13 ms·

The Uncertain Future of Ham Radio

150 points by MindGods 6y ago

umpc 6y ago
I got into ham radio almost a year ago. I did so as my software and web development hobby became my career. Ham radio is a very interesting hobby with a large variety of activities and operating techniques. It's been great to learn about how to make direct contacts across the world using just a small antenna and coil using the HF bands. I certainly understand the potential commercial value of spectrum currently allocated to amateurs, though it's a shame to see it constantly under threat, with little regard to its usefulness as an emergency communication service. While it's true that most amateurs are older, I'm 24 and I would encourage anyone looking for something else to do to get licensed and get on the air. There's always something more to learn and do, and many hams are happy to help with choosing and setting up equipment. Check out hamstudy.org if you want to get licensed. It's pretty easy, especially to get a basic Technician class license, and online testing has begun due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- admax88q 6y ago
  So what do you do exactly as a ham? Like what does a typical ham session look like for you?
  - umpc 6y ago
    There are many different types of activities depending on your interests. I write a lot, so if you're not keen on reading, check out the included YouTube videos. One common type of activity is attempting to make direct contact with a distant station. This could be using a voice mode, digital mode (text), or CW, which just means using Morse code and a keyer to communicate. Operators can make contacts all over the world using the Earth's ionosphere as a mirror, to reflect signals, and send them further than any method of terrestrial propagation can achieve. This is called skywave propagation as opposed to groundwave propagation, which is like how cell phones work. The caveat being that skywave propagation appears to have a degree of randomness to it. It isn't totally random but we collectively do not understand it enough to fully predict when and where our signals will end up. So there's an opportunity to make direct contact with another station somewhere else on Earth, depending on the propagation conditions. So to now actually answer your question, there's novelty in getting your station working, and then using it to have a brief conversation with a random person at least hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away. This is known as a QSO. At different times, for example, with my station being located in North Carolina, I might suddenly be able to reach stations in Europe around sunset. Usually, it's more limited to random areas within the United States with a basic antenna, but not always. If I announce my presence over the radio (call CQ), and someone comes back to me, we'll exchange some basic signal quality info. Afterwards, if the other person wants, you can ask about their radio setup, and talk about common interests, while avoiding some topics like local politics, etc. Here's a video of someone doing this: https://youtu.be/tXIbSGX2SvU?t=3m40s https://youtu.be/tXIbSGX2SvU?t=3m40s That's only one activity while there are many others. Another activity would be pointing a beam antenna at low earth orbit amateur radio satellites to make as many quick contacts with other operators as possible while the satellite is above the horizon. This is a very physically and mentally challenging activity. Here's a video of that: https://youtu.be/QWtdyT4PYMw https://youtu.be/QWtdyT4PYMw There are also digital modes as well. FT8 is a common digital mode for making contacts with much less personal interaction using a PC. This one is easier to just watch and see than to explain: https://youtu.be/bSpyYV-xz5c https://youtu.be/bSpyYV-xz5c Hopefully that gives you some ideas about what it's like to make contacts over the radio. Some people like the social aspects and others (like me) like the technical and experimental aspects of making contacts and seeing where and how far my signals will go.
    - popped 6y ago
      FT8 is amazing and would be an amazing way to suck people on HN in. It's fun without transmitting. I'm at the bottom of New Zealand and get transmissions from all over the world including our antipode, Europe. And that's with a crappy short wave receiver with a tiny built in antenna that you can get for <$100. The fact that someone made the FT8 modulation scheme up out or the blue and people started adopting it and using it and having fun shows the spirit of ham radio. I bet there are folk on here who would be able to come up with some interesting new modulation schemes to push the envelope even further. It's a shame that the venn diagram intersection between the modern tech world and ham radio isn't larger.
      - amatecha 6y ago
        Yeah I've had WSJT-X (or JTDX) listening here in western Canada and I've picked up FT8 messages from New Zealand, Japan, Russia, Brazil... it's crazy! I just used a random piece of wire laying around on my balcony! So cool :D
      - hanoz 6y ago
        If anyone fancies having a play with FT8 without any ham equipment, I was surprised to find I could do so using a regular "world band" shortwave receiver. It does need to have SSB (single sideband) mode, I'm not sure how common that is. Just tune in to 14.074Mhz and listen for the strangely melodic modem-like tones. Download WSJT-X and pipe one into the other. It was at this point I was annoyed to find my new PC doesn't have a mic socket (what's that all about?), but in fact holding my usb webcam up to the radio's loudspeaker was enough to get reports from all over the continent appearing.
    - admax88q 6y ago
      Cool stuff, thanks for the info! I'll watch the videos when I'm no longer on a metered connection. I've always found the physics and technology behind radio fascinating but was never really clear what sort of activities amateur radio operators actually do.
  - kwk1 6y ago
    There are amateur radio activities that don't necessarily fit into the "session" scope that are still interesting. For example, there is the AMPRNet [1], a TCP/IP over AX.25 block of the Internet on 44.0.0.0/8. There is a similar effort called Hamwan with its Puget Sound Data Ring [2]. [1] https://www.ampr.org/ https://www.ampr.org/ [2] http://hamwan.org/ http://hamwan.org/
- stellersjay 6y ago
  Where are you seeing results for online testing? Seems to be tricky to find as most of the ones I have seen have been cancelled or "no walk-in / call ahead". Also thanks for prompting this and keep ham radio alive :)
  - umpc 6y ago
    I've heard about various VECs experimenting with online testing by reading the news on QRZ.com or eham.net, though another ham recently mentioned that hamstudy.org now lists online test sessions: https://hamstudy.org/sessions/online https://hamstudy.org/sessions/online I haven't tried online testing yet. I've been putting off upgrading to Amateur Extra class, though I'll probably try one of those online test sessions eventually.
    - beaugunderson 6y ago
      I proctored one of the tests administered by KL7AA (Anchorage); I know GLAARG (Los Angeles) is also doing online tests...
  - roamingryan 6y ago
    The MIT Radio Society (W1MX) has gotten their online process up and running and is regularly scheduling sessions. http://w1mx.mit.edu/ham-exams/ http://w1mx.mit.edu/ham-exams/
    - marianov 6y ago
      It looks like they accept people from abroad. Nowhere do they say you need to be a US citizen. Is that possible?
      - roamingryan 6y ago
        That is correct. US Citizenship is not a requirement, however, I believe you do need to have a US mailing address.
  - irrational 6y ago
marianov 6y ago
Licensing is the worst part. In my country you have to sit through about 20 2h lessons and then take an examination. No way to just study on your own
beckler 6y ago
I've had an amateur radio license since I was 14, and I got it through a collaboration with our local radio club and the boy scouts. I don't use my license enough, but I love having it. One of my absolute favorite memories growing up was when we did a camping trip during a field day. A field day is basically an annual global contest to see who you can contact and how far you can reach out. We setup a massive portable antenna in the woods, and I stayed up ALL NIGHT on one of our more powerful SSB radios reaching out to people all across the world. Like Ukraine, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, and more (I'm in the US). Young me was so fascinated with talking with those people, that I'm pretty certain it was one of the first times I experienced sonder. SDR is fun, but no where near as rewarding as using analog.
- jdshaffer 6y ago
  CQ field day, CQ field day! Did the same thing when I was about 13... that was a blast -- camping in a big field with a bunch of other hams... Great memory! -- KA3TMV
- nlh 6y ago
  1000% this. Same story - was one of the highest of highlights of my ham youth. The local club’s field day operation happened literally a day after my license arrived in the mail and I vividly remember staying up all night totally immersed in this crazy hobby that I’d only been reading about. Huge fancy Kenwood and Icon HF rigs (the amazing ones I could only dream about buying as a 12 y/o), tons of people having fun, and CQ Field Day CQ Field Day into the wee hours. Super fun experience and memory. (Ps - DE K2KD)
- entropea 6y ago
