Amateur radio changed my life. In high school, I thought I was a nobody, maybe I wanted to be a truck driver, or a psychologist...who knows. Who cares? I was pretty depressed.
I'm 28 years old and I fucking love amateur radio.
I always had a curiosity about radio, being so interested in two-way radio that my parents had me tested for ASD. My mom had a police scanner and it had a button titled "HAM" [sic]. I found a repeater and no more than a few weeks later I was absolutely enthralled and was licensed in 2007.
I got a radio, an antenna, installed it, and I was absolutely hooked. It did not matter that the average age of a ham was around 50 or 60, and I was only 15. It was just so much fun and there was so much to do an learn using it. I studied for my General and got it a few months after my first Tech license. A few months after that, I got Extra. All the while, I ran a YouTube channel documenting my experiences.
I chose to go to Missouri S&T (formerly University of Missouri - Rolla) because they had a ham radio club (W0EEE). I declined a full ride to Truman State in Chem or CompSci, and went to S&T as undecided engineering. I naturally nestled into EE realizing a lot of the basic circuits knowledge was already covered under the Extra exam. Myself and one other ham became de-facto President and VP of the ham radio club, which we re-grew from near death.
I ended up working at an Electromagnetic Compatibility lab for a while, before having a co-op at the Very Large Array radio observatory in NM where I ran cabling, designed antennas, and worked on mitigation of RF interference. My manager specifically sought me out because I was a ham.
Acheving full time employment was also a no brainer. I applied to Rockwell Collins, Raytheon, Garmin, Boeing, Honeywell, Black & Veatch, maybe a few more, and had offers from everyone but Garmin (apparently proving my way around a smith chart dedicated to quiz grad students in the off-site interview, but choking at an unannounced op-amp circuit analysis by hand while two managers watched on-site wasn't good enough for them!). And now I design antennas for a living! All because of ham radio.
Ham radio never ceases to entertain me. There's science, there's experimentation, there's socialization, and there's public service. I'm a advocate for youth in ham radio, and I'm starting to get into things like ARRL reformation and other politics, since - like the author says - ham radio has a bad image. Through programs like YARC[0] and YOTA[1][2] I'm trying to help change that.
I love your reply here. My experience mirrors yours in many ways. I also got my license right after I turned 15 (in 1999), followed by my general, advanced, and extra (20 WPM!) within a few months. It led me into EE (focused on RF) in college, software development (I write https://www.aetherlog.com/), and a great career doing both hardware and software engineering. It remains my favorite of the many hobbies I've had, and has led to so much of the good in my life.
I love Ham too! My kids love the radio. I built a 2M Yagi with my son (3-4 at the time). I got my Technician in my Undergrad. A few years later I got my General and Extra on the same day. Great stuff!
Same here. I became licensed in the 1980's. And it allowed me to quit my job as a poor assed farming boy, and over the past 30+ years, I have built numerous cellular systems from the ground up and I have designed hundreds of cell phones.
This little nerdy hobby, turned into a fabulous career.
I started with a $25 RTL-SDR v3 kit that includes two antennas (for VHF and UHF, approximately). That allowed me to listen in on 2m and 70cm band repeaters, and familiarize myself with the language, etiquette, modes, etc. I recommend that to anyone that is interested in amateur radio, and you can still make good use of that stick once you get a transceiver, by using it as a spectrum scope / waterfall. From there, a $40 Baofeng will allow you to get used to the feel and operation of the radio, just don't transmit until you get your Technician license. You can sometimes get the Technician study book for free from ARRL by signing up for their welcome packet, or check it out from your library. The exam costs $15 or less, and you can cram study for it at hamstudy.org. (The few-dollar HamStudy mobile app is also worth the cost.)
That gets you a SDR with spectrum scope and waterfall, a portable HT UHF/VHF transceiver, and your Technician license, for ~$80. From there, you can look into getting your General license to transmit on HF, and a cheap HF radio and antenna, for less than $500 total. A higher quality HT like an Icom or Yaesu would be money well spent for VHF/UHF, as the Baofeng is notoriously hard to program and allows you to transmit outside the legal band limits.
(Note: the RTL-SDR works best for VHF and UHF. For an HF SDR, you'll want to check out something like the Airspy HF+ Discovery and perhaps a cheap $30 magnetic loop antenna from eBay, which is what I use.)
Edit: My apologies for the acronyms. SDR is software defined radio, allowing you to receive radio signals on your computer. HT is "handy-talkie" or handheld transceiver. HF/VHF/UHF are defined in the parent post.
* https://hamstudy.org/ is the go-to place to study for your license, and it's free. Use it, love it, thank the devs after you get your license.
* Don't listen to the naysayers (which aren't as loud these days), a Baofeng radio is a perfectly acceptable first radio, and it's impossible to beat the price.
