Getting On The Air

I've always been interested in radio beginning with fooling around with my Dad's scanner in the early 80's to listen to nearby radio traffic from airplanes, police, fire, and what ever signal was in range. Back then even cordless phones and baby monitors could be picked up. A very interesting time listening to the airwaves before privacy concerns and encryption and laws declaring what frequencies an off the shelf scanner from Radio Shack was allowed to pick up.

Eventually I got my hands on a CB radio and actually began talking to nearby folks. This naturally led to an interest in HAM radio but at the time cost, licensing and learning morse code kept it out of my reach.

In the Army I leaned radio discipline procedures, about encryption and frequency hopping.

After the Army, interest continued in CB where I introduced it to the local neighborhood watch and learning about GMRS when people would harass or interfere with the neighborhood watch community patrols.

After becoming and EMT my radio interests and involvement grew into professional and emergency communications, repeaters and redundancy. Becoming a Firefighter I learned more about trunking and digital radios.

A lot of my radio experience helped me getting on the air as a pilot and talking to ATC and Towers.

After encountering inexpensive radios being used by folks in Airsoft and knowing the morse code requirements were dropped in the early 2000's and at the time I had a disposable "fun" budget. I purchased my first HAM radio and I received my Technician license in February 2018. My original callsign was KG5YFZ, and I later moved to the vanity call K2SMT. Most of my operating has been listening and working the 2-meter and 70-centimeter VHF/UHF bands. I have also spent some time with DMR, including Talk Groups 91 and 93.

As inexpensive radios became more accessible, more people were getting on the airwaves, and I began noticing that quite a few didn't fully understand what they had or how they were using it. Most weren't being malicious; they simply didn't understand the laws and procedures governing radio communications. Without realizing it, they could inadvertently interfere with nearby businesses and even emergency services, completely unaware of the potential consequences.

At the same time, computers and inexpensive software-defined radio (SDR) equipment made it easier for just about anyone to listen in. Consider someone picking up transmissions from a nearby airsoft field. Without knowing the source, what they heard could easily sound like actual tactical communications rather than people playing a game. That brought to mind Orson Welles's famous *War of the Worlds* radio broadcast and how easily something heard over the airwaves could be misunderstood.

Those observations and experiences eventually led me to the idea behind PhantomNet. I wanted to create something that could support professional operations requiring reliable local radio coverage without the expense and restrictions of proprietary vendor systems. At the same time, PhantomNet could help address the very problems that inspired it: RF misuse, unnecessary interference, and public misunderstanding of radio communications.