  ARRL Field Day is the best! I just got back from this years Field Day two weeks ago and its still really active and a large event even though band conditions are really very poor. One year I setup a VHF/UHF log periodic and was able to get 5-10 people to get confirmed contacts with astronauts on the ISS. It was probably the most exciting time I've had in amateur radio, and definitely not something everyone gets to do in life.
h4m1tup 6y ago
I got a general license in the US since it seemed like an interesting hobby, but haven't used it much. Sometimes I feel bad about that, and I've thought a bit about it. Radios are fascinating to learn about, but our HAM regulations seem mired in the past and overly restrictive. You simply aren't allowed to do much on the amateur bands besides chatting with people. For example, I don't believe you can cipher communications unless they're being used to control an RC vehicle. That rules out a lot of DIY-style projects. The regulations and terminology around automated "beacons" are also a tad confusing, and the potential fines are quite heavy. And if you do spend the time reading rules, going to a class or doing flash cards, taking your test, buying a starter radio, and finally talking with some people on a local repeater...then what? Try to contact a different country or continent? You can, but talking to someone across the world feels very pedestrian in this day and age. And while it is technically possible to set up a beacon for something like data collection or remote monitoring on HAM frequencies, it's much easier these days to use an off-the-shelf radio module. You don't need a license to use a $5 LoRa module with an arduino or raspberry pi, and there's no red tape. It's too bad, because I really admire the amateur operators who step in during disasters to keep information flowing. But I can also see why HAM radio is sort of a dying art in the US; like many relics of an optimistic past, it's been left to rot for decades.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  > You simply aren't allowed to do much on the amateur bands besides chatting with people. Here's a fun thing you can do: 802.11b channel 1 is in the amateur band, so as long as you don't use encryption, you can use quite a lot more power than the 802.11 band would normally allow. (Remember that you should only use the amount of power you need, though.) Our amateur rocketry group used ordinary wifi, amplified to 1W and run through a custom cylindrical antenna, to communicate between the rocket (breaking the sound barrier) and the ground.
  - chmod600 6y ago
    Now that's cool! But rocketry is also pretty tightly-regulated in my area. So that's two high-attention hobbies, and it starts to seem like a bit much.
brian-armstrong 6y ago
If you're reading this and you're thinking about getting into radio, you can get a Baofeng UV-5R handheld radio which works on the 2m and 70cm bands for $25. It has never been cheaper or easier to get into radio than it is now. These radios are completely portable and will let you "work" the repeaters local to you and can be received 10-15 miles away even without a repeater at 5W power https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-Black/dp/B007H4VT7A https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-Black/dp/B00... Do I need a license, you ask. Yes, you'll need to get a technician's license to transmit, though you can receive on the radio without it. The test has no morse code requirement, and it's entirely multiple choice. The entire question pool is freely available and it only takes a couple weekends to prep for and pass. It'd be an easy task for anyone here. Most of the questions pertain to FCC policy as well as radio safety, just enough to make sure you don't injure yourself or interfere with other radio users. 73s :)
- dbcurtis 6y ago
  Please don’t get a Baofeng. Those things put out incredibly dirty signals. They are RF polution you can carry in your pocket.
  - brian-armstrong 6y ago
    Is there anything near their price that can get people up and making QSOs that is much better? Possibly the Yaesu FT-4X but that's $85, so considerably more than the UV-5R.
  - LeoPanthera 6y ago
    Quite apart from their quality, a VHF handheld is possibly the most boring possible introduction to amateur radio. There is so much more you can do that is so much more interesting than hearing 80 year old retirees talk about their prostates on the local repeaters.
    - brian-armstrong 6y ago
      Does this imply there's a radio frequency that's not dominated by retirees? ;) HF feels considerably harder to get into. If you're a city dweller your only antenna choice is probably a magloop. VHF has options for things like satellite and ISS contacts, and the fact that it's local makes it seem a bit more relevant and community-driven.
chmod600 6y ago
One thing I noticed when getting my license was that broadcasting is not allowed. That makes sense, because you're not supposed to hog the airwaves. But I think they could create room for some kind of amateur programming. For instance, you have to pause every 5 minutes so people can either join the conversation or ask questions. And maybe it would have to be a human speaking live, not a recording or machine. And I'm sure you'd need certain channels and parts of the spectrum for this. The advantage is that this gets content on the airwaves and gives people a chance to get involved. After the program, you can jump onto another part of the spectrum for free-form chat. Like: "That's all for now, but join the discussion starting right now on [callsign of repeater]". It would have to be non-commercial, but people like talking about their hobbies, etc. I could easily see a lot of people doing scheduled 30-minute programs about cars or gardening or whatever.
- nullc 6y ago
  This isn't precluded under US regulations. Broadcasting means transmissions intended for the general public, as opposed to other amateurs. One way communications are generally prohibited too (except in certain cases like beacon stations and remote control), but as you note-- what you want doesn't need to be one way. It's not even uncommon on HF for people to blather on for many minutes at a time without pause. People could totally do lectures with Q&A, and I imagine many repeaters would be perfectly fine with that use.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Yeah also many people have been duplexing over the years, upstreaming on 2m and downstreaming on 70cm for example. That is allowed as long as you mention your call every few minutes.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  I've seen people doing TV on 13cm. It is possible. It was even easy to receive with a DVB-S box, just omitting the LNB. This was before WiFi so not sure if this is still possible with all the additional traffic on that band. However there's very strict restrictions on playing third-party content like video and music.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
The original article talks about attracting newcommers to the ham radio community, on the other hand I'm here to complain about the trouble of staying in the community. From my experience, one major killer of ham radio is the horrible and dehumanizing electromagnetic interference in modern cities from 0 to 30 MHz. HF/shortwave remains the most interesting spectrum in ham radio - it's the only spectrum capable of international communication without specialized equipment or infrastructure, just throw a random wire out of the window, how wonderful it is. Unfortunately, 0 to 30 MHz is also where most electrical and electronics devices operate at. A cheap bike charger with PWM control can easily disable all HF communication around it, so can a cheap switched-mode power supply, also, yes, builders of transparent PCs without metal enclosures, I'm looking at you (although it's not much of a problem compared to commercial devices)! Government regulations on EMI/RFI is useless when tons and tons of nonconforming devices made by the cheapest vendors are flooding the market. While it's easy to add filters or stop using them if they are yours, but in cities, you often cannot possibly know where they are coming from. And even worse, nobody cares - without a spectrum analyzer (or an SDR equivalent), nobody can see or smell it. Remember those stories about car key fobs being jammed? The media makes them sound almost mysterious, because EMI/RFI is unknown to the general public. Car keys are only a tip of the iceberg, VHF is actually pretty clean, HF is horrible. And even to some people with respective knowledge on the subject, many still don't care - the worst offenders, such as VDSL and Ethernet over Powerlines technologies, are fundamentally harmful to radio communication and can disable all HF receivers in sight. In an ideal world where telecommunication regulations are faithfully enforced, nobody should be allowed to use them, yet the interests of ISP trumps HF amateur services and governments allowed their deployment. Even with all these jammers, HF is still somewhat usable, but only for picking up powerful stations, or using slow, digital modes designed for weak-signal communications. It's better than none, but quite limited (this includes digital modes that requires a higher signal-to-noise radio). When HF becomes a lost battle, the enjoyment and capabilities of amateur radio is reduced greatly. So one is forced to go somewhere else, either physical moving your home or your radio (not an option for most), or moving the spectrum of your operation: VHF (without special setups) is only capable of local communication. Then the only remaining choices for international communication are satellite communication, meteor scatters, and tropospheric scatter. They are interesting technical challenges much in line with the tradition of amateur radios, but far from easy like HF. For example, satellites at Low Earth Orbit are only usable when they are passing your location. With the launch of the first geostationary amateur radio satellite, QO-100 (Es’hail 2), I can only hope the situation of amateur radio without HF will continue becoming better at the next decade and enjoy global coverage by geostationary satellites.
