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If she applied for a license, you have to take an exam - full stop. The exams are reported by VE’s - volunteer examiners - through organizations like ARRL. There are others, but ARRL tends to be the most popular.

As a Technician, you are pretty limited in terms of what bands you can use. On the HF bands, the ones used to go long distances, you can use 10M, but only for data and morse code (CW or Continuous Wave).

When I say data, you can use a type of software like RMS Express. It uses a type of modem you can use with radios called a Terminal Node Controller (TNC). It takes your text, converts it to 1’s and 0’s, and then the software transmits this ‘noise’ out to a ‘gateway’ that handles your email or fax and then sends it out on the regular internet.

As a ‘Tech’ (lowest form of license), you can mostly use VHF and UHF bands. The issue with this is that they are ‘line of sight’ type radios that use these bands. That also goes for data.

Very High and Ultra High frequencies are line of sight because the will not bounce off of the ionosphere. They go off into space, which is why those frequency bands are used to call the International Space Station, and amateur radio satellites (lots of them - cool to use).

They are using amateur radio for digital. You could use satellites to take data and get it to all kinds of places if you knew how to link to those satellites, and had the equipment to do it.

Here’s the thing - it is ILLEGAL to encrypt messages on any amateur band. Can’t do it. You can send data, or you can send voice in the clear. If you send data, then you can send the message using any cipher you want, as long as the message itself is readable by people or software.

I hold an Amateur Extra license, and teach Boy Scouts what they need in order to pass their Technician License Exam.

Oddly, if they are in violation of Part 97, that is a violation of the law. The stupid part is getting a license. You are in the FCC’s database, period.

They could have just used the amateur bands for whatever they needed and it is likely nobody would have been the wiser as long as they were careful and had a good code built.

I can’t tell you how many daily confabs (called ‘rag chews’) are out there they could have disappeared into and they would have bored an analyst to death listening. Just use someone else’s call sign so that it would be tracked to somebody else and nobody would have been on to them.

Re: last night’s post abt Nellie Ohr’s HAM license.

Many freepers, myself included, are HAM operators. No private COMMS there. Kinda silly to think you can go private on that IMHO. Years ago I happened onto some embarrassing “private” HAM COMMS of a local public official. Was amusing to say the least. Basically he, his wife and another couple were talking about skinny dipping in a swimming hole down at the river. Nothing insidious really but I mentioned it to a neighbor who then wrote a humor piece for a small local publication. Even without the NSA you can’t trust those “private comms.”

I’m giggling recalling this.