There's no ham bands where you're going to build a 50-100 mile range mesh network.
Most of the HF ham bands have kilohertz of bandwidth. These are the bands where you'll get propagation over the horizon. The better ham digital modes get ones of kilobits of data in good conditions. To get that sort of throughput you need good antennas on both ends and a fair amount of output power.
It's enough power to give someone bad RF burns and antennas large enough to require sturdy masts. The antennas alone will violate most HOAs. The output power requires some knowledge to be safe.
None of the equipment required for HF is cheap or easy that some rando can throw some up to participate in a mesh network.
Encryption on amateur bands is a non-starter. There's no practical difference between your fantasy encrypted HF mesh network and RF noise. That means there's no practical difference between you using such a network to chat with your buddies, businesses flooding the air with commercial traffic, and noise.
HF can affect huge areas due to propagation. If a business uses a HF mesh network for commercial traffic in the next town over from you, they can basically shut out you from using it. It also potentially shut me out in the next state over.
HF mesh networking is not very practical to begin with and the tiny slice of HF hams have it's just laughable.
I think you assumed I was imagining high-bandwidth, but I was just thinking that even 80s dialup with BBS's or plaintext (encrypted) email would be useful, if it was long range and decentralized. That's absolutely possible with the HAM bands, especially shortwave.
> That's absolutely possible with the HAM bands, especially shortwave.
Such things already exist (Winlink, SailMail, etc) but you don't like them because there's no encryption and they don't have buzzwords like mesh in the names.
You seem to think encrypted transmissions on ham bands will let you play secret agent. All encryption will do is increase the noise floor on HF to the point its unusable by anyone. HF is already a noisy band but a bunch of people playing secret agent will swamp the bands over huge areas.
It's funny that you seem to think since I want decentralized long range encrypted mesh nets, I must be an idiot that doesn't know what I'm talking about. Or is it simply because I disagree with you?
Most of the HF ham bands have kilohertz of bandwidth. These are the bands where you'll get propagation over the horizon. The better ham digital modes get ones of kilobits of data in good conditions. To get that sort of throughput you need good antennas on both ends and a fair amount of output power.
It's enough power to give someone bad RF burns and antennas large enough to require sturdy masts. The antennas alone will violate most HOAs. The output power requires some knowledge to be safe.
None of the equipment required for HF is cheap or easy that some rando can throw some up to participate in a mesh network.
Encryption on amateur bands is a non-starter. There's no practical difference between your fantasy encrypted HF mesh network and RF noise. That means there's no practical difference between you using such a network to chat with your buddies, businesses flooding the air with commercial traffic, and noise.
HF can affect huge areas due to propagation. If a business uses a HF mesh network for commercial traffic in the next town over from you, they can basically shut out you from using it. It also potentially shut me out in the next state over.
HF mesh networking is not very practical to begin with and the tiny slice of HF hams have it's just laughable.