irrational 6y ago
This summer I was supposed to go on a week long backcountry hike with a youth group. The youth would be split into multiple teams and they wanted an adult with a ham radio to be with each team. I volunteered to get a license since there was only one adult who already had his license and was experienced with ham radio. Getting the license was interesting. I’ve never studied engineering or electronics and a lot of the test was things like being able to read circuit schematics, understanding how inductors/capacitors/tranformers/etc. work, learning ohms law and the power law and being able to solve equations with them, learning laws around ham radio, etc. What you don’t learn as part of getting a license is what do you do after you have a license. Where do you buy equipment? What kind of equipment do you need? How do you use a radio? What do all the buttons on the radio do? Etc. I asked someone about this and they said I needed to join my local club to learn this stuff. But, I don’t want to join a club. I have a family, 2 jobs, home remodeling, and various hobbies (woodworking, drawing, reading, board games, baking, gardening, etc.) The last thing I have time for is to join a club ;-) So I’m in this weird spot where I have a license, but don’t actually know what to do with it. Due to the pandemic, the youth trip was cancelled. But it may be rescheduled for a future year. I’ll need to figure all this stuff out before then.
- thepangolino 6y ago
  What’s the actual point of having to learn all that for the license? What’s the actual point for the license in the first place?
  - irrational 6y ago
    The license is an FCC requirement. They are also the ones who come up with the test questions. You would have to ask them. I can understand why they would want me to understand the laws governing ham radio. I don’t understand why I need to be able to read a schematic diagram to get a license. I assume that if I was going to build my own equipment that I would need to know a lot more than what I needed to learn to pass the test.
    - formerly_proven 6y ago
BrianHenryIE 6y ago
> The 66-year-old from Dartmouth, Mass., credits his career in electrical and computer engineering to an early interest in amateur radio. I initially studied electronic systems before later studying computer science, which I credit to my dad's interest in ham radio.
punchclockhero 6y ago
Got the Baofeng and the callsign, in that order. Got licensed because it costs around $10 for the exam with no mandatory classes and to use Echolink. Don't see much point in it as I don't like to talk and the funny chatter is on the unlicensed bands anyway. Seriously, PMR446 near hotels and nightclubs is pure gold. Local gangsters' seating preferences, awkward staff romance, weird room service orders, you name it.
MrRadar 6y ago
As a guy in his 30s who got his ham license last year, there are two major things I think the ham radio community needs to change if they want to increase membership. Firstly, they need to target the right demographic for recruitment. Right now they're laser-focused on targeting teens, since that's the age many of these older guys originally got into the hobby, however (as the article acknowledges) what draws people to amateur radio today is very different to what drew people back then. I think the demographic they need to be targeting is engineers and scientists of all types and electronics hobbyists in their 20s-40s, i.e. people who have an aptitude/knowedge base to build off and who can imagine applications for radio, and who have the income and physical space to invest in the hobby. (Don't get me wrong, if younger people want to get involved they absolutely should be encouraged to do so, but I don't think there is enough interest there to rebuild the base the hobby needs to continue.) Secondly, the ham community needs a much better presence on the web. ARRL's site has a lot of information but if you don't know what you are looking for it can be a bit of a maze to navigate. Also, they really want to sell you their books, which means some of that vital information about being an amateur radio operator is not available for free on their site. The web presence of local clubs is highly variable but often poor. For example, the club I took my license exam through has two different web sites with different information in them, one of which is apparently no longer maintained and the other of which is "temporary". I got a free 1-year membership to the club when I passed my exam so I get a ~monthly newsletter from them, but it's sent from a personal e-mail account in the form of a PDF attachment. I actually deleted those newsletters for the first few months because I didn't know who was sending them or why I was getting them! The club doesn't have any social media presence and meetings were strictly in-person before the Coronavirus. Because I live a 45-minute (in good traffic) drive away from where they hold meetings I hadn't attended any before they held those online ones. Clubs really need to invest in their online presence as that's where people under the age of 50 will first encounter them. They should have a decent-looking site with a dedicated domain, photos/blog posts about activities they do and, if possible, recordings of their meetings so people can see what joining the club brings them. They should also maintain a presence on Facebook and Twitter, if only to post the occasional updates and links to their main site. Online forums aren't much better. QRZ Forums, the largest English-language online amateur radio community, has such a reputation for being hostile to newcomers to the hobby that I haven't even bothered looking at it. r/amateurradio, by nature of being on Reddit, has a much younger and more welcoming demographic than QRZ Forums, but it has the problem of being on Reddit which is not conducive to any kind of long-running discussions which makes forming a community hard. On YouTube channels that focus on amateur radio rarely seem to cover topics related to getting people interested in the hobby or the basics of the hobby, and those that do generally seem tsrgetted at the "prepper" community (which is not me). What got me to take the time to get my license was a guy on a programming forum I follow posting that he was going to do live streams of himself making contacts and otherwise doing projects related to radio. Just seeing the practical side of the hobby was enough to push me from a vague interest to getting my license. Unfortunately he stopped streaming after a few months, but this is exactly the type of content organizations like ARRL or local clubs should be putting out to get people interested.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Personally as a HAM I think our technology is becoming too stale. Commercial tech is now migrating towards high-speed data networks to be used even for voice. With HAM radio we're still stuck with analog voice and very low-bitrate voice codecs in the digital standards. None of which really offer much that analog (and linking tech) didn't. APRS is a joke with its low speeds. The whole idea about ham radio was to innovate... We're not doing that at all, at best we're just using commercial technology. Some advancements to adapt firmware of commercial rigs (MD-380tools, OpenGD77) are amazing, but we're still lifting on what's commercially possible. This is not the ham spirit :( We really need something good to offer and at the moment we haven't. It used to be so cool you could talk to people around the world for free. Now anyone with a phone in their pocket can do that.
- m0xte 6y ago
  There’s still plenty of innovation left to do. Low bandwidth, low power, long distance signalling is interesting. As are ridiculously high frequencies. Also new modes and repurposing some of the modern radio ICs you can get. But the issue I found is that the technical community is about as dead as it gets. It created a stereotype and then proceeded to get stuck in a hole. This was around 1970. Any newer thinking made it into appliances which cover the 95% of the rest of the user base. Most hams can barely solder a PL259 without destroying it. Even talking modulation schemes solicits a glazed look and some mumbling about 80m QRM. I was about done. This year I didn’t renew my RSGB sub and sold all my radio equipment and test gear. I spent the money on an iPad Pro with Procreate and and a new Mac and am in a better place with respect to personal satisfaction and have some cash left over to spend on experiences and not things.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    Compared to innovation in radios for commercial telecom microwave and millimeter wave radios (2.4 all the way up to 86 GHz), ham radio is moribund. There's a whole lot more on the ground real world innovation happening in people building WISPs in very rural, challenging locations with no pre-existing telecom services (except by two-way satellite) than there is happening in ham radio.
jacquesm 6y ago
HAM radio is a complete luxury with today's networks right up until the point that you really need it, for instance during some kind of natural disaster. With high speed satellite internet maybe even that function will be superseded.
