This appears to be "video streaming" style transmitters, not an ADS-B out sort of location transmitter or anything.
And it seems that HobbyKing just... hoped nothing would happen.
> As spelled out in ARRL’s 2017 complaint, the ARRL Laboratory had documented that the operating frequencies of these drone TV transmitters near the 1.3 GHz amateur band were dip-switch selectable for frequencies internationally assigned for use by Aeronautical Navigation, GPS, GLONASS L1, ATC Mode “S,” as well as to both the interrogation and reply frequencies used for Air Traffic Control Air-Route Surveillance “transponder” radar systems. “Transmissions from these drone TV transmitters would have caused harmful interference to these essential Navigation and ATC Radar systems, presenting a real and dangerous threat to the safety of flight,” Carlson said.
That's impressively ballsy. I'm glad the FCC smacked them down pretty hard. It's not like global frequency allocations aren't well known.
I suspect this bit didn't endear them to the FCC either:
HobbyKing had told the FCC that it had no notice of the Commission’s authorization requirements; that the Fifth Amendment relieved HobbyKing of its duty to respond; that the forfeiture amount was inappropriate because its parent company, Indubitably, Inc., lacked the ability to pay to the Forfeiture Order; and that the Commission was time-barred from taking action against ABC Fulfillment Services LLC because it was not part of HobbyKing’s business.
It's like I'm reading "Sovereign Citizen: Corporate Edition". Why did someone honestly think there was even the slightest chance of that response helping their situation? "We weren't importing, we were travelling!"
Linux allows individuals to override tx frequencies and power on many devices, but at least that’s done in software. I could understand if the dips were for setting bits on a frequency divider and could allow selecting any frequency, but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale.
>but having them directly correlate to reserved frequencies is beyond the pale.
The whole point of this cheapo hardware is that it can be used for whatever just by setting switches and therefore achieves massive economies of scale. They sell the same hardware to the drone makers and the radio makers and so on.
IIRC these switches were not user accessible. The manufacturer set them in the right position.
They were definitely user accessible in at least some of the products. Here are a couple of the devices named in the FCC complaint which obviously had exposed DIP switches:
My initial thought was also that it sounded excessive, until I got to the parts about interfering with assorted Air Traffic Control frequencies, only 1 of the 7 possible selectable bands being legal for use, broadcasting (in reserved bands!) at higher power than allowed for the device type, selling 65 other noncompliant products, claiming that the constitution protected them from having to respond and refusing to agree to more than "We'll try not to do it again but no promises."
After that, throw the book at them. I'm amazed they didn't claim that the FCC had no jurisdiction because they only recognize county sheriffs as authorities.
After all, what could possibly go wrong with remote controlled flying transmitters that interfere with GPS AND ATC navigation systems?
> After all, what could possibly go wrong with remote controlled flying transmitters that interfere with GPS AND ATC navigation systems?
Do you think the people who operate or use these things are completely helpless and have no contingency plans?
The people in here saying the sky is falling are insane. People who operate disruptive devices are caught, and then educated and/or fined all the time.
Absolutely they have contingency plans and it's unlikely something with these would cause a jet crash, but in a scenario with instrument flight due to weather, taking out one of two additional positioning systems adds noticeable risk.
Low visibility. No GPS. Impaired ATC. How many additional separate systems have to be affected to be a real problem?
It is up to the end user to not break the law. But...
> In its earlier Forfeiture Order, the FCC said it had made clear that “[d]evices used in the Amateur Radio Service do not require authorization prior to being imported into the United States, but “if such equipment can operate in amateur and non-amateur frequencies, it must be certified prior to marketing and operation.” The FCC investigation found that 65 models of devices marketed by HobbyKing did not have the required FCC certification.
It's also up to the equipment manufacturer or importer to make sure the equipment they sell in the United States is certified by the FCC.
Just to add more context to this - it's easy to create a radio device that outputs RF on frequencies outside the intended range. This is one of the main reasons we have the certification requirements to begin with. It would be bad enough to do it by mistake, but these things do it by design.
