7 ms·

As the internet gets more balkanized, censored, and controlled by a few giant companies, it makes me think that it's time for a different hobby. Something that

As the internet gets more balkanized, censored, and controlled by a few giant companies, it makes me think that it's time for a different hobby. Something that can be used to subvert censorship (remember the whole "interprets it as damage and routes around it" conceit?) and is more hobbyists and less corporate sounds appealing. Is Ham that hobby? I am genuinely asking. A few days ago a thread here had lots of people agreeing it was mostly old dudes being boring. But I like the idea that maybe I (in Europe) can talk to my friend (in the US) by bouncing radio waves off the moon, or some such, and not relying on intermediaries.

swalberg 2y ago
What I like about the hobby is that it can be a lot of things to a lot of different people. So the emcomm/prepper crowd is very interested in practicing communications for when existing networks go down. That said, everything you do in amateur radio is in the open. So if you want to talk to your European friend, only the Sun can prevent you, but anyone can listen.
ianburrell 2y ago
Amateur radio is not that hobby. There are significant restrictions on what it can be used for. And providing uncensored communication for others is not allowed. Amateur radio is not for public use like public park. It is like a public golf course, where have to pay for membership and can only use it for certain things. Also, amateur radio does not have that much spectrum for the bandwidths we expect for internet. That is what has kept the spectrum from being taken away. Much of the high frequenecy spectrum does have is shared with ISM bands.
- simonw 2y ago
  I agree that understanding the restrictions on HAM usage - including the ban on encryption, and strict rules on what kind of material can be broadcast (since anyone can hear it) - is really important. You don't have to pay ongoing fees: the initial outlay in the USA is $35 for the license (you have to pass the exam) plus the cost for your equipment (~$70 for the cheaper HAM radios on Amazon), but after that there are no ongoing charges.
  - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
    There is a renewal fee for the license, every 10 years. But it's negligible.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - nobodyknowin 2y ago
      Does one have to take a test for renewal? Or is it a one and done type thing?
      - simonw 2y ago
        You don't have to take the test again. I believe you only have to take the test if your license expires at the end of the ten years AND you wait more than two years before renewing it again.
        nobodyknowin 2y ago
        Thank you for your response. I did get my novice license (or whatever the lowest license is called) but never got an old borrowed radio to actually transmit. Then life kind of got in the way. I keep meaning to get back into it, the sstv and various data networks are really cool. I really dig the analog tech.
        wkat4242 2y ago
        Yeah even if you move to another country you don't have to do the test again. You can just transfer your license.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Depends on country. In Holland the fee is substantial and yearly (60€ I believe). In most other EU countries it's once off but the Dutch government wants money for everything.
  - sharksauce 2y ago
- gh02t 2y ago
  > where have to pay for membership and can only use it for certain things Just to clarify for people who might be interested-- this is not a perfect analogy in that you don't have to pay to participate in amateur radio. You have to pay a fee to take the license exams but it's a token amount, and you don't have to pay regularly to use any ham services that I know of. Apart from buying a radio, of course.
  - smitelli 2y ago
    In the US it’s currently $35 for the FCC renewal, which comes up every ten years.
- kayfox 2y ago
  > pay for membership Not in every country or even always in the US. In Canada there is no government fees for ham radio, if the test giver wants to charge a fee, they can, but most do not. In the US there are clubs that pay for new hams fees out of a fund for that purpose.
tkuraku 2y ago
Anyone can use ham radio. Encryption is illegal on those bands though.
- bitfilped 2y ago
  Anyone can listen on a ham radio, you need a license to broadcast. FRS, CB and MURS are the unlicensed options in the US to my knowledge.
  - tkuraku 2y ago
    That's true, but anyone can get a license.
  - kragen 2y ago
    broadcasting is not permitted on ham bands in the us. i suspect you might have meant that you need a license to transmit
    - vitaflo 2y ago
      Can always spot a non-ham by use of the word "broadcast". It's a dead giveaway.
      - kragen 2y ago
        i'm a non-ham actually, but i'm also a shibboleth specialist
      - bitfilped 2y ago
        Or some people just don't care about minor language semantics, radios are never truthfully point to point. Anyone in range can hear them.
    - bitfilped 2y ago
      Lock me up and take away my license...
- kayfox 2y ago
simonw 2y ago
I got my HAM license in the USA a while ago. I'm in it mainly for the emergency communications side of things: I live in a coastal community in California with three roads in and out, all three of which can be affected by affected by storms, earthquakes etc. I've joined ARES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Radio_Emergency_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Radio_Emergency_Servic... - which coordinates to provide HAM support for emergency communications. If a big earthquake temporarily disables a chunk of communications infrastructure I can hopefully be useful!
- BobbyTables2 2y ago
  Jus curious, respectfully, is ARES still relevant? These days it seems like a few portable cell towers should outstrip what a motley group of HAMs can humanly do. About 30 years ago, the people I met who were into ARES seemed a bit weird — sorta a radio version of “preppers”. Maybe I was just in an area not prone to earthquakes…
  - justin66 2y ago
    "If a big earthquake temporarily disables a chunk of communications infrastructure." OP is talking about the kind of thing that kicks in if that cell phone network, or 911 response, or what have you is compromised.
    - tcmart14 2y ago