- teddyh 6y ago
  If “some kind of natural disaster might happen” is your only argument, then you’re basically being a prepper.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Natural disasters happen all the time, and HAM radio in the past has traditionally been the last to go down and the first to be back up in those situations because it needs no infrastructure at all to work.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      > […] HAM radio in the past has traditionally been […] You know what’s not like the past? The present, and, even less so, the future. 3G/4G/5G/Satellite phones are rapidly progressing, and everybody already has one. But even if you were right, how does that address my point that arguing for HAM radio with the argument “it might be useful in a disaster” is basically being a prepper?
zeckalpha 6y ago
I got my ham license at 16, later used it at work extensively (non-commercial, research projects), but mostly set it aside in 2016 due to the incessant discussion of hateful politics on the local 2m band. I upgraded to general but my HF setup is portable (no permanent antenna) so it’s harder to hop on, but I hope those bands are less bigoted, or at least, the bigots keep to themselves.
jvanderbot 6y ago
I am working on my HAM General-class license. I have young and non-engineer friends who are into it. It is mostly interesting to them because they have never done something highly technical, and here is a relatively approachable technical hobby. However, I'm decreasingly enthused about HAM. I got my license so I could interact with devices that I wanted to build. However, there are almost no use cases where HAM helps. I cannot build something cheaper, or make it more effective than a commercially available product. It's only at the extreme, un-useful cases that HAM becomes a thing. (Want to bounce signals off the moon?) What I'd like to see from HAM: - More, different competitions. Long-term monitoring, stealthy side-channel transmissions, digital and analog networking competitions (like hackathons: Get a signal from A to B with minimal loss / delay using teams in disparate areas of the country --- internet OK), recovery games (set up a network serving x users with max datarate or voice capacity using this equipment), or encoding / decoding games, and so on. - More support from local governments and infrastructure. I want to know where to sign up to be useful if telecommunications suffers a hiccup. If that is not useful, I want to know and be told how to be useful (esp studying different technology). Some certifications beyond HAM, and specializing in different niche areas would be nice. - More training on HAM-adjacent technologies. To be useful / innovative requires knowing the telecommunications space, and sticking to SSB voice + FT8 for DXs is great, but not helpful when trying to understand telecommunications and make an impact on the world. God forbid a disaster did happen and the HAMs showed up with their 10m antennas and were useful for 30 minutes until the Verizon tech arrived. It'd be more useful if they could bridge 3G / UHF by setting up an adhoc repeater network to actually extend the range of whatever equipment didn't die in the zombie apocalypse. For example: In the IoT area, I thought for sure HAMs would be front-and-center with new mesh networking technologies, WAN, etc. But no, we got another AWS product with minimal device-device communication and called it a day.
- sitzkrieg 6y ago
  its ham
- FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
  > I cannot build something cheaper, or make it more effective than a commercially available product. Not sure what you are looking to do, but there are plenty of inexpensive radio designs. Consider the Pixie or the SMT version, the Knight SMiTe, either can be built very cheaply. Onr could also put an amplifier on inexpensive IMS chips for really inexpensive radio projects. A Raspberry Pi Zero can be bitbanged into a transciever using PWM and SDR and can operate pretty much any mode. It's a very noisy, low power output signal and will need filtering and amplification. Still better than a spark gap transmitter, the ultimate low cost radio. For cheap recievers, look into foxhole radio designs.
schoolornot 6y ago
Dad always told me the smartest people he knew were Hams so I figured why not. Skimmed the book, used the flash cards, and got a tech license. In short, it sucks. Some observations: - the exams are oriented towards RF knowledge and will weed out anyone who just wants to go on the air to talk. They should really restore the novice license. Give it the same privileges as technician with no rights to broadcast over 10w or construct towers - there is MASSIVE underutilization of spectrum. not just at the tech level due to inefficient coding but in general, the airwaves are not busy at all whatsoever. I live in NYC and there are rarely more than a dozen or so people on across the entire tech band at any given time. - conversations are dull. the weekly nets can be interesting but pretty much the subject of conversation always revolves around call quality or someone's rig or something to do with radio. It's boring! - proprietary. all the digital modes employ proprietary protocols or proprietary codecs. brandmeister is closed-source. echolink is closed sourced and rarely updated. DSTAR is proprietary. DMR isn't proprietary but the vocoder is. want to setup a repeater? sure, go pay a shady motorola VAR a few bucks and he'll sneak you a unit and user manual.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  HAM still has some interesting practical uses. Up here in the PNW rally racing events use them to coordinate stage start and emergency/sweeper vehicles. The races are up in the mountains where cell phone service can be quite spotty, but a truck with a repeater parked on one of the higher foothills covers the whole area just fine.
- quesera 6y ago
  I agree. I hold an Extra class license for work with microwave RF equipment, years ago. Today, the argument for getting a ham license for use as a general communications tool seems to boil down to: "It's like the Internet, except that it's synchronous, slow, requires special (moderately expensive) equipment to access -- and to join, you have to take a test using high school math. Sign up here!". If you're interested in the tech of radio, then a license gives you the ability to legally operate interesting equipment. Or, you might be active in another hobby that has special communcations needs, or you might want to provide a public service in the event of disaster. All legit, but definitely niche.
arbitrage 6y ago
I am a paper HAM, that is a derogatory term in the amateur radio community for us operators who only have a license and don't use it. In short, it sucks. HAM radio is full of old weird people, talking about bodily functions. Wanna go to a HAMfest? If you're under 50years old, you well get weird looks. And weird interactions. The learning curve is brutal to do anything other than exchange callsigns with randos, or talk to old people about communism and their bodily functions. HAM radio has outlived its usefulness. It is really sad, and I regret that. But there is just no point to it.
hanoz 6y ago
If anyone in the UK is thinking about getting a foundation license, you might like to know you can now sit the exam entirely online, as the practical assessment component is currently waived.
sitzkrieg 6y ago
ham is not an acronym, dont write it HAM :-)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jimnotgym 6y ago
There is something soul destroying that comes with the demographic. Long, ill informed, right- wing speeches. Politics is supposed to be a taboo subject, of course. I was listening to a repeater in the UK one day and heard this, "I don't follow the news, I don't follow politics, I don't know the first thing about it. But in my opinion... blah blah Brexit blah" Or another on air every night without fail on 2m FM in the SSB segment... " These modern planes are all auto-pilots, the pilot is just sat there. No skill at all." That's the reality that greets us after we get our licence. You would also be hard pressed to join in with them either, they are just chatting to their mate up the road. I tried to get my boys interested, but they heard this stuff and now make their own jokes about ham operators.
- ColanR 6y ago
  Yeah, too bad there's people using a communication tool to share their opinion with their friends.
thatannoyingguy 6y ago
In my country (Luxembourg) is only one place where you can take the courses. That place is in the south of the country and the courses are held in the evening. Their schedule is impossible to combine it with public transportation and their sessions/courses are only done once per year, meaning that I'd have to wait an entire year to be able to apply to their courses. As a young person, it is nearly inpossible to participate without relying on somebody with a car or living somewhere closer.
- xvf22 6y ago
  It seems easier in Canada but what always puts me off is that there isn't any formal resting center. You need to find an examiner and they set the price. A bunch of them insist on lessons which be useful for some but if like to just write the test.
m0llusk 6y ago
I wonder if Negativland tracks documenting the history and art of "jamming" might be a way of sparking the interest of young people. Track and sound arts are popular new sounds and radio is a great way to expose lots of people to compositions.

