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HAM mode question (midwest.social)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/meshtastic@mander.xyz
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Hello meshers, I have a friend who is a licensed US HAM operator, I'm curious if they're then required to use their meshtastics in HAM mode, or if that's only for airtime and power limitations. Certainly has been a fun hobby ro pick up

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[–] [S] 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Sweet, thank you. That's basically what I figured, but the arcane rules may have had something else to say, especially things like the HAM encryption restriction, you never know 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    My knowledge is incomplete as to what powers and restrictions you get with an amateur license, but I think the only real reason you'd want to use HAM mode in the US is if you wanted to operate on US 433 or maybe the 868 MHz block. Not sure if HAMs have access to the latter one or not, though. The 915 block is pretty permissive here for unlicensed use, so that's usually sufficient.

    Also, if a node is operating in HAM mode, it may not be able to mesh with other nodes not in HAM mode due to encryption being disabled. I could be wrong about that as I haven't read into that specifically, but to my knowledge it tracks.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 9 months ago

    Yes on that second part, which really makes me wonder what purpose it serves, unless you had a bunch of HAMers in an area that want to set up a mesh.. but they all already have HAM so whats the point almost 😅

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