Whatever Happened to Ham Radio?

[Telequipment]

Here is the enjoyment of ham radio just 2 minutes ago I spoke to a station in Portugal 6 metres FM 4 watts, and on my home made 6 metre transceiver, pure utter magic. 

Sweet, got to love 6 meters. One of my favorite bands.

Here is a couple of pics on my old homebrew 6 meter rig.
It started out as a MFJ 6 meter rig.  After a lot of modifications this is how it ended up.

Beautiful Radio lovely work there,  My friend KG0ZZ Dave, is getting tempted by 6 Metres at last, mine started off as a burned out AKD, with many mods now,I've got a New Case from AKD, once it's all back inside I'll take a picture, my low is 4 watts, and high is 40 watts, I think the orginal is 1 and 4 not sure though.

[Radio Tech]

Beautiful Radio lovely work there,  My friend KG0ZZ Dave, is getting tempted by 6 Metres at last, mine started off as a burned out AKD, with many mods now,I've got a New Case from AKD, once it's all back inside I'll take a picture, my low is 4 watts, and high is 40 watts, I think the orginal is 1 and 4 not sure though.

Thanks,
I threw that together over a couple of weeks when it was cold. I had bought the MFT9604 when 6 meters was hopping during the summer. I made a lot of contacts with it but it drifted bad and was clumbsey to operate.  And frequency rejection was terrible. So before I decided to toss it in the pile I got to thinking.
The case was an old maco mobile cb splatter box amplifier.  The VFO assembly I used was from an old tram diamond 10 cb external VFO unit.  I picked up a digital frequency counter that was a programmable job made to use on 40 channel cb's.  Had to re-wire the first digit from a 2 to a 5. Then it was just a simple reprogram to get it to match the VFO oscilator.
The MFJ board got a new filter scheme and mic circuit. Next was to change out the output section from 10 watts to 20 watts. I had a blast with this rig. It was some of the most fun I ever had on ham radio.

Good luck on the AKD. Sounds like a bit of fun also. Stay on your friend. Once bitten by the 6 meter bug nothing else matters

[MikeK]

I just dug up my paperwork. My license expired in 2012 but there is a two year grace period. I guess I'll register with the FCC tomorrow and renew it. It would be a shame to let it die, but I have no idea what I will do with it. Maybe when I lose interest in my model railroading hobby ... 

Even if you don't use it to talk to all those old farts, it's a cheap license to have that allows you to experiment with radio.  You can also use it to launch high altitude balloons, which need a way of broadcasting the location.  That's why I got my license.

[xrunner]

Even if you don't use it to talk to all those old farts, it's a cheap license to have that allows you to experiment with radio.  You can also use it to launch high altitude balloons, which need a way of broadcasting the location.  That's why I got my license.

Yea I'm trying to renew it. Need to hear from the FCC to get my site password, should be able to renew since it's not been two years since expiration.

We'll see what I can find to interest me after that. 

[xrunner]

License renewed! Now expires 6/2023. 

Now what should I do - no equipment. 

[Radio Tech]

License renewed! Now expires 6/2023. 

Now what should I do - no equipment. 

Sweet,
Now build something!

Oh, what class license you have?

[xrunner]

Oh, what class license you have?

General Class.

I'll probably start off boring, and get a 2m handheld, just to get my feet wet again. 

After that, we'll see what happens.

But, I'm, glad I posted this now. The FCC was really pretty efficient in getting my password fixed up and then renewing the license. Took two days. Good job FCC! 

[MikeK]

You can get a 2m/70cm HT for under $40: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007H4VT7A

[xrunner]

You can get a 2m/70cm HT for under $40: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007H4VT7A

Wow! That's inexpensive and it gets fairly good reviews. How can they produce it for that price? I know don't ask right?

I'm going to look into that right now.

[xrunner]

I just ordered a BaoFeng UV-5R 136-174/400-480 MHz Dual-Band DTMF CTCSS DCS FM Ham Two Way Radio + programming cable + external mic for $58.