150 points by MindGods 6y ago

umpc 6y ago

I got into ham radio almost a year ago. I did so as my software and web development hobby became my career. Ham radio is a very interesting hobby with a large variety of activities and operating techniques. It's been great to learn about how to make direct contacts across the world using just a small antenna and coil using the HF bands. I certainly understand the potential commercial value of spectrum currently allocated to amateurs, though it's a shame to see it constantly under threat, with little regard to its usefulness as an emergency communication service. While it's true that most amateurs are older, I'm 24 and I would encourage anyone looking for something else to do to get licensed and get on the air. There's always something more to learn and do, and many hams are happy to help with choosing and setting up equipment. Check out hamstudy.org if you want to get licensed. It's pretty easy, especially to get a basic Technician class license, and online testing has begun due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

admax88q 6y ago
So what do you do exactly as a ham? Like what does a typical ham session look like for you?
- umpc 6y ago
  There are many different types of activities depending on your interests. I write a lot, so if you're not keen on reading, check out the included YouTube videos. One common type of activity is attempting to make direct contact with a distant station. This could be using a voice mode, digital mode (text), or CW, which just means using Morse code and a keyer to communicate. Operators can make contacts all over the world using the Earth's ionosphere as a mirror, to reflect signals, and send them further than any method of terrestrial propagation can achieve. This is called skywave propagation as opposed to groundwave propagation, which is like how cell phones work. The caveat being that skywave propagation appears to have a degree of randomness to it. It isn't totally random but we collectively do not understand it enough to fully predict when and where our signals will end up. So there's an opportunity to make direct contact with another station somewhere else on Earth, depending on the propagation conditions. So to now actually answer your question, there's novelty in getting your station working, and then using it to have a brief conversation with a random person at least hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away. This is known as a QSO. At different times, for example, with my station being located in North Carolina, I might suddenly be able to reach stations in Europe around sunset. Usually, it's more limited to random areas within the United States with a basic antenna, but not always. If I announce my presence over the radio (call CQ), and someone comes back to me, we'll exchange some basic signal quality info. Afterwards, if the other person wants, you can ask about their radio setup, and talk about common interests, while avoiding some topics like local politics, etc. Here's a video of someone doing this: https://youtu.be/tXIbSGX2SvU?t=3m40s https://youtu.be/tXIbSGX2SvU?t=3m40s That's only one activity while there are many others. Another activity would be pointing a beam antenna at low earth orbit amateur radio satellites to make as many quick contacts with other operators as possible while the satellite is above the horizon. This is a very physically and mentally challenging activity. Here's a video of that: https://youtu.be/QWtdyT4PYMw https://youtu.be/QWtdyT4PYMw There are also digital modes as well. FT8 is a common digital mode for making contacts with much less personal interaction using a PC. This one is easier to just watch and see than to explain: https://youtu.be/bSpyYV-xz5c https://youtu.be/bSpyYV-xz5c Hopefully that gives you some ideas about what it's like to make contacts over the radio. Some people like the social aspects and others (like me) like the technical and experimental aspects of making contacts and seeing where and how far my signals will go.
  - popped 6y ago
    FT8 is amazing and would be an amazing way to suck people on HN in. It's fun without transmitting. I'm at the bottom of New Zealand and get transmissions from all over the world including our antipode, Europe. And that's with a crappy short wave receiver with a tiny built in antenna that you can get for <$100. The fact that someone made the FT8 modulation scheme up out or the blue and people started adopting it and using it and having fun shows the spirit of ham radio. I bet there are folk on here who would be able to come up with some interesting new modulation schemes to push the envelope even further. It's a shame that the venn diagram intersection between the modern tech world and ham radio isn't larger.
    - amatecha 6y ago
      Yeah I've had WSJT-X (or JTDX) listening here in western Canada and I've picked up FT8 messages from New Zealand, Japan, Russia, Brazil... it's crazy! I just used a random piece of wire laying around on my balcony! So cool :D
    - hanoz 6y ago
      If anyone fancies having a play with FT8 without any ham equipment, I was surprised to find I could do so using a regular "world band" shortwave receiver. It does need to have SSB (single sideband) mode, I'm not sure how common that is. Just tune in to 14.074Mhz and listen for the strangely melodic modem-like tones. Download WSJT-X and pipe one into the other. It was at this point I was annoyed to find my new PC doesn't have a mic socket (what's that all about?), but in fact holding my usb webcam up to the radio's loudspeaker was enough to get reports from all over the continent appearing.
  - admax88q 6y ago
    Cool stuff, thanks for the info! I'll watch the videos when I'm no longer on a metered connection. I've always found the physics and technology behind radio fascinating but was never really clear what sort of activities amateur radio operators actually do.
- kwk1 6y ago
  There are amateur radio activities that don't necessarily fit into the "session" scope that are still interesting. For example, there is the AMPRNet [1], a TCP/IP over AX.25 block of the Internet on 44.0.0.0/8. There is a similar effort called Hamwan with its Puget Sound Data Ring [2]. [1] https://www.ampr.org/ https://www.ampr.org/ [2] http://hamwan.org/ http://hamwan.org/
stellersjay 6y ago
Where are you seeing results for online testing? Seems to be tricky to find as most of the ones I have seen have been cancelled or "no walk-in / call ahead". Also thanks for prompting this and keep ham radio alive :)
- umpc 6y ago
  I've heard about various VECs experimenting with online testing by reading the news on QRZ.com or eham.net, though another ham recently mentioned that hamstudy.org now lists online test sessions: https://hamstudy.org/sessions/online https://hamstudy.org/sessions/online I haven't tried online testing yet. I've been putting off upgrading to Amateur Extra class, though I'll probably try one of those online test sessions eventually.
  - beaugunderson 6y ago
    I proctored one of the tests administered by KL7AA (Anchorage); I know GLAARG (Los Angeles) is also doing online tests...
- roamingryan 6y ago
  The MIT Radio Society (W1MX) has gotten their online process up and running and is regularly scheduling sessions. http://w1mx.mit.edu/ham-exams/ http://w1mx.mit.edu/ham-exams/
  - marianov 6y ago
    It looks like they accept people from abroad. Nowhere do they say you need to be a US citizen. Is that possible?
    - roamingryan 6y ago
      That is correct. US Citizenship is not a requirement, however, I believe you do need to have a US mailing address.
- irrational 6y ago

marianov 6y ago

Licensing is the worst part. In my country you have to sit through about 20 2h lessons and then take an examination. No way to just study on your own

beckler 6y ago

I've had an amateur radio license since I was 14, and I got it through a collaboration with our local radio club and the boy scouts. I don't use my license enough, but I love having it. One of my absolute favorite memories growing up was when we did a camping trip during a field day. A field day is basically an annual global contest to see who you can contact and how far you can reach out. We setup a massive portable antenna in the woods, and I stayed up ALL NIGHT on one of our more powerful SSB radios reaching out to people all across the world. Like Ukraine, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, and more (I'm in the US). Young me was so fascinated with talking with those people, that I'm pretty certain it was one of the first times I experienced sonder. SDR is fun, but no where near as rewarding as using analog.

