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ARRL – The National Association for Amateur (Ham) Radio

peter_d_sherman 6y ago
Future To-Do: Learn everything that can be learned about HAM Radio...
- philihp 6y ago
  If you remember electromagnetics from your last physics class, with a little bit of studying it wouldn’t be hard to pass the entry level technician’s exam. It’s a 35 question test from a public bank of 200, and you no longer need to do Morse code. Radios are also inexpensive these days, and a Bao-Feng for $50 will usually be strong enough to get you to a municipal repeater. In the Black Rock Desert, I was able to get about 1.5 kilometers between two of these little radios. You can’t legally broadcast from them without passing the exam, but anyone can listen (that’s the answer to one of the questions on the exam!)
- m0xte 6y ago
  First things to learn: avoid 80m SSB, 2m FM and hamfest food :)
curiousfab 6y ago
Ham Radio has seen a lot of interest during the lockdown, both because it's a fantastic and extremely diverse technical and social hobby that you can spend endless time on in isolation, but also because (especially in the US) ham radio is now only thought of as a hobby but as a public service providing emergency communication. Many radio amateurs who were licensed but inactive for a long time recently came back into the hobby, causing a spike in activity. To those who think that amateur radio is a bunch of guys sitting in front of glowing tube radios, hammering away on their Morse keys (which still exists, and is great fun, too!), nowadays radio amateurs have a multitude of sub-hobbies which include homebrewing equipment of all sorts, ARDF ("fox hunting"), satellite communication (with lots of LEO satellites and the QO-100 geostationary satellite available), moon bounce operation, digital communication schemes that work with extremely weak signals, software defined radio experimentation, contesting (competitive radio sport events), ... the list goes on forever. Frequencies from 137 kHz to hundreds of GHz are available for experimentation. In most countries nowadays the "entry level" license class is very easy to achieve and I encourage everyone with some interest in technology to give it a try.
jhallenworld 6y ago
I'll say this for the ARRL: it's more flexible than the NRA for cases where one's hobby is causing problems with the wider community. Indeed it's over regulated- that you can't carry the internet over ham radio is one of the main reasons for its lack of popularity. Can you imagine if hams and the ARRL held the first amendment in the same regard that the NRA holds the second amendment?
- curiousfab 6y ago
  No commercial activities, no encryption, no politics and no religion are fundamental pillars of ham radio's culture and the adherence to these principles (on the air) has led to a world wide community of radio amateurs, who are living the "ham spirit" across political and cultural borders. It is a very good thing in my opinion. Ham radio would be a completely different hobby, and I dare say not an enjoyble one, without it.
- 2ndisnohobby 6y ago
  The 2nd Amendment is a lot more than someone's hobby. Gun rights are minority and womens' rights.
- crims0n 6y ago
  I would argue the lack of internet over ham radio is more about technical limitations and less about regulation. The only practical transport frequencies are in the VHF/UHF range and those rely on line of sight. Even if you did put some kind of access point on top of a tall tower you are limited to 1200 baud on 2m, 9600 baud on 70cm (which is what most radios support). That is barely enough bandwidth to load simple static HTTP pages, add the overhead of encryption and it is completely impractical. Hams have access to bands higher than 70cm, and some look technically promising for an implementation of internet over radio - but the lack of equipment manufactured for those bands make it a challenge to get off the ground.
- kawfey 6y ago
  > that you can't carry the internet over ham radio is one of the main reasons for its lack of popularity This isn't exactly true; misleading at best. Internet via ham radio isn't really that much "fun" whilst the scope of amateur radio is incredibly broad. You can buy COTS 802.11 networking gear, update their firmware to operate on ham radio channels, and transport TCP/IP at 1500 watts of power all day long (sans encryption), but part 15 devices perform this service admirably. In fact, it's a part of the amateur service to not use amateur spectrum if the communication can be reasonably furnished with another service. A majority of ham radio happens at VHF and below, where data transmission speeds are very slow for TCP/IP communication, but fine for voice, other forms of data like ASCII text or digital voice via FSK/BPSK/MFSK/GMSK/QAM etc modulations. At HF, spectrum is very limited and shared, so wide-band modulations are frowned upon or disallowed, but the phenomena of worldwide propagation via ionospheric refraction is the main allure. There are numerous forms of ham radio internet, like HamWAN, HamNET, BBHN, AREDN, and adhoc mesh systems out there, that transport all kinds of (unencrypted) data useful to the radio amateur, but there are far more Part 15 systems that deliver the Internet and other encrypted information to its users. Allowing encryption on ham radio opens doors to illicit and commercial use of amateur spectrum. The fact you can't use encryption isn't killing ham radio's popularity, it's that it's practitioners and organizations are having trouble keeping ham radio relevant for the 21st century, and advertising/marketing the hobby to a new generation of prospective hams.

