
We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio - resters
https://www.ke6mt.us/2018/05/hf-ham-radio-on-a-budget-qrp-labs-and-qrpguys/
======
httpz
I have a license because my high school teacher made us do it but I never
quite understood what hobbyists do with it. I see how it can be a useful skill
to have for people in a certain profession but as a hobbyist what do you do?
Do people just talk to random people on the radio? I'm genuinely curious.

~~~
themodelplumber
It's an incredibly broad hobby. I just got my first award by downloading
digital images (SSTV) from the ISS using a $35 handheld radio, and that didn't
require any talking at all.

There are tons of things you can do, so many that it's hard to sum up. It also
combines well with other hobbies. Or it can be a symbol or inspiration of its
own kind, an objective reminder that more science in your life is a good
thing.

One of the biggest advantages is the practically free education. If you
upgrade your license you'll learn a lot of really fascinating stuff. I really
wish I knew about propagation and differences between the various bands and
band schedules back when I was a kid, fooling around with my dad's Patrolman
radio. I also learned how effective logging can be, and have applied that in
just about every area of my life.

Finally, there's just something about breaking the silence and making that
call when you're out in the middle of nowhere. Even if you're the world's
biggest introvert, you might end up helping somebody by keeping your radio
turned on and tuned in.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9c9n0q/my_for...](https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9c9n0q/my_forthever_contact_was_an_emergency/)

~~~
cnnrro
> I also learned how effective logging can be, and have applied that in just
> about every area of my life.

This statement really piqued my curiosity. Would you mind expanding on it?

~~~
themodelplumber
Sure, as a radio operator, even just a listener-operator, you quickly find
that A) you are expected to keep a log, and in many situations _must_ keep a
log (contests are a good example), and B) a log easily runs circles around
your memory. As it turns out, logs also provide a helpful context for bridging
the gap between the subjective and objective lenses, both of which are helpful
and needed for solving problems, reaching goals, etc. no matter the activity.

In many areas of life, I knew I was really far too subjective due to my
research into my personal psychology (I'm a professional coach) and wondered
about different ways I could be _more_ objective without actually becoming an
external sensing-measuring device. :-) Reading about logging tools like
SINPO[0] helped me intuitively identify new ways of logging & spreadsheeting
my way through different activities and situations.

As an example, when I get sick, I now engage this logging skill rather than
just feeling my way through the illness, and I get to see some really cool
emergent properties of this new personal system. I usually monitor my vitals
in addition to writing down some subjective 1-10 ratings of how I feel in
terms of general wellbeing, nausea, depression, and anxiety as the day passes.
I have an autoimmune condition and while I can't just take a pill and cure
that, my logs have shown me the peaks and troughs of amplitude within every
passing hour of severe illness, when those illnesses come. I discovered that
as I watch this data I can be more nuanced about the way I treat my sick time,
and ended up actually getting productive work done that I _wanted to get done_
while "sick", by recognizing the high points and patterns in rest and energy
buildup. "Riding the waves" with more precision, so to speak. There is also
the analytical side of this, where I'll occasionally look back through my logs
and see icons like a circled "!!!" which means "wow you tried something new
here and it worked amazingly well, please add this to your toolkit for this
activity from now on."

Because you're effectively engaging more of your "sensor suite," you kind of
feel more like the space ship that can navigate the asteroid field vs. the one
that really gets banged up. When you fold in the analysis step, it's like
you're now better able to approach even more treacherous asteroid fields--your
machinery is getting upgrades over time.

Incidentally, when I meet up with a doctor, I can be much more accurate about
what happened and when.

I do the same logging thing at work, and now keep logs as part of just about
every project. In some cases this is a literal mini-blog on a web page, and in
other cases it's a text file tucked somewhere 15 folders deep, and in still
other cases it's a small mark in the margin of a paper journal page.

I also discovered that this helps with other hobbies. I run RPGs for my kids
and develop my own table-top RPGs, and keeping a log is a huge tip for a
really effective campaign. Later on the log can become a published, written
narrative (e.g. Record of Lodoss War), or mined for new ideas.

I used to struggle to keep a personal journal, but I've since found that I can
more easily approach the practice by starting from the "Stardate" mindset and
being a tad more robotic regarding current circumstances than I can by trying
to keep the personal history that used to come to mind when I'd consider
journaling.

Another thing I've learned is that we are extremely brittle about this
practice, as a society. Our thinking about keeping logs tends to be black &
white (a common sign of lack of education on the matter) and we hesitate or
think in terms like "OCD" when people around us really leverage this
practice[1]. IMO this is really unfortunate.

Anyway I hope this expands on it a bit!

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SINPO_code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SINPO_code)

1\. [https://qz.com/507727/a-man-who-recorded-his-every-sneeze-
fo...](https://qz.com/507727/a-man-who-recorded-his-every-sneeze-for-five-
years-might-have-a-fix-for-your-pollen-allergy/) (example)