Shoot, for that price it's a no brainer. 

[MikeK]

If you need help with it there's an active Yahoo group for it.

[xrunner]

If you need help with it there's an active Yahoo group for it.

Thanks.

I also found this website when I was looking at whether to buy it - there's a whole lot of info there too -

http://www.miklor.com/

[xrunner]

If you need help with it there's an active Yahoo group for it.

Well it arrived today. I must say, it's has a very high quality feel to it for the money. I'm receiving the local repeaters OK, but I need to use the Chirp software to set up the channels so I can try a contact this evening. 

[adnewhouse]

Don't forget HF. The magic bands (10m, 20m, 40m, 80m and 160m) have had some decent propagation recently. Whenever I turn on my radio I never know what country I'll hear from next. DIY low power SSB radios are really fun to make and usually cheap. The kits here: http://ea3gcy.blogspot.com/ are superb. If you really want a cheap QRP radio the Bitx (http://www.phonestack.com/farhan/bitx.html) is also great. It's only about $5 worth of parts. I built a Bitx and I've been surprised by the performance. Antennas can be as simple as a length of wire. Congrats on the renewed licence and welcome back to Ham radio!

[SeanB]

You got the better antenna. I just connected it to an external one, and it is a lot better then. Mobile I have to be within 5km of the repeater to work it.

[amyk]

You can get a 2m/70cm HT for under $40: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007H4VT7A

Wow! That's inexpensive and it gets fairly good reviews. How can they produce it for that price? I know don't ask right?

I'm going to look into that right now.

Teardown please? I don't think there's much in it though... but RF is like voodoo to me.

[olsenn]

I'm not even a licensed operator, but I purchased a Yaesu VX-8DR handheld transceiver just for its receiver capacibilities and testing some of my own test gear. Plus I love electronics that are submersible and rugged!

Perhaps a bit overkill though

[dr.diesel]

License renewed! Now expires 6/2023. 

Now what should I do - no equipment. 

I'm a general as well, wa9sdj, its a great hobby.

If you have ~ $900 burning a whole in your pocket by an Elecraft KX3, I own one and it's a great HF rig.

[xrunner]

Don't forget HF.

Yea I know, I'll have to get more equipment as time goes on. When

I have a really nice communications receiver put away - JRC NRD-535, I'll have to get it out of the box.

Stock photo -

Congrats on the renewed license and welcome back to Ham radio!

Yea I'm glad I got off my a** and renewed it. Stupid to let it expire at all.

Teardown please? I don't think there's much in it though... but RF is like voodoo to me.

Already been done  -

You got the better antenna. I just connected it to an external one, and it is a lot better then. Mobile I have to be within 5km of the repeater to work it.

Yea I got it at the same time. I talked to one guy last night on 145.33 repeater, but he wasn't hearing me well enough to talk for very long. I told him he was the first ham I had talked to in 2o years, he was amazed.

I am in the process of finding the repeaters that I can get to and people can hear me well enough. There are a lot of repeaters in Fort Worth but even at 4W this little radio may not work well for many of them unless an external antenna is used.

I'm a general as well, wa9sdj, its a great hobby.

If you have ~ $900 burning a whole in your pocket by an Elecraft KX3, I own one and it's a great HF rig.

Never heard of them, I'll check their stuff out. 

[SLJ]

Just a listener here but I enjoy cruising the bands and listening to what's going on in the rest of the world.  I have noticed a drop in HAM traffic over the past few years.
Here's the Kenwood I use when I'm working at night.  It's hooked up to a 75 foot long wire.  It works pretty well.


I use to have a nice big old vintage tube Hallicrafters but I sold it as this one had a wider bandwidth and took up less space.  I'll have to replace it one of these years. Dialing in a station on that old tube set gave me a feeling of satisfaction I don't get with the Kenwood for some reason.  The digital receiver is easier to use and you can program in frequencies but it's just not as much fun.

[KD0CAC John]

I almost got into ham back in the early 60s , but my folks handed me a Heathkit catalog just before sending me off the military boarding school - in 3rd grade .
Nobody there was a ham , so I forgot all about it , till about 8 yrs. ago when a friend was at our local coffee shop and had an HT , a hand-held 2m , 70cm .
I asked what he was doing and he mention it was a ham radio , next thing I know I'm off to classes & testing .
As far as the original question , there are many answers , 1st off SLJ you left and are part of the answer .
But like any other subject , there is never only one answer to almost any question .
Recently I saw a stat.  that showed about 750,000 ham lic. in the US and more every weekend .
Another large % answer , I think , is that for again a lot of reasons , there are fewer technical / electrical minded out there .
With the miniaturization of gear , its a lot to tackel to make a kit & build your own rig these days .
So that is 3 combined reasons , less inclined young people , harder to build - and a company needs to sell many kits in order to exist .
And touched on earlier , almost anyone is more occupied these days [ even if its just sitting in front of the TV { not a TV in every room back in the 50s & 60s } and sitting infront of the computer screen .
I as a ham think there is no relationship to cells phones , that is a non-ham mind talking .
To me I get on the air and its an adventure , I never know who I may run into on air .
Its a searching for signals thing , a cell phone needs a number to call - no comparison at all , either in technology or mind-set . 
To hams have ego stuff going on - when all else fails hams will save the world , attracts many .
Some of those do a good job of being ready , but it appears many are marginally prepared , most lacking in knowledge , training and gear .       
With no-code lic. these days it makes it easier to get into the hobby with out any real technical knowledge , then they seem to get lost and drop out .
One the local 2m , 70cm repeaters , things are much slower also , it used to be you had to wait in line to get on many of them about 6-8 yrs. ago .
This seems to me is a good example of all of this , because this is where almost all new hams start and with so many out there it should be more crowded than ever but its not ?
Then there the economy or the lack of , like any hobby , its not cheap and can get very expensive vary fast .
Then there is propagation , with an 11+ yr. sun cycle [ and we are at an unusual low the last couple yrs. ] its harder to make contacts . 
Related to something earlier above , tech. learning , at least from a hams perspective learning electronics at the component level and systems , the education is not there anymore .
I have to go back to about the 80s to find helpful books on learning .
I just picked up a copy of The Art of Electronics , by Horowitz & Hill , most sources were in the $100 + range , but I kept looking and found a good condition for about $14 including shipping

[xrunner]

Talked with a guy this morning for a while on a 2m repeater that seemed to be closer, still had a little noise on my signal according to him.

According to a repeater directory there are 24 (2m and 70 cm) repeaters within 10 miles of my location. I can hear pretty much all of them, because I can hear them send out IDs, but on most of them, I rarely hear anyone talking. There's maybe three that are somewhat busy, but the rest - nothing much at all. Seems like a lot of capability just sitting around out there.

But like any other subject , there is never only one answer to almost any question .

That's very true. When I was a kid there was only a few ways for the average person to communicate with people far away from you.

A. Long distance telephone or international phone call
B. Write a letter

Now, we have the internet and cell phones. It's no big deal - nothing at all - to communicate with anyone in the world in a matter of seconds. Cell phones provide instant text messaging.

Take my nephew. I gave him some N scale trains and track. Couldn't have cared less about it. Went right back to video games.

Gave him a little helicopter to fly. Couldn't have cared less about it. Went right back to video games. I took the helicopter home with me and I now play with it.

Now imagine if I gave him a shortwave radio. After a few hours you could call that a boat anchor if you wanted to.

Let's say I tried to get him interested in ham radio, I'd probably show him my 2m handheld and explain it. Then he'd probably say it's like a telephone, only with annoying beeps and static, and no kids to talk to, and no games built-in, and no camera, and no texting ... and WTF - you have to pass a test to even use it?

Ain't gonna happen.

