HRN 450: 25 MIles

25 Miles comes from a fairly frequent Facebook inquiry from non-hams (usually) wondering how they might be able to communicate over X distance with some kind of radio technology when ‘All Else Fails’ - no cell phones, no Internet, no nothing (maybe sat phones… we didn’t think of that). The answer changes as you fill in the X with different distances, and 25 miles is sort of the limit with non-ham equipment (say, GMRS or CB), even with a decent (but not super-high or elaborate) antennas. Yes, the devil is in the many details. We discuss various distances (but forget about sat phones… it just doesn’t come up.Then we talk about Ribbit, a new ‘technology’ for generating a text-based data signal on a smart phone that can be sent over a variety of medium - radio, VoIP - with ‘acoustic coupling’ - just holding the phone up to the mic and hitting ‘send’. It’s early days, and the technique may be a solution in search of a problem, but sometimes it works. They have a YouTube Video demonstrating the technology.,Note that we had some trouble with our YouTube stream (again), and I’ve uploaded the recording to YouTube to avoid the buffering. Instead, you get a too-long discussion about the problem. Feel free to fast-forward (like you don’t do that already).