Put That Amateur Radio License To Use On 915 MHz

Amateur radio enthusiasts in the US will be interested in Faraday, an open-source digital radio that runs on 915 MHz, which amateur radio enthusiasts may know better as the 33 cm band.

You can transmit on 915 MHz without a license (in the US), taking advantage of the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) exemption. This means that there’s commodity hardware available for sending and receiving, which is a plus. But you can’t do so with any real power unless you have an amateur radio license. And that’s what makes Faraday interesting — it makes it very easy to transmit and receive digital data, with decent power and range, if you’re licensed. The band is currently under-utilized, so go nuts!

The hardware design and documentation is online, and so is the firmware. The founders of the project would like you to build out a big network of these devices, possibly meshing them together. Our only regret is that the 33 cm band is only really open for use in the US, both with a license and without. Of course, there’s very little the Faraday team can do about that.

We’re no strangers to digital-mode amateur radio around here. But if you’re an amateur who hasn’t played around with digital modes yet, this might be a good way to get your feet wet.

Thanks to [Daniel] for the tip!

106 thoughts on “Put That Amateur Radio License To Use On 915 MHz

          1. Usually they don’t want to learn they just want the results.

            That can be frustrating for the people they ask.

            But what do I know, I’ve never helped anyone in my life.

        1. Yup, the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

          People without engineering degrees playing with micro-controllers, people who aren’t part of the NBA playing basketball on street corners, people are out there FISHING who are not part of the professional fishing tournaments. I understand that people are even fixing their own cars who are not real mechanics! The horrors!

          My wife has recently cooked some meals. Since she does not have any real training in culinary arts, I will have to have her stop this horrible practice.

          1. Heh, I did see a rant a while back about how it was unpossible for a normal person to handle raw meat to cook for themselves without poisoning half a city or something.

        2. You sound like one of those smug dicks at a party “I liked XYZ band but now they have become to mainstream” Perhaps Tesla, Edison, Benjamin Franklin should have stopped electricity becoming too accessible, Might have saved them having to explain shit to people who are interested.

      1. I don’t really agree with having two rows on the top and bottom of the form factor, but I can see why… when you’re building a spec that might double as a physical interface… that’d be important.

        The thing I really REALLY hate is the staggered spacing! All your pins should fit perfectly in a grid. Also while we’re at it… the arduino pro mini’s extra four GPIO pins in the middle of the board are even worse!

        1. The staggered spacing was not intentional. The first Arduino batch had the PCB that way, the files were not checked enough before sending to the PCB house. It´s an inherited bug, that became a norm.

          1. Yes, but they could’ve fixed it in the second batch. They could’ve just said, “Haha, oops, we messed up the position of that header. Sorry about that, we’re silly and it’s been fixed. Just bend the pins over on any shields you’ve made or something.” But no, we have to deal with not being able to use perfboard for daughterboards on any Arduino-compatible for the rest of time.

          2. It’s a CONSPIRACY maaan!
            To keep your money in the pockets of big proto.

            But seriously… accident or intentional, should have been fixed in the second production run. I doubt there were many shields at the time that would have been hit hard by a corrected form factor.

        2. I heard some whiners grousing about the form factor, but I never had a problem with it. Probably since I’m not one of those users who ask a lot of questions, I just ordered some atmega328 chips instead of buying Brandybrand(TM). And since I already had a preferred code editor and compiler, I didn’t use the Brandybrand(TM) IDE either, so I avoided a bunch of other things that seem to rile up the whiners.

          The part about people asking for code even when the code is already posted, I understand these complaints. But the majority of the complaint is necessarily self-hatred; if, like me, you never bought the Brandybrand(TM), you wouldn’t have any reason to be opposed to it having an awful form factor, if indeed it has one. You simply wouldn’t be affected. The complaint implies affect, but look; nobody forced anybody to use a Brandybrand(TM) in their product!

          It is like adults whining about the existence of tricycles, or wheelchairs. If it isn’t the right choice for you… you actually have no complaint at all. Not everything that you don’t choose, or wouldn’t want to use, is actually a problem.

          The reality is those Brandybrand(TM) users really help me a lot, because the companies like Adafruit and Sparkfun that sell the products write device drivers, which then get ported to avr-gcc, or which I can easily port myself. For example, I bought some generic ssd1306 boards, and they don’t have all the pins that the Adafruit ones have, and require an undocumented (in English…) software reset to work at all. The only reason non-Chinese-reading users can even use this chip is because the open source Adafruit driver was easy for the manufacturer to modify with the extra init code. Which is great for me because I can just copy out the needed values and incorporate them into my own very lightweight plain C driver.

          Those unwashed masses may indeed stink, I can’t say for sure because I don’t mix with them. However, gazing at them from across the street they seem to actually BE the revolution that is causing my suddenly increased access to ICs, documentation, and toolchains. I don’t need a Brandybrand(TM) to get going, but I am allergic to proprietary toolchains that might go away or change price, or demand the purchase of new versions. Without the revolution, only a few devices would even have driver examples that are public!

          1. The one thing I forgot to mention is that as a non-Brandybrand(TM) user, I really can’t say that the mess of wires connecting breadboards together is a better form factor than poorly placed rows of pins. And when the pins are poorly placed, those users actually end up in the situation that I start in; with the exact same nest of jumpers connecting everything.

    1. It especially doesn’t make sense when you realize that the brain on this board has an MSP430 core (CC430F6137), so it won’t be an Arudino. Could use Energia, of course, but the point is the ridiculous form factor is completely unnecessary.

      Fortunately, the board is open source, and hopefully somebody with some sane design practices will put together a better board. I wish someone would do that with Arduino too–if people insist on using it, at least fix that awful mistake. And for all the gripes about how “it breaks compatibility with existing ‘shields'”, well–often you can make those yourself for the same cost, if not lest, as those things tend to sell for. It’s high time the hacker community starts pushing against that awful design. I’d do it myself, but I don’t use AVRs in my projects; I learned on the MSP430, and have never seen the point of using an AVR or PIC at this point.

      1. I could make new shields, but them I am in the business of building shields instead of building cool projects. At some point, my time becomes more valuable than the 30$ it takes to get a LCD shield. I don’t need to worry about design mistakes, or whether the decoupling cap I chose was the right footprint, or whether the LCD has the right footprint. I just want to build a cool thing. Thats where shields shine. I could do the work to remake it, but its not worth my time

      2. We set out to solve the real problems we care about. Making amateur radio relevant in a digital world. Faraday fits nicely on an Arduino form-factor board and at minimum it might as well make sense to at least support the prototyping shields:

        https://store.arduino.cc/product/TSX00083

        FaradayRF isn’t in the business of building prototyping shields we could never offer for the price someone like Adafruit or Sparkfun can. Simply not enough volume and if they do it well then by all means buy their product, it’s cheaper and good quality and lets you experiement with Faraday quicker than building your own proto shield.

        I fully agree, the form-factor is wonky. FaradayRF is set on bringing amateur radio into the digital experimentation world and to do that we need to solve several fundamental problems facing ham radio, fixing Arduino’s form-factor isn’t one of them :)

        1. $8 + shipping for that?

          Amateur radio enthusiasts are also used to a thing called perfboard; this spacing error makes it difficult, at best, to use it. I would think if your interest was only in the prototype shield, that would be an even stronger argument to ditch the Arduino board style.

          Don’t get me wrong–the Arduino as a concept is great. But this error is insane, and propagating it into a fixed standard leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. We really shouldn’t be afraid to break standards when there are very good reasons to do so.

          And lest you think otherwise, I think it’s awesome that you guys are creating this! And I appreciate your chip choice. So thanks for this contribution!

          1. So, which school of thought do you subscribe to, conventional flow or electron flow? Clearly that noob Franklin fellow took a stab in the dark and got it a about face! But who cares enough to change such an historical event and the propagation that continues to exist to this very day?! amiright?

