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Any Shortwave Radio Tips for a Noob Considering the Hobby?
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wilfred:

--- Quote from: VK3DRB on December 08, 2019, 12:28:29 pm ---
But if you have a ham radio you will be able to communicate, assuming your infrastructure is destroyed and you were not vaporised. If this sounds far fetched, look what happened in Cyclone Tracey in 1974 which wiped out an entire city of Darwin. Ham radio was the ONLY form of communication to the outside world for several days. The main link was between a ham with a generator in Darwin and a ham in Melbourne.
 

--- End quote ---

You don't have to look back that far. I'm pretty sure I heard Ham radio was involved in saving more than a few lives in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.
edy:
I found a few resources online. I just Googled "Ham Radio for Dummies PDF" and "AARL ham radio license manual pdf" so a few links show up. Both are 300 pages+ so lots of good material in there to get a feeling for what is going on with the entire hobby. I didn't realize what I was getting into!  :scared:   Yeah maybe too much for me to chew on at this point. These books will give me something to do for a while and then I can figure out what's next. Perhaps in the summer once I've read through the basics I will have a better idea if I want to just do "Ultralight DXing" on some cheap sub-$100's hand-held equipment. If anything I can build or buy a slightly better indoor antenna and plug it into the ext antenna plug.

Note that I live in a suburb of a major city, with still very dense population density... so much so that I have over a dozen WiFi access points show up in addition to my own every time I load up my computer! I don't have the ability to erect any antennas at the moment or start modifying my house or drilling holes in walls and running wires. I doubt that my reception will be that good, I don't see that antenna wire over 5m happening. I have no trees or poles, I'd have to erect something. I don't see it happening. The books and a cheap radio should keep me busy.  :-+


[EDIT:]

I found a few more books online... Googling "the-beginners-handbook-of-amateur-radio.pdf" produced a link to a 529 page book, and "basic amateur radio course pdf" gives this file: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~ehashman/emcomm-ham-radio.pdf. And there is a whole pile of stuff here: http://www.n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/. Together with the dummies book and AARL manual, seems like I'll be busy for a long time just reading up on the topic and playing around with a small Tecsun!  :-+
fourfathom:
Just get that cheap Tecsun 310 and use the whip antenna or throw a skinny wire out the window.  This will work well enough to get you some useful hands-on experience while you are reading up on the hobby.  If you end up getting a better radio or get your ham ticket the Tecsun will still be a fun radio to have.  And they work!  For example, I've used a similar (cheap) receiver, with the headphone jack connected to my laptop mic-in jack to pick up and decode NOAA weatherfax signals.  I was in northern California and the transmitter was in Hawaii.
Bud:

--- Quote from: edy on December 08, 2019, 03:58:55 pm ---I hope it's not a hobby going extinct, although I imagine as the folks involve age there is more incentive to keep the young ones interested (and now you compete with many more hobbies that seem to attract young ones) to pick up the torch.

--- End quote ---
No worries, people still go hunting using flintlock muzzleloaders.
VK3DRB:

--- Quote from: wilfred on December 08, 2019, 04:11:44 pm ---
--- Quote from: VK3DRB on December 08, 2019, 12:28:29 pm ---
But if you have a ham radio you will be able to communicate, assuming your infrastructure is destroyed and you were not vaporised. If this sounds far fetched, look what happened in Cyclone Tracey in 1974 which wiped out an entire city of Darwin. Ham radio was the ONLY form of communication to the outside world for several days. The main link was between a ham with a generator in Darwin and a ham in Melbourne.
 

--- End quote ---

You don't have to look back that far. I'm pretty sure I heard Ham radio was involved in saving more than a few lives in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

--- End quote ---

In Texas (where I once resided), ham radio license number plates for you car were $1 per year. That was because the State of Texas recognises the technical contribution and potentially the emergency contribution ham radio operators can provide. The plates cost around $500 in Victoria. When I came back to Victoria, I lobbied to get the law changed to allow hams to get low cost number plates and I was effectively told to get lost. Technical people need a lot more recognition in our society.
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