Nick Szabo  🔑

Many variables here other than power: What frequency you're on, what time of day, how active the sun is, what type of antenna you have (and the height), what type of radio, and others. But if you get them right, it's like magic. Point to point contact nearly anywhere on earth.

Peer-to-peer networks built on the internet have a special allure because of the sense of resilience they have without a central point of failure. A bit misleading: they are really built on many computers and the connections between them. Not true with radios. True peer to peer.

I've spoken with people in Venezuela, Brazil and Chile, Hungary, France, Slovenia, Spain and Lithuania, The Canary Islands and South Africa, most US states and Canadian provinces, Japan, and many other locations. Just by bouncing energy off the ionosphere.

Good stuff, but how reliable is it compared to NVIS?

Antenna is a multiband dipole 55' up, which is higher than the ideal NVIS arrangement. It works for 40m NVIS but not others. 20m is quite reliable at long distances even with these terrible solar conditions. Notice the St. Helena station reporting me only 4db under noise floor.

Interesting. Raises another issue, how willing and able are motivated but average people to set up a 55' tower vs. a lower-slung NVIS dipole from a painter's pole. I hope in future it can be not much harder than setting up a tent, plugging in some cables & installing software.

My general idea here is 100-900km range comms to get past political firewalls -- from portable (like camping equipment, not like pocket phones) rigs, simple enough for use by a motivated family trying to preserve as much as they can of their life savings from persecution.

Have you participated in an amatuer radio field day yet? That could be very instructive to see how knowledgeable hams communicate under conditions similar to what you're describing.