          2. Yeah can’t comment on the shipping, it was just an example of one of many options online. Overall, we’re open source and open hardware so if the form fact is that big of a deal someone can offer something different. I’m not even married to the form factor but since it doesn’t affect performance of the radio, functionality, or manufacturing yield I’m keeping my sights elsewhere so I can get quality hardware into peoples hands :). Thanks for the insight and interest!

        2. That is perhaps a misguided goal; if amateur radio started becoming “relevant,” it would no longer have available bandwidth, and would then cease being relevant.

          It is interesting precisely because it is irrelevant! That is why the frequency is available. :) It is only good for hobbyists because it is only good for hobbyists. :)

      3. CC430F6137 also supports 70cm, so an international model could be made also.
        The SoC supports 389 MHz to 464 MHz band in addition to the 779 MHz to 928 MHz band.

        “Support for Asynchronous and Synchronous Serial Receive or Transmit Mode for Backward Compatibility With Existing Radio Communication Protocols” Also sounds promising, if one wants to attempt interoperating with ancient packet modems. Or just using SLIP for TCP/IP.

    2. I can’t imagine what I’m doing to my breadboard contacts when I bend the super duper long pin header I use on my arduinos or shields…. better complain about it to the manufacturer of my breadboard so they change it

    3. Yep, could not agree more. Although handy if you need more than one or two devices connected to them it quickly becomes unmanageable.
      Honestly, couldn’t they have made even ATA/IDE stile connector for GPIO and something as simple for the ADs? Or, as a gui who made low level code for a Velleman K8000 (~no micro controller, PC only for data I/O) why not make the connectors in PORT/type groups? I was processing IO via WORD’s and BIT by BIT manipulation, therefore PORT A on a single connector and so on should allow to simply add more of them connectors as you added improved MCUs that have more IO. 8 pins per port + Vcc/GND (or just gnd) for Digital IO and PWM, and on the ADs use a Voltage Differential enabled/capable connector type that allows for differential pairs or individual AD input.
      (Sorry, got carried away)

        1. Not exactly “wifi”, but yes you can do 802.11. I’ve set it up for two separate WISPs. The 900mhz band is much better than 2.4ghz in rural areas as it operates at near line of site (NLOS) and punches through trees/foliage better.

      1. There’s an annoying issue on that website. There’s an event handler for the mousewheel that does nothing, so you can’t use your mouse wheel to scroll unless you go into the devtools and delete the errant handler.

      2. Yeah, it a contrived setup where they were transmitting from the top of a hill on the coast of a flat ocean bay with full line of sight and free fresnel zone to the other end.

        In a normal setup with 500mW in a town at the height of your roof the coverage is going to be very significantly reduced. I operate on 910 MHz at 600mW and hill/valleys are the real killer. It’s true that you can get links going at many km distance but in practice the link is going to go in and out everything time you go behind a slight rise in the ground.

        A more realistic range for this would be ~800 meters.

        1. Then again all RF network links and repeater installations are ” contrived” to get desired performance. Not like this party was using advertising wank to pull the wool over people’s eyes. The photos and text clearly explained the setup they where discussing.

          1. Thanks for pointing this out Doug. Yes we never claim on the website to always provide 40km links. However, we proved using two omni antenna’s we could do it. That means that we’ve developed hardware that is capable of providing access appropriate for our needs. As we describe on our network page, amateur radio needs to move to a new ubiquitous data network and structure. We see no reason not to learn valuable lessons from the cell phone networks in how to build a new network intended for radio amateurs.

            https://faradayrf.com/network/

            Since not having to deal with a 10mW access point only capable of going a few hundred meters means we can put more effort into actually building a network amateur radio gets to focus on solving the problems it actually faces.

    1. At pretty much any power range maximum range is line of sight. That’s something like 30 miles or so between high points on the Earth’s surface. It’s much much farther if you are talking straight up such as to a satellite.