jdshaffer 6y ago
CQ field day, CQ field day! Did the same thing when I was about 13... that was a blast -- camping in a big field with a bunch of other hams... Great memory! -- KA3TMV
nlh 6y ago
1000% this. Same story - was one of the highest of highlights of my ham youth. The local club’s field day operation happened literally a day after my license arrived in the mail and I vividly remember staying up all night totally immersed in this crazy hobby that I’d only been reading about. Huge fancy Kenwood and Icon HF rigs (the amazing ones I could only dream about buying as a 12 y/o), tons of people having fun, and CQ Field Day CQ Field Day into the wee hours. Super fun experience and memory. (Ps - DE K2KD)
entropea 6y ago
ARRL Field Day is the best! I just got back from this years Field Day two weeks ago and its still really active and a large event even though band conditions are really very poor. One year I setup a VHF/UHF log periodic and was able to get 5-10 people to get confirmed contacts with astronauts on the ISS. It was probably the most exciting time I've had in amateur radio, and definitely not something everyone gets to do in life.

h4m1tup 6y ago

I got a general license in the US since it seemed like an interesting hobby, but haven't used it much. Sometimes I feel bad about that, and I've thought a bit about it. Radios are fascinating to learn about, but our HAM regulations seem mired in the past and overly restrictive. You simply aren't allowed to do much on the amateur bands besides chatting with people. For example, I don't believe you can cipher communications unless they're being used to control an RC vehicle. That rules out a lot of DIY-style projects. The regulations and terminology around automated "beacons" are also a tad confusing, and the potential fines are quite heavy. And if you do spend the time reading rules, going to a class or doing flash cards, taking your test, buying a starter radio, and finally talking with some people on a local repeater...then what? Try to contact a different country or continent? You can, but talking to someone across the world feels very pedestrian in this day and age. And while it is technically possible to set up a beacon for something like data collection or remote monitoring on HAM frequencies, it's much easier these days to use an off-the-shelf radio module. You don't need a license to use a $5 LoRa module with an arduino or raspberry pi, and there's no red tape. It's too bad, because I really admire the amateur operators who step in during disasters to keep information flowing. But I can also see why HAM radio is sort of a dying art in the US; like many relics of an optimistic past, it's been left to rot for decades.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
> You simply aren't allowed to do much on the amateur bands besides chatting with people. Here's a fun thing you can do: 802.11b channel 1 is in the amateur band, so as long as you don't use encryption, you can use quite a lot more power than the 802.11 band would normally allow. (Remember that you should only use the amount of power you need, though.) Our amateur rocketry group used ordinary wifi, amplified to 1W and run through a custom cylindrical antenna, to communicate between the rocket (breaking the sound barrier) and the ground.
- chmod600 6y ago
  Now that's cool! But rocketry is also pretty tightly-regulated in my area. So that's two high-attention hobbies, and it starts to seem like a bit much.

brian-armstrong 6y ago

If you're reading this and you're thinking about getting into radio, you can get a Baofeng UV-5R handheld radio which works on the 2m and 70cm bands for $25. It has never been cheaper or easier to get into radio than it is now. These radios are completely portable and will let you "work" the repeaters local to you and can be received 10-15 miles away even without a repeater at 5W power https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-Black/dp/B007H4VT7A https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-Black/dp/B00... Do I need a license, you ask. Yes, you'll need to get a technician's license to transmit, though you can receive on the radio without it. The test has no morse code requirement, and it's entirely multiple choice. The entire question pool is freely available and it only takes a couple weekends to prep for and pass. It'd be an easy task for anyone here. Most of the questions pertain to FCC policy as well as radio safety, just enough to make sure you don't injure yourself or interfere with other radio users. 73s :)

dbcurtis 6y ago
Please don’t get a Baofeng. Those things put out incredibly dirty signals. They are RF polution you can carry in your pocket.
- brian-armstrong 6y ago
  Is there anything near their price that can get people up and making QSOs that is much better? Possibly the Yaesu FT-4X but that's $85, so considerably more than the UV-5R.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  Quite apart from their quality, a VHF handheld is possibly the most boring possible introduction to amateur radio. There is so much more you can do that is so much more interesting than hearing 80 year old retirees talk about their prostates on the local repeaters.
  - brian-armstrong 6y ago
    Does this imply there's a radio frequency that's not dominated by retirees? ;) HF feels considerably harder to get into. If you're a city dweller your only antenna choice is probably a magloop. VHF has options for things like satellite and ISS contacts, and the fact that it's local makes it seem a bit more relevant and community-driven.

chmod600 6y ago

One thing I noticed when getting my license was that broadcasting is not allowed. That makes sense, because you're not supposed to hog the airwaves. But I think they could create room for some kind of amateur programming. For instance, you have to pause every 5 minutes so people can either join the conversation or ask questions. And maybe it would have to be a human speaking live, not a recording or machine. And I'm sure you'd need certain channels and parts of the spectrum for this. The advantage is that this gets content on the airwaves and gives people a chance to get involved. After the program, you can jump onto another part of the spectrum for free-form chat. Like: "That's all for now, but join the discussion starting right now on [callsign of repeater]". It would have to be non-commercial, but people like talking about their hobbies, etc. I could easily see a lot of people doing scheduled 30-minute programs about cars or gardening or whatever.

nullc 6y ago
This isn't precluded under US regulations. Broadcasting means transmissions intended for the general public, as opposed to other amateurs. One way communications are generally prohibited too (except in certain cases like beacon stations and remote control), but as you note-- what you want doesn't need to be one way. It's not even uncommon on HF for people to blather on for many minutes at a time without pause. People could totally do lectures with Q&A, and I imagine many repeaters would be perfectly fine with that use.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah also many people have been duplexing over the years, upstreaming on 2m and downstreaming on 70cm for example. That is allowed as long as you mention your call every few minutes.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
I've seen people doing TV on 13cm. It is possible. It was even easy to receive with a DVB-S box, just omitting the LNB. This was before WiFi so not sure if this is still possible with all the additional traffic on that band. However there's very strict restrictions on playing third-party content like video and music.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

The original article talks about attracting newcommers to the ham radio community, on the other hand I'm here to complain about the trouble of staying in the community. From my experience, one major killer of ham radio is the horrible and dehumanizing electromagnetic interference in modern cities from 0 to 30 MHz. HF/shortwave remains the most interesting spectrum in ham radio - it's the only spectrum capable of international communication without specialized equipment or infrastructure, just throw a random wire out of the window, how wonderful it is. Unfortunately, 0 to 30 MHz is also where most electrical and electronics devices operate at. A cheap bike charger with PWM control can easily disable all HF communication around it, so can a cheap switched-mode power supply, also, yes, builders of transparent PCs without metal enclosures, I'm looking at you (although it's not much of a problem compared to commercial devices)! Government regulations on EMI/RFI is useless when tons and tons of nonconforming devices made by the cheapest vendors are flooding the market. While it's easy to add filters or stop using them if they are yours, but in cities, you often cannot possibly know where they are coming from. And even worse, nobody cares - without a spectrum analyzer (or an SDR equivalent), nobody can see or smell it. Remember those stories about car key fobs being jammed? The media makes them sound almost mysterious, because EMI/RFI is unknown to the general public. Car keys are only a tip of the iceberg, VHF is actually pretty clean, HF is horrible. And even to some people with respective knowledge on the subject, many still don't care - the worst offenders, such as VDSL and Ethernet over Powerlines technologies, are fundamentally harmful to radio communication and can disable all HF receivers in sight. In an ideal world where telecommunication regulations are faithfully enforced, nobody should be allowed to use them, yet the interests of ISP trumps HF amateur services and governments allowed their deployment. Even with all these jammers, HF is still somewhat usable, but only for picking up powerful stations, or using slow, digital modes designed for weak-signal communications. It's better than none, but quite limited (this includes digital modes that requires a higher signal-to-noise radio). When HF becomes a lost battle, the enjoyment and capabilities of amateur radio is reduced greatly. So one is forced to go somewhere else, either physical moving your home or your radio (not an option for most), or moving the spectrum of your operation: VHF (without special setups) is only capable of local communication. Then the only remaining choices for international communication are satellite communication, meteor scatters, and tropospheric scatter. They are interesting technical challenges much in line with the tradition of amateur radios, but far from easy like HF. For example, satellites at Low Earth Orbit are only usable when they are passing your location. With the launch of the first geostationary amateur radio satellite, QO-100 (Es’hail 2), I can only hope the situation of amateur radio without HF will continue becoming better at the next decade and enjoy global coverage by geostationary satellites.

