Am I missing something about Ham Radio?

[Certaindeaf]

I just bought an iCom hand held from the classifieds here for a great deal. The seller was nice enough to program several local channels for me. I know nothing about Ham Radio but have been a little interested in having one for emergencies.

I've been watching beginner videos and reading threads on forums the last couple days, but I still don't "get" the hobby side of it. I'm don't think I'll be geeking out on the technology site of things and wanting to build systems. I'm not interested in meeting people across the world. If I was, I'd do it on technology that's 100 years newer (internet).

I've been listening to the local channels, but I'm often wondering why the hell I'm listening to it. I heard old guys talking about a raffle today. Yesterday it was old guys talking about anti-virus programs. The day before it was old guys talking about fishing (at least that was somewhat interesting. Is this what you guys are listening to? Thought i might at least hear cops and firefighters but nothing. I keep thinking I must be missing something. I'm fine throwing this thing into the glove box until I see zombies, but I figured I'd ask here.

It sounds like your pants aren't hiked up far enough by the sound of it.

 

[AshWilliams]

Ham radio is just like anything else: it can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. If you want to rag chew and talk about the weather you can do that, or you can tumble down the rabbit hole of portable, off-grid, grid down, practical ham radio communications for preparedness as well.

Probably the best channel out there for the latter is Julian's (OH8STN) Off-Grid Ham Radio.

Off-Grid Ham Radio OH8STN

Hello Operators This is Julian, a Ham Radio Operator and US Expat living in Finland. The channel focuses on portable, off-grid, grid down power and practical ham radio communications for preparedness. The goal is teaching operators to use portable power, HF radios and data mode communications...

www.youtube.com

 

[PiratePast40]

Yes, some of us still do the post card thingy...

View attachment 1952593

From a little island called Sardinia...

Visited Sardinia multiple times years ago. Had no idea there were flamingos there. Did hear about the cork forests that Hitlers troops burned down.

 

[Kruel J]

I got into it because my dad was a ham operator since he was a kid. He always wanted me to get my license so I could participate.

I've pretty much not used it since he passed. It was his thing, not my thing. I'll keep my license current for emergencies but I never found the interest in it that he had.

 

[Cerberus Group]

Ham radio of today is way much different than what some people think.

There's not only the usual talking antenna to antenna and CW or morse code...but there's microwave, numerous digital modes, still slow scan TV, winlink, packet, talk to the ISS, satellites, and a lot of other options not coming to mind right off.

Although I still have a set from the late 60s - early 70s (tube based), I have newer stuff and I still prefer talking and code antenna to antenna...there's just something about going to hardware store, picking up some wire and stringing it between a couple trees and talk all over the world...more when you build you build your own stuff.

Kinda like buying a gun and/or ammo...or loading your own ammo, and building your own gun and watching the results.

 

[CountryGent]

Truth be told, I've completely lost interest in amateur radio awhile ago. I got into it because of personal and community preparedness and because my father-in-law is a lifelong enthusiast. I'm too busy now to do much with community preparedness and no longer do ham stuff with FIL. For personal/family preparedness reasons, I'll keep my ham and GMRS licenses current, but I can't ever see spending much time on it and I've been slowly selling off or donating equipment.

 

[AshWilliams]

I got into satellite work a few years back and the ISS but haven't touched it in a few years.

At one point I had my linux laptop adjusting for doppler shift with gpredict working with a yagi antenna. This worked well and one night in particular we had saudisat SO-50 do a 89° pass over Council Crest and the reception was probably the best I've ever heard.

 

[Indy62]

It's both a hobby and an emergency means of communication. I'm not into the hobbyist aspect of it, but I did get the technician license.

However, I do 'get' the hobby part of it. Once in a while I'll scan the freqs on 70cm and 2M just to listen to the ole guys chat. Not my thing, but I 'get' why it's theirs. Here's a good pbs documentary on it. One thing I learned from it is bouncing signals off the moon is a thing..pretty cool.

 

[Member 53867]

I've talked to other ham operators from:

New Zealand
Australia
Slovenia
South Africa
Lithuania
Russia
Japan
Philippines
Svalbard
Finland
Bulgaria
Curacao
Galapagos Islands
Uruguay
Sweden
Montserrat
Suriname
Western Sahara
Brunei
Scotland
Canada
Brazil
Costa Rica
New Caledonia
Mexico
French Polynesia
Spain
Cayman Islands
Barbados
Belize
Turks and Caicos Islands
Guam
Cuba
St. Lucia
Estonia
Mongolia
Belarus
Aruba
Kazakhstan
Puerto Rico
Chile
Madeira Island
Falkland Islands
Ireland
Switzerland
Croatia
Netherlands

...and all over the United States.

All on HF. I don't do VHF/UHF. There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on the repeaters I can access from my location, and I'm just not interested in those bands any longer.

Not once have I ever talked about my medical conditions with another ham operator. If you think that's all that ham radio is about, that's just ignorant and kind of insulting IMO.

I'm currently off the air until I can get my antenna relocated. Hoping to get a better signal out, but I'm in a crappy location (lots of local interference) and not a lot of options for antenna mounting.

 

[Cerberus Group]

An email from a friend this morning about the current hurricane situation around North Carolina

 

[xmoshx]

Just saying, a ham radio that can do only texts would be a way handier tool for me than one that does only voice. edit, there gotta be a market for those.

Radio Nerd here, there is actually a few different "text" modes. In the radio world we call them data modes. APRS is a location and messaging protocol. It's mostly just used to send text messages and gps location. Then you have stuff like VARA and that operates like a chat room but instead of you using the internet you are in control of the transmitter and receiver. Meaning there is no one to censor the content. You also have BBS message boards that are just forums but again without internet and only using a computer connect to the radio.

