This is going to sound stupid

C

Claybreaker!

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What do you do with HAM radio? I am reading about it and intrigued but still don't understand what you do with it. I was reading this and just trying to see what its all about. http://www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio I am a former Radio DJ at a very well known Boston station but I realize this is nothing like that.
 
There are a lot of things you can do with ham radio. At one end of the spectrum, you have folks that buy one inexpensive radio to talk locally on repeaters. Most just chit chat, but occasionally more important talk. On the other end of the spectrum, you have folks that like to experiment with cutting edge equipment such as digital voice methods or radio modifications.

I am heavily involved in experimenting with cutting edge things. Some recent projects involved converting some analog-only EF Johnson 900 MHZ radios into P25 radios, setting up some 2-meter NXDN digital voice repeaters, working with the NXDN community to include our repeaters in the worldwide network, a recent effort to experiment with microwave backhaul linking of repeater sites and I'm beginning to experiment with HSMM mesh network activity at 2.4 GHZ and 5 GHZ utilizing modified Ubiquiti equipment.

In between, you have folks that talk around the world on HF. I do that from both my house and my truck. Others use APRS mapping, slow scan TV, fast scan TV, packet radio, radio-teletype (known as RTTY) and various other keyboard-to-keyboard digital modes.

I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what a person can do with ham radio. There are so many things.

Oh, and many of my radio activities can be conducted at higher power as a licensed Part 97 operator rather than operate equipment under unlicensed Part 15 rules. For instance, when I run wireless equipment in the 2.4 GHZ band, I can run as much as 1500 watts of power when operating at 802.11 G/N speeds and 10 watts at 802.11B speeds. A Part 15 user is limited to I believe a maximum of 1 watt ERP.
 
n1oty said:
There are a lot of things you can do with ham radio. At one end of the spectrum, you have folks that buy one inexpensive radio to talk locally on repeaters. Most just chit chat, but occasionally more important talk. On the other end of the spectrum, you have folks that like to experiment with cutting edge equipment such as digital voice methods or radio modifications.

I am heavily involved in experimenting with cutting edge things. Some recent projects involved converting some analog-only EF Johnson 900 MHZ radios into P25 radios, setting up some 2-meter NXDN digital voice repeaters, working with the NXDN community to include our repeaters in the worldwide network, a recent effort to experiment with microwave backhaul linking of repeater sites and I'm beginning to experiment with HSMM mesh network activity at 2.4 GHZ and 5 GHZ utilizing modified Ubiquiti equipment.

In between, you have folks that talk around the world on HF. I do that from both my house and my truck. Others use APRS mapping, slow scan TV, fast scan TV, packet radio, radio-teletype (known as RTTY) and various other keyboard-to-keyboard digital modes.

I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what a person can do with ham radio. There are so many things.

Oh, and many of my radio activities can be conducted at higher power as a licensed Part 97 operator rather than operate equipment under unlicensed Part 15 rules. For instance, when I run wireless equipment in the 2.4 GHZ band, I can run as much as 1500 watts of power when operating at 802.11 G/N speeds and 10 watts at 802.11B speeds. A Part 15 user is limited to I believe a maximum of 1 watt ERP.
Click to expand...

[rolleyes]

Everytime I have had just about enough of the nonsense, a response like this comes along[grin]
 
Claybreaker,
When I was deployed during the 1990's and early 2000's for military service, our radio operator was licensed Ham radio operator and he would set up antenna's in the countries we would be operating in. Those antenna's let him with send and receive communication to those in the USA that have a HAM radio and proper license. they would then patch us into phone conversations with our families, wherever they are in the U.S.A. it was a blessing to have them assist us in the 90's before satellite phones were issued to the teams for deployments and before we could buy cell phones in those foreign countries.
 
To elaborate on N1OTY's reply, it's 99 hobbies in 1.

* Service oriented people get involved in emergency communications. When the SHTF hams can still communicate. The Boston Marathon had over 200 volunteer hams scattered across the 26mile course. When the bombs blew and the cell towers jammed the radios were the primary means of comms for a while.
* Preppers like it because when TSHTF they'll still be able to communicate or listen for information.
* Designer/builder types will have fun building kits or designing their own gear. Anything from a $40 morse-only radio that fits in your pocket but will talk around the world to 1,000W amplifiers to all types of antennas.
* Social people will sit on the couch and chat on the local repeaters or stay up late chatting on the HF bands with people several time-zones away.
* Digital geeks can send emails without the internet or have text chats over the airwaves with their laptop connected to their radio.
* Experimenters like N1OTY advance the state of the art in many different ways.
* Hams have put satelites in orbit. You chat with other hams by using the satelite as a repeater. I've done it with a walkie-talkie type radio in one hand and pointing a hand held antenna at the satelite with the other hand. MA to FL or CO with a hand held!
* There's even guys that communicate by bouncing their signals off the moon. You get to hear your own voice 3 seconds later after the 1/2 million mile round trip.