      I do believe there have been instances where ham radio operators were able to deploy recently and get comms up in some areas faster than others would. These were disasters where they took down the towers, because it happens. And the local hams are faster than the cell phone company is to deploy something.
  - chillingeffect 2y ago
    Ham range can be 100s or >1000 of miles. Cell towers much shorter, under abs max ideal conditions 45 miles. And require much more config and admin. Hams aren't "motley." They're well-organized. That's why they appear to you as "preppers."
aero-glide2 2y ago
You can always find what you are looking for on the internet. Things like zeronet/tor, etc.
bityard 2y ago
I think you're getting unfairly downvoted so I'll try to answer your questions. I've had an interest in radio since I was a kid but have only had my license for about the past decade. The fact that you can have a box full of electronics send information to another box full of electronics _around the world_ without any wires in between still kinda blows my mind. Ham radio is a great hobby. But like all hobbies, you get out of it what you put into it. "Old dudes being boring" for sure are a staple of the ham radio community, but if you come into it with prejudice, you probably won't have the experience you want or make many friends. What are grumpy old men famous for? That's right, loudly complaining about things other people do and say. So when I see an HN or Reddit thread about ham radio complaining about all the old farts on the air, my mind melts from the overload of irony. That aside, I don't think I would count on ham radio for subverting censorship but I guess it depends on what you mean. Laws vary by country but in the US and in most countries, you cannot broadcast to the general public, play music, encrypt your transmissions, or use ham radio frequencies for any business purpose. A ham radio license is permission from your country's government to get on the air for the sake of playing with radio waves and communicating with other hams locally or around the globe without any further agenda. Bouncing signals off the moon is still a fair technical challenge but it has and can be done. But we also bounce signals off the Earth's ionosphere (in the HF bands) and through satellite repeaters, both of which are far easier. I recommend looking into it and seeing where it takes you. There are plenty of resources online that will help you get started.
- hilbert42 2y ago
  ""Old dudes being boring" for sure are a staple of the ham radio community, but if you come into it with prejudice, you probably won't have the experience you want or make many friends." Ha, one of the great modern (and unsung) ironies of Amateur Radio can only be seen from today's perspective. When I first got my amateur license decades ago long before the internet, amateurs would find themselves on the end of disparaging or pejorative jibes from those who weren't radio amateurs (but who—more often than not—were also family members) that went something to the effect 'heaven only knows how they manage to gabber and yabber on about such inconsequential garbage for so long' and other like comments. Now Amateurs can revenge that wrong with a vengeance beyond comparison. All they have to do is to point to the almost infinite tons of inconsequential garbage on Social Media that far exceedes the sum total of all utterances ever made by Radio Amateurs by many orders of magnitude. I've often wondered why Amateurs don't rub this fact home to the Great Unwashed with much glee
sbrorson 2y ago
The thing which seems to be overlooked -- both in the linked article and in the HN comments -- is that at one time ham radio was a hobby for folks wanting to play around with state-of-the-art technology. It was more than just a bunch of guys chatting with each other over a radio. At one time most people had to build their own ham rig from piece parts. One had to have a serious amount of engineering ability to do so ... or at least be able to read a schematic published in a magazine and solder together a radio, not a small feat. As a hobby it was all about becoming proficient in electrical engineering, then enjoying your proficiency by chatting with -- and showing off to -- like-minded guys around the world. Ham magazines like QST and 73 published schematics and other how-to articles which amounted to an excellent education in practical electrical engineering. 73 magazine in particular was very technical -- it assumed you had good working knowledge of many common RF and audio circuits. Also, to get a ham license you needed to take a test demonstrating a good level of proficiency. For the lowest rung "novice" license you just had to demonstrate knowledge of Morse code at a slow but reasonable pace. For higher rungs of the achievement ladder like "advanced" or "extra" you needed to pass an exam about electronics as well as receive and send Morse code at a fast clip. The license presented a barrier to entry which didn't exist in CB radio -- which some hams looked down upon as a cesspool of unwashed, technically illiterate bozos. My exposure to ham radio really started in the 1970s since my dad had been a ham playing with homebuilt radios since he was a kid in the 1930s. In the '70s the hobby was trifurcating. On one hand were the hard-core guys who built their own rigs, sometimes for the challenging high-frequency bands. Some also participated in designing and launching a ham-radio satellite via the ARRL. Early forms of digital encoding over radio were also big. Those guys were the real engineering types, and I admired them. On the other hand, commercial outfits were selling ready-to-use radios ... no engineering skills needed. In the middle were guys assembling and using stuff from Heathkit -- a great way to learn about electronics. The ham hobby has been fading away for many years. I think the thrill of building a radio and then talking to somebody on a different continent with it has diminished in the face of cheap international calling, cell phones, Skype, etc. The only thing left for hams to do these days involves disaster relief -- and the remaining ham mag QST plays up that theme (or at least did the last time I looked). Meanwhile, the young nerds who used to take up ham radio now occupy themselves with various open-source software projects. I suppose that's natural.
jimhefferon 2y ago
I agree that there are a lot of people in a certain demographic. But you can have a lot of fun playing with various technologies.
dyauspitr 2y ago