irrational 6y ago

This summer I was supposed to go on a week long backcountry hike with a youth group. The youth would be split into multiple teams and they wanted an adult with a ham radio to be with each team. I volunteered to get a license since there was only one adult who already had his license and was experienced with ham radio. Getting the license was interesting. I’ve never studied engineering or electronics and a lot of the test was things like being able to read circuit schematics, understanding how inductors/capacitors/tranformers/etc. work, learning ohms law and the power law and being able to solve equations with them, learning laws around ham radio, etc. What you don’t learn as part of getting a license is what do you do after you have a license. Where do you buy equipment? What kind of equipment do you need? How do you use a radio? What do all the buttons on the radio do? Etc. I asked someone about this and they said I needed to join my local club to learn this stuff. But, I don’t want to join a club. I have a family, 2 jobs, home remodeling, and various hobbies (woodworking, drawing, reading, board games, baking, gardening, etc.) The last thing I have time for is to join a club ;-) So I’m in this weird spot where I have a license, but don’t actually know what to do with it. Due to the pandemic, the youth trip was cancelled. But it may be rescheduled for a future year. I’ll need to figure all this stuff out before then.

thepangolino 6y ago
What’s the actual point of having to learn all that for the license? What’s the actual point for the license in the first place?
- irrational 6y ago
  The license is an FCC requirement. They are also the ones who come up with the test questions. You would have to ask them. I can understand why they would want me to understand the laws governing ham radio. I don’t understand why I need to be able to read a schematic diagram to get a license. I assume that if I was going to build my own equipment that I would need to know a lot more than what I needed to learn to pass the test.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago

BrianHenryIE 6y ago

> The 66-year-old from Dartmouth, Mass., credits his career in electrical and computer engineering to an early interest in amateur radio. I initially studied electronic systems before later studying computer science, which I credit to my dad's interest in ham radio.

punchclockhero 6y ago

Got the Baofeng and the callsign, in that order. Got licensed because it costs around $10 for the exam with no mandatory classes and to use Echolink. Don't see much point in it as I don't like to talk and the funny chatter is on the unlicensed bands anyway. Seriously, PMR446 near hotels and nightclubs is pure gold. Local gangsters' seating preferences, awkward staff romance, weird room service orders, you name it.

MrRadar 6y ago

As a guy in his 30s who got his ham license last year, there are two major things I think the ham radio community needs to change if they want to increase membership. Firstly, they need to target the right demographic for recruitment. Right now they're laser-focused on targeting teens, since that's the age many of these older guys originally got into the hobby, however (as the article acknowledges) what draws people to amateur radio today is very different to what drew people back then. I think the demographic they need to be targeting is engineers and scientists of all types and electronics hobbyists in their 20s-40s, i.e. people who have an aptitude/knowedge base to build off and who can imagine applications for radio, and who have the income and physical space to invest in the hobby. (Don't get me wrong, if younger people want to get involved they absolutely should be encouraged to do so, but I don't think there is enough interest there to rebuild the base the hobby needs to continue.) Secondly, the ham community needs a much better presence on the web. ARRL's site has a lot of information but if you don't know what you are looking for it can be a bit of a maze to navigate. Also, they really want to sell you their books, which means some of that vital information about being an amateur radio operator is not available for free on their site. The web presence of local clubs is highly variable but often poor. For example, the club I took my license exam through has two different web sites with different information in them, one of which is apparently no longer maintained and the other of which is "temporary". I got a free 1-year membership to the club when I passed my exam so I get a ~monthly newsletter from them, but it's sent from a personal e-mail account in the form of a PDF attachment. I actually deleted those newsletters for the first few months because I didn't know who was sending them or why I was getting them! The club doesn't have any social media presence and meetings were strictly in-person before the Coronavirus. Because I live a 45-minute (in good traffic) drive away from where they hold meetings I hadn't attended any before they held those online ones. Clubs really need to invest in their online presence as that's where people under the age of 50 will first encounter them. They should have a decent-looking site with a dedicated domain, photos/blog posts about activities they do and, if possible, recordings of their meetings so people can see what joining the club brings them. They should also maintain a presence on Facebook and Twitter, if only to post the occasional updates and links to their main site. Online forums aren't much better. QRZ Forums, the largest English-language online amateur radio community, has such a reputation for being hostile to newcomers to the hobby that I haven't even bothered looking at it. r/amateurradio, by nature of being on Reddit, has a much younger and more welcoming demographic than QRZ Forums, but it has the problem of being on Reddit which is not conducive to any kind of long-running discussions which makes forming a community hard. On YouTube channels that focus on amateur radio rarely seem to cover topics related to getting people interested in the hobby or the basics of the hobby, and those that do generally seem tsrgetted at the "prepper" community (which is not me). What got me to take the time to get my license was a guy on a programming forum I follow posting that he was going to do live streams of himself making contacts and otherwise doing projects related to radio. Just seeing the practical side of the hobby was enough to push me from a vague interest to getting my license. Unfortunately he stopped streaming after a few months, but this is exactly the type of content organizations like ARRL or local clubs should be putting out to get people interested.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Personally as a HAM I think our technology is becoming too stale. Commercial tech is now migrating towards high-speed data networks to be used even for voice. With HAM radio we're still stuck with analog voice and very low-bitrate voice codecs in the digital standards. None of which really offer much that analog (and linking tech) didn't. APRS is a joke with its low speeds. The whole idea about ham radio was to innovate... We're not doing that at all, at best we're just using commercial technology. Some advancements to adapt firmware of commercial rigs (MD-380tools, OpenGD77) are amazing, but we're still lifting on what's commercially possible. This is not the ham spirit :( We really need something good to offer and at the moment we haven't. It used to be so cool you could talk to people around the world for free. Now anyone with a phone in their pocket can do that.

m0xte 6y ago
There’s still plenty of innovation left to do. Low bandwidth, low power, long distance signalling is interesting. As are ridiculously high frequencies. Also new modes and repurposing some of the modern radio ICs you can get. But the issue I found is that the technical community is about as dead as it gets. It created a stereotype and then proceeded to get stuck in a hole. This was around 1970. Any newer thinking made it into appliances which cover the 95% of the rest of the user base. Most hams can barely solder a PL259 without destroying it. Even talking modulation schemes solicits a glazed look and some mumbling about 80m QRM. I was about done. This year I didn’t renew my RSGB sub and sold all my radio equipment and test gear. I spent the money on an iPad Pro with Procreate and and a new Mac and am in a better place with respect to personal satisfaction and have some cash left over to spend on experiences and not things.
- walrus01 6y ago
  Compared to innovation in radios for commercial telecom microwave and millimeter wave radios (2.4 all the way up to 86 GHz), ham radio is moribund. There's a whole lot more on the ground real world innovation happening in people building WISPs in very rural, challenging locations with no pre-existing telecom services (except by two-way satellite) than there is happening in ham radio.