It isn't a hobby. It's 99 hobbies. Pick a few and have fun or feel more secure.
 
Last edited:
CockedAndLocked said:
It is stupid, but not as stupid as me for clicking on a thread with a subject line as idiotic as this one.


Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...

In all my radio training and communication studies HAM radio was never even mentioned. Thanks for the responses and feedback. Even the D-bag I quoted in this response! Btw I'ma a lot younger than Dale Dorman. Ha.
 
I bought one of the low level cheapy handheld HAM radios from Amazon just to see if I could get it set up. I'm a month in and I still can't get it hooked to my local repeater. I'll figure it out one day. For me, I bought it for the same reason I prep. In case of a SHTF scenario. Having a means of communicating with the world can only be a good thing if something local, regional or nation wide happens.
 
Some of this stuff you might already know, so I hope you don't feel like I'm insulting your intelligence or anything. I think it's cool that you asked about it, and I hope you get a license and join in some day. [thumbsup]

Amateur radio is called that because it must be "solely with a personal aim and without direct monetary or other similar reward."* (The word amateur comes from a Latin word, "amador" I think it is, for "lover." Literally, someone who does something just for the love of it.) Ham radio is actually a bunch of hobbies-within-the-hobby. You got guys who like to see how far away they can make contacts while using minimal transmitter power. You got guys collecting "QSL" cards (confirmation of a two-way contact) from all around the world. You got guys doing EME (Earth-Moon-Earth, or "moonbounce"), Amateur Televison, packet radio, and I don't know what-all else.

Didja know Joe Walsh is a ham, and has included brief Morse Code messages in a couple of his songs?

It's a hobby, but the reason hams get all those different bands ("frequencies from DC to light" [wink]) to play with is that they do so much public service stuff. I haven't done anything on 2 meters in ages, but years ago, there were a lot of weekends when a bunch of us would turn out to help one of our ham buddies who was in a local Lions Club or similar service organization, providing communications for checkpoints along the route of a walkathon or some other event. Working non-emergency events like that helps you prepare to do comms during an emergency, too.

One summer afternoon way back when I lived in MA, I heard a guy with a "0" (zero) area callsign (meaning his license was initially issued in the region that includes CO, IA, KS, MN, MI, NE, MO, ND and SD) on the local 2-meter repeater. I heard him key up and say "W0?? [?? being the letters of his Extra class callsign] testing. What repeater is this?" It was a weekday, when pretty much everyone else was at work, so I answered with my callsign and said "You're on the K1KKM repeater in Haverhill, MA. Where are you?" I figured he was just visiting the area, but it turned out he was on the southern end of Campobello Island. (Yeah, the one that's in New Brunswick.) He was running an Icom handheld, into a beam antenna, and Mother Nature was doing the rest of the work.
I rank that exchange right up there with the time I was up in a forest fire tower in NH, and a visitor had come up with his 2M handheld, which he was using to "hit" a repeater somewhere in MA, with a 20M link to a guy in Scotland. If that was before I got my license, it was probably one more thing that pushed me towards becoming a ham.
Good times.

Hope this helps.

*Wikipedia expressed that so much better than I could. [smile]
 
Claybreaker! said:
In all my radio training and communication studies HAM radio was never even mentioned. Thanks for the responses and feedback. Even the D-bag I quoted in this response! Btw I'ma a lot younger than Dale Dorman. Ha.
Click to expand...


What brand and model radio do you have?

It would help to know so we may help you get it working properly.

Rod - KK4VVC
 
Ham Radio is like 100 hobbies in one.

There are so many ways to play and experiment. When I put my tower up at the house I had to dig a very large hole, learned how to use a jackhammer, learned how to weld, learned how to build forms for pouring cement, improved my soldering techniques, learned how to actually get a ground rod into the ground etc etc. I probably used a wider range of tools on that project than anything else I've ever done. Then there was the fun part like actually getting the tower into position. That was exhilarating.
On the flip side you can just buy a radio and talk to people if thats what you like.
 

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