Is anyone here into Ham Radio? I was giving some thought to getting into it, but don;t actually know much about it. I know you need to be licensed to operate it though.
SO, what can you tell a guy who might want to get into Ham radio?
Thanks
Go back to 1960.
if you like electronics there are ham radio types that build their radios or parts of their system, good learning projects. some like to build radios and antennas. ham radio people have put up their own communications satellites.
you can hold voice discussions with people around your nation or the world. hams make long distance friends and learn other cultures. some like to talk and develop friends in their state and on the other side of the planet. hams have done discussion networks similar in nature to these forums for 3/4 of a century.
some people like to be useful in a fashion of doing emergency communication during times of disaster or aiding in communications for things like races.
some like challenges of communicating with many people with certain conditions like using a specific allowed small range of frequencies or through video or through extremely low amounts of power.
some are very technical people. some just like to communicate with others.
I have my license, but honestly I don’t use it. Just doesn’t seem to be much point in it these days w/ pervasive internet access. Nevertheless, it was interesting and fun to study up for the license test.
I got a license a bazillion years ago, and never used it. I got into electronics just as personal computing was on the rise, and at that time ham radio was filled with electronics geeks - who en-mass deserted to start building computer systems. Radio was at the time still something you could reasonably design and build things yourself. The geek part of understanding how a radio transceiver works from end to end was a lot of fun. Like a lot of hobbies, for many, the journey was the reward, and actual on-air time not really the goal. Others lived for the on-air time. As observed above, the internet has almost totally wiped out the special nature of ham radio communications. The thrill of talking to a random person on the other side of the planet is now everyday mundane. I’m in Australia - I bet you aren’t :).
For the hard core, there are still places where serious fun can be had. johnpost pretty much covers the ground.
I have a license but haven’t used it in decades.
That said, these people are still active and tell you more than you probably ever wanted to know.
Got a license, haven’t used it in years. My handheld needs a new battery, I think. I’d like to get into it more, but Manhattan doesn’t really seem like the place–hard to manage a decent antenna in your walk-up, y’know?
Thanks for the info. My main reason for wanting to get into it was over the past month we had some major flooding in my area (northeast PA), a quarter of my town was pretty much wiped out.
And I heard that after katrina, Ham radio operators helped out getting messages through about what was going on and what supplies were needed. SO I sort of want to get into it in case something like that happens again.
for that kind of situation UHF radios can be used locally. there are radios for that use that are for auto/tabletop and handheld (pocket sized and lower power). how far you can talk depends on your radio power and location, frequently can do for miles to dozens of miles. longer distances would utilize manually relaying the messages through people or the use of repeaters (automatic radio relaying which can have emergency power for disasters).
for communications outages for hundreds of miles like a hurricane other ham radio frequencies would also be used for hundreds of mile communication.
ham radio people practice for such situations of disaster communications. they have worked up procedures and methods to do this effectively. a ham radio club in your area which might operate a repeater could help you get into ham radio.
go to
put in your zip code and you might find a club near you.
Thank you for your exciting, knowledgeable, and fact-filled treatise on the matter.
Perhaps when you are finished with recess, your second-grade teacher will let you put your head on your desk to rest. You must be exhausted from such mental gymnastics.
To answer your question, Amateur Radio, or Ham radio is alive and well. In fact, the reason that you associate disasters with ham radio is the simple fact that when natural or other disasters occur, virtually all modes of modern communications fail. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, widespread weather events - they can all take down the power and/or infrastructure for phones, cell phones, and fire and police radios. Hams are independant, with emergency power and lots of antennas. In a true emergency, you can’t get a regular phone line, cell towers get jammed and you can’t get a signal, Nextel does the same, and worse.
In addition to chatting with friends all over the world, many hams devote a great deal of their time, effort, and money to their communities by providing emergency communications to local, state, and federal agencies. It’s actually part of the mandate of Amateur Radio in exchange for keeping and using certain frequency bands.
Look into ARESat the ARRL websiteand you will find a lot of information. I’m in charge of my county’s mobile command post - a trailer full of comm equipment that we will deploy as requested by several agencies. Even if the trailer isn’t deployed, hams provide emergency shelters with communications to the county’s EOC and Emergency Management Agency. We work closely with our county’s EMA, and set up training drills with them so they know how to utilize our valuable resources.