jacquesm 6y ago

HAM radio is a complete luxury with today's networks right up until the point that you really need it, for instance during some kind of natural disaster. With high speed satellite internet maybe even that function will be superseded.

teddyh 6y ago
If “some kind of natural disaster might happen” is your only argument, then you’re basically being a prepper.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Natural disasters happen all the time, and HAM radio in the past has traditionally been the last to go down and the first to be back up in those situations because it needs no infrastructure at all to work.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    > […] HAM radio in the past has traditionally been […] You know what’s not like the past? The present, and, even less so, the future. 3G/4G/5G/Satellite phones are rapidly progressing, and everybody already has one. But even if you were right, how does that address my point that arguing for HAM radio with the argument “it might be useful in a disaster” is basically being a prepper?

zeckalpha 6y ago

I got my ham license at 16, later used it at work extensively (non-commercial, research projects), but mostly set it aside in 2016 due to the incessant discussion of hateful politics on the local 2m band. I upgraded to general but my HF setup is portable (no permanent antenna) so it’s harder to hop on, but I hope those bands are less bigoted, or at least, the bigots keep to themselves.

jvanderbot 6y ago

I am working on my HAM General-class license. I have young and non-engineer friends who are into it. It is mostly interesting to them because they have never done something highly technical, and here is a relatively approachable technical hobby. However, I'm decreasingly enthused about HAM. I got my license so I could interact with devices that I wanted to build. However, there are almost no use cases where HAM helps. I cannot build something cheaper, or make it more effective than a commercially available product. It's only at the extreme, un-useful cases that HAM becomes a thing. (Want to bounce signals off the moon?) What I'd like to see from HAM: - More, different competitions. Long-term monitoring, stealthy side-channel transmissions, digital and analog networking competitions (like hackathons: Get a signal from A to B with minimal loss / delay using teams in disparate areas of the country --- internet OK), recovery games (set up a network serving x users with max datarate or voice capacity using this equipment), or encoding / decoding games, and so on. - More support from local governments and infrastructure. I want to know where to sign up to be useful if telecommunications suffers a hiccup. If that is not useful, I want to know and be told how to be useful (esp studying different technology). Some certifications beyond HAM, and specializing in different niche areas would be nice. - More training on HAM-adjacent technologies. To be useful / innovative requires knowing the telecommunications space, and sticking to SSB voice + FT8 for DXs is great, but not helpful when trying to understand telecommunications and make an impact on the world. God forbid a disaster did happen and the HAMs showed up with their 10m antennas and were useful for 30 minutes until the Verizon tech arrived. It'd be more useful if they could bridge 3G / UHF by setting up an adhoc repeater network to actually extend the range of whatever equipment didn't die in the zombie apocalypse. For example: In the IoT area, I thought for sure HAMs would be front-and-center with new mesh networking technologies, WAN, etc. But no, we got another AWS product with minimal device-device communication and called it a day.

sitzkrieg 6y ago
its ham
FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
> I cannot build something cheaper, or make it more effective than a commercially available product. Not sure what you are looking to do, but there are plenty of inexpensive radio designs. Consider the Pixie or the SMT version, the Knight SMiTe, either can be built very cheaply. Onr could also put an amplifier on inexpensive IMS chips for really inexpensive radio projects. A Raspberry Pi Zero can be bitbanged into a transciever using PWM and SDR and can operate pretty much any mode. It's a very noisy, low power output signal and will need filtering and amplification. Still better than a spark gap transmitter, the ultimate low cost radio. For cheap recievers, look into foxhole radio designs.

schoolornot 6y ago

Dad always told me the smartest people he knew were Hams so I figured why not. Skimmed the book, used the flash cards, and got a tech license. In short, it sucks. Some observations: - the exams are oriented towards RF knowledge and will weed out anyone who just wants to go on the air to talk. They should really restore the novice license. Give it the same privileges as technician with no rights to broadcast over 10w or construct towers - there is MASSIVE underutilization of spectrum. not just at the tech level due to inefficient coding but in general, the airwaves are not busy at all whatsoever. I live in NYC and there are rarely more than a dozen or so people on across the entire tech band at any given time. - conversations are dull. the weekly nets can be interesting but pretty much the subject of conversation always revolves around call quality or someone's rig or something to do with radio. It's boring! - proprietary. all the digital modes employ proprietary protocols or proprietary codecs. brandmeister is closed-source. echolink is closed sourced and rarely updated. DSTAR is proprietary. DMR isn't proprietary but the vocoder is. want to setup a repeater? sure, go pay a shady motorola VAR a few bucks and he'll sneak you a unit and user manual.

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
HAM still has some interesting practical uses. Up here in the PNW rally racing events use them to coordinate stage start and emergency/sweeper vehicles. The races are up in the mountains where cell phone service can be quite spotty, but a truck with a repeater parked on one of the higher foothills covers the whole area just fine.
quesera 6y ago
I agree. I hold an Extra class license for work with microwave RF equipment, years ago. Today, the argument for getting a ham license for use as a general communications tool seems to boil down to: "It's like the Internet, except that it's synchronous, slow, requires special (moderately expensive) equipment to access -- and to join, you have to take a test using high school math. Sign up here!". If you're interested in the tech of radio, then a license gives you the ability to legally operate interesting equipment. Or, you might be active in another hobby that has special communcations needs, or you might want to provide a public service in the event of disaster. All legit, but definitely niche.

arbitrage 6y ago

I am a paper HAM, that is a derogatory term in the amateur radio community for us operators who only have a license and don't use it. In short, it sucks. HAM radio is full of old weird people, talking about bodily functions. Wanna go to a HAMfest? If you're under 50years old, you well get weird looks. And weird interactions. The learning curve is brutal to do anything other than exchange callsigns with randos, or talk to old people about communism and their bodily functions. HAM radio has outlived its usefulness. It is really sad, and I regret that. But there is just no point to it.

hanoz 6y ago

If anyone in the UK is thinking about getting a foundation license, you might like to know you can now sit the exam entirely online, as the practical assessment component is currently waived.

sitzkrieg 6y ago

ham is not an acronym, dont write it HAM :-)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jimnotgym 6y ago

There is something soul destroying that comes with the demographic. Long, ill informed, right- wing speeches. Politics is supposed to be a taboo subject, of course. I was listening to a repeater in the UK one day and heard this, "I don't follow the news, I don't follow politics, I don't know the first thing about it. But in my opinion... blah blah Brexit blah" Or another on air every night without fail on 2m FM in the SSB segment... " These modern planes are all auto-pilots, the pilot is just sat there. No skill at all." That's the reality that greets us after we get our licence. You would also be hard pressed to join in with them either, they are just chatting to their mate up the road. I tried to get my boys interested, but they heard this stuff and now make their own jokes about ham operators.

ColanR 6y ago
Yeah, too bad there's people using a communication tool to share their opinion with their friends.

thatannoyingguy 6y ago

In my country (Luxembourg) is only one place where you can take the courses. That place is in the south of the country and the courses are held in the evening. Their schedule is impossible to combine it with public transportation and their sessions/courses are only done once per year, meaning that I'd have to wait an entire year to be able to apply to their courses. As a young person, it is nearly inpossible to participate without relying on somebody with a car or living somewhere closer.

xvf22 6y ago
It seems easier in Canada but what always puts me off is that there isn't any formal resting center. You need to find an examiner and they set the price. A bunch of them insist on lessons which be useful for some but if like to just write the test.

m0llusk 6y ago

I wonder if Negativland tracks documenting the history and art of "jamming" might be a way of sparking the interest of young people. Track and sound arts are popular new sounds and radio is a great way to expose lots of people to compositions.