GPS signals from the satellites are extremely weak, and actually are below the noise floor. GPS uses processing gain tricks in order to see the signals at all. This means that a terrestrial based transmitter doesn't have to put out a ton of power to break GPS in a large area. Like, many square miles. It makes sense to me to outlaw the sale of RF electronics that are made to transmit on that frequency.
Usually I would agree with you, but it's sort of like selling a laser pointer with a user-accessible switch that would make it a powerful directed energy weapon.
I went to a GnuRadio conference a few years ago where a lot of presentations were on directional tracking of signals. One huge issue is that truckers are using GPS jammers that plug into the cigarette lighter socket to block the truck tracking systems from knowing that they are driving outside of their legal time limits. One trucker has left his jammer plugged in for a day or two. The nearby port was entirely shutdown until authorities found the jammer because the massive ships couldn't navigate the tight quarters of the port without GPS. One project was using cameras along with multiple antennas to attempt to track who was driving past a particular overpass with a jammer turned on. A cigarette lighter socket has the potential to put out tens of watts out RF power which can almost certainly jam anyone that can't use the military anti-jam GPS channels.
Sure. Can you afford to pay damages after you inadvertently blind yourself, and everyone else in a hundred meter radius around you, with diffuse reflections off whatever you point the laser at?
That's a selfish framing, though for that poster it's probably a good choice. However the thing that they really should worry about is harming others in the first place. If I was blinded by them, money would be great to get but no amount is going to make up for the fact that I'm blind.
I'm aware. Have you not seen the occasional news articles where someone with a cell/GPS jammer gets caught and fined for it? Last one I remember was a trucker jamming his company's GPS to prevent speed tracking.
It's reasonable to expect the end user to not break the law because enforcement is possible. Even if enforcement was impossible, prior restraint of natural rights to just do stuff should not be on the table. Should we ban CNCs because you can use CNCs to build things that kill people?
As an example of this, look at the explosion of cheap handheld radios that can operate across all different parts of the spectrum flooding in from China, enforcement has been... more or less non-existent except in the most egregious of cases. Generally the range on these things is only a few miles, and trying to pinpoint a single intermittent transmission even if it's static within that few miles can be _extremely_ time consuming.
And we're talking about a very limited shared resource that we rely on for many aspects of day-to-day life.
Where it _is_ possible to enforce at scale is at importation/sale.
Yes, any random yahoo can get the parts to put together an illegal transmitter. But the scale of that problem is a hell of a lot different than a product being mass marketed online for $50 with no indication that it's illegal to operate.
The simple fact is if the market gets flooded with cheap devices that don't follow the spectrum allocations, large swathes of the spectrum will very quickly become useless. It's pretty a straightforward example of the tragedy of the commons.
EM spectrum is something sovereign states take Very Seriously, and if that requires hardware makers to lock their hardware in to approved frequencies so be it (from a state perspective).
If it were a product for licensed radio operators, sure it’s up to the user. But for the general public, it’s really not appropriate for them to be able to flip a switch that breaks international law, and have an elite Dutch police team haul them off for trial in The Hague. Even if that does sound awesome.
I’m not going to trust aircraft safety to one jackass who might not care about the law — or might not even be aware of the consequences of what they are messing with.
Technically, you’re not allowed to “operate” on bands you’re not licensed for, including rx, but enforcement is difficult, of course.
Edit: If your device has any transmit ability, it falls under above. If your device ONLY has rx capability, it does not. Many of the USB SDR dongles DO have the capability to tx, albeit at only ~0.5 watts. This is generally not advertised in the device, but their chip does technically hav an amplifier capable of sending out signals, though usually you would also need an antenna with a shunt. I'm quite certain on this.
This is incorrect at least in the US. You are allowed to receive practically everything. There's only really a carve out for analog cellphone frequencies, but that's about it.
You just jogged a weird memory out of my head. In the early days of the internet there were sites that had pirate audio streams from analog cell phones. It was pretty sporadic but a very interesting sort of slice of life thing.
> It's a strange thing to see white-snow-static redigitized and then drop bit-rates.