* If your interests tend towards the tinkering with electronics side, you can pick up inexpensive/generic RTL-SDR dongles cheaply (less than $10) and modify them to receive HF. Or use them as-is.
* For zero dollars, you can use someone else's web-connected SDR, such as https://websdr.org/
* Look around at the various digital modes (there are many, with FT8 and WSPR being the most popular at the moment), especially if you're into computers. Many allow a structured way to get familiar with things without worrying about messing up on the etiquette front.
* For an HF rig, the uBitx (https://ubitx.net/ & https://www.hfsignals.com/) is hard to beat, and they just introduced a new version (v6). $199 with a case ($150 without) will get you a full-band, all mode, dual VFO 10 watt radio. That's unbelievable value for an HF rig. Add an amp later on for more power.
* For HF especially focus on making/buying good antennas before you go spend a bunch of money on radios.
Whatever you do, don't give up on it until you have tried HF in a semi-serious way, at least by visiting a functioning HF station and tuning around. In my view, VHF local FM can be great or very boring depending on where you live and the local community, whereas HF reaches all over the world and feels a lot different than a phone call.
Anyone who wants a demo should post their location in this thread... My station can be demo'ed just via a laptop (remotely, such as from a bar or coffee shop) and I'm sure many of us who are hams would be happy to help any interested person from HN get familiar with what it's all about.
Amateur radio can be as expensive or inexpensive as you want it to be. I've drifted in and out over the years, and recently found myself really enjoying a super basic 2M handheld (ICOM V-80) which can be had for $50 on eBay. It's so simple you can easily memorize every function, and it's surprising that even something so basic has so many functions to explore. I think that's why I like it so much.
Now in the digital era, you can spend $250 on a handheld that can literally reach any spot on the globe. The primary digital platform for amateur radio, D-STAR, allows cross-band communication by connecting to the internet.
A lot of the cost of amateur radio is people trying to get the best equipment possible to transmit and receive via FM modulation over the longest distances with the best possible audio quality. But that's just one aspect. That's what costs a bundle, but there's much more to it than just that.
IMO, what's interesting about radio is that, if you know how to use it, you can get a message from anywhere to anywhere else on the planet… or even low earth orbit. It requires minimal infrastructure and it can work with AA batteries. The community is very friendly and people are happy to help/relay messages.
Honestly, amateur radio, for me, is a lot of what the internet used to be when it was difficult to use. Since amateur radio is still relatively difficult to use it keeps the trolls away.
<$100 for a cheap handheld VHF/UHF transceiver (which would allow you to hit local repeaters, play with APRS, talk to satellites/the ISS/etc, etc).
Yaesu is a pretty solid "cheap" brand. BaoFeng/BTech is a less solid, even cheaper brand (my advice would be to avoid them, despite the fact that that's where I started...)
I run a handbuilt BITX20 for HF fun almost exclusively these days, but I got started with a Baofeng and would absolutely recommend them to anyone looking to check the hobby out.
Yeah, I'm always back and forth on Baofeng... At the end of the day, it's a very cheap, but (generally) functional HT.
The downside though, is that they can be very frustrating in some environments (esp with a high noise floor, or with a strong transmitter nearby - the frontend is _very_ easy to overload), and they're generally pretty bad about spurious emissions (though the newer tri-band model seems pretty good in that regard).
With a handheld radio and a Technician License, you can get on the air via local repeaters, work the VHF/UHF satellites, tinker with APRS (using something like this: http://www.mobilinkd.com/).
$500 will get you a good HF rig, but as another comment mentioned, you'll need to factor in the cost of a DC power supply, some decent coaxial cable and something to use for an antenna. Antennas can be dirt-cheap - just wire cut to length and lofted however you can.
/r/hamradio is a solid online resource. There's a semi-official IRC channel too.
I'd recommend getting something that can do HF, because that's where things get interesting.
That kinda depends on what you consider "interesting". IMO, there's plenty of "interesting" stuff to do on 2m / 70cm, plus anything you can do in receive only mode on other bands. But to me, "interesting" includes things like listening in on air-traffic control using an RTL-SDR, participating in the local ARES group, working the local repeaters in voice mode, and experimenting with decoding various digital modes.
This is not to say that working HF doesn't open up additional doors, because clearly it does. My point is just that there's a lot of fun to be had with just what you can do with a Technician license, a $40 Baefung radio, and a $25 RTL-SDR dongle.
> This is not to say that working HF doesn't open up additional doors, because clearly it does.
That's basically it. Shit, I was a tech for twenty years, but never did much because I wasn't interested in club stuff or chatting on the local repeater. At some point I got an RTL-SDR, but dealing with noise and frustrating software issues killed my interest in it... Then around the time my license was up for renewal again, I studied for a week and got my extra ticket, and bought a rig that could do HF-70cm and suddenly I was able to try anything that interested me. If you've got a $500 budget, you can do the same... no reason to limit yourself.