It depends. I think the ham crowd skews older so there is a lot of misogynistic humor (which I enjoy) and a bunch of racist humor (which I don’t enjoy). Overall it’s definitely not boring, especially if you enjoy a slower paced, in depth discussion of topics.
- hilbert42 2y ago
  "…a bunch of racist humor" Huh, perhaps where you are but I've never heard any of note. AR is pretty clean in that respect, self-policing works very well.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    Yes your experience is heavily location dependent.
    - hilbert42 2y ago
      OK, I'll have to accept that expansion. Was it mostly on VHF (would seem more likely)?
      - misstuned 2y ago
        You hear it in the UK on 160m, there are a couple of nets that deal in that kind of "non politically correct" stuff, I don't tune in.
        hilbert42 2y ago
        Hum, OK. I'm in VK, seems it's quieter here. Thought they'd use VHF to keep it local, but I suppose 160m is the next best thing (it's not the best look, you ought to keep that traffic local if possible). PS: Sorry about that damn typo, I must kill autocorrect.
        wkat4242 2y ago
        Yeah and the Italians always ignore any power limits so you hear them all over the world :)
mordae 2y ago
It's mostly old guys erecting large antennas to connect their boat anchor tube radios to, from what I read online. It's a great hobby if you are in it for the actual tech itself. Check out e.g. https://pysdr.org/ https://pysdr.org/ for a nice introduction. There is https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ to get you started and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Radio for more advanced stuff. You don't need a license to listen! Also, people are doing some crazy stuff: https://pietern.github.io/goestools/guides/minimal_receiver.html https://pietern.github.io/goestools/guides/minimal_receiver....
- hilbert42 2y ago
  "It's mostly old guys erecting large antennas to connect their boat anchor tube radios to, from what I read online" I disagree, it's much more that, far too much to discuss here. A starting point would be to check the ARRL and RSGB handbooks which provide a reasonably comprehensive overview of AR. (Google each for more info.) There are many more specialist books if you want even more in-depth information.
  - teleforce 2y ago
    You can say that again, for example please check this excellent references by ARRL for radio communications [1]. [1] ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications 100th Edition Six-Volume Set: https://home.arrl.org/action/Store/Product-Details/productId/2003373095 https://home.arrl.org/action/Store/Product-Details/productId...
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  > It's mostly old guys erecting large antennas to connect their boat anchor tube radios to... Old guys? Tube radios? You got my attention.
  - mikewarot 2y ago
    I've got a friend who has been fixing those things since he was a kid in the 1950s... I've been helping him recently, it's an ersatz apprenticeship. Almost everything is now well beyond economic repair. It's all about emotions and nostalgia for almost all of the gear. I no longer jump when something smokes or pops, and I know it's usually a good sign, as it helps you figure out where the trouble is. ;-) I've learned to hate Silver Mica capacitors, and came up with a technique to help track down the noisy ones. (Take out all of the tubes, leave B+ on... measure the voltage across all the resistors, most of them will read 0 volts, if you do get a voltage, check the schematic and see if it's reasonable, if not... there's current flowing to a bad silver-mica cap through it. It really cut down on the time to find issues) Collins 30S1 amplifiers.... those will always command fear and extreme caution. 3000 volts at a solid Amp will easily burn off limbs, and it will hurt like hell as you watch it happen to you. Or... it'll just kill you, and burn your corpse.
0xEF 2y ago
Ham radio is not that hobby. For example, broadcasting is not allowed, one person-to-person comms. Subverting censorship? Not really. There's no cussing on the air, English only, make your contact to deliver info and move on. Maybe you get a rag chew on a local repeater, but that conversation will be about housework or health problems. Nobody is subverting anything in ham radio, though some of the tacticoolies might pretend they are. Now, do you want a hobby that lets you explore the physics of antennas, how our atmosphere actually works, build your own experimental low power QRP rig just to see how far you can throw a CW(Morse) signal with a tiny bit of juice, or maybe help set up comms for local events or emergencies? Yes, ham radio is that hobby.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  English only? Not in Europe, everyone speaks their local language. Callsigns are generally spelled using the nato Alphabet though.
  - 0xEF 2y ago
    That's not in keeping with my experience, even ignoring the fact that I am in North America. I've made hundreds of contacts in the EU during contests and only English was used. Do they perhaps use their native languages on local repeaters? If that is the case, I would not hear it since contesting is done on HF.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Ah ok yes I'm never on HF. On HF it's more English only due to the many languages here in Europe. Especially during contests of course. However people do have local chats and ragchews in the local language. It's more the contests that are English only (but that doesn't go any further than "59 good copy. Next."). Which is why I hate contesting, I find It so boring that nobody has time to speak. I have no drive to be a "winner" so I never care about the number of contacts. In fact most people in the ham demographic here would speak very limited English anyway due to not learning it at school in their days.
fullspectrumdev 2y ago
HAM while playing by the rules is pretty much “not that”, due to ban on encryption and such. Doesn’t help that the HAM community will more than happily snitch on you if you goof around too much, and licences mean your full dox are publicly searchable (at least in America).
- vitaflo 2y ago
  Hams self-police because our spectrum allocation is a privilege from the government that can be taken away if people don't play by the rules. Also, a valid address for your license can be a PO Box if you care about your personal details being online.

swalberg 2y ago

What I like about the hobby is that it can be a lot of things to a lot of different people. So the emcomm/prepper crowd is very interested in practicing communications for when existing networks go down. That said, everything you do in amateur radio is in the open. So if you want to talk to your European friend, only the Sun can prevent you, but anyone can listen.

ianburrell 2y ago

Amateur radio is not that hobby. There are significant restrictions on what it can be used for. And providing uncensored communication for others is not allowed. Amateur radio is not for public use like public park. It is like a public golf course, where have to pay for membership and can only use it for certain things. Also, amateur radio does not have that much spectrum for the bandwidths we expect for internet. That is what has kept the spectrum from being taken away. Much of the high frequenecy spectrum does have is shared with ISM bands.

simonw 2y ago
I agree that understanding the restrictions on HAM usage - including the ban on encryption, and strict rules on what kind of material can be broadcast (since anyone can hear it) - is really important. You don't have to pay ongoing fees: the initial outlay in the USA is $35 for the license (you have to pass the exam) plus the cost for your equipment (~$70 for the cheaper HAM radios on Amazon), but after that there are no ongoing charges.
- BenjiWiebe 2y ago
  There is a renewal fee for the license, every 10 years. But it's negligible.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - nobodyknowin 2y ago
    Does one have to take a test for renewal? Or is it a one and done type thing?
    - simonw 2y ago
      You don't have to take the test again. I believe you only have to take the test if your license expires at the end of the ten years AND you wait more than two years before renewing it again.
      - nobodyknowin 2y ago
        Thank you for your response. I did get my novice license (or whatever the lowest license is called) but never got an old borrowed radio to actually transmit. Then life kind of got in the way. I keep meaning to get back into it, the sstv and various data networks are really cool. I really dig the analog tech.
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        Yeah even if you move to another country you don't have to do the test again. You can just transfer your license.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Depends on country. In Holland the fee is substantial and yearly (60€ I believe). In most other EU countries it's once off but the Dutch government wants money for everything.
- sharksauce 2y ago
gh02t 2y ago
> where have to pay for membership and can only use it for certain things Just to clarify for people who might be interested-- this is not a perfect analogy in that you don't have to pay to participate in amateur radio. You have to pay a fee to take the license exams but it's a token amount, and you don't have to pay regularly to use any ham services that I know of. Apart from buying a radio, of course.
- smitelli 2y ago
  In the US it’s currently $35 for the FCC renewal, which comes up every ten years.
kayfox 2y ago
> pay for membership Not in every country or even always in the US. In Canada there is no government fees for ham radio, if the test giver wants to charge a fee, they can, but most do not. In the US there are clubs that pay for new hams fees out of a fund for that purpose.