Old-school white snow static is theoretically the most uncompressable thing, right? So some poor encoder is being told to "send this at 384kb!" and it just throws its little robot hands up and says, "fine, here's your super blocky bullshit. I'm going on break..."
Modern codecs detect noise, filter it out and add back artifical noise at the decoder (especially audio codecs can do this with all kinds of noise). I think back in the day, video compression would likely not have an issue as noise is high frequency and if you're compressing images, that's the first thing to go, you'd just get a blurrier image.
That’s under federal law. A few states add some restrictions. 5 of them disallow listening to police frequencies on portable radios without a license (but a ham license is acceptable). Florida and New York are the biggest states with this restriction.
My understanding is that operating on a frequency requires that you be transmitting on it, not whether the device is capable of transmitting on it.
For instance, you can own one of those cheap handheld Baofeng radios that is capable of transmitting on all sorts of frequencies, so long as you never transmit (and you don't listen to any forbidden frequencies)
Happy to be corrected, but all the resources I've dug up say that it doesn't matter whether the device is capable of transmitting or not.
In the us you're allowed to receive everything but the cellular phone spectrum without a license. You or the device needs to be licensed to transmit, however.
Note that this isn't the case everywhere. I believe in the uk it's illegal to listen to air traffic, but I would need to look up the specifics to give anymore detail.
Receiving of certain bands is prohibited, from memory the ones used on cordless phones and something else. All devices sold, say frequency analyzers, have to have a bandgap for them to pass FCC validation. It is common to remove these bandgaps and ignore the law because everyone seems to accept they are really dumb and they wreck the sensitivity of the instrument.
The bandstop filter requirement is mostly a stopgap measure from an analog era when cell phones were basically trunked FM radio systems. That limitation serves no purpose nowadays.
Certainly untrue in the United States, though there are some bands that are prohibited to listen to — the old 800 MHz analog cell phone bands. And you won’t get 500mw transmit out of usb SDR dongles.
TX SDR is already illegal, unless you have the appropriate license. If you don't stop the sale of cheap illegal transmission devices, there will be millions of instance of illegal transmission, most unintentional, which would make enforcement impossible and ruin the spectrum.
Even if you're a hardcore libertarian, you have to be somewhat pragmatic here. The freedom to do whatever the fuck you want is nice, but being able to board a flight without fearing that it could be endangered by any random fuckwit who doesn't know what they're doing is a bit nicer. While it's not that hard to cobble together some electronics that would have the same effect, this is about limiting it happening because some idiots flipped the wrong switch, or making it just hard enough to stop most evildoers who would do it on purpose from actually doing it.
With generic equipment like an SDR which requires one to specifically do many things to break the law.
However having a piece of unlicensed radio equipment for use with unlicensed operators which has essentially a “flip this switch to break the law” the situation is quite different.
Kits are already easy to buy. People don't bother buying the kits because if you use the jammer generally you are found. Occasionally pops up in the news.
" if you use the jammer generally you are found. Occasionally pops up in the news." - only people who are found pop up in the news. Your logic looks faulty.
The thing with phone jammers is that they actively flag "I am here" and are easy to locate.
Because phone jammers cause serious problems to the phone companies, they have teams in the field actively tracking them down. And the phone base stations run software which automatically flag that they are present and log the co-ordinates.
No, dip switches are for end user configuration. Radio modules use firmware or other semipermanent and non-user accessible configuration to set frequency bands which is usually for regionalization. There isn’t really a use case for transmitting in global navigation bands outside of malicious jamming or spoofing.
This. They could easily have just masked out some different jumpers with zero-ohm resistors to set the frequency band. In fact, it would have been cheaper to build that way. The only reason to use DIP switches is to let people mess around with the frequency themselves.
One of the requirements of radio equipment is that it must not be easily user modifiable to operate on the wrong frequencies. In the past, that has been construed to include where a user could use a soldering iron to replace a resistor. So certainly changing some DIP switches counts too.
Possibly, although I’ve definitely got some old Hobbyking video kit where the DIP switches are totally user accessible and can definitely go into bands they aught not. Likely not the same kit (it’s about 10 years old now) but… there’s very likely still super sketchy stuff available there.
