Oddbean new post about login | logout The problem is that when you broadcast you essentially give out your position. It’s like revealing your secret key every time you use it. It’d make sense if you could broadcast and it would get routed securely to an antenna far from you.
Indeed. There are some simple ways around or to at least help this problem: 1) Be mobile in a vehicle. Have vhf, uhf and Hf radio mobile setups mounted and ready 2) Setup a remote repeater that utilizes a private tunnel via the web, OR is easily reachable via a highly directional low power setup aimed at a public or private repeater in a remote location like a mou tain top. 3) Utilize NVIS HF antennas that scatter and make it hard to locate the source. 4) Use larger portable hf rigs and be on the move while hiking or driving.
Here I was thinking of a mesh of drones at random locations which route the signal around
you could certainly do that with vhf and uhf radio. I built a repeater that takes a vhf radio signal and rebroadcast via a UHF signal using some cheap handheld ham radios.. It is mounted in one of my larger FPV RC planes. In my testing, I went out about 3 miles, put it into loiter(circling) mode, and successfully rebroadcast my signal to my house on the new frequency and sent back to myself. You could easily rig a larger drone that does similar, and even multiple drones that are tied together repeating the signal, however there would be a few delays.