The Open Source Internet Is Here

Building a Permissionless Long-Distance Network with HF Radio and Reticulum

This video documents the creator's ambitious project to build a bridge between Reticulum (a fully digital, permissionless, open-source network) and HF amateur radio to enable long-distance communication without cell towers, satellites, or corporate middlemen. The creator details the technical, legal, and logistical challenges of transmitting encrypted Reticulum data over high-frequency radio waves that can bounce off the ionosphere and travel thousands of miles.

The Core Problem: Communication Gatekeepers

The central argument is that legacy telecom models force users to depend on intermediaries who control access, maintain records, and charge fees. The creator aims to build a network where nobody has that kind of power. Projects like Meshtastic and Meshcore have proven community-run models work at local scales, but covering hundreds of miles requires a different approach. The creator drives from Florida to New Hampshire and detects over 450 nodes on the Longfast protocol, demonstrating the existing appetite for decentralized infrastructure.

The Technical Solution: HF Radio as a Bridge

The project uses an Airmemes Light 2, an inexpensive open-source software-defined radio covering 0 to 38.4 MHz, including the HF (high frequency) spectrum. Unlike Wi-Fi or LoRa, HF signals can achieve skywave propagation, reflecting off the ionosphere to reach beyond the horizon. The creator assembles the radio from three pieces, tunes a Falcon dipole antenna using a nano VNA, and begins receiving signals. Within the first day, the setup decodes an FT8 data packet from Bogotá, Colombia—roughly 1,600 miles away—proving the physics work.

Legal Hurdles and the Encryption Dilemma

Amateur radio regulations forbid encryption, which poses a fundamental problem because Reticulum is built on cryptographic identities and encrypted packets. Removing encryption would break the network's core architecture. The creator discovers an exception: encrypted commands for satellite control. Rather than exploit this loophole, they design a bridge extension that terminates encryption at the air gateway. The HF frame is sent as plaintext with a public codec published on GitHub, while cryptographic signatures still prove message origin. The creator obtains their ham radio technician class license in Miami and receives an FCC call sign.

The Bridge Architecture

The system uses Cross Talk, a mesh chat fork, with specialized bridge extensions running parallel to Reticulum:

• A licensed gateway node converts Reticulum packets into amateur radio frames with call sign identification
• An RTL-SDR ($37) receiver listens for HF traffic and ingresses decoded messages back into Reticulum
• Users on the mesh don't need HF radios—only one person needs the gateway for the whole community to have long-range capability

Field Testing Results

The creator builds a remote control app using Tailscale to monitor transmissions in real-time, eliminating inefficient round trips. Driving through neighborhoods, the system achieves clean decodes at 2 miles through concrete-block homes and non-line-of-sight conditions. Power supply issues limit transmit power to 300 mW instead of the radio's full 5 watts, and computationally heavy decoding improves significantly after porting key components from Python to Rust.

Final Outcome: Partial Success

The creator acknowledges the project remains incomplete. While the bridge works across the office and neighborhood, the skywave test—sending a message hundreds of miles—was not achieved within the three-week deadline. The video ends with an honest assessment: the creator now subscribes to nearly every communication service they sought to replace (fiber, Verizon, Starlink, Iridium), yet proved critical milestones:

• ✅ 1,600-mile reception from Bogotá proves beyond-horizon capability
• ✅ Legal HF bridge transmits public call-sign-identified frames through Reticulum
• ✅ End-to-end message delivery between nodes with no direct path

Key Takeaway

This project demonstrates that permissionless long-range networking is technically feasible but remains logistically complex and legally constrained. The creator's approach—terminating encryption at the gateway rather than breaking Reticulum's architecture—offers a pragmatic path forward. However, the unfulfilled skywave test highlights the gap between proof-of-concept and production-ready infrastructure. For decentralized networks to truly replace corporate middlemen, the community must solve not only physics and software challenges but also navigate regulatory frameworks designed for a different era of communication.