> As spelled out in ARRL’s 2017 complaint, the ARRL Laboratory had documented that the operating frequencies of these drone TV transmitters near the 1.3 GHz amateur band were dip-switch selectable
They weren't even pretending to hide it. The product listings showed which channels were selectable and it looks like the dip switches were easily accessible:
Wow that could have affected WAAS GPS approaches for aircraft which is rather critical stuff. (WAAS approaches allow for airplanes to descend to much lower altitudes without ground visibility. Basically the GPS equivalent of the Instrument Landing System.)
And Mode S has serious implications for TCAS systems (preventing air to air collisions.)
Extremely bad to be messing with those frequencies. Potentially catastrophic.
> Extremely bad to be messing with those frequencies. Potentially catastrophic.
If someone with a hobby electronics kit can cause that much damage, the system needs to change. Hobby projects like this can help expose the serious flaws in aircraft control, making us all safer.
Security by obscurity is no security at all. Security by hoping people don't do bad things is even worse.
I think what the comment is about is that the system should be built safer with less security with obscurity but more actual measures. You can (partially) scan people getting onto the plane for bombs etc but it's practically very hard to pinpoint a jamming RF transmitter possibly from kilometers away from ground. Security shouldn't rely on those frequencies being clear.
Because aircraft systems are multiply redundant, there is little likelihood of a jammer directly causing an accident.
However, any deterioration in that redundancy is considered a serious safety risk and immediate action is usually taken.
Bottom line: The high redundancy is there to prevent accidents, however any idiot who compromises that redundancy deserves to learn an expensive lesson.
This system does not at all rely on security by obscurity.
This system relies on safety be reliability / availability. All of the operating parameters are public, to prevent anyone from accidentally interfering with these systems. They are not designed against adversarial attacks, and really with radio systems. It is very hard to defend against jamming attacks. Doing so successfully makes the system a lot more complicated. More importantly, doing so successfully makes the system use much more bandwidth.
Bandwidth is actually really scarce. If you start doing defensive stuff, then more and more frequencies get used, and you end up with everyone screaming over each other just to be able to add all the required error correction. That is why we decided to coordinate on frequency allocation. It prevents a tragedy of the commons. As a side effect, it also means transmit power can be lower. This allows you to operate more systems in the same area without interfering.
Now, this does leave a somewhat fragile system. Because jamming (and other attacks) are not mitigated by the system. But this is an acceptable price to pay to actually allow people to use radio communication.
Besides, jamming attacks have an interesting downside. They are somewhat easy to track down. The higher level attacks can be defeated by cryptography. There is a mid-level of smart jamming, that attacks the low level protocols with more than just power. These require significant effort to develop though. And military hardware tends to have mitigations against this sort of thing. A sufficiently sophisticated attacker could disrupt civil systems, but to what gain?
It doesn't. Jamming TCAS or ILS systems doesn't cause crashes. At worst, a go-around and increased workload in the Tower.
But since you're disabling safety equipment or their redundancies, in practise it's rightfully treated as harshly as it is. TCAS almost never activates in practise but if your HAM radio jams it and a crash happens... You disabled that redundancy to prevent accidents.
Ahh, hobbyking. I used to order RC and electronics stuff from them, back before off the shelf drones became common enough that regulations ramped way up.
Their checkout pipeline used to have a drop-down box for what percent of the orders value to declare on the customs documents. IIRC, the default value was 30%...
It was also always interesting seeing what machinations they were using when orders of LiPo batteries would get shipped. I had a very large battery order for a workshop I ran that was shipped from HK to the west coast via Fiji post - and by the postal tracking, took the long way around, and showed up with a surprising lack of stickers related to the contents.
They still have the best battery searcher in the business if you need to find pouch cells with specific dimensions.
Not surprised that regulators have been catching up with them.
> ...and showed up with a surprising lack of stickers related to the contents.
Yeah... screw 'em if they're doing that.
I've never ordered from them, because I really, really do not like pouch cells (pouch LiCoO2 is terrifying). I've done a lot of work with lithium packs, mostly 18650s, and was the sole supplier of rebuilt BionX ebike battery packs in North America for a few years until some other people got their rears in gear and undercut me (I was so tired of building packs by the end...).
