Magnetic Phone attachments

The difference between us is that you us vague terms like microwave hops or spectrum. I like to be more technical with terms and say things like ‘thingy’ or ‘do-hicky’. :smile:

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what I am about to say would probably get me killed by someone who knows what they are talking about. :smile:
The addon module would have the hardware components needed to talk to the satelite

  1. an antenna tuned (physical dimensions, material, etc.) for the frequencies satellites use (different frequencies penetrate our atmosphere better).
  2. electrical components for hardware accelerated encoding and decoding of data packets to the protocols used for satellite communication. I imagine they are very different than cell tower protocols.
  3. physical components for encryption and decryption. I know that certain satellite protocols use encryption at the waveform level which requires everyone talking to the satellite to use the same key, so I imagine you would need a specialized chip with a proprietary firmware blob.

I image a similar setup implemented for the current radios in a cellphone.

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Oh, ha ha, I’m not a ham or anything. Truth is I kinda looked into this about a year ago because I saw on an episode of beefcake boat erm…The Last Ship a scenario where cell phones were pretty much daisy chained together to work without a network. I dunno, just caught my fancy I guess. I usually use terms like thingy and do-hicky too :slight_smile:

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Not very.

HAM radios often require reasonably large power supplies to spit out the large wattage signals required. Remember, a cellular phone only has to talk to the nearest cell tower, which are legion in most areas, so your phone won’t spit out more than 1-2 watts (dependent on the SAR in your territory).

Your HAM radio idea means talking to anything other than the relatively small number of operators near you — and you can guarantee that compared to the cell tower population, that number of operators will be frighteningly small — means you’ll have to up the wattage. This can be as much as 1.5kW output for operators with big PSUs and large antennas (oh, don’t forget the antenna, which could have to be a couple of building stories tall to work). And I wouldn’t want a 1.5kW antenna anywhere near my head.

As usual, I know just enough of the subject to get me to reveal my ignorance. I do believe there are portable radios, but I can just imagine how cumbersome a VoIP setup would be, if even possible.