Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

>You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng.

I'm welcome to being corrected, however my understanding is that I'd need a full license to legally broadcast on those bands.



Ah, sorry! I misunderstood what you meant. You are correct.

You're likely aware that you can get CB/MURS/FRS type radios without a license, but that wouldn't help that much. It would be nice to have a small slice of each ham band that would be available to non-licensed folks, but the hardware would be tricky, you'd have high physical capability (and cost) but it would have to be locked down to basically a 'slice selector', speaker and microphone...basically what you get with FRS radios.

Neat idea though!


Yeah, I just think it would be nice to have a "non-custom equipment" license. Allow me to buy the BaoFeng equipment with a license based on radio etiquette, laws, etc.

And avoid all the test questions about amplifiers, and antenna configuration, etc.

The other month in Canada we had a huge outage of 3-4 cellular service providers and home internet issues due to a MPLS failure. Being work from home due to COVID I had no idea how to determine if this was a local level event, or a larger event. I turned on my trusty AM/FM/LW/SW radio. However in the fashion of today's radio landscape they're all multicast of national programming etc. Nothing about a huge outage.

Had I a license there are a few HAM guys I know 60 minutes down the road and it would have been a decent check to see the severity of the outage.


MURS/FRS radios don't require a license in Canada, actually.


Sure but do people hang out on them to chat?


Over here at least (Sweden), there are around 10 channels that are allocated to hunting radio and PMR, which you can use without a license.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: