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I love the idea of sending data over ham radio but, outside some kind of disaster or simply making hams happy, is there a practical use?
by mprev 8y ago
I love the idea of sending data over ham radio but, outside some kind of disaster or simply making hams happy, is there a practical use?
- jrockway 8y agoIs there a practical use? Not really. Satellites and fibers are more reliable than hoping the ionosphere is in the right configuration for the path that you want to send messages on. It is nice to know that you can communicate with the other side of the world using no infrastructure, but it's unlikely that it will ever be necessary. Airplanes on oceanic routes use HF radios, which is the same idea as ham radio. I am not sure why they don't use satellites. I guess it's cheaper than buying satellites.
- ric2b 8y agoMight be useful during wartime, since it's likely that lots of infrastructure will be taken down.
- AA6TS 8y agoAny additional communication skill would be handy to know about should it become necessary to use alternate communication methods in times of emergencies when normal communications are disrupted. Since the Internet controls practically everything we do, and enemy would want to disable our Internet access to cripple our communications. We would then need alternate ways to communicate voice, text and data. So a practical use would be to practice and gain experience ahead of time, and then hope you never have to use this as a last resort