      Of course, that’s in perfect ideal conditions. Practical range at such low powers is much smaller. It’s almost impossible to put an actual number on though because there are too many variables. That’s why license free power limits are so low in the first place. There really isn’ t any power level where it is 100% gauranteed you can’t interfere with somebody that should be too far away to even realize you exist.

    2. Maximum transmitter output power, fed into the antenna, is 30 dBm (1 watt).

      Maximum Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) is 36 dBm (4 watt).
      You can obtain the EIRP by simply adding the transmit output power, in dBm, to the antenna gain in dBi (if there is loss in the cable feeding the antenna you may subtract that loss).

      1. With the caveat that you have to be frequency hopping if you’re unlicensed for continuous transmission. Protocols like LoRa have compliant spreading/hopping sequences to allow you to take the full watt. AM transmission is a lot more limited without a license.

      1. Oh more ham radio projects?! Please share when you do decide to go public. Amateur radio has an exciting future and it would be awesome to see what you can add to it too! Drop me a line @faradayrf if you would like.

  1. > You can transmit on 915 MHz without a license (in the US), taking advantage of the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) exemption.

    That’s not entirely true. You can **operate** a certified transmitter in the ISM band without having a license. That’s not the same – most transmitters will still need to adhere to [Part 15](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_47_CFR_Part_15) and that’s really different from just taking a device that has unknown RF characteristics and doing anything you please with it.

    Especially, http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=f2892d685a885ebb43e85e638b9368f7&mc=true&node=se47.1.18_1203&rgn=div8 **requires** that the manufacturer declares conformity, which, considering this is an SDR, is impossible. Thus, the device must not be sold within the US as consumer equipment. Period.

    1. Faraday is intended for Part 97 operations only. If you look at FCC Part 97.3.13 it’s clear that radio amateurs are responsible for the proper operation of their stations transmissions. This is one reason we are required to take a test that covers technical topics.

      Additionally, Faraday is hardware defined, not SDR. Check out the FAQ to see why Faraday is a hardware defined radio: https://faradayrf.com/faq/

    1. There is something nice about having a frequency band that is not overcrowded like crazy. WiFi, Bluetooth, some cordless phones, and microwave ovens all share the same chunk of bandwidth.

      This frequency is often used for things like cordless phones and garage door openers, but not every house has these. Pretty much every house has WiFi, Bluetooth, and microwave ovens.

      0.9 GHz should also penetrate walls better than 2.4 GHz too.

      1. Unfortunately, 900MHz is very polluted with the ISM devices, making it tough to use for any real distance. 902.1/903.1 in particular are used for weak signal work, and in some places are near useless due to pollution from unlicensed devices.

        With 1.5KW amplifier and a 6′ dish, you can work well into 100’s of km. :)
        KI2L

        1. You are correct, there can be issues on 900 MHz with RF pollution. However, if you’ve ever used a 900 MHz FM radio for a local simplex or repeater contact you’ll probably notice that when you transmit the repeater is keyed on and any noise in addition to your own signal is tranmsitted. This is one reason 33cm is known as a noisy band.

          Faraday is digital For most situations you will either obtain near perfect copy, or nothing. That’s digital. In the case of RF noise preventing communications, protocols can request a retry immediately (CRC or other check). Therefore, we shouldn’t be afraid to jump into 33 cm and use this amazing band we have access to as radio amateurs!

          If you read our Faraday Balloon Flight project we flew in August 2016 you will see that the data does have a few spots where we dropped out. This was most likely from some interference as line of sight was not an issue and we know we easily had 40km range with our previous distance test using similar antenna setups. At not point was the balloon more than about 20km away from us. Overall, we still achieved AWESOME performance and have 1Hz data of a balloon payload. It was super fun!

          https://faradayrf.com/simple-faraday-balloon-launch/

        2. I honestly have no experience with this band. What types of devices can be found around 915 in a typical house? I am not talking about a factory or a business, I am referring to a neighborhood where the closes business is a coffee shop and a pizza joint.