Currently, we practice taking down part of our local 911 center and routing the calls through the trailer to the apppropriate fire or police units as a routine excersize.
After Katrina, we set up the trailer at the edge of destruction in Mississippi. In addition to providing the local fire and police departments with communications until they could repair their own, bedraggled people with nothing but the clothes on their backs would come to us and ask if we could contact their family.
Aunt Betty in Boston? No problem. Mom in Florida? Piece of cake. Dad in Colorado? Dad doesn’t have a phone? No problem. I called for, and found a ham in his town, and that ham got in his radio-equipped truck, drove to Dad’s house, and brought him to the driveway so he could talk to his crying daughter and learn for the first time in days that she and her children were alive. This type of help was repeated thousands of times by ham groups who came at their own expense to stay for a few days to a few months and help complete strangers. I did it for 5 months. What did you do to help, Music Cat?
Before that, hurricanes devastated several smaller towns across Florida in 2004 and 2005, and we set up portable repeaters and provided emergency communications for weeks until repairs could be made.
Hams like me all over the world were monitoring emergency frequencies when we began to get calls for help in December of 2004 from Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
Those of us in Emergency Management forwarded the information to our own Coast Guard and State Department immediately to start help heading their way in minutes.
Amateur Radio was the only working form of communications for months in that area.
The list of such help goes on, and on.
Even if your interest in Amateur Radio just remains personal, I encourage you to find a local group of hams to help you get started. They’ll be glad to help, and you’ll have a great new hobby at the very least.
I had a license way back when and was playing around with packet radiowhen this Internet thingy came along. I guess it turns out was more interested in the content of the medium rather than the medium itself. Still, it was pretty cool to pull text messages out of the ether years before wifi or digital cellular.
I will tell you the same thing I tell people interested in getting into astronomy: contact your local club. There’s a directory of ARRL clubs here.
I recently got my license, and would second the advice of finding a local group to show you the ropes. The process of getting licensed is straightforward and easy, but it can be a little overwhelming, especially the choice of what first equipment to get. Most active hams like nothing better than to talk about their hobby and will make great recommendations, and probably steer you to some decent used equipment if you don’t want to spend a lot.
The licensing requirements have been scaled back quite a bit, so with a few days of study almost anyone can pass the Technician test, which will allow you to transmit on the frequencies that most local emergency traffic would be on. It will probably cost $10-20 for the test, plus $30 if you buy the ARRL study guide. The entire question pool with answers is officially published, so the test is easy if you study.
If you are primarily interested in emergency communication there are most likely a number of local groups that concentrate on that. If you expect a lot of random conversation, though, there’s much less of that going on now. The repeaters are pretty much dead where I am, and the groups that still use them for chatting are mostly old farmers, which isn’t really my demographic. If you want to talk to random people you will probably need to get a General license and use the lower frequencies, and the equipment costs for that can add up quickly.
A little study, $50 in costs, and then probably $100-200 for a radio is all it takes to get started.
[moderator note]
After 12 years on the SDMB, Musicat, you should have figured out the GQ rules. Don’t jump in at post #2 with a cute, snarky little comment. Wait until there are some real answers in the thread.
No warning issued.
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Highlighting mine.
[moderator note]
This isn’t appropriate for GQ. When someone breaks the rules, please report it and leave it to the moderators instead of insulting people.
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Absolutely right. Please move my post to #3.
Here is a podcast aimed at beginners: Ham Nation
(Hopefully the link is correct. The site is blocked for me at work.)
Didn’t there used to be a requirement that you had to know ‘Morse code’ in order to get a ‘ham’ license?
There was, and it was a significant barrier to many (me included.) Generally (depending on country) you needed Morse code to be allowed to use the frequencies bellow 30MHz. Morse code can get through with very weak/noisy signals when voice has no chance, and as such was important as a safety capability. Requiring it was a great way for governments to ensure a solid capability existed. It has largely been dropped from the license requirements around the world. This parallels its phasing out in professional communications worldwide.
before 2007 in the USA.
I have a general class license and have a nice station at home, but tend to use the VHF/UHF radio in my cars more than the home station. Also, like many others, active in public service and emergency communications. Depending on where you live, you’re likely to find a local group helping your emergency management agency in times of need. It can be very rewarding. As mentioned, the ARRL website is a good place to look for contact information.