> If you have a local club, talk to the folks there
Second this. I'm VP of an active club and for someone with a real interest we can do a lot. Here is a way to find a club, in the US: http://www.arrl.org/find-a-club
It depends on what you want to do with it. I bought a Yaesu FT-60 (which I'd recommend to start with) and the first upgrade I got was a much nicer antenna and some equipment to charge it in event of a power grid failure, and I'm probably at around $500 all-in.
If you want to get into satellites, you'll want to a specialized antenna for that, and then it helps to have a computer setup or a fine-tuning dial that can help deal with the Doppler shift and tracking, etc. Then you're easily getting up there in price, probably well past $500.
The other thing I've seen people do is set up extreme long-range setups. They'll get the General license that allows them to use frequencies that bounce around the atmosphere better and build their own antennae, get higher-power transmitters, etc. and their rigs are easily into the thousands of dollars.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but a Baofeng or other inexpensive dual band (2 meter (144Mhz) & 70 cm (440MHz)) radio plus something like a uBitx (https://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/ubitx-v6/) full-band (0.5Mhz - 30Mhz) HF radio, plus a copy of the ARRL's Antenna Book (http://www.arrl.org/arrl-antenna-book) and some wire will see you far less than $500 and get you on most bands.
If you prefer to buy not build your antennas, you can still do that for less than $500 all in, you just might have to look at used antennas.
No seriously though, why isn’t there a platform that would let me host, or listen to, live audio broadcasts? I mean, you could do it by twitch or youtube, but something optimised just for audio would be great. Somewhere out there must be people with interesting taste in music who’d be happy to curate shows I could listen to throughout my workday.
We desperately need new blood. If you like outdoor activities in areas where cell phone coverage is poor (camping, hiking, skiing, dense urban gatherings) or enjoy the idea of having unique access to spectrum for learning and experimentation, you need to look into amateur radio.
Don't forget low-cost SDR dongles - great for introducing digital signal analysis, satellite communications (wxsat, etc), ADSB aircraft tracking, HAB, and other ham-adjacent topics. This sort of thing was unimaginably expensive when I was first getting interested in radio. The first WinRadios I saw advertised in hobbyist magazines were, what, $700 or more?
Absolutely! These are how I got started. Just buying an RDL-SDR [1] for $20-30 will open up an amazing world of possibilities and provide dozens of hours of entertainment scanning around the waterfall listening to various transmissions.
We need new blood in Amateur Radio but we need more openness to those new people to be experimenting with and doing things the older HAMs don't care about. One really interesting aspect is that the amateur 2.4GHz band overlaps with WiFi, allowing for Part 97 use of WiFi to create mesh networks over very large areas and at higher power than ISM use allows.
This is definitely a problem. We're going on almost four years of FT8 and the forums are still dripping with contempt for most digital modes and FT8 specifically.
I think something that could draw in a LOT of people -- and be an awesome STEM tool -- would be non-cost-prohibitive VHF and UHF SDR radios that can be easily controlled wirelessly (Bluetooth, WiFi, or both) and allow for any number of modulations from standard FM as is used on 2m/70cm, analog slow-scan TV, digital TV, digital voice, data and more. Heck, the creation of a handshake protocol that starts as AX.25 and the stations identify a switch-to protocol would be great, and since it's digital and we're assuming SDR, that handshake could be "Oh, you don't have the ABC123XYZ codec? I'll send it to you now!" Yes... trusting a CODEC from an unverified source could be dangerous but that's part of the fun of experimentation!
I think such things are coming very soon. VHF in particular is really easy to design for as the direct sampling SDR components supporting that band can be had cheaply. You can go on digikey.com right now and spec out a pretty nice pipeline without too much difficulty.
Honestly, we can totally ignore the previous generation. This has been a sticking point for a lot of people but at the end of the day they are irrelevant and aren't going to be around much longer. There are also a lot of them that welcome the new systems and bemoan their peers for not wanting to build anything anymore but an angry minority tends to get the most attention.
At the end of the day, analog modes aren't going anywhere and the old curmudgeons have no administrative power to prevent people from using newer modes and otherwise enjoying the available bandwidth as defined by the regulations.
This is a hobby. There are a few constraints on what you can do with it due to licensing and that's about it. Whatever happens is fine be it cranking CW out on a one tube transmitter on 80m, pushing the envelope on digital modes on 134 GHz or talking about tomatoes on a local 2m repeater. That is choice.
What is important is we stop pissing on each other's interests and longevity and trying to restrict choice. It builds resentment and that resentment is loud and destructive.
At the time I did my full license, in 2018, there was a large interest in "old modes" because it's an escape from daily complexity in technical professions.
No individual should be burdened by the interests of another, thought there is a very vocal group that wants to complain about the interests of others. As I see it, it's safe to disregard the views of this group if your views don't align with theirs.
Heh, indeed. With minor tweaks (I've seen the patches floating around) making contacts can be fully automated.