But I shipped ground. Period. The hazmat requirements for 300+Wh packs were pretty stiff, and I met them. The UPS guy out here knew me as "the battery guy," and I had to explain to any sub on the route that, yes, this was legit, yes, I have all the paperwork right there, yes, I'm registered... look, just call base, ask about "the battery guy," they'll know who it is.
And since I shipped a lot to Canada, I filled out my customs forms properly, with actual value. I had a few people ask me about some "creative valuation," and... nope. Not going to screw around when sending hazmat internationally.
I got out of it partly because people undercut me, partly because the requirements for shipping lithium were getting ever more strict. I'll do stuff locally now, but I deliberately didn't renew my hazmat shipping training.
Not that I advocate it, but I can see why they are trying to skirt the rules. It’s tough now as a consumer to just order LiPos for a reasonable price and trust that they aren’t going to be a risk of catching on fire. HobbyKing is one of the few LiPo vendors right now that have managed to achieve trustworthy B2C LiPo batteries at a reasonable price point. I’m guessing they are really trying to maintain that position.
It sucks more when your unlabeled, poorly packed batteries catch fire and take down cargo planes. It sucks even more when they take down passenger airlines, because a lot of mail is shipped in the bellies of passenger flights - and if it's not labeled as prohibited for air transport, you have no idea how it gets from A to B.
Different carriers have different regulations, and you can legally ship small lithium cells (at least on some carriers) without a lot of restrictions. There are also different restrictions for "batteries in equipment" versus bare packs or cells. But places like Hobby King tend to just shove stuff in a box and hope it doesn't catch fire.
My point there is mostly that USPS mail and such is carried on passenger flights, and I have a very real problem with unlabeled scrap grade lithium cells being carried without proper markings on anything with passengers, which is exactly what Hobby King's behaviors lead to. That stuff, if it goes by air at all (I'd argue it probably shouldn't), should go by cargo aircraft only.
Even ground includes labeling requirements and such. And it gets complicated knowing what to put. The reality is UPS gives no shots, the USPS is a bit stricter.
This is unfortunate but I’m more displeased with the ARRL. They spend millions on lobbyists and politicians, pay the President A quarter of a million a year, and they’re really not doing that much for it. The website is seriously lacking an up-to-date information about state and federal issues, and I’m very dismayed at what seems to be a lot of money spent but very little to show for it. Ive been an Extra since 2002 and I didn’t renew my membership last year. To me, a humble Ham in tornado country, ARRL just seems like a lot of people hanging on feeding at the trough.
But other than that, a quarter million sounds huge, but that's not huge for a big, heavily-government-involved national non-profit.
For my own benefit, they orchestrate the classes and testing that I used to get my license, publish excellent reference materials, etc. I'm no longer in tornado country, but in earthquake country and a bigger city, the many different HAM activities are nice to know about.
So I started digging into this and I can’t tell what they are doing, I barely passed political science, but I went to the webpage and clicked on legislative issues and there’s nothing there. So I pulled up the report every nonprofit is required to file, and they are paying lobbyists millions of dollars. What are they lobbying for?
They are lobbying to maintain the status quo. I think their big fear is some politician deciding to sell off the amateur spectrum to Verizon or getting convinced by Cisco that ham radio is bad for wifi and needs to be more tightly regulated.
That said, I cannot speak to whether they are efficient at their lobbying or not.
I have a secret for you, and it’s an app called Libby, which you use with your public library card you digitally check out the books, magazines, and audiobooks from the library. The ARRL magazine is completely free through the library app. You can read it right now totally free.
Also an Extra. I actually delayed renewal this year, but then re-upped when I remembered that I'd been using the callsign@arrl.org email forwarded for a bunch of stuff and shelling out for one more year was easier than hunting down all the places I'd used it. I'll probably address that soon and let it go for good after this year.
Ham radio is as analog as your microwave systems are. I'm not going to convince you to become a ham, but hams have a lot of digital voice and data modes at their disposal.