Future To-Do: Learn everything that can be learned about HAM Radio...

philihp 6y ago
If you remember electromagnetics from your last physics class, with a little bit of studying it wouldn’t be hard to pass the entry level technician’s exam. It’s a 35 question test from a public bank of 200, and you no longer need to do Morse code. Radios are also inexpensive these days, and a Bao-Feng for $50 will usually be strong enough to get you to a municipal repeater. In the Black Rock Desert, I was able to get about 1.5 kilometers between two of these little radios. You can’t legally broadcast from them without passing the exam, but anyone can listen (that’s the answer to one of the questions on the exam!)
m0xte 6y ago
First things to learn: avoid 80m SSB, 2m FM and hamfest food :)

Ham Radio has seen a lot of interest during the lockdown, both because it's a fantastic and extremely diverse technical and social hobby that you can spend endless time on in isolation, but also because (especially in the US) ham radio is now only thought of as a hobby but as a public service providing emergency communication. Many radio amateurs who were licensed but inactive for a long time recently came back into the hobby, causing a spike in activity. To those who think that amateur radio is a bunch of guys sitting in front of glowing tube radios, hammering away on their Morse keys (which still exists, and is great fun, too!), nowadays radio amateurs have a multitude of sub-hobbies which include homebrewing equipment of all sorts, ARDF ("fox hunting"), satellite communication (with lots of LEO satellites and the QO-100 geostationary satellite available), moon bounce operation, digital communication schemes that work with extremely weak signals, software defined radio experimentation, contesting (competitive radio sport events), ... the list goes on forever. Frequencies from 137 kHz to hundreds of GHz are available for experimentation. In most countries nowadays the "entry level" license class is very easy to achieve and I encourage everyone with some interest in technology to give it a try.

jhallenworld 6y ago

I'll say this for the ARRL: it's more flexible than the NRA for cases where one's hobby is causing problems with the wider community. Indeed it's over regulated- that you can't carry the internet over ham radio is one of the main reasons for its lack of popularity. Can you imagine if hams and the ARRL held the first amendment in the same regard that the NRA holds the second amendment?

curiousfab 6y ago
No commercial activities, no encryption, no politics and no religion are fundamental pillars of ham radio's culture and the adherence to these principles (on the air) has led to a world wide community of radio amateurs, who are living the "ham spirit" across political and cultural borders. It is a very good thing in my opinion. Ham radio would be a completely different hobby, and I dare say not an enjoyble one, without it.
2ndisnohobby 6y ago
The 2nd Amendment is a lot more than someone's hobby. Gun rights are minority and womens' rights.
crims0n 6y ago
I would argue the lack of internet over ham radio is more about technical limitations and less about regulation. The only practical transport frequencies are in the VHF/UHF range and those rely on line of sight. Even if you did put some kind of access point on top of a tall tower you are limited to 1200 baud on 2m, 9600 baud on 70cm (which is what most radios support). That is barely enough bandwidth to load simple static HTTP pages, add the overhead of encryption and it is completely impractical. Hams have access to bands higher than 70cm, and some look technically promising for an implementation of internet over radio - but the lack of equipment manufactured for those bands make it a challenge to get off the ground.
kawfey 6y ago
> that you can't carry the internet over ham radio is one of the main reasons for its lack of popularity This isn't exactly true; misleading at best. Internet via ham radio isn't really that much "fun" whilst the scope of amateur radio is incredibly broad. You can buy COTS 802.11 networking gear, update their firmware to operate on ham radio channels, and transport TCP/IP at 1500 watts of power all day long (sans encryption), but part 15 devices perform this service admirably. In fact, it's a part of the amateur service to not use amateur spectrum if the communication can be reasonably furnished with another service. A majority of ham radio happens at VHF and below, where data transmission speeds are very slow for TCP/IP communication, but fine for voice, other forms of data like ASCII text or digital voice via FSK/BPSK/MFSK/GMSK/QAM etc modulations. At HF, spectrum is very limited and shared, so wide-band modulations are frowned upon or disallowed, but the phenomena of worldwide propagation via ionospheric refraction is the main allure. There are numerous forms of ham radio internet, like HamWAN, HamNET, BBHN, AREDN, and adhoc mesh systems out there, that transport all kinds of (unencrypted) data useful to the radio amateur, but there are far more Part 15 systems that deliver the Internet and other encrypted information to its users. Allowing encryption on ham radio opens doors to illicit and commercial use of amateur spectrum. The fact you can't use encryption isn't killing ham radio's popularity, it's that it's practitioners and organizations are having trouble keeping ham radio relevant for the 21st century, and advertising/marketing the hobby to a new generation of prospective hams.