Sometimes re-wiring a house or building isn't as practical as setting up a mesh network that's good-enough.

This exactly. Wifi is damn near unusable in dense residential settings. It'll cut it for streaming and web browsing, but much more than that and you'll feel the pain of interference from all the other wifi APs in the area.

Especially with most of them defaulting to 80MHz on 5GHz and many of those defaulting away from UNII-2. which leaves 4 non-overlapping channels (with one of them giving trouble with a lot of devices). We're right back to where we were in 2.4. Even worse, I think, since wifi is more ubiquitous.

Mesh should be an option of last resort. It reduces the speed and increases the latency quite a bit. The only thing worse is power line networking, which has the side effect of turning your whole house into an RF jammer.

Rat Bastard Rafael Cruz

I mean, does anyone actually communicate on the ham bands? HF is for contesting and contesting only, 2 meters is for "checking in and out" on ragchew nets, 70cm is 2m again except half the range, 220 is hipster 2 meter, and I've never been given a reason to even think about 33cm and above. You're more likely to find discussion about Icom vs Yaesu's incompatible 2 meter digital things than high UHF.

Most actual communication is illegal on the ham bands one way or another so...I haven't renewed my license.

I have been using 6ghz for about a year or so now and I found it to be quite fast. MLO can be super weird sometimes and seems to get confused, but it works. (It's probably just a driver I haven't updated.)

Yep, just set your Wi-Fi routers to use 6GHD and trample all over the other people in the band until they figure out that they can't control it.

Nah wifi was actually originally on 5GHz spectrum, with 802.11a. It came out shortly before 802.11b, which used 2.4GHz, and was objectively better...but component shortages for 802.11a devices made the inferior 802.11b more successful on the market.

Then in 2009, after 802.11b and 802.11g came 802.11n, which used the 5GHz spectrum, and introduced dual-band routers to consumers.

Most recently, 6GHz got allocated with the advent of Wifi 6E and Wifi 7.

I thought about getting a ham license so are you telling me there is really no need?

This guy's full of shit. You can talk all you want on the HF bands, they're certainly not exclusively for contesting. You can do Morse code or digital modes too. The "most actual communication is illegal on ham bands" thing is wrong too, you can talk about pretty much anything you want as long as it's not "obscene or profane," according to the FCC.

Yeah, I've got Wifi 7 set up and it's awesome. I've got a single access point, and I get full gigabit in my office with line of sight, and it auto switches to 5GHz or 2.4GHz when I move too far away. It's also great for apartments since it's more easily blocked by walls, there's way less interference from neighbors.

Right, I figured they meant in order to make room. There’s too much cluttering 2.4 — zigbee, zwave, bluetooth, IO peripherals, microwave ovens, cordless handsets, walkies, and more. WRT general WiFi traffic, in dense residential settings 2.4 is often only used for initial client device handshake.

It's illegal to transmit music, it's illegal to transmit anything encrypted unless you're controlling a satellite, it's illegal to transmit anything for commercial purposes, and it's actually illegal to transmit anything on a regular basis that could reasonably be communicated some other way.

A HAM license realistically is for two things:

1 the test teaches you major items you should know about how radio works
2 how to not fuck shit up for everyone else

For the bands allocated to HAM radio in the US, as long as you're not fucking shit up for everyone else the FCC doesn't really care. A good example of that and my personal favorite rule is the power transmission rule of "only enough power to complete the transmission". Functionally it's so vague that I doubt anyone would ever actually get their license suspended over it.

The group AFRL ARRL has a pretty restrictive "band plan" that I think is where the above comment's salt is coming from. A perception I have and have heard others talk about is the HAM community has a tendency to be borderline hostile to newcomers and are very gate-keepy, which ARRL in my experience embodies.

I have a license purely to play by the rules from a legal standpoint when I'm out in the rocky mountains hiking and camping with friends, makes communicating with different groups way easier

Edit: formatting, typoing ARRL

Get into ham radio if you like radios, that's pretty much the only topic you'll find on the air.

So am I able to goof around on the radio till I get my license or do I really need to have my license first?

It's illegal to transmit music

True, for obvious reasons

it's illegal to transmit anything encrypted unless you're controlling a satellite

True, it helps to ensure nothing illegal is going on and enforce keeping commercial interests out. It's a self regulating space, one of the only cases I know of that tends to work due to there being no monetary interests allowed. The point is to communicate information, not hide it.

it's illegal to transmit anything for commercial purposes.

True, the whole point is to keep commercial interests out. That's what "amateur" means.

illegal to transmit anything on a regular basis that could reasonably be communicated some other way.

False. This is for something like a non-profit wanting to use radios for their operations, they should be steered toward another service like gmrs, FRS, murs, etc. instead of amateur radio.

It's illegal to push that button until you're licensed.

(No one will search you out if you're not being annoying)

Do you mean ARRL?

I agree their bandplan is pretty restricty, but it's also not law. It's more for playing nice with each other. Keep high power up here so it doesn't wipe out the people playing with low power, digital here so they don't get overrun by voice, etc. You wouldn't have any idea you're stepping on someone sending Morse if you're on FM. So there's reason for it.

And yeah, with line of sight radios, nobody gives two shits 20 miles from civilization in the woods.

Nothing legally stops you from listening. To transmit, you are legally required to have a callsign (which you must broadcast during transmit) and your callsign must be licensed for that frequency.

If you break the law, it's highly unlikely that the FCC themselves will hunt you down and fine you. If you're using it to talk to others on the HAM bands, they'll likely get pissed at you for not being licensed but actually tracking you down is difficult. Using it for your own personal projects, friend groups, etc, it's unlikely anyone would notice you at all.

A license is like $15 for life (just need to occasionally tell the FCC you're still alive), the test will teach you some stuff, I don't see it as that onerous to play by the rules so I'd recommend following them.