~~~
foobarian
Just to chime in, I saw an old-timer keep a daily work log in a text file, and
that appealed to me so I started it too. This was in 1998, and to this day I
still keep writing new entries to that same text file pretty much every
business day. Old test account credentials, notes on what got done, ticket
numbers, ideas, unfinished todos, the works. It also helps with time sheets at
the end of the month :-)

~~~
wrycoder
Rather like back in the day people like Jefferson would keep a daily journal.
Hand-written in a paper notebook of course, and still available 250 years
later, without worrying about hardware and data conversion issues.

~~~
navaati
Let's not be too dramatic, ascii and utf8 will be readable in 250 years,
that's a certainty.

As for the hardware issue, his notebook was kept because he was an important
person. Average Joe's notebook had a much greater chance to go into the
landfill.

That's the same for today persons' digital files: Average Joe laptop goes to
landfill but I'm sure presidents and whatever's files are archived by State or
their families, same as they did for the paper notebook back then.

------
HocusLocus
Cell phones are laughable single points of failure. Everyone brought this upon
themselves from decades of bad engineering choices, if you consider resilience
an objective. Once upon a time there was a terrestrial network of small
autonomous telephone exchanges. Your phone numbers were tied to geographical
locations. It seemed 'inconvenient'. Now you or your signal often have to
travel hundreds of miles (as the crow flies) to find a central office that is
required for call completion, even between two phones 10 feet apart. Even so-
called 'land line phones' are tied into this network now because cell phone
providers have remade the old Bell system in their own image and require, of
all things, Internet connectivity and utility power to boxes on poles all over
the neighborhood to work.

Expect it to fail all at once. You will not be disappointed. What this means
in terms of the value of amateur radio is not hard to figure out.

~~~
gambler
Thank you for posting this.

 _> Now you or your signal often have to travel hundreds of miles (as the crow
flies) to find a central office that is required for call completion, even
between two phones 10 feet apart._

And people generally think this is okay. Until something big happens and
everyone reacts to it by trying to call other people, the central office gets
overwhelmed, and the entire system stops working right when it's needed the
most.

Then you get something like AWS or Azure outage. And you see engineers saying
"it's fine, there are so many services down, no one expects out to work".

Then you get something like that big Oculus Rift shutdown. No big deal, right?
But do you know that that some industrial control systems use certificate
signing?

I've just finished reading The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. If you think
about it, the kind of systemic failure he describes is not as ridiculous as it
might sound. Over time, people start taking large technical systems for
granted, like forces of nature.

~~~
phaedrus
The Machine Stops was one of the first science fiction stories I ever read,
and one I will never forget.

------
apatters
I've always been curious about this hobby but never jumped in. The technology
is an interesting curiosity to me but speaking bluntly what would probably
give me the impetus to really spend time on it would be tapping into any kind
of underground content or social experience that exists. For instance I read
that Art Bell got started by broadcasting his show over shortwave bands, what
a fascinating experience it would have been to be hanging out with those guys
and listening to their conversations through amateur radio.