          1. ancient wireless headphones, the ones where a transmitter comes with the unit and needs to be plugged into power and an available headphone-out or line-out jack

            also, a good chunk of analog cordless telephones, the cheap ones marketed as 2.4ghz are usually only 2.4ghz IN ONE DIRECTION and thats why its only 15 bucks. also, thats why (using wireless 900mhz headphones) you can hear people’s telephone convo’s but only in one direction.

    2. That’s one of the things about amateur radio. It gets slices, some small, some large, throughout the radio spectrum. It’s not for specific purposes, so it’s not about a slice that fits a certain need (CB suffered because of being in the shortwave spectrum, local communication is best at higher frequencies, shortwave broadcasting needs a place where the signal will travel far). Having segments every so often over the full spectrum means hams can play with those frequencies, and maybe learn something.

      Hams couldn’t play with television without UHF bands that were wide enough for tv. But having small slices in the shortwave segment meant hams played with slow scan tv, low bandwidth at the cost of slow “data” rates, but useful over long distances. Now there are low frequency allocations, something missing since the early days of ham radio, but since they are there, people get to play with frequencies that have different propagation. Shortwave us great for distant communication, but VHF and UHF useful for local, especially after FM and repeaters took off, but those bands can still be used for distant communication when propagation is right, or if someone is using ham satellites or moonbounce.

      So having different segments allows for experimentation.

      Some bands have seen low use. The 220MHz band was mostly ignored, no useful equipment (not even surplus) and not dramatically different propagation wise from the 144MHz band. I’ve rarely seen mention f the 915MHz band since it did become a ham band decades ago. That’s a good reason to use it, it’s underused.

      Michael

      1. 220MHz band now gets rigs from Alinco (DR-235), Wouxun (KG-UVD1P 220/2m dualbander), Baofeng (UV-82X and many others), TYT (handhelds, 2m/220/70cm triband mobile rigs, 220 monoband mobiles), QYT (2m/220/70cm triband mobile) and various others.

    3. It might just be interesting because it’s usable with and without a license. Imagine a mesh network with hams providing the backbone of high-EIRP long-range links, but anyone can use it under Part 15.

      There’s some legal issues with this scenario, as hams are only supposed to talk to other hams under Part 97 (the rules governing amateur radio). Broadcasting to receivers or bidirectional communications with other users (whether Part 15, Part 90, or other) is a no-no. If you want to talk to other Part 15 users, even when they share a frequency, you’re supposed to do so under Part 15 rules yourself.

      I’m not sure whether there’s a way to legally use one radio, and switch transmit power on a per-packet basis, high power to other hams under Part 97, and low power to other users under Part 15; if so, this could be really interesting. If not, you’d have to run two radios, but I don’t see a reason you couldn’t bridge them into one mesh network, and there’s certainly something to be said for using the same hardware on both.

      There’s also a ham/ISM overlap for the lower channels of WiFi, which could enable similar Part 15/Part 97 interoperability, but 2.4GHz is so noisy it’s not very interesting IMO. Still, the hams who play with 2.4GHz stuff might already have the legal answers figured out.

      1. Oh brother! Yeah, because 902-928 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.8 GHz aren’t polluted enough.

        Get this: There are radios out there that support 3.3-3.5 GHz and are on the market TODAY. And that band is shared only with the US Government and no one besides hams. Quit drinking the $99 Koolaid and spend some money.

    4. Amateurs can use this band as secondary users. The idea is to establish an amateur radio presence in hopes of avoiding commercial interests of making grab for the spectrum. As a license radio service hams are allow more privileged than most unlicensed users. Those unlicensed users will see the use of the spectrum limited as well if commercial interest make a successful grab.

