of time given the brevity of low earth orbit satellites for those not fortunate to live in the foot print of the only current geosynchronous satellite that covers all of Europe, Middle East, Africa, India and a few other countries across Asia.

Fight:  Innovation in amateur radio

The first amateur satellite put into orbit was OSCAR-1 in 1961, just 4 years after Sputnik was put into orbit as the first ever satellite. 

Now almost 60 years later, there has been a total of over 100 satellites put into orbit and most of them being fully operational, with a few example success stories being AO-7, SO-50, AO-92 and QO-100.

In total and thanks to international regulatory efforts, all this satellite success requires spectrum to be set aside since managing who or what can use certain frequencies is more challenging compared to how a specific country can manage its finite spectrum resources.

Its pretty clear that there has been a lot of innovation within the amateur radio satellite spectrum, but much of it has yet to be fully realized.

One example of how technology originally meant for meteor scatter or earth-moon-earth communications which involves bouncing signals off of these non-man made satellites is known as low signal to noise ratio modes, mostly invented by Joe Taylor, K1JT.  The modes can now be found in use on the HF bands rather than for space related contacts. Here is how computers and amateur radio together create innovation.

Technology Improvements: We all benefit 

OSCAR 100 which was put into functional orbit by the Qatar Amateur Radio Society along with technical guidance from the German branch of the Amateur Satellite Corporation known as AMSAT pushes the boundaries of technology and spectrum management.

In 2018, various digital voice modes such as those enabled and made more accessible due to Multi Mode Digital Voice Modem (MMDVM) hot spot devices created an issue for certain satellites operating in the congested 435 to 438 MHz band.   A LEO satellite such as AO-92 speeds overhead at an average altitude of 220 miles and can easily be interfered with by 20mW hot spots and the lower power radios people use to access them. OSCAR 100 is the only satellite that does not have this issue.

Price has driven the adoption of MMDVM hot spots and radios such as the Anytone D868, TYT MD-380 and others. 

Today, thanks to the QO-100 satellite, there is a lot of rapid innovation taking place which shows that cost and user benefits generate lots of excitement that highlights the growth of the radio arts as specified in FCC Part 97.1.

The only unfortunate thing for North American amateur radio operators is that its not possible to utilize this innovative satellite and its great use of spectrum because it is in geosynchronous orbit. However, the AMSAT project GOLF is coming near which is exciting!

Looking beyond, satellite is just one way to show innovation through the use of spectrum. The future of amateur radio is dependent on finding other innovative applications for spectrum, so why not look at what else may be possible outside of the HF bands, even going as high as the mmW bands -
GigaHertz.... not MegaHertz!!!

Full Presentation & Added Bonus

The complete, but non-animated version of the presentation can be found at the link below in addition to the amateur spectrum database compiled to help develop some of the content Steve K2GOG presented both at the HVDN Quarterly meeting this past March 11th as well as TCF on March 23rd.

HVDN Satellite Spectrum Presentation