It's much like the early days of the internet when people would tail -f /var/log/http/access.log and keep track of how many countries contacted their webserver.
At least there's not a js8call which gasp actually allows keyboard to keyboard chat. Even allows relaying through a 3rd party as well as async communications through a storage and forward process.
What helped me the most was an app on my phone. I'd be sitting there waiting for something with a few minutes to spare, and I could fire up the app and run through sample questions. Huge huge help.
I can listen to the spectrum just fine without a license. Why would I want to talk on it?
More to the point, why would I want to have to get the government's permission in order to talk on it?
Also:
> If you like outdoor activities in areas where cell phone coverage is poor (camping, hiking, skiing, dense urban gatherings)
If you mention this as a possible use, mention that it is illegal to encrypt amateur radio communications, so you must broadcast your family's information and plans for the world to hear. That's quite the security risk.
> More to the point, why would I want to have to get the government's permission in order to talk on it?
One of the key purposes of the amateur radio service is experimentation. This brings with it the risk that I might inadvertently disrupt other communication services, potentially endangering human lives. The tests/licensing guarantees a minimum level of competence to mitigate that risk, while the clear-text and station identification requirements makes it possible to tell me to stop it if I do end up disrupting other services.
I see it comparable to our driver license system. Yes it invades our freedom somewhat, but it reduces a lot of human suffering.
If you used less regulated CB in the old days and heard what a garbage dump it could turn into, you might appreciate more regulated frequencies. Or maybe not, I don't know.
As far as your encryption concerns go, you have to go to extra effort for any of your ham transmissions to be heard by the whole world. Generally it's just a mile or two radius, line of site, only to those who are listening during the short interval while you are transmitting. Far, far different from posting something on the internet.
Funny you should compare it to the Internet. I remember the days when you could post something online and not worry about it because 1) only a very tiny fraction of the world was online 2) even if you were online, good luck finding it unless someone told you where it was.
My main point being that amateur radio only has security through obscurity as it only takes one device locally listening/relaying your signal to invalidate the distance assumption in the same way people posting things online thought 'nobody's ever going to care about this post' all those years ago. A key difference being that you have no option to encrypt and the other party doesn't need to MITM you to get any potentially interesting information.
All of these points are valid to an extent, however they all exist on every other service that fills the same role.
FRS: unencrypted, type accepted radios only. Extremely low radiated power and sensitivity.
GMRS: Gotta pay $70 to the gubment every 10 years, type accepted only, unencrypted.
MURS: Unencrypted (mode restricted), and very few usable channels, type accepted.
CB: Unencrypted, unwieldy equipment, full of lunatics, type accepted.
At the end of the day, you live in a society that requests you follow some laws and get licenses for things that can effect others. The encryption issue is contentious and not entirely one-sided but realistically you're far more likely to be bothered over the public bands and the security risk you fear is rather non-existent. I don't exactly know of a hams being kidnapped or attacked in the streets. The US is far safer now that it ever has been on a crime level so having some trust in your fellow man is not unwarranted.
If you really want to be left alone, use Fusion or Dstar over simplex :)
If you mention this as a possible use, mention that it is illegal to encrypt amateur radio communications, so you must broadcast your family's information and plans for the world to hear. That's quite the security risk.
I wouldn't use ham radio as a replacement for normal cell phone personal chatter, but more for updates "Hey dad, me and Judy are going to that cave we saw last year, will call you when we're back out. KG12345 signing off" or "Help, my father fell off a cliff on the John Doe trail about a mile from the trailhead"
It's a broadcast channel, not a private channel, so don't use it for personal chatter that you wouldn't want other people to overhear. Using some common sense eliminates the privacy risk of other people overhearing you
"More to the point, why would I want to have to get the government's permission in order to talk on it?"
Actually, I really appreciate this sentiment.
One thing that has always seemed odd to me (as a non-HAM with a marginal interest in RF comms) is how authoritarian and ... adherent the community is.
There is no deviation from the established regulations and a striking lack of interest in even discussing amendments or alternatives to the rules.
Whether it is the prohibition of encrypted comms or the radio typing categories (that cause me to respond to fire calls with, literally, three radios in my hand) you will find very little sympathy or enthusiasm for stepping outside the party line even a bit.
... which surprises me because you'd think HAM would be skew libertarian ... or something like that ...
Realistically the FCC has __very__ little enforcement capability/interest right now. The views you see on the internet are from a very vocal group that is worried about maintaining the status quo and not losing access to any bands because corporate interests decide they need the spectrum.
If you want to go off and be a pirate you can probably get away with it, given that the top selling walkie talkie on amazon is an incorrectly marketed ham handheld that can also broadcast on public safety/police frequencies, with or without being set to them. I wouldn't advise it though because if you do get caught they tend to make an example of you, and if you know enough to not get caught, you can easily pass the tech test and beyond so just get licensed for the cost of a happy meal and enjoy.