What is the easiest way for me to start listening in and discovering what's
out there on the airwaves? Do I have to buy hardware or are there purely
software/online options? Also I live in Thailand so most of the local chatter
would probably be in Thai which is hard for me to follow.

~~~
SOMA_BOFH
Online SDR receivers are a great way to listen using other people's equipment:

[http://www.websdr.org](http://www.websdr.org)

Reverse Beacon Network and PSKreporter are excellent tools to see how people's
signals are propagating:

[http://www.reversebeacon.net](http://www.reversebeacon.net)

ttps://pskreporter.info/pskmap.html

~~~
apatters
Oh man. This is amazing. Going to require at least one full evening to figure
out WTF I am looking at though :)

~~~
BenjiWiebe
Check out the WSPRnet map to get a visual indicator of propagation conditions,
by seeing which automated stations can hear which other automated stations.

------
threeio
I'll also toss out that there is a great amateur radio community on Reddit...
where you can avoid some of the more... seasoned radio operators, their
opinions and health conditions ;)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio)

------
gergles
The title of this piece is "HF Ham Radio on a Budget: QRP Labs, QRPGuys, CW
Academy" and probably should at least just be the first part. The article
doesn't really talk about being it a golden age for amateurs except for the
existence of SOTA.

It's actually a pretty bad time for HF right now because of low solar
activity; in fact, it's probably one of the worst times in recent memory to
try doing HF beyond SOTA.

~~~
wishinghand
Why is low solar activity bad for amateur radio?

~~~
GlenTheMachine
HF signals need to bounce off the ionosphere to travel any distance. The more
ionized the ionosphere is, the more effectively hf radio waves refract off it.
High solar activity leads to higher ionization.

In ham terms, this is know as “band openings”, eg when ionospheric conditions
allow hf at a given frequency to refract off the ionosphere.

------
jimhefferon
The problem is that many on the bands are miserable people. It can be
discouraging.

The radio is a lot of fun. (I love Morse.) But a sizable percentage of the
radio-ers make you want to do something else.

~~~
setquk
This is a big problem. I find CW to be populated with less annoying people.

~~~
philodough
This reminds me: has anyone done a survey of the relative
Democrat/Republican/Other distribution of voice hams vs CW HAMS?

I would be interested in the results.

~~~
lujim
In hundreds of contacts on CW I've never once talked politics with anyone. I
understand that isn't your question but the bandwidth is too low to waste on
useless garbage. That and CW operators are a tighter community so an opposing
political opinion isn't as divisive with that much common ground.

------
steveharman
I guess it might be of as old fashioned, but there's nrarely a "Resource Limit
Reached. Error 508" with radio.

Shame, I was interested in reading about this.

~~~
lightlyused
Well, I once was operating from the Caribbean on 40m and had such a huge
number of people calling me, I couldn't make any contacts for many minutes. I
guest that would be a 508 error.

------
Uberphallus
A question for the international crowd, I want to take the license exam. I
live in France, and the closest exam center is like 300 Km away, exam dates
always on weekday, so I'd need to take a day off for that. I live near Monaco,
had a look but I can't find anything regarding exams, some people hold
licenses but they don't answer to my emails asking about it. Is there a
comfortable way to obtain the license around here?

~~~
resters
Surprised nobody has responded. What entities have you tried reaching out to?
I'm sure that if you find the right person your quest to get licensed will be
greatly streamlined.

------
p0d
I agree we are in a golden age of ham tech but older hams than me (like my
friend GI0LZR) talk about days when the radio bands were more open. This is
ham speak for sending/receiving more frequent long distance calls. I think we
may be in a season of bad radio weather. The Sun usually gets the blame.

I get a buzz out of the low power stuff and don’t see the fun in pumping out
signals using 1 or 2kw of power. I have sent and recieved low power messages
6k miles using less than 5w.

Transmitting low power signals, like wspr, using a raspberry pi is great fun.
And before anyone mentions it I do run my noisey signals through a low pass
filter :-)

2IOJXA

------
jpm_sd
I'm almost 40 and never quite managed to get into amateur radio, but my kids
are getting old enough that they might be interested. Reading articles like
this gets me excited to finally give it a try.

~~~
ssimpson
do it! you can get started with some cheap SDR stuff to "see" whats out there.
I you want to participate it is really a great hobby. I can't wait until my
daughters can participate.

------
snazz
I am interested in ham radio, but I’m uncomfortable with broadcasting my call
sign around (as required by the FCC) since in the US it’s super easy to get
someone’s name and home address from their callsign.

For currently operating hams: do you just deal with it, or is there something
you can do to protect your privacy?