 

[AshWilliams]

This is an interesting project. I'd like to convert this to Python... for informational purposes only, of course.

GitHub - lulzlabs/AirChat: Free Communications For Everyone.

Free Communications For Everyone. Contribute to lulzlabs/AirChat development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[salmon creek gary]

A "ham" is a licensed amateur radio operator. That means a "ham" is a person, never a piece of radio equipment.

HAM is an acronym; God only knows what it stands for, but it has nothing to do with the amateur radio hobby.

I've no idea what a "Hamm" is, other than being one "s" short of beer from the land of skyblue waters.

From day one, amateur radio has been a technical hobby. The professionals of commercial telegraph and the U.S. Navy (who wanted to own the airwaves back then) considered amateur radio operators to be pests on the air, nothing but intererence to their important business of Morse communications. They dubbed the amateurs to be "ham operators", which was short maybe for "ham-fisted operators".

The earliest hams - and those who followed over the next few years - had to design and build their own radio equipment. Why? Because nobody manufactured any radio equipment back then. In fact, many of the components of those radios had to be built from scratch. A few hams even made their own vacuum tubes.

Again, it was a technical hobby, so the allure of amateur radio was much less about talking with other people than it was about exploring and improving a novel means to communicate over long distances without intervening wires. Not surprisingly, the equipment used was often referred to as a "wireless set" or a "wireless radio").

I was just a 13 year-old kid in the late 1950s when I first became aware of amateur radio. Dad had given me an old "cathedral top" radio receiver that he found when cleaning out Grandma's attic. Cool that I could listen to music on that dusty old thing, but what was that switch labeled "SW"? Dad explained that switched the radio over to the "shortwave" band, and I likely needed to attach a piece of wire in order to hear anything. He called it an antenna.

With wire attached (strung all over my bedroom), I was suddenly hearing all sort of undecipherable beeps, squawks, and howls. Sometimes, though, it was just ordinary voices of folks from all over the country, talking to one another about the weather, radio sets, and antennas, as well as a bit of griping about various health ailments. I was instantly hooked on the idea of talking all over the place, and I told my dad I really, really wanted to do that stuff, too. He told me I'd first have to get a license.

It took a couple years of studying radio theory, regulations, and operating procedures, along with regular visits to a helpful ham radio operator who lived nearby (I zeroed in on him because of that huge antenna beside his house). When I was finally ready to test for my license, that nearby ham operator put me in touch with the broadcast engineer at our local AM radio station because he could adminster my license test.

So there I sat in front of that exalted fellow, sweating through a whole hour of written examination and demonstrating I could send and receive Morse code. Finally, as if from the lips of God, he pronounced that I had passed the test and he'd submit my application to the FCC!

It was July 1960 when that license (ham "ticket") arrived in the mail. That was several months before I was even old enough to get a drivers license. It was the beginning of a lifelong hobby for me, one that I carried along through many of the U.S. states and more than a few countries of Europe during my 40 year DOD career.

Along the way, however, the hobby grew more popular and also changed remarkably. As it changed, it began to have less and less appeal to me. In my late 70s, I realized that I had become an anachronism, clinging to a hobby that was no longer recognizable to me. So here I am at age 80, no longer active in the amateur radio hobby, and beginning to dismantle my amateur radio station.

And all of that, you might realize, is the reason why you're now beginning to see me posting FS ads here for some ham radio equipment . . . so my son doesn't have to deal with it some day for pennies on the dollar. And that also shows that in the end, amateur radio has at least one thing in common with collecting firearms.

 

[boattail]

It is definitely a tech hobby. I had to get into it a little bit just to get my radio, that I use for work, to be correct. I have never thought of the radio as a hobby as I only use one for work. When I need it it needs to work and work well. The mindless jaw jackers that bleed signals over all channels really mess with things. Sad part is tech hobbies always bring out outlaws that overpower their equipment in order to be top dog. The whole band suffers because of it.

 

[lovemy38]

Been a ham Amateur Extra for a few years now

 

[Kruel J]

I got into it because my dad was a ham operator since he was a kid. He always wanted me to get my license so I could participate.

I've pretty much not used it since he passed. It was his thing, not my thing. I'll keep my license current for emergencies but I never found the interest in it that he had.

Just renewed my license. Haven't been on-air in a couple years.

 

[Numbers2323]

There are many avenues of HAM radio, something for everyone. Testing propagation of your antenna around the world is interesting. For me, low power is where it's at. You can use digital modes such as FT8 and JS8call or Morse Code to work stations around the world with very little power. It's a skill, just like anything else. Low power also means you can run your station on less power for longer and easier to go portable. When the internet and cell phones are no longer working, HAM radio is always available.

 

[CountryGent]

I renewed my license a few weeks back, just because. I haven't operated on amateur bands in while now, with no plans to do so any time in the near future.

 

[Boyandhisdogs]

I think it was a much bigger deal before before cellphones, as a handheld radio was all you had for mobile communication. Back then you had a good reason to need it, and even well into the cellphone era lots of remote places have no cell service, so again that's a realistic use case for the average guy.

Then of course there's the people who are into the tech side of it, which I can completely understand. I think these are the majority of radio guys now, aside from people with specific use cases like military, EMS, or prepper/off grid.

 

[Numbers2323]

I enjoy it for the tech. The fact that a radio and a wire, sometimes a tuner can make a contact is pretty cool. I have almost no interest in SSB. But you can text a cell phone with a radio via APRS, get weather data via aprsdroid, email, etc. Morse code is also very interesting.