Whereas I (we) had an appreciation of the challenge of communication, most kids these days don't have that appreciation or interest. It either works or it doesn't - there's' no understanding why it doesn't work. If it doesn't work you go to the store and replace it. If I told my nephew I could talk to a guy in France over a ham radio, he'd be totally unimpressed. So what - he can do the same thing on the computer faster and easier. Maybe that's why we liked it back then. It was a challenge that few other people wanted to do or could learn to do.

I dunno.

[KD0CAC John]

Ham radio is ' going out in the world ' and meeting new people .
Your nephew cannot talk to that unknown person is france , he has to know him in advance - have his phone # etc.
With ham radio you could end up talking to and maybe become friends with anyone , wether its just a working stiff or an astronaut , famous whatever .
With the internet is close but there is a stand-off , it may not be as open as it use to be , for many reasons people tend to keep there selves anonymous these days , on the net almost know one gives you there name .
With a lic. you can look up and know who you talking to .
And then still get to know after talking over the air .
Something similar , if you haven't done either it may be difficult to imagine but like having a solar system and making your own power , with ham radio you are not part of another infrastructure , system or paying a fee , once you set up your shack your on your .
Repeaters are just one small part of all the aspects of ham radio .
When I travel there are a large number of people I have met on air that because ham radio , I have personal invites all over the world and I haven't even been there .
 
     

[xrunner]

Now, I'm going to be thinking like a young person does in the following reply, so remember that ... 

Ham radio is ' going out in the world ' and meeting new people .

That's true but ...

Your nephew cannot talk to that unknown person is france , he has to know him in advance - have his phone # etc.

^^^ That's not.

As in this forum, you can meet all sorts of new people and talk to them without knowing them in advance. To do it, all you have to do is "go out" and register on the forum and poof - you're meeting new people. See the flags of the members here? You are meeting new people from all over the world with a high reliability.

Take another example - Facebook. Once you are friends with several people you can start friending other friends and so on and so on, all without knowing them in advance. If they want to talk to you, they will, if not, they won't, just like ham radio.

Not to mention Skype, internet relay chat, blogs, twitter, email, etc, etc, etc - all not available when I was a kid. Like I said - you either made a long distance call or wrote a letter.

With ham radio you could end up talking to and maybe become friends with anyone , wether its just a working stiff or an astronaut , famous whatever .
With the internet is close but there is a stand-off , it may not be as open as it use to be , for many reasons people tend to keep there selves anonymous these days , on the net almost know one gives you there name .

Again - same thing as a forum. You can always exchange real names via PMs if you are so inclined. But due to the real threat of personal privacy (which wasn't as bad as it is now) it's a fact that people want to keep their privacy. The privacy on ham radio isn't nearly as much a concern because there isn't much of a record, unless you record the whole conversation (yea I know about rtty and so on). But there's just no "tracking" of your activities over the air. Once the RF is received by a receiver, the rest just goes on it's way to outer space - gone. Now take an email - there's a record of that and tracking of that.

With a lic. you can look up and know who you talking to .
And then still get to know after talking over the air .
Something similar , if you haven't done either it may be difficult to imagine but like having a solar system and making your own power , with ham radio you are not part of another infrastructure , system or paying a fee , once you set up your shack your on your .
Repeaters are just one small part of all the aspects of ham radio .
When I travel there are a large number of people I have met on air that because ham radio , I have personal invites all over the world and I haven't even been there .

All true, but your preaching to the choir.  You have to think like the younger generation thinks to understand how they communicate. What they are used to and care about is instant reliable clear communications and virtual worlds (games). They're not into hit and miss contacts, static, or noise.
 

[xrunner]

Just a listener here but I enjoy cruising the bands and listening to what's going on in the rest of the world.  I have noticed a drop in HAM traffic over the past few years.
Here's the Kenwood I use when I'm working at night.  It's hooked up to a 75 foot long wire.  It works pretty well.

Yea a Kenwood R-2000, I used to have one. 

I used to spend hours listening to shortwave - all the major bands and everything in between. I always liked the mystery of the numbers stations too. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station