How not to create a new digital ham radio mode…

You’ve had a C compiler sitting in front of you and some communications textbooks, and so you’ve done some hard work and created a new digital mode that you’d like to see widely deployed. What should you do? Well, let’s begin with what you should not do:

  1. First, you shouldn’t presume to dictate what frequencies it should be used on without paying some close attention to the bandplans, both voluntary and involuntary, that we as hams have established. A particularly bad choice would be to recommend frequencies such as 14.101, which are uncomfortably close to the 20m beacon that many hams rely on.
  2. You should not recommend frequencies that are likely illegal. Modes wider than 1khz, or which use unspecified coding aren’t legal on 30m in the U.S.
  3. You should not call your mode something which is either incorrect, or at best misleading. If you say your mode is spread spectrum, it’s going to make a lot of people upset, and you could have avoided that by knowing what words mean.
  4. You should not keep the details of your scheme private. As amateurs, we are tasked with improving the radio art through experimentation, and trade secret modulation does nothing to encourage or aid that kind of cooperation. I’d suggest that you make your scheme open source to achieve maximum impact. Private protocols and encodings are basically just encryption.
  5. You should not make vague assertions about the mode’s performance. Comparisons of a mode which runs at (say) 16 baud and take 2.25khz of bandwidth have to be carefully made when compared with modes that run at (say) 31.25 baud and only 80hz or so of bandwidth.
  6. Lastly, you shouldn’t fabricate communications between yourself and the FCC in support of your new mode. It doesn’t lend much credibility when you later retract all evidence that you did so by deleting posts from your blog.

5 thoughts on “How not to create a new digital ham radio mode…”

  2. Mark VandeWettering

    I’m sure that any resemblance to an existing mode is purely coincidental.

    After all, nobody would shoot themselves in the foot that badly.

    Would they?

  3. Mike, KL7MJ

    You forgot:
    “You should not attack those who are trying to work with you to understand your new mode so that it can be used in the U.S.”

  5. signal_lock

    Hi Mark,

    Good summary of that unknown and unmentionable modes saga.
    For a non commercial mode, open source is the best way to implement a new mode, as experience has shown many times.
    Although I am confused as to the “spread spectrum” status of this mode, it appears to implement some type of this protocol, from what I have read by others.
    This is what I find confusing, I am not a communications expert, but I was under the impression that spread spectrum was mainly for secrecy, or sharing a “channel” with multiple users. I can see some utility for this on UHF, but for HF it seems odd to say the least.

    I am a big digital user (my main modes), but think I will stick to modes which will
    not get me blacklisted or threatened with legal action by the author if I happen to make an indirect criticism.

    Thank you for your blog. Talk about eclectic, a feast of intellectual variety.
    Tnx Mark and 73s

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