tkuraku 2y ago

Anyone can use ham radio. Encryption is illegal on those bands though.

bitfilped 2y ago
Anyone can listen on a ham radio, you need a license to broadcast. FRS, CB and MURS are the unlicensed options in the US to my knowledge.
- tkuraku 2y ago
  That's true, but anyone can get a license.
- kragen 2y ago
  broadcasting is not permitted on ham bands in the us. i suspect you might have meant that you need a license to transmit
  - vitaflo 2y ago
    Can always spot a non-ham by use of the word "broadcast". It's a dead giveaway.
    - kragen 2y ago
      i'm a non-ham actually, but i'm also a shibboleth specialist
    - bitfilped 2y ago
      Or some people just don't care about minor language semantics, radios are never truthfully point to point. Anyone in range can hear them.
  - bitfilped 2y ago
    Lock me up and take away my license...
kayfox 2y ago

simonw 2y ago

I got my HAM license in the USA a while ago. I'm in it mainly for the emergency communications side of things: I live in a coastal community in California with three roads in and out, all three of which can be affected by affected by storms, earthquakes etc. I've joined ARES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Radio_Emergency_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Radio_Emergency_Servic... - which coordinates to provide HAM support for emergency communications. If a big earthquake temporarily disables a chunk of communications infrastructure I can hopefully be useful!

BobbyTables2 2y ago
Jus curious, respectfully, is ARES still relevant? These days it seems like a few portable cell towers should outstrip what a motley group of HAMs can humanly do. About 30 years ago, the people I met who were into ARES seemed a bit weird — sorta a radio version of “preppers”. Maybe I was just in an area not prone to earthquakes…
- justin66 2y ago
  "If a big earthquake temporarily disables a chunk of communications infrastructure." OP is talking about the kind of thing that kicks in if that cell phone network, or 911 response, or what have you is compromised.
  - tcmart14 2y ago
    I do believe there have been instances where ham radio operators were able to deploy recently and get comms up in some areas faster than others would. These were disasters where they took down the towers, because it happens. And the local hams are faster than the cell phone company is to deploy something.
- chillingeffect 2y ago
  Ham range can be 100s or >1000 of miles. Cell towers much shorter, under abs max ideal conditions 45 miles. And require much more config and admin. Hams aren't "motley." They're well-organized. That's why they appear to you as "preppers."

aero-glide2 2y ago

You can always find what you are looking for on the internet. Things like zeronet/tor, etc.

bityard 2y ago

I think you're getting unfairly downvoted so I'll try to answer your questions. I've had an interest in radio since I was a kid but have only had my license for about the past decade. The fact that you can have a box full of electronics send information to another box full of electronics _around the world_ without any wires in between still kinda blows my mind. Ham radio is a great hobby. But like all hobbies, you get out of it what you put into it. "Old dudes being boring" for sure are a staple of the ham radio community, but if you come into it with prejudice, you probably won't have the experience you want or make many friends. What are grumpy old men famous for? That's right, loudly complaining about things other people do and say. So when I see an HN or Reddit thread about ham radio complaining about all the old farts on the air, my mind melts from the overload of irony. That aside, I don't think I would count on ham radio for subverting censorship but I guess it depends on what you mean. Laws vary by country but in the US and in most countries, you cannot broadcast to the general public, play music, encrypt your transmissions, or use ham radio frequencies for any business purpose. A ham radio license is permission from your country's government to get on the air for the sake of playing with radio waves and communicating with other hams locally or around the globe without any further agenda. Bouncing signals off the moon is still a fair technical challenge but it has and can be done. But we also bounce signals off the Earth's ionosphere (in the HF bands) and through satellite repeaters, both of which are far easier. I recommend looking into it and seeing where it takes you. There are plenty of resources online that will help you get started.

