Chapter 1
IN THIS CHAPTER
Becoming part of ham radio
Exploring ham radio
Making contact via ham radio
Constructing your own radio shack
Ham radio invokes a wide range of visions. Maybe you have a mental image of a ham radio operator (or ham) from a movie or website. But hams are a varied lot — from go-getter emergency communicators to casual chatters to workshop tinkerers. Everyone has a place, and you do too.
Hams employ all sorts of radios and antennas using a wide variety of signals to communicate with other hams across town and around the world. They use ham radio for personal enjoyment, for keeping in touch with friends and family, for emergency communications and public service, and for experimenting with radios and radio equipment. They communicate by using microphones, computers, cameras, lasers, Morse keys, and even their own satellites.
Hams meet on the air, online, and in person, in clubs and organizations devoted to every conceivable purpose. Hams run special flea markets and host conventions large and small. Some hams are as young as 6 years old; others are centenarians. Some have a technical background; most do not. One thing that all these diverse people share, however, is an interest in radio that can express itself in many ways.
This chapter gives you an overview of the world of ham radio and shows you how to become part of it.
Hams engage in three aspects of amateur radio: technology, operations, and social. Your interest in the hobby may be technical, you may want to use ham radio for public service or personal communications, or you may just want to join the fun. All are perfectly valid reasons for getting a ham radio license.
Ham radio lets you work closely with electronics and technology (see Chapter 2). Transmitting and receiving radio signals can be as much of an electronics-intensive endeavor as you like. By opening the hood on the ham radio hobby, you’re gaining experience with everything from basic electronics to cutting-edge wireless techniques. Everything from analog electronics to the latest in digital signal processing and computing technology is available in ham radio. Whatever part of electronic and computing technology you enjoy most, it’s all used in ham radio somewhere … and sometimes, all at the same time!
In this section, I give you a quick look at what you can do with technology.
Just as an audiophile might, you can design and build your own equipment or assemble a station from factory-built components. All the components you need to take either path are widely available in stores and on the web. The original do-it-yourself (DIY) makers, hams delight in homebrewing, helping one another build and maintain stations. In software-defined radio (SDR) equipment, computer code is the new component, and I encourage you to experiment as much as you wish.
You can write software to create brand-new types of signals. Hams also develop systems that are novel hybrids of radio and the Internet. Hams developed packet radio, for example, by adapting data communication protocols used in computer networks to operate over amateur radio links. Packet radio is now part of many commercial applications.
The combination of GPS technology with the web and amateur mobile radios resulted in the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS), which is now widely used. For more information about these neat systems, see Parts 3 and 4 of this book.
The newest radios are based on software-defined radio (SDR) technology, which allows the radio to adapt to new conditions or perform new functions, as I discuss in Part 4. Hams using design tools like GNU Radio (www.gnuradio.org
) can experiment with all sorts of techniques to improve and customize their equipment.
Voice communication is still the most popular technology that hams use to talk to one another, but computer-based digital operation is gaining fast. The most common home station today is a combination of computer and radio. You can operate a remote-controlled station via a tablet or phone from anywhere in the world, too. All it takes is access to the Internet and some hosting software at the station.
Besides being students of equipment and computers, hams are students of antennas and propagation, which is the means by which radio signals bounce around from place to place. Hams take an interest in solar cycles and sunspots and in how they affect the Earth’s ionosphere. For hams, weather takes on new importance — radio signals can travel long distances along storm fronts or reflect from rain or snow. Antennas launch signals to take advantage of all this propagation, so they provide a fertile universe for station builders and experimenters.
Antenna experimentation and computer modeling is a hotbed of activity in ham radio. New designs are created every day, and hams have contributed many advances and refinements to the antenna designer’s art. Antenna systems range from small patches of printed circuit-board material to multiple towers festooned with large rotating arrays. All you need to start growing your own antenna farm are some wire or tubing, a feed line, and some basic tools. I give you the full picture in Chapter 12.
Hams use radio technology in support of hobbies such as radio controlled (R/C) drones, model rocketry, and ballooning. Hams have special frequencies for R/C model operation in their “6 meter” band, away from the crowded unlicensed R/C frequencies. Miniature ham radio video transmitters (described in Chapter 11) frequently fly in drones, rockets, and balloons, beaming back pictures and location information from altitudes of hundreds or thousands of feet. Ham radio data links are also used in support of astronomy, aviation, auto racing and rallies, and many other pastimes.
Hams like to meet in person as well as on the radio. This section discusses a few ways to get involved.
Membership in at least one radio club or group is part of nearly every ham’s life. In fact, in some countries, you’re required to be a member of a club before you can even get a license. And there are hundreds of online groups with a variety of interests in ham radio, ranging from hiking to public service to technical specialties.
Two other popular types of gatherings are hamfests and conventions. A hamfest is a ham radio flea market where hams bring their electronic treasures for sale or trade. Some hamfests are small get-togethers held in parking lots on Saturday mornings; others attract thousands of hams from all over the world and last for days, an in-person complement to eBay and Amazon.
Hams also hold conventions with a variety of themes, ranging from public service to DX (see “DXing, contests, and awards,” later in this chapter) to technical interests. Hams travel all over the world to attend conventions where they might meet friends formerly known only as voices and call signs over the crackling radio waves.
Hams don’t rely on a lot of infrastructure to communicate. As a result, they bounce back quickly when a natural disaster or other emergency makes communications over normal channels impossible. Hams organize as local and regional teams that practice responding to a variety of emergency needs. They support relief organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, as well as police and fire departments.
