25 Miles comes from a fairly frequent Facebook inquiry from non-hams (usually) wondering how they might be able to communicate over X distance with some kind of radio technology when ‘All Else Fails’ - no cell phones, no Internet, no nothing (maybe sat phones… we didn’t think of that). The answer changes as you fill in the X with different distances, and 25 miles is sort of the limit with non-ham equipment (say, GMRS or CB), even with a decent (but not super-high or elaborate) antennas. Yes, the devil is in the many details. We discuss various distances (but forget about sat phones… it just doesn’t come up.

Then we talk about Ribbit, a new ‘technology’ for generating a text-based data signal on a smart phone that can be sent over a variety of medium - radio, VoIP - with ‘acoustic coupling’ - just holding the phone up to the mic and hitting ‘send’. It’s early days, and the technique may be a solution in search of a problem, but sometimes it works. They have a YouTube Video demonstrating the technology.,

Note that we had some trouble with our YouTube stream (again), and I’ve uploaded the recording to YouTube to avoid the buffering. Instead, you get a too-long discussion about the problem. Feel free to fast-forward (like you don’t do that already).