Personally, I actually support having encrypted sub bands like we have for everything else, with the exception that station ident should be in the clear and I would like to see the tech test be easier.
The ban on encryption has always seemed odd to me. I mean, WiFi is spread-spectrum radio, and it's encrypted. And it's not necessarily short-range. I've done well over several km with Ubiquiti radios driving parabolic dishes.
What I'd want would basically be tinc or another P2P VPN via radio. Like WiFi meshnet, but not limited to line of sight.
One option I've been looking at is the LoRa transceivers that have come out. A couple have bluetooth 5.0 baked in so you could realistically make a really low part count bridge for your phone to let you send encrypted mesh networked texts to other people running similar hardware. There's at least one person working on this I know of but they're not super forthcoming about source.
As for wifi, it's worth noting that while you can get a ton of gain, you do so by making the signal directional so long story short you always cover very roughly the same volume, be it a long super skinny wedge, medium donut or a small sphere.
Huh. Anything with GPS freaks me out. Even WiFi, now that Google etc have mapped so many damn APs. Or cellular, of course.
But then, here I am on a wired uplink. I guess it's just that I trust my understanding of nested VPN chains in Linux. And that I trust the hardware and software enough.
Android and iOS, though, I don't understand or trust.
You make a good point about WiFi. Not going transcontinental with that. Except adjacent continents, maybe.
If you don't like using your phone, theoretically anything with bluetooth would work with the bridge, or you could just add a microcontroller and a little keyboard and display to have something self contained. Something like the toy messenger everyone is hacking to open garage doors.
Why isn't Amateur Radio a key part of STEM? What do ALL of us have in our pocket that operates on radio (you might even be reading this comment on one)? How many modern homes don't have WiFi? What's the magic that allows smart-meters and wireless doorbells to work? Heck, what's the signaling mechanism on a WIRED communication? RF and radio is key to so much of modern life that unless your STEM program is geared toward training people to do basic research you're using RF in some capacity along the way.
And not only teach RF but then apply across other things like robotics and flying. One of the major public service aspects of Amateur Radio is emergency communication. Rather than humans trying to word-paint what's happening in a storm why not have a camera-equipped drone zoom out to a vantage point and shoot back HD imagery via 1.2GHz? How about weather stations communicating primarily via APRS instead of via WiFi directly?
So many possibilities... though without low-cost VHF/UHF SDR radios much of this will remain a dream.
There are lots of courses on wireless communication. I think there's a big community there that doesn't participate in amateur radio. For me there's no reason to build huge antennas and high power, when I can build my low power, high speed WiFi setup in the University lab.
A lack of MOTIVATED instructors is more accurate. There are more than enough retired HAMs who would love to teach interested students -- they just don't care for digital modes.
I see something missing in this thread. I suspect this is the audience which is highly technical and work focused.
This is a hobby. Bar the license constraints, the scope is amazing. And you don't have to achieve anything major. You don't have to change the world. You don't have to create a service or act as a service for some cause. Sometimes it's just about playing, a thing many of us have forgotten since childhood.
I myself like to climb up hills with homebrew radios and send and recieve morse code. There is no point in doing this at all. Not even one. I can't think of any at least. Some people pretend it's going to save them if the world ends so it gives them purpose. But really it's nice to have no pressure, no deadline and no dependency on it at all and just tinker with things!
Here's what ham radio really needs: transceivers that can be controlled by an easy to use Android or iPhone app. The current user experience is so far behind.
Oh, we also need handheld transceivers that can be charged with a standard mobile phone charger.
The Xaomi Mijia Walkie-Talkie has all of this, but in the U.S. you have have to side load a hacked Android app to get it. Not quite there
This would be great and if there was enough demand it would surely happen. As it is, the main reason amateur radio hand-helds are so inexpensive is that manufacturers can make one batch of boards/radios for commercial, nautical, and amateur use and target the different audiences by putting different firmware and cases on the radios (or in the case of Baofeng and the cheap Chinese radios, just one radio for any use you want -- figure it out of use Chirp to make it do what you want).
Too bad 1.25m and 33cm radios are in so much lower demand; while it's not hard to find acceptable quality 1.25m radios for inexpensive prices I haven't seen the Chinese radios show up with transceivers covering 902 - 932 MHz.
I could definitely be interested in amateur radio, the long ranges are very appealing. But I'm just not that interested in voice/audio. Text/data streams are cool though, I can do things with those even at 9800 baud.
For me, the ideal platform would have the following characteristics
* python programmable
* Easy to hook them together, and to hook them up to a real computer
* Consistent modem spec, with adjustable parity-checking levels
* Cryptographically signed streams, I should be able to verify the callsign/origin of anyone on the network
* Streams should describe how to decode the data on them, maybe something like a mimetype injected into the flow every N seconds?
