So HAM radio is perfectly compatible with enjoying the Sun and not spending days stuck in the cabin! (getting enough sleep is another story, though)
But what on earth do you talk about and to whom? Genuine question, btw.
Depends. I am not the ragchewing type myself, I am more into building things.
But from what I see on the bands, few people just talk, especially if it is some exotic/rare station. Just the fact of making a contact and getting it in your logbook is valuable, because those contacts count for all sorts of contests, diplomas, bragging rights and even for upgrading your license (in some countries you have to have a certain amount of confirmed contacts in order to be able to upgrade). Most contacts are very short and schematic - you only exchange your call signs and a signal quality report, that's it. If it is for a contest, then there may be some extra code to be exchanged, depends on the contest. Basically the rarer the callsign/location and the longer the distance, the more valuable such contact is.
So if you are on a boat somewhere in a middle of the ocean, where no/few HAMs have gone before, you will be a very sought after article, with crowds of people wanting to make contact. Such pileup will keep you pretty busy for hours
Of course, there are also people who run nets or just chat with friends.
I watch lots of guys on YouTube who do Radio Repair - when they show a demo of a unit they've fixed, the airwaves just seem to be full of salespeople, prostitutes, criminally insane ranters and people just unintelligently "mouthing off"..
On HAM bands? Maybe on CB or PMR where it is a free for all, with no licensing. On HAM frequencies this is rare because you can actually get fined and have your license revoked (rare, but does happen) for such behavior.
Again, amateur radio is not the same thing as what the truckers use, even though it looks similar and both are radios. Different frequencies, different mode of operation, different ITU service and different laws governing its use. Completely different worlds.
Let's take my situation as regards communication, for example, which I'm sure is typical of most these days:
...
So what am I missing out on in the world of HAM? Is it just a load of folks talking about, well, HAM radio? Which seems a bit self-defeating...
As I say, genuine question, so please don't get triggered!
I don't want to go into a lot of detail because it would be off-topic here (and has been covered before - look for a thread "Is HAM radio dying?" or something like that). HAM radio is a technical hobby - some people collect stamps and others are building retrocomputers, HAMs tinker with radio. In fact, HAM radio is the only ITU service where it is explicitly OK to build and modify equipment without having to have it certified by some authority before using it. That's a big no-no for every other service, including that CB or common ISM band hardware.
It is not meant to replace a cellphone or e-mail or anything else. In fact, e.g. in the USA using it for such things is explicitly illegal - the law prohibits using it for things that could be done better by some other service.
So for the most people it is a way of having fun with radio - learning to build stuff, some people like those contests and chatting, some others are building and launching satellites (yep, that's a thing, there are several HAM satellites up there), working on stuff like high-speed digital communications, designing new protocols, building networks, others build tracking systems (e.g. APRS). A lot of HAMs work on radio astronomy in their gardens (you can build a radio telescope), build rigs for tracking satellites (HAM and not HAM ...). There are some guys experimenting with radar as well, software defined radio has a lot of following and a lot of R&D was done by HAMs, etc.
There are also sports - like fox hunting (trying to find a hidden beacon somewhere in the woods) or ARDF - basically a cross-country orienteering where you have to identify and localize several such beacons while navigating using only a map and compass (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_finding)
Of course, then there is also the emergency communication - HAMs are often part of the emergency communication networks when a disaster strikes - e.g. a hurricane. Last year HAMs were the only link to some of the islands hit by the hurricane for a good while until the military could bring in their own equipment. In this regard HAMs have a huge advantage - they are there already, have the equipment, have the skill and all they need to operate is a charged car battery. Cellphone networks, internet and such will be unusable for a long time if the infrastructure has been destroyed.
So there are tons of things you could do once you have the permit. It is not only about chit-chat, that's mostly the domain of the greybeards.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