Next to none of which are actually useful for serious IP data traffic any any usable data rates or applications. I'm quite familiar with all of the weird things like psk 31.
ARRL noted one of the channels was within an Amateur band. So they're reducing the consumer options for ARRL members and other HAMs who would be licensed to use this feature legally and correctly, with the correct channel selection. I don't hold it against them, that they chose to pursue this anyways, to keep the North American spectrum clean and correct, but it's nifty side note.
I had to point out the relevant parts of the CAN-SPAM Act and the potential liability before they would honor an opt-out request. They were emailing constantly and whatever opt-out mechanism wasn't working (had no effect).
HobbyKing and Hobby Lobby are completely different companies. HobbyKing are based in Hong Kong and don't have retail outlets in the US (or anywhere, I think).
This is one of those weird things that bugs the crap out of me. I get why it's a "general" problem, but I use some of these transmitters in amateur frequencies legally, and now getting more parts is going to be a pain in the ass.
I don't know how big HobbyKing is, and surely agree than the RF spectrum is a fragile limited resource that we must use properly, and therefore abuses must be punished, however $3M seems a lot. That fine could destroy a business and send home a lot of people, probably none of which have any responsibility on the matter. Did the FCC at least give HobbyKing the chance to withdraw those products?
The FCC doesn't hand out big fines to companies that go "oops, my bad, heres how I am fixing it" they hand out big fines to companies that refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem and refuse to correct it. HobbyKing refused to acknowledge the issue, the FCC's jurisdiction, or make any attempt to resolve this issue, so they get a big fine.
The FCC probably doesn't expect this fine to be paid, instead its part of an effort to block the importation of this stuff into the US.
They did. Multiple times. HobbyKing went on the ol' "You have no jurisdiction" route, or tried to.
Additionally, the devices interefered with Aircraft and GPS Frequencies. If you jammed around in a less sensitive band (ie, blocked something non-vital), they might close an eye or two over it. But GPS and Airtraffic Frequencies is where any regulation agency on this planet will bring the hammer down because accidents caused by that would be quite costly in lives and money.
It's somewhat surprising for a radio amateur group to take it upon themselves to complain to the FCC about interference to a whole bunch of infrastructure-critical systems like satellite positioning, air traffic control, etc. Sounds a bit like spectrum vigilantism to me. Or was there actual harm done to these systems? You'd hope that if it was really critical there'd be more investigations by the government vs waiting for private groups to complain.
Making an official complaint to the appropriate government enforcement agency is the exact opposite of “vigilantism”. Vigilantism would be hams deliberately crashing the drones with jammers, or something.
This is kind of what the ARRL does. Amateur radio is supposed to be self-policing. They want to minimize FCC headaches from any kind of hobbyist radio, in order to maintain flexibility and tolerance.
Not really surprising, radio only works if we all play by the rules. Even a small 5w transmitter up high enough can easily cover over 100 miles.
Most radio groups tend to be disaster recovery and communication adjacent so they care about infrastructure even if it's not directly on the ham bands.
> It's somewhat surprising for a radio amateur group to take it upon themselves to complain to the FCC... Sounds a bit like spectrum vigilantism to me.
Someone dumps their garbage on your front yard. You hop in your car, follow them and find out that they're running a large-scale illegal garbage dumping business. You call the cops and report both crimes. Are you a "vigilante" now?
And it seems that HobbyKing just... hoped nothing would happen.
> As spelled out in ARRL’s 2017 complaint, the ARRL Laboratory had documented that the operating frequencies of these drone TV transmitters near the 1.3 GHz amateur band were dip-switch selectable for frequencies internationally assigned for use by Aeronautical Navigation, GPS, GLONASS L1, ATC Mode “S,” as well as to both the interrogation and reply frequencies used for Air Traffic Control Air-Route Surveillance “transponder” radar systems. “Transmissions from these drone TV transmitters would have caused harmful interference to these essential Navigation and ATC Radar systems, presenting a real and dangerous threat to the safety of flight,” Carlson said.
That's impressively ballsy. I'm glad the FCC smacked them down pretty hard. It's not like global frequency allocations aren't well known.