~~~
threeio
You can get a PO Box or forwarding service as your FCC address.. doesn't have
to be street address just mailing addy.

~~~
sevensor
I thought the FCC wanted to know where your station was. Doesn't this defeat
the purpose?

~~~
gwillen
No, they only need to be able to contact you.

However, as far as I know, even if you change your listed address, your _past_
addresses are still published, unfortunately. There was some movement towards
ending that, but I don't think it was successful.

------
gwbennett
Great read! Thanks for the website info! Taking my General Test on Tueday. I
have picked out a Yaesu 818 as my first HF radio. Look forward to QRP and
SOTA.

~~~
ssimpson
awesome! i need to get my butt up some of the summits around me and do some
SOTA work myself. I've got all the stuff, just need to do it!

------
TimTheTinker
Submission is mistitled. Should be "HF Ham Radio on a Budget".

~~~
resters
The title used is more descriptive of the intent of the article, which is
clear if you RTFA.

~~~
TimTheTinker
I did RTA and I understand the reasoning. I just disagreed in this case
because although the HN title was one of his main points, that wasn't _the_
main point and the article wasn't structured around it.

If that had been the title and the main point, he'd be emphasizing a lot more
than the great cheap HF gear that's now available. (There's a lot more that's
really awesome in AR than what you can do with basic HF gear.)

------
jimnotgym
I would like to have a go at building a receiver for listening to CW with my
kids. I don't want anything on the computer, just something I can solder that
will work. Is there a kit that has a good success rate? I'm in the UK if that
matters.

~~~
nickysielicki
Check out the Pixie kits, they're extraordinarily cheap, like $5 on ebay
cheap.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwtErr2E1kQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwtErr2E1kQ)

~~~
Johnythree
Not a pixie. They are super simple, but require considerable skill to use.

For example, they are morse code only.

~~~
nickysielicki
He specifically asked for a CW device.

------
tabtab
These hobbyists may save our hide after an apocalypse that levels the
Internet.

------
tonymet
If you're a software engineer, and know even a little electronics ( V=IR,
basic components, schematics , etc), you can get your technician's license
with 2-4 hours study using
[https://hamstudy.org/tech2018](https://hamstudy.org/tech2018) . There are
many exams every month, and it's only $15 (use [http://www.arrl.org/find-an-
amateur-radio-license-exam-sessi...](http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur-
radio-license-exam-session) to find a local exam)

Think of your HAM license as a driver's license for radio communications, and
you'll see it opens up a lot of opportunities & functionality. You can do
voice simplex (radio-radio), chat on repeaters (bunny-hopping to reach distant
stations), DMR (same as above, but digitally encoded), CW (morse code with low
bandwidth & long range), APRS (digital beacons for GPS, weather, etc), and
more.

Most people experience radio through a commercial (aka unlicensed) product
like GSM/CDMA (cell phones), WiFI, FM-broadcast, FRS (walkie talkies), CB
Radio (trucker's radios) etc. That's a great intro, but so restricted it's
kind of like comparing bumper-cars to driving a car.

It's more than a just a hobby too. Most emergency response teams get licensed.
The Red cross sent Hams to puerto rico when the network went down. Sailors
still use radio to communicate.

Since your first radio is $30 and the technician's exam is $15, it's a very
easy and rewarding hobby to get into.