  2. Less we forget. Amateur Radio is not primary user on the band 33cm. And any interference from other devices must be accepted. As long as those devices are registered with the FCC. This is a very sh*tty band to use. It’s been abandoned almost as bad as the 220 mhz band. Remember the bandwidth taken on 220mhz. To be used by package carrier services. Namely (UPS/USPS/FEDEX). They did nothing with the band, instead they used other ways to communicate (cell phones). I hope the military uses that band since they have the equipment already. Or just give it back to the HAMS.

    1. Actually, all we lost was contiguous spectrum in the 1.25 Meter band. The segment taken away was offset by an allocation just below 220 MHz (218-220). I believe there was a ruling at the time that basically said that amy spectrum we lost had to be replaced with a similarly sized allocation with similar propagation characteristics, which is why we haven’t lost anything else since then.

    2. Actually if you look at Part 97.303(b) you will see:
      “Amateur stations transmitting in the 70 cm band, the 33 cm band, the 23 cm band, the 9 cm band, the 5 cm band, the 3 cm band, or the 24.05-
      24.25 GHz segment must not cause harmful interference to, and must accept interference from, stations authorized by the United States Government in
      the radiolocation service. ”

      http://www.arrl.org/files/file/FCC%20Documents/47%20CFR%20Part%2097%20-%20September%2023%202014.pdf

      The US Government radio location service and ISM use is covered nicely here: http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/900mhz/900users.html

      Basically, part 15 radios (ISM) cannot cause interference and must accept interference. It’s written in every manual we’ve ever seen in the US with a consumer electronics product :) The radiolocation service seems to be a localized issue and since Part 97.3.13 means we radio amateurs are responsible for the operation of our station then we will be required to prevent interference with that radio service when it actually is an issue… like on the ocean or near a shipping port.

      Thanks for the concern, I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about this topic over the last several years :) Excited to see interest.

  3. I discovered some interesting things in this band at my QTH. For instance, I just happen to be on the beam for our state’s public radio(like all classical music-all the time PBS 88MHz) link feedback from one transmitter to another. As helpfully(and happily) explained by the station engineer when I made a query about hearing the FM broadcast station in this band, this was a feedback from a remote/secondary transmitter on the other side of a mountain range for coverage in the western part of the state. They send a feeder signal(in L, I think he said – somewhere in microwave) to that transmitter, then the feed from THAT transmitter is sent back on 900 MHz to monitor the integrity of the secondary. Verification on the modulation is done automatically with delay-lines and analog comparators that spew out an “amplitude” of variance that when it goes beyond a predetermined threshold, alerts the engineers. It was also mentioned that this whole thing may be switching over to a fiber loop at some point, but the terrestrial radio systems are still there and functioning.

    I also found several (what appear to be) paging systems, unencrypted baby-monitor’s(or open mic feeds), and what I think is a wireless speaker system. So I wouldn’t call it an “empty” band… definitely want to be on the lookout for QRM from them and you.

  4. This is Bryce KB1LQC, one of the creators of FaradayRF. First off, thank you for the interest. It’s quite humbling to see people talking about amateur radio, 33cm, and experimentation. For those interested in why we have created Faraday and put it on 915Mhz (33cm) check out our Master Plan.

    https://faradayrf.com/faradayrf-master-plan/

    Brent and I are very curious to see the response to the Arduino form-factor. To be honest, it was chosen because it’s about the right size to fit all the necessary traces an let’s us keep some sort of familiarity with other projects. We don’t use Arduino IDE or anything like that, this is not an Arduino compatible project. the radio itself is CC430 bare metal :)

    https://github.com/FaradayRF/Faraday-Firmware

    Our main goal for most developers is to get the radio into the hands of web and Python developers to start solving problems ham radio needs to solve, update it’s digital offerings out of the 90’s :) Now, this doesn’t show the web interface but it does show the RESTful architecture Faraday is built upon:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaHiizrVx_k

    Lastly, Faraday is NOT and SDR. It’s very much hardware defined and we chose that for a reason as stated in the master plan and FAQ :) Please feel free to comment, question, and criticize. We hope you are all as excited as we are to give ham radio the digital network it deserves.