* Basic data types for voice and image
Notice at no point did I include "packet switching". I think one of the issues with current digital amateur radio projects is that they look like they're trying to reinvent the internet, but worse.
Amateur Radio is a great hobby that will give you unlimited possibilities to play and learn. From tube transmitters in Morse code (which is still a thing, and it's fun) to sophisticated weak-signal modes like FT8.
When I came up as a ham in the sixties there were gentlemen on 80 meter AM calling us teenagers lids, kids and space cadets. That animus has always existed in the hobby towards newcomers.
I think connecting with maker spaces is a real opportunity. I've been a member of the Lansing club since the sixties, although I rarely attend meetings anymore. Friends with the guys who started the local makerspace and they were genuinely interested in ham radio. I tried several times to setup a tour of the makerspace but the local club is run by a clique who made it clear they had zero interest in it. I still think it was a missed opportunity.
I was president my junior year of the Michigan State club and it was strong and vibrant. A few years back it apparently had declined to only a handful of members. The local faculty advisor started reaching out to freshmen in the fall and started classes to help those get licensed.
The program has been a huge success and now the club in reinvigorated. It only takes one or two people in a community to help out because the interest among young people is there as it has always been. Elmers are what ham radio calls people like that faculty advisor. What the hobby needs is more Elmers like him.
Funny: "You can home-build a device that transmits a watt or two of power (the same amount as a fairly dim lamp) into the sky, and can be received thousands of miles away (imagine trying to do that with a torch, illuminating clouds so that their reflections in the ocean illuminate other clouds, so somebody with a telescope in a distant country sees it and picks up your message!)..."
Heh, what's even more amazing is that it's not just one bounce off the atmosphere, but multiple bounces.
With js8call you can do similar with other radios sprinkled around the planet, without prior coordination.
What's even more wild is that under certain conditions you get a weird distortion... from the signal taking the short path between two points AND the signal taking the long patch between two points.
quite enjoyable, and agreed, a lot of stuff is about WHAT amazing stuff you can do, but very little is advertised HOW to do...
kinda sad AM radio is basically dead, since it can be fun making a simple AM receiver at home, it's even in a "fun experiments" kids book I have, I think it's only like, about 5 components or such...
on the other hand, with teens and above you can teach soldering with radio kits (obviously not the first thing, but possibly about 3rd or 4th kit) , some are nice having like, one surface-mount chip you have to figure out too, which would be a nice next-level one "now you know the basics, wanna go beyond that?"
then there's the massive amount of cool stuff SDR (software defined radio) enables which isn't even mentioned to exist in the article...
I love the mystery in radio, even thumbing through AM stations on a long road-trip is enjoyable, but as a complete non-technical person, I've always been overwhelmed by amateur radio.
Maybe I will muster up some courage and dive into this.
Really anyone can get their license with about two weeks of online studying. Since the requirement for Morse code was dropped, it's not difficult at all.
I had a bit of prior knowledge (radios are a big part of emergency services), but I took the Tech test on a whim (literally walked into a library for an entirely unrelated reason and noticed they were hosting an exam).
The presence of this story on the front page, I think, underscores how different HN is from the other technical venues I frequent. It's a straightforward overview of RF and how it's used and what that means to amateur licensees. At any of my other haunts, this would never get an upvote.
Imagine a story called "The Command Line", a straightforward take on the core concepts thereof. I think everyone here is pretty familiar with that topic, and would regard such a story as pretty much the opposite of news or even interesting.
To my eye, this story is just as out-of-place because it's a topic I just assume everyone here is already quite familiar with it. Am I mistaken? Or is HN just that different a crowd?
One aspect HN offers me is the wide variety of content. If using a website like reddit, for example, you may not see this kind of article if you're not subscribed to a relevant subreddit. This can be good as you mostly see things you want to see. But, this design doesn't always show you things you wouldn't already see and HN does that for me. I'm familiar with the general concept of RF waves but still learned a lot from this article. I wouldn't have learned this information otherwise as I haven't told my various personalized websites that I want to see this kind of content, yet I'm happy I saw this. It's my opinion that the breath of topics on HN is very good and is a major reason I use it -- to see things people like me are interested in that I may not yet know about
Mostly I was thinking of Reddit and Slashdot. On Reddit, even outside /r/hamradio and /r/amateurradio (why are there two? don't ask me!), I enjoy /r/electronics and /r/askelectronics, /r/rfelectronics, /r/rtlsdr, /r/carhacking, /r/arduino, /r/embedded, /r/engineering, /r/askengineers, /r/homelab, /r/datahoarder, /r/vintagecomputing, /r/askscience, /r/asksciencediscussion, and a few more.
I still enjoy Slashdot because, like HN, it's a single feed and gets me stuff I might not find in my regular subreddits.
I also read Arstechnica and The Register on a fairly regular basis, but not daily.