------
ablation
Are those cheap Baofeng radios decent? Was considering getting into this and
using one of those as a starting point (to listen at first, obviously, not
broadcast until I've got a licence.)

~~~
Uberphallus
They're decent for their price... but you won't hear much, as they're stuck in
136-174 MHz (some AM airband, but the radio is FM) and 400-480MHz (local
PMR446, some pager networks operate here).

Also no digital modes, and max bandwidth (25 KHz? don't remember) limits what
you can postprocess in the computer.

Otherwise, they're fine for low bandwidth stuff. They work great as ghetto
amplifier for 433MHz applications.

To get started I'd rather recommend a RTLSDR dongle, they're under $10 and you
can listen (though not transmit) from 24 MHz to 1.7 GHz at 2MHz bandwidth: you
can capture images from weather satellites at ~145MHz, scan for weather
stations at 433 MHz, various telemetry at 868/915 MHz, airplane tracking,
L-band satellites... for some of these things you'll need some sort of
filtering and amplifying though.

~~~
ablation
Thanks for the reply, very useful. I have an SDR dongle around somewhere
already I think.

Are there any entry-level (price wise) handhelds you'd recommend? It's not
always hugely easy to carry my laptop around with me sometimes.

~~~
Uberphallus
If you have a (rooted?) Android phone, you can use the dongle with an OTG
cable.

Otherwise, a Baofeng DM-5R should do the job, it has digital modes compared to
the cheaper and more popular models. Still limited to FM in analog, which is a
pity for airband (where, by the way, you should never ever transmit in).

------
presscast
I want to get started with packet radio. I don't know anything about it. Where
do I start?

~~~
nickysielicki
Start with APRS --- a lot of people aren't even aware that there are packet
radio networks that exist on VHF outside of 144.390M, but no matter where you
are in the US, you probably will be able to get something going on APRS.

There are all sorts of ways that you can go with packet radio. Here are a
couple ideas:

1\. Start monitoring APRS traffic in your area.

I have a blog post that I wrote about repurposing a $5 scanner from a swapfest
with a broken USB headset from a junk drawer, and turning it into a receive-
only APRS igate. [1] I run that on a raspberry pi, you can see the current
status of it here: [2]

You can do this with an RTLSDR, or a Baofeng into your laptop's microphone,
etc. This is the easiest way to just listen and hear for yourself that there
is traffic around you, and I think that will motivate you to get further into
it.

2\. Start putting cool packets onto APRS!

If you have a Baofeng, you can make a cheap TNC out of a USB soundcard, an
appropriate break-out cable (available for ~$15 on Amazon), and any computer
running soundcard TNC software. I strongly recommend Direwolf if you are
playing with a Raspberry Pi (or just a laptop running linux), and APRSDroid if
you have an old phone in a drawer. Something to watch out for is the quality
of the signal that you put out, you need to tweak the volumes so that things
aren't being overdriven. Nobody will hear you otherwise, and you'll be jamming
the band for others.

A cool project idea is to put together a Baofeng-powered APRS security system
in your car, with the radio stowed in the trunk and tied into the ignition
switch. You could track your car at any time! (I started a project like this
but never finished it --- the Baofengs use something weird like 7.4V, and my
Raspberry Pi was powered at 5V, and I never could think of a proper solution
for my ground loops, and how to put it together in a clean package. I have a
TH-D72A with a built-in GPS and TNC that I use for APRS in my car on longer
trips, for now.)

I bought a cheap weather station, and I was able to get wee_wx to start
pulling data from it, and sometime over Christmas I'm hoping that I'll find
the time to start putting that data onto APRS. The sky is really the limit,
there are dozens of interesting data formats on APRS besides positional data
and weather data.

3\. Non-APRS packet radio!

This is where the real fun is. Here in Wisconsin I have the following site to
see where traffic is [3].

One of the craziest things I've done in Ham radio is hooked my TH-D72A up to
my laptop, connected via raw commands to a neighboring station speaking AX.25,
left a message on his BBS, and then issued a command which had me hopping from
his VHF receive _to his HF rig_ , which forwarded me onto another BBS over HF.
The connection was very broken up, but enough came through that I know it
happened, and that was enough for it to put a wide smile on my face.

4\. If you live in Seattle, check out HamWan.

