No one has shown that's what's happening, it's just being bandied about by people who don't have the first fucking clue how spam filters work, but need to be whiny little bitch ass snowflakes... cause that's all they have. This is a straw man argument from stupid people, for stupid people... nothing more.

I KNOW the rules, I've been a ham for over 40 years now. YOU need to review your ability to read and understand posts in context and not misquote them. My initial post was quite correct which you misinterpreted, drew an incorrect conclusion about what I was saying, then you starting quoting bits of Part 97 to me after taking what I said out of context - or perhaps simply misunderstanding it.

You know what, let's NOT review my posts, what I said was proper and true. Instead, let's review why you can't seem to understand either my initial post or the clarification that I posted especially just for you. Maybe you are attempting to deliberately misquote me or take me out of context? Sounds like a troll move to me.

What also feels like trolling is when people nit-pick and micro-analyze every sentence typed in an attempt to create a giant gish gallop. What I said was correct, and you then proceeded to misinterpret it and take up an argument with me about your misinterpretations.

The stupid was yours, my friend, and it seems you are the one doubling down on it. You misinterpreted or misunderstood what I said then decided to fuck with me over it. Fuck you. I made no mistake other than trying to be helpful to an audience of asshole trolls who who would rather attack the messenger than learn something.

I am done with the likes of you here.

I will admit it has been a few years since I last read Part 97, but short duration test transmissions are (or were) definitely one of the exceptions. Some use that exception to net their radio to a repeater by zero-beating or monitoring with a 2nd receiver.

Local hams retransmitting news I specifically said was NOT an exception. Please read my post better. I do know this stuff, I used to be a net control for a large multi-site repeater in a large city so I am speaking from many years of experience.

I am aware of the 10 minute rule and that is usually the interval (or less) that the repeater automatically ID's itself during such a transmission session. Thirty minutes was the average length of the news program, not the ID interval. The evening's transmission would typically involve three four breaks during the session to ID if it was not going through a repeater, and the person transmitting the news program has to ID _their_ transmission. That's why I said "pause". Jesus, you really need to read more carefully before you gleefully rip people a new asshole. Your nitpicks are bullshit, and you should have known it.

And a downmod for posting true information? Fuck right the hell off all of you, this was my first few posts in many months and I can see the level of professionalism and expertise has gone right in the shitter. This will be the last time I try to post some fucking helpful information.

Blow Me.
 

That situation sucks, and I had not heard of the malfeasance of the ARDC with that IP block, but face it, this is a fart in the wind as far as the totality of Amateur Radio is concerned. It's a very small facet in a much larger stone, ham radio as a whole. The IP space reserved was mostly used for Packet Radio and that is almost totally dead excepting a small contingent that still uses it for GPRS, but that's about it. Packet activity in the large city I live near is at zero usage except for the couple times a year the bicyclists use GPRS during races and events.

The other 99% of ham radio could make good use of the archiving services not for recording everyday transmissions about medical ailments and hemorrhoid creams, but more interesting things such as technical nets and on-the-air news programs such as NewsLine or the Amateur Radio Newsline, CQ Digest, and quite a few others. They each have their own program archives, I'm sure, but they would be likely fodder for this new collection, logically.

My bottom line is don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, I suppose. There are many subdivisions of Ham radio, there is something worthwhile and positive in it for nearly everyone, no matter what your experience level or technical skills are. With a very few exceptions and a couple of miscreant bad apples, it's generally a very affirming hobby, one you can choose your level of involvement with, to a great extent. It is what you (and I) make it.

There are a few exceptions to that rule, mostly having to do with the ARRL _broadcasting_ Morse code practice sessions over-the-air. They are specifically called out in Part 97, but are very rare IRL.

Even local hams re-transmitting news programs, etc. have to pause during a half-hour screed for station ID by giving their call sign and pausing for any emergency break-in traffic.

Basically, one-way transmissions are illegal with the few exceptions for code practice and radio tuning over-the-air (generally a bad idea). You still are legally required to ID at the end of your (short) series of one-way transmissions.

Sadly, no. I have never been to the Spark Museum, but it sounds really interesting and fun. It has been about 40 years since I was last in WA state, sorry - it wasn't me.

No, that's not correct either. There is a switch dedicated to encryption on/off on the radios, but whether the radio honors it or not is based on the system policy set by the customer (the police or whoever owns it. There is no preference or default configuration, all the buttons on the radio are programmable and can be turned on or off or changed to give the operator more or less flexibility or capability, depending on the eventual application of the radio and the expected experience level of the end user.

Most of the systems that are "100% full-time encryption" on all talkgroups are making it mandatory via system policy, that's all. They could, as others do, just designate encrypted specific talk groups, like detectives, drug and SWAT ops be encrypted and everything else like fire and sewer ops in the clear. Then, they will still program the specific encrypted talk groups as strapped that way, but other channels can be in the clear or will use the switch to determine if encryption is needed in the opinion of the user.

As to how many, a LOT is the answer. Motorola is giving away basic RC4 encryption for free with new radio purchases, and charges if they need higher security (DES or AES), It's hard to say no to free!

Of course, Moto sends in the sales Droids and talks up system security and promotes it adding in a few lies and myths like it's harder to jam encryption, or it has better coverage, etc. and they easily dazzle the customers and usually convince them to order the encryption with their purchase.

Where I live (suburb of large city) the police are 100% encrypted except the state-police highway patrol system. Only fire dept. and public works traffic is in the clear. Some of the police agencies have a few delayed feeds of their channel's audio on Broadcastify, but not all. One or two suburban systems are in the clear but those are far-flung suburbs and they probably will be going to encryption next time they upgrade their radio hardware.

LA was special to Motorola. It was used to test the rollout of Moto's first digital attempt, ASTRO. It was basically P25 but but not quite, it used VSELP instead of IMBE vocoding and it was all swapped out a few years later with true P25 once the standard was finalized.

So, LA was kind of like Schaumburg, IL (Motorola HQ's back yard) in that it was a test bed for early digital systems and other Beta and test system deployments.

For varying values of "better".

The digital signal is narrower bandwidth, but crappier audio quality. Some contend digital has a little better usable range than analog, and narrow band signals seems to go a little further than wide band ones.

So, which is actually "better" depends on your yardstick, i.e. audio quality vs, occupied bandwidth vs. effective real-world range and reliability.

The smallest and the largest cities are the last to get encryption, and when they do, they go whole-hog and encrypt usually everything but fire traffic.

The first to get this were the well-funded suburban police, then the small towns started getting it, or hopping onto state-wide systems that are usually encrypted.

The big cities are the last to convert because they have large, expensive multi-site systems they have to retro-fit or replace and more complicated budgets to work out.

That's not true. FYI:

First, the digital repeaters don't care about whether the payload is encrypted or not, it's just a bit set in the headers.

Second, if the system subscribers and console are secure-strapped (preprogammed to ignore the switch) they CAN'T fall back to clear (non-encrypted) mode, ever.

You can still jam the system, but you need a +6dB signal advantage to guarantee FM capture.

Ham radio Motorola Quantar owner and retired Moto design engineer here.

It's a warning. The article is about cars, so anyone using car analogies will cause the thread to self-destruct and implode from being far to meta to possibly exist in the universe.

I loved the Atarisoft original PC version, very true to the arcade version. Or as close as you could get to it with a 16 color palette, and no sound hardware!

Only 1 person in the entire country was able to crack the PC self-booter!