Forgive me for sharing this a little late. If you’re interested in FSQ, this is a must listen to episode. In this episode Cale and Kevin talk about FSQ. Personally I’m still a fan, I just don’t have that many operators to interact with, so ham radio 360 shedding some light on FSQ, is definitely a good thing.
One thing which became completely apparent, most operators (myself including until recently) don’t understand the value of FSQ or how it might be useful in a real life. Hopefully I can shed some light on the topic.
Practical use for FSQ
Well FSQ is a make-shift digital network operating over RF. Is this case it’s operating on HF 40M day, 80M night, or 60M day/night. Each station in the network operates as a node, sharing its resources with other stations or nodes in the make-shift Network. One practical example of an operation I’m taking part in looks like this:
There are five portable field stations running FSQ. For the sake of this discussion we can say the stations are located in
- HQ station in Copenhagen
- Field station in Northern Finland
- Field station in Swedish Lapland
- Field station in Lilyhammer Norway
- Field station in Faroe Islands
- Field station in Shetland Islands
Each station takes soil and water samples each day, along with any images relevant to each days results. Once per day each station shares its results with the other stations for comparison. Additionally, each station sends health and welfare updates, supplies inventory, and sounds a beacon continously every hour, day and night.
All of the files are stored in a shared directory on the local computer over FSQ. Any one of the stations in the network can connect to any one of the other stations, to collect all of their data stored in each stations shared files.
Since it may not possible for all stations to hear one another directly, they are able to connect to other stations by being relayed through the stations they can hear. The stations you hear directly are displayed on your screen. If you can’t see a station that you actually expect to see there, you can ask the stations you can see if they have heard that station, or what stations they have heard.
The question that comes to mind when I give people examples like this one is, “Why aren’t you just using winlink?”. The answer; “All of this is done off-grid and without the internet!”.
Make sense?
So I’ll share the YouTube video If you prefer listening to it this way. Underneath the video, is the original link to the ham radio 360 website.
Ham Radio 360: FSQ, Linux & YouTube with Kevin, KB9RLW http://hamradio360.com/index.php/2017/09/05/ham-radio-360-fsq-linux-youtube-with-kb9rlw/
http://hamradio360.com/index.php/2017/09/05/ham-radio-360-fsq-linux-youtube-with-kb9rlw/
73
Julian oh8stn