Hams are allowed to run standard 2.4GHz Wi-Fi equipment at higher power than
normal people, provided that we stick to the FCC requirements (station
identification in the form of our SSID, no encryption, etc.) I really don't
know much about this project, but it's cool stuff. Fun to see what WiFi is
theoretically capable of. [4]

[1]: [https://nsielicki.blogspot.com/2018/04/repurposing-old-
radio...](https://nsielicki.blogspot.com/2018/04/repurposing-old-radio-
scanners-to-make.html)

[2]: [https://aprs.fi/info/a/W9NLS-2](https://aprs.fi/info/a/W9NLS-2)

[3]:
[https://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wapr/bandplan.html](https://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wapr/bandplan.html)

[4]: [https://hamwan.org/](https://hamwan.org/)

~~~
Stratoscope
> _Hams are allowed to run standard 2.4GHz Wi-Fi equipment at higher power
> than normal people, provided that we stick to the FCC requirements (station
> identification in the form of our SSID, no encryption, etc.)_

Are you sure about that? It doesn't sound right to me, since 2.4GHz is not a
ham band. But I would be happy to be corrected!

~~~
ssimpson
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_alloca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations#Very_high_frequencies_and_ultra_high_frequencies)

notably: 13 centimeters – 2300–2310 MHz (lower segment), 2390–2450 MHz (upper
segment)

------
rnotaro
Backup link: [http://archive.is/tH0Ae](http://archive.is/tH0Ae)

------
arendtio
If you want to learn Morse Code I can recommend using these Anki decks:

\- Easy start but without punctuation. You might want to add that
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/950182698](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/950182698)

\- Pretty good but hard to start with
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3645353967](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3645353967)

\- There are a few more Decks:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/morse%20code](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/morse%20code)

~~~
lujim
Sorry to be that guy but it is for good reason. Don't learn Morse Code
visually. The time it takes to convert an audible signal into a visual
representation is simply too long to be able to decode a real Morse Code
signal.

I learned visually at first and the amount of effort it took to unlearn it was
unbelievable. You have to learn by hearing the audible character and have your
brain immediately translated it through shear practice and repetition.

If you have to convert it to a visual dot dash symbol in your head you will be
too slow to ever have a conversation on the air.

------
tdeck
I guess it's all relative. I am just getting into ham radio and I am shocked
at how expendive HF rigs still are. The QCX kit is $50 sure and it's really
well designed, but it takes hours to assemble and it's difficult to debug
without already having a radio or other test equipment. If I want to get into
Arduino, I can buy a fully built board on eBay for about $3. Other HF radios
on the budget end are a couple hundred bucks. It's one of the few areas where
you can save significant cash building kits, which is kind of cool.

------
Tepix
I'm interested in getting into HAM radio to communicate with/via satellites
(or the moon), what's a good resource to get started?

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
AmSat has some good articles for getting started with satellites:

[https://www.amsat.org/introduction-to-working-amateur-
satell...](https://www.amsat.org/introduction-to-working-amateur-satellites/)

Moonbounce is challenging even for experienced hams.

------
furyg3
I was a HAM in the US, mostly just to get internet access via packet radio
(and play with higher power wifi) back in early 2000's. I participated in a
few field day's which were really awesome. The community was pretty cool.

I didn't take this hobby over to Europe when I moved, and let my license
lapse. How's the community over here (specifically the Netherlands)?

~~~
eythian
Can't speak to it specifically - yet - but I've been in NL for a few years now
and haven't converted my licence as it requires some paperwork hoops on the
non-NL side that I haven't bothered to figure out all of yet. Probably easier
than doing the exam in a tweede taal though.

But I was at SHA2017 where we had a temporary repeater hoisted up on a cherry-
picker, and someone who had boated in was doing APRS (I brought my HackRF so
could dabble on the edges of legality :)

But one of these days, soon I'm sure, I'll get my HAREC thing sorted and
convert it over.

------
jcmoscon
Remember that we used to have antennas in the our cellphones back in the
2000s? Well, where did it go? This is a pretty interesting history about an
Amateur Radio hobbyist going to a Amateur Radio conference and Fractals!!!!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mPefLpoz50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mPefLpoz50)

~~~
buescher
That's not where they went.

------
jimmcslim
I'm interested in amateur radio but always feel that I can't get anything done
without a big honking antenna?