But honestly, my main firehose of news and ideas is IRC. I'm on 5 networks and about 25 channels, and I try to read all the scrollback in about half of those. There's lots of good stuff on Freenode and OFTC in particular, but I feel like this is one I should leave as an exercise to the reader. ;)
That's been my impression as well. There are plenty of stories here with zero context that go right over my head, and I wonder what stuff I might post that would go right over someone else's...
#1 problem: requiring identification. Sorry, I don't want to provide ID. We are not in a police state yet.
#2 problem: the snitching mentality. HAMs sure love to snitch on those who don't follow the rules to keep their clubs very exclusive and very obedient
#3 problem: banning a bunch of interesting uses. Can't transmit encrypted - linked to #1 and #2 I guess.
Overall, a nice hobby for someone who aims to work at a FANG: if your life objective is to obey, serve and extend the order decided by the status quo, HAM is a nice matching hobby.
If it's not for you, stay out of the snitchers band, and play on low power on the unlicensed bands instead. The smell of freedom is intoxicating.
>#3 problem: banning a bunch of interesting uses. Can't transmit encrypted - linked to #1 and #2 I guess.
As others have said, it's not generally a problem, and if there is something that requires confidentiality you're free to use another method e.g. phone, email, etc.
But it's worth noting that not all cryptography is banned, just anything that obscures the contents of a transmission. For example, you can cryptographically sign messages to authenticate that they came from you. Similar to how you can use digital modes that aren't human-understandable (in the same way that morse or voice is) as long as the protocol specification is published somewhere such that it is possible someone could implement it from spec and decode the messages, or append checksums to your transmissions, etc. - as long as the content gets through in the clear it's OK.
You presume bad faith. I have a different opinion. I trust people, even without government ID.
Someone said below: "If you're made aware of your mistake (failure to adhere to rules, spurious emissions, etc.) you're given the opportunity to stop transmitting until you fix the issue."
I believe most people do not want to willfully commit mistakes. Letting them know is sufficient. There may be a few bad apple like in everywhere, but that's why you have laws and law enforcement.
If you -- in perfectly good faith -- accidently disrupt vital services, like emergency com's or air traffic control, potentially endangering human lives, then the identification requirement allows us (as in society) to contact you to remedy the situation.
Without the identification requirement it would take a lot longer to track you down, puting human lives at risk.
Physics still holds true; if I create a signal in a certain spectrum, it will raise the noise floor for other signals in that spectrum limiting effective communication. It did so in the 60's, it does so now. No amount of calling it "dogma" or "parroting" is going to change that..
If someone is transmitting "signal in a certain spectrum" in a way that cause you harm, step 1) get on the mike and tell to that person their transmission is causing problem, step 2) they stop. No snitching or gov id required.
I agree with the other person, this is just parroting the official position.
The world has changed, and pseudonymous communication is a valid alternative: HAMs could simply be required to provide an email - good enough to add a layer of anonymity, and not sufficient to stop law enforcement.
"get on the mike" what frequency? Modulation? What makes you think I am monitoring anything after say a relay got stuck keeping my gear permanently -unbeknown to me- in transmit.
A reliable out of band back channel is needed. Currently that is what it is. I am not saying there are no better alternatives possible, go ahead design them and start the political process..
Pseudonymity? Yeah, that's working so well on the internet. Trolling and Spam are not a problem at all. Lets see how that works in a much more resource constrained environment like our radio spectrum.
> I am not saying there are no better alternatives possible, go ahead design them and start the political process..
Read again what I wrote above: email. Hell, add twitter or a phone number on top of that if you really want. That's still a good extra layer of anonymity.
And sorry, but I won't design anything now - I won't touch HAM even with a 10 ft pole, let alone engage in politics.
I'm not saying that to hurt you. I just assume you care about HAM and wonder why younger people are not interested anymore, as discussed in the original article.
The problem is that several of your core values have become show stoppers for people like me. Address the big 3 problems I listed, and maybe you'll have more success interesting more people to HAM. Personally, I don't care anymore. I now prefer unlicensed spectrum.
Identification is of course there to ensure accountability. But actually, as you learn with the exams, identifying yourself makes you less likely to get punished (i.e. with an FCC fine) if you're operating in good faith. If you're made aware of your mistake (failure to adhere to rules, spurious emissions, etc.) you're given the opportunity to stop transmitting until you fix the issue. But if you don't identify yourself and people or the FCC have to foxhunt you down, you're surely going to face a fine and/or revocation of license.