After big storms of all types, hams are some of the first volunteers to help out. Many more operators around the country get ready to relay their messages and information. During and after hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria in 2017, for example, hams were on the job providing communications at emergency operations centers and in the field. Hams trained as emergency response teams helped government agencies by handling health-and-welfare messages, performing damage assessments, and providing point-to-point communications until normal systems came back to life. Ham radio also provided the hams themselves with personal communications in and out of the affected area. To find out more about providing emergency communications and public service, see Chapter 10.
Hams provide assistance for more than just emergencies. Wherever you find a parade, festival, marathon, or other opportunity to provide communications services, you may find ham radio operators helping out. In fact, volunteering for community events is great training for emergencies!
If you were to tune a radio across the ham bands, what would you hear hams doing? They’re talking to other hams, of course. These chats, called contacts, consist of everything from simple conversations to on-the-air meetings to contesting (discussed later in this chapter). This section gives you a broad overview of contacts; for more info, see “Communicating with Ham Radio,” later in this chapter. I discuss contacts in depth in Chapter 8.
By far the most common type of activity for hams is casual conversation, called chewing the rag. Such contacts are ragchews. Ragchews take place via voice or keyboards or Morse code across continents or across town. You don’t have to know another ham to have a great ragchew; ham radio is a friendly hobby with little class snobbery or distinctions. Just make contact, and start talking! Find out more about ragchews in Chapter 8 and 9.
Nets (an abbreviation for networks) are organized on-the-air meetings scheduled for hams who have a shared interest or purpose. Your club or public service team probably has a regular net on a weekly basis. These are great practice for new hams! Here are some of the types of nets you can find:
www.winlink.org
).Hams like engaging in challenging activities to build their skills and station capabilities. Following are a few of the most popular activities:
If you enjoy the thrill of the chase, go to Chapter 11 to find out more about all these activities.
Although the United States has a large population of hams, the amateur population in Europe is growing by leaps and bounds, and Japan has an even larger amateur population. With about 4 million hams worldwide, very few countries are without an amateur (see the nearby sidebar “Hams around the world”). Ham radio is alive and well around the world. Tune the bands on a busy weekend, and you’ll see what I mean!
Hams are required to have licenses, no matter where they operate. (I cover all things licensing in Part 2 of this book.) The international agency that manages radio activity is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU; www.itu.int/home
). Each member country is required to have its own government agency that controls licensing inside its borders. In the United States, hams are part of the Amateur Radio Service (www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/amateur-radio-service
), which is regulated and licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Outside the United States, amateur radio is governed by similar rules and regulations.
Amateur radio licenses in America are granted by the FCC, but the tests are administered by other hams acting as volunteer examiners (VEs). I discuss VEs in detail in Chapter 4. Classes and testing programs are often available through local clubs (refer to “Clubs and online groups,” earlier in this chapter).
Because radio signals know no boundaries, hams have always been in touch across political borders. Even during the Cold War, U.S. and Soviet hams made regular contact, fostering long personal friendships and international goodwill. Although the Internet makes global communications easy, chatting over the airwaves with someone in another country or participating in a planet-wide competition is exciting and creates a unique personal connection.
Though you make contacts for different purposes (such as a chat, an emergency, a net, or a contest), most contacts follow the same structure:
If the purpose of the contact is to chat, proceed to chat.
You might talk about how you constructed your station, what you do for a living, your family, and your job, for example.
Except for the fact that you and the other ham take turns transmitting, and except that this information is converted to radio waves that bounce off the upper atmosphere, making a contact is just like talking to someone you meet at a party or convention. You can hold the conversation by voice, by keyboard (using a computer connected to the radios), or by Morse code. The average contact satisfies a desire to meet another ham and see where your radio signal can be heard.
Hams have supported “real science” since the earliest days of wireless when everyone was an experimenter. One of the best examples is the series of “Listening Tests” conducted in 1922–1923, in which hams supplied many of the observations that helped establish the existence of the ionosphere. Amateur radio and science have gone hand-in-hand ever since. The ARRL publication A History of QST, Volume 1: Amateur Radio Technology describes the 100-year story of collaboration between hams and scientists, discovering and inventing technologies at the foundation of our present-day wireless world. (See Figure 1-1.)
Today, there are several opportunities for hams to participate in scientific research. These are just a few of the opportunities hams have to make real contributions:
www.cubesat.org
) that beam telemetry data from on-board experiments back to Earth. Some satellites also have simple repeater or translator stations on-board that hams can use for point-to-point communication.www.hamsci.org
) was initially formed to make radio observations of the total solar eclipse in August 2017. Since then, it has branched out to several other projects and is working on designs of instruments that hams can build and use themselves to take and share measurements.radio-astronomy.org
). it can help you build your own equipment, find kits, or purchase preassembled gear.Often referred to as a radio shack, the phrase conjures visions more worthy of a mad scientist’s lab than of a modern ham station. Your radio shack, however, is simply the place you keep your radio and ham equipment. The days of bulbous vacuum tubes, jumping meters, and two-handed control knobs are largely in the past.
For some hams, their entire station consists of a handheld radio or two. Other hams operate on the go in a vehicle. Cars make perfectly good places for stations, but most hams have a spot somewhere at home that they claim for a ham radio.
I discuss building and operating your own station in Part 4 of this book. For now, though, here’s what you can find in a typical ham’s “shack”:
The modern ham station is as far removed from the homebrewed lashups in a backyard shed as a late-model Tesla roadster is from a Model T. You can see examples of several stations, including mine, in Chapter 13.