~~~
int_19h
For VHF and UHF , that's not generally true - e.g. a simple quarter-wavelength
antenna (exactly what it says on the tin - a stick antenna that is 1/4 of the
wavelength on which you intend to operate - so e.g. for VHF 2m band, we're
talking ~20" long, and for UHF 70cm it's even shorter) is perfectly sufficient
to work repeaters, and to communicate with others directly within the radio
horizon.

For HF, you do need a large antenna, but it's not necessarily what people
think of when they think "antenna" \- i.e. not a tower with a giant vertical
rod. An HF antenna can just be a piece of cable of the right length and type,
properly arranged; and it's usually strung more horizontally than vertically.
Using trees for that is pretty common, too. Something like this:

[https://hamcall.net/images/BuckmasterOCFInstallDiagram.png](https://hamcall.net/images/BuckmasterOCFInstallDiagram.png)

~~~
superkuh
>For VHF and UHF,

For VHF and UHF it matters that your antenna is very high up (on a pole, roof,
or whatever w/line of sight if you want more than a couple blocks) more than
your antenna 'size'. So even VHF/UHF/Microwave you still need something "big"
unless you're just communicating with your next door neighbor.

There's no magic in RF. The cell system for phones only works because they pay
the big bucks to put cells on every high point they can.

~~~
int_19h
If you hold the transceiver in front of your head while speaking (as you
naturally would), that already gives you 2-3 miles of radio horizon, depending
on your height. If the person you're talking to does the same, that range
doubles. Of course, that's on flat ground, without hills etc getting in the
way... but still, you're usually looking at a mile or two of range, at least.

[http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_HowFar2.php](http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_HowFar2.php)

[https://hamradioschool.com/how-far-can-i-talk-with-my-
radio/](https://hamradioschool.com/how-far-can-i-talk-with-my-radio/)

And, of course, beyond that, you'd just use repeaters anyway. There's no
shortage of VHF and UHF repeaters, and because they take care of antenna
height on their side, it's not uncommon to hit one 10-15 miles away with a
handheld.

------
lightlyused
I posted this the other day:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18375562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18375562)
Amsat and Ariss fundraiser to support new infrastructure for the ham stuff in
ISS.

------
rv-de
[https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9q15t1/the_re...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9q15t1/the_real_problem/)

------
neatlifers
This is great. I love that old things, old paced stuff comes back. We all need
to take a break to re think how we do things that entertain us. Spotify,
Netflix, Facebook, etc, are just making us more miserable and less social in
real life.

------
kevindqc
What is a Toroid used for and why does it need to be winded differently for
different bands? Is it what generates the signals that get transmitted by the
antenna?

~~~
lightlyused
Basically a circular inductor with a ferrite core instead of air which allows
it to be more compact, have a higher inductance per volume and a greater q
factor (bandwidth). A different inductance (different number of wire turns) is
needed depending upon several factors, especially if you are using them to
make a resonant circuit (a circuit that responds to a particular frequency).
It does not generate the signal. I hope I got that right.

------
hyperpallium
What's the most lightweight, portable ham radio?

Is it comparable to a smartphone?

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
I guess it depends on what you mean by "ham radio". Here's a tiny surface
mount transmitter that is barely more than a gram and operates on amateur
frequencies.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkaN21K5S0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkaN21K5S0)

Gerber file, bill of materials, etc are freely available. I'm looking at
modifying the design into a beacon for a rocket radiolocation project.

------
idoescompooters
Obligatory comment for new radio enthusiasts: "ham" is not an acronym. Ham not
HAM :)

------
CathyWest
I'm curious, do hams ever troll one another as internet users frequently do?

~~~
idoescompooters
Ohhh yes. That would occur on 14.313 MHz on the 20m band. Don't find yourself
caught calling "CQ" on that frequency. It is where lots of bad language and
name calling occurs.

~~~
resters
The FCC occasionally does a sting operation to shut down someone doing
malicious interference, but there are a few frequencies where a handful of
griefers congregate. I suspect the reason the FCC ignores it is that they
generally only bother each other and limit it to one or two frequencies.