    Bryce Salmi, KB1LQC

    1. Great work. I’m looking forward to playing with a pair.

      That being said, ham radio digital hasn’t been staying still. Come on down to HF/VHF and play with some of the new digital modes. WSPR, JT65 and friends are doing some incredible things digging out very weak signals. I just worked almost 5,900km with 250mW. (Eastern US to Germany)

      Now, the bandwidth is limited, and by the nature of the beast, you need to be further up the scale to push a lot of bits, what with Nyquist and all…

      1. Hey Komradebob, thanks for the comment. I would add that while some aspects of ham radio digital operations have certainly progressed, when you compare them to the rest of technology we are not staying relevant. There are certainly very good reasons to have JT65 and other modes but for the most part there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to use ham radio as a networking medium which provides easy access to experimentation with python, JSON, RESTful interfaces, etc. This leverages the tools built to help the commercial communications world and our internet as we currently see it. I believe ham radio has not really adapted this in it’s digital offerings and Faraday is there to fill that gap.

        1. KB1LCQ2,

          Absolutely. The folks who live on the Front Range in Colorado have set up a pretty good mesh network on 2.4GHz. Given the terrain (lots of flat with a sudden mountain range many meters above the flat part) They get some incredible coverage. Those of us who live in the older mountains of the eastern US are not quite as lucky.

    1. As far as I know amateur radio has been serving essential needs all along and still is. In many parts of the USA amateur radio operators had access to a world wide computer network long before affordable dial up internet service made it to their location. Agreed amateur radio operators could and should do more, but ham radio has never been an “old-timey hobby”, seeing it started when wireless was new keeping abreast of new technology whenever it comes along.

      1. I definitely see why you would see it this way. Each one of us has our own reasons for loving amateur radio and you are absolutely entitled to yours! Personally, I’ve been licensed since 2004 and since 2010 have been asking myself why doesn’t ham radio adapt new technologies like GMSK, web-development practices, and networking in a relevant and easy to experiment way. Over the last few years Brent and I have been working to solve this problem and Faraday is our initial means to do this.

        I.e. APRS using AX25 is the ubuquitous digital network in ham radio righ now and it runs at 1200 baud. You literally cannot pay for internet that slow in 2016 to my knowledge. Faraday leverages the CC430 with it’s easy to use hardware defined radio to quickly enable us to start solving the problems necessary to move ham radio forward and improve it’s relevance in a digital world.

  5. 915 MHz is restricted anywhere near White Sands Missile Range. It causes havoc with the nuclear tests.

    (1) In the States of Colorado and Wyoming, bounded by the area of latitude 39° N. to 42° N. and longitude 103° W. to 108° W., an amateur station may transmit in the 902 MHz to 928 MHz band only on the frequency segments 902.0-902.4, 902.6-904.3, 904.7-925.3, 925.7-927.3, and 927.7-928.0 MHz. This band is allocated on a secondary basis to the amateur service subject to not causing harmful interference to, and not receiving any interference protection from, the operation of industrial, scientific and medical devices, automatic vehicle monitoring systems, or Government stations authorized in this band.

    (2) No amateur station shall transmit from those portions of the States of Texas and New Mexico bounded on the south by latitude 31° 41′ N, on the north by latitude 34° 30′ N, on the east by longitude 104° 11′ W, and on the west by longitude 107° 30′ W.

      1. I was being flippant (levity) but I’ve always like the 33 cm band (we had a voice repeater for many years) but that hole in the western states is huge (3 degrees of lat and lon). What I like about it, is it allows pulse transmissions.

  6. ISM is Part 18. ISM doesn’t receive. ISM is medical diathermy, microwave ovens, and cyclotrons. License-free wireless as we know it is Part 15. There are power limits on Part 15. And yes, Part 97 supersedes Part 15. Amateurs are secondary on 902-928, only to US Government stations. Part 15 is below secondary in 902-928.

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