hilbert42 2y ago
""Old dudes being boring" for sure are a staple of the ham radio community, but if you come into it with prejudice, you probably won't have the experience you want or make many friends." Ha, one of the great modern (and unsung) ironies of Amateur Radio can only be seen from today's perspective. When I first got my amateur license decades ago long before the internet, amateurs would find themselves on the end of disparaging or pejorative jibes from those who weren't radio amateurs (but who—more often than not—were also family members) that went something to the effect 'heaven only knows how they manage to gabber and yabber on about such inconsequential garbage for so long' and other like comments. Now Amateurs can revenge that wrong with a vengeance beyond comparison. All they have to do is to point to the almost infinite tons of inconsequential garbage on Social Media that far exceedes the sum total of all utterances ever made by Radio Amateurs by many orders of magnitude. I've often wondered why Amateurs don't rub this fact home to the Great Unwashed with much glee

sbrorson 2y ago

The thing which seems to be overlooked -- both in the linked article and in the HN comments -- is that at one time ham radio was a hobby for folks wanting to play around with state-of-the-art technology. It was more than just a bunch of guys chatting with each other over a radio. At one time most people had to build their own ham rig from piece parts. One had to have a serious amount of engineering ability to do so ... or at least be able to read a schematic published in a magazine and solder together a radio, not a small feat. As a hobby it was all about becoming proficient in electrical engineering, then enjoying your proficiency by chatting with -- and showing off to -- like-minded guys around the world. Ham magazines like QST and 73 published schematics and other how-to articles which amounted to an excellent education in practical electrical engineering. 73 magazine in particular was very technical -- it assumed you had good working knowledge of many common RF and audio circuits. Also, to get a ham license you needed to take a test demonstrating a good level of proficiency. For the lowest rung "novice" license you just had to demonstrate knowledge of Morse code at a slow but reasonable pace. For higher rungs of the achievement ladder like "advanced" or "extra" you needed to pass an exam about electronics as well as receive and send Morse code at a fast clip. The license presented a barrier to entry which didn't exist in CB radio -- which some hams looked down upon as a cesspool of unwashed, technically illiterate bozos. My exposure to ham radio really started in the 1970s since my dad had been a ham playing with homebuilt radios since he was a kid in the 1930s. In the '70s the hobby was trifurcating. On one hand were the hard-core guys who built their own rigs, sometimes for the challenging high-frequency bands. Some also participated in designing and launching a ham-radio satellite via the ARRL. Early forms of digital encoding over radio were also big. Those guys were the real engineering types, and I admired them. On the other hand, commercial outfits were selling ready-to-use radios ... no engineering skills needed. In the middle were guys assembling and using stuff from Heathkit -- a great way to learn about electronics. The ham hobby has been fading away for many years. I think the thrill of building a radio and then talking to somebody on a different continent with it has diminished in the face of cheap international calling, cell phones, Skype, etc. The only thing left for hams to do these days involves disaster relief -- and the remaining ham mag QST plays up that theme (or at least did the last time I looked). Meanwhile, the young nerds who used to take up ham radio now occupy themselves with various open-source software projects. I suppose that's natural.

jimhefferon 2y ago

I agree that there are a lot of people in a certain demographic. But you can have a lot of fun playing with various technologies.

dyauspitr 2y ago

It depends. I think the ham crowd skews older so there is a lot of misogynistic humor (which I enjoy) and a bunch of racist humor (which I don’t enjoy). Overall it’s definitely not boring, especially if you enjoy a slower paced, in depth discussion of topics.

