A while ago I dove into ham radio a bit. I think what you saw was the 40m and 80m bands (HF band, very high range) which are used mainly for "competitions" (ess

A while ago I dove into ham radio a bit. I think what you saw was the 40m and 80m bands (HF band, very high range) which are used mainly for "competitions" (essentially exchanging callsigns). I still find it intriguing because it's such a simple way of communicating. You can build the circuits yourself and with a license communicate with others over kilometers (with a good antenna sometimes thousands of kilometers). Think about it, without cell phone towers, satellites and all that commercial infrastructure it's really the only way to reach anyone.