What you might view as "snitching", others like myself view as keeping the bands open and enjoyable for everyone, or at least as many people as possible given the narrow bandwidth of HF bands. If you fire up a many-kW wide-band FM transmission on 160m where the band is only 200KHz wide for example, you're ruining it for everyone and possibly blocking emergency communications (see ARES/RACES). You're entitled to experiment and enjoy the band within the rules, which ensures you're not depriving everyone else of that opportunity, just as traffic lanes ensure you're not blocking oncoming traffic. But really, I have yet to hear of issues on the air with people "snitching" on others. Most hams are respectful to one another and are mature enough to know the system only works if everyone shares the limited bandwidth and coordinates with one another via band plans. The band plans help ensure that your SSB transmission doesn't interfere with someone else wanting to do Morse code CW or moonbounce or low-power beacon propagation reporting. The privilege to use this spectrum would disappear quickly if these rules were not in place and enforced.
Encrypted and obfuscated communications are prohibited in these bands precisely because this is "amateur" radio. It should not have a purpose other than exploring radio science and communicating in a public and open way. It cannot be used for commercial purposes, either. Therefore encryption and obfuscation are not needed for these purposes, and you cannot ensure the transmissions are meeting the rules if you can't decode them. I might be wrong about this, but I believe encryption would be allowed for experimentation purposes as long as the protocol is publicly documented and you make the decryption keys publicly available. (You would also probably want to begin and end your transmission with a non-encrypted message explaining where to get more information to decode it.) If your concern is learning how to do encryption over radio, this would allow you to meet that goal, with the understanding that everyone would be able to decrypt your transmissions. There are "experimental" sections of the band plan available for this kind of experimentation and learning.
If you wish to transmit on radio waves without identification, amateur rules, or with encryption, you can certainly do so in the ISM bands within regulatory power limits, or if you need commercial use, there are non-amateur bands out there. The spirit of amateur radio is to encourage learning about radio science and to communicate with other people around the world interested in this hobby, not to be the wild west of our limited radio spectrum.
> Encrypted and obfuscated communications are prohibited in these bands precisely because this is "amateur" radio. It should not have a purpose other than exploring radio science and communicating in a public and open way.
But others said that you could use it as a cell phone replacement; that is, for personal communications.
How does that work when it's illegal to encrypt it?
You may use it for personal communications, but others can hear/see/decode what you're saying/sending. I hear people on 2m repeaters talk with their spouses about going to the grocery store all the time, but the point is, everyone else can hear it. If you need your communications encrypted, you need to use a different band or service.
FCC Part 97.113, "Prohibited transmissions":
> Music using a phone emission except as specifically provided elsewhere in this section; communications intended to facilitate a criminal act; messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except as otherwise provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or deceptive messages, signals or identification.
(I believe the only "otherwise provided herein" obscured communications are control commands sent to satellites, to ensure they cannot be improperly controlled.)
I believe pretty much any outside of the amateur bands that you're able to get appropriately licensed for. I know the commercial "business band" can be encrypted, ISM low-power bands can be encrypted (i.e. the same band WiFi and Bluetooth uses at 2.4GHz), and obviously cell phone transmissions are.
I'm 28 years old and I fucking love amateur radio.
I always had a curiosity about radio, being so interested in two-way radio that my parents had me tested for ASD. My mom had a police scanner and it had a button titled "HAM" [sic]. I found a repeater and no more than a few weeks later I was absolutely enthralled and was licensed in 2007.
I got a radio, an antenna, installed it, and I was absolutely hooked. It did not matter that the average age of a ham was around 50 or 60, and I was only 15. It was just so much fun and there was so much to do an learn using it. I studied for my General and got it a few months after my first Tech license. A few months after that, I got Extra. All the while, I ran a YouTube channel documenting my experiences.
I chose to go to Missouri S&T (formerly University of Missouri - Rolla) because they had a ham radio club (W0EEE). I declined a full ride to Truman State in Chem or CompSci, and went to S&T as undecided engineering. I naturally nestled into EE realizing a lot of the basic circuits knowledge was already covered under the Extra exam. Myself and one other ham became de-facto President and VP of the ham radio club, which we re-grew from near death.
I ended up working at an Electromagnetic Compatibility lab for a while, before having a co-op at the Very Large Array radio observatory in NM where I ran cabling, designed antennas, and worked on mitigation of RF interference. My manager specifically sought me out because I was a ham.
Acheving full time employment was also a no brainer. I applied to Rockwell Collins, Raytheon, Garmin, Boeing, Honeywell, Black & Veatch, maybe a few more, and had offers from everyone but Garmin (apparently proving my way around a smith chart dedicated to quiz grad students in the off-site interview, but choking at an unannounced op-amp circuit analysis by hand while two managers watched on-site wasn't good enough for them!). And now I design antennas for a living! All because of ham radio.
Ham radio never ceases to entertain me. There's science, there's experimentation, there's socialization, and there's public service. I'm a advocate for youth in ham radio, and I'm starting to get into things like ARRL reformation and other politics, since - like the author says - ham radio has a bad image. Through programs like YARC[0] and YOTA[1][2] I'm trying to help change that.
[0] https://yarc.world/ [1] https://yotaregion2.org/ [2] http://ham-yota.com/