hilbert42 2y ago
"…a bunch of racist humor" Huh, perhaps where you are but I've never heard any of note. AR is pretty clean in that respect, self-policing works very well.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  Yes your experience is heavily location dependent.
  - hilbert42 2y ago
    OK, I'll have to accept that expansion. Was it mostly on VHF (would seem more likely)?
    - misstuned 2y ago
      You hear it in the UK on 160m, there are a couple of nets that deal in that kind of "non politically correct" stuff, I don't tune in.
      - hilbert42 2y ago
        Hum, OK. I'm in VK, seems it's quieter here. Thought they'd use VHF to keep it local, but I suppose 160m is the next best thing (it's not the best look, you ought to keep that traffic local if possible). PS: Sorry about that damn typo, I must kill autocorrect.
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        Yeah and the Italians always ignore any power limits so you hear them all over the world :)

mordae 2y ago

It's mostly old guys erecting large antennas to connect their boat anchor tube radios to, from what I read online. It's a great hobby if you are in it for the actual tech itself. Check out e.g. https://pysdr.org/ https://pysdr.org/ for a nice introduction. There is https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ to get you started and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Radio for more advanced stuff. You don't need a license to listen! Also, people are doing some crazy stuff: https://pietern.github.io/goestools/guides/minimal_receiver.html https://pietern.github.io/goestools/guides/minimal_receiver....

hilbert42 2y ago
"It's mostly old guys erecting large antennas to connect their boat anchor tube radios to, from what I read online" I disagree, it's much more that, far too much to discuss here. A starting point would be to check the ARRL and RSGB handbooks which provide a reasonably comprehensive overview of AR. (Google each for more info.) There are many more specialist books if you want even more in-depth information.
- teleforce 2y ago
  You can say that again, for example please check this excellent references by ARRL for radio communications [1]. [1] ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications 100th Edition Six-Volume Set: https://home.arrl.org/action/Store/Product-Details/productId/2003373095 https://home.arrl.org/action/Store/Product-Details/productId...
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> It's mostly old guys erecting large antennas to connect their boat anchor tube radios to... Old guys? Tube radios? You got my attention.
- mikewarot 2y ago
  I've got a friend who has been fixing those things since he was a kid in the 1950s... I've been helping him recently, it's an ersatz apprenticeship. Almost everything is now well beyond economic repair. It's all about emotions and nostalgia for almost all of the gear. I no longer jump when something smokes or pops, and I know it's usually a good sign, as it helps you figure out where the trouble is. ;-) I've learned to hate Silver Mica capacitors, and came up with a technique to help track down the noisy ones. (Take out all of the tubes, leave B+ on... measure the voltage across all the resistors, most of them will read 0 volts, if you do get a voltage, check the schematic and see if it's reasonable, if not... there's current flowing to a bad silver-mica cap through it. It really cut down on the time to find issues) Collins 30S1 amplifiers.... those will always command fear and extreme caution. 3000 volts at a solid Amp will easily burn off limbs, and it will hurt like hell as you watch it happen to you. Or... it'll just kill you, and burn your corpse.

0xEF 2y ago

Ham radio is not that hobby. For example, broadcasting is not allowed, one person-to-person comms. Subverting censorship? Not really. There's no cussing on the air, English only, make your contact to deliver info and move on. Maybe you get a rag chew on a local repeater, but that conversation will be about housework or health problems. Nobody is subverting anything in ham radio, though some of the tacticoolies might pretend they are. Now, do you want a hobby that lets you explore the physics of antennas, how our atmosphere actually works, build your own experimental low power QRP rig just to see how far you can throw a CW(Morse) signal with a tiny bit of juice, or maybe help set up comms for local events or emergencies? Yes, ham radio is that hobby.

wkat4242 2y ago
English only? Not in Europe, everyone speaks their local language. Callsigns are generally spelled using the nato Alphabet though.
- 0xEF 2y ago
  That's not in keeping with my experience, even ignoring the fact that I am in North America. I've made hundreds of contacts in the EU during contests and only English was used. Do they perhaps use their native languages on local repeaters? If that is the case, I would not hear it since contesting is done on HF.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Ah ok yes I'm never on HF. On HF it's more English only due to the many languages here in Europe. Especially during contests of course. However people do have local chats and ragchews in the local language. It's more the contests that are English only (but that doesn't go any further than "59 good copy. Next."). Which is why I hate contesting, I find It so boring that nobody has time to speak. I have no drive to be a "winner" so I never care about the number of contacts. In fact most people in the ham demographic here would speak very limited English anyway due to not learning it at school in their days.

fullspectrumdev 2y ago

HAM while playing by the rules is pretty much “not that”, due to ban on encryption and such. Doesn’t help that the HAM community will more than happily snitch on you if you goof around too much, and licences mean your full dox are publicly searchable (at least in America).

vitaflo 2y ago
Hams self-police because our spectrum allocation is a privilege from the government that can be taken away if people don't play by the rules. Also, a valid address for your license can be a PO Box if you care about your personal details being online.