So, is Ham Radio like the spiritual ancestor of something like Discord Voice Chat? I’m trying to understand why people do it, besides the technical/tinkering aspects.
Why? Because you can. But in terms of useful reasons?
Cellphones, Internet they need infrastructure to work, and that can be disabled either during a natural disaster or war situation. Even by your own government in some cases.
But if I want to communicate, I just need a piece of wire, somewhere to hang it, and a 12v battery and I can communicate for thousands of miles.
Personally I just think that’s cool.
Ham radio can be used as voice chat with friends, but that would be a pretty limited view of it. Here’s some things that a Discord Voice Chat cannot do that radio can:
- Chat without internet (e.g. places without cell towers).
- Chat without voice. (digital communications of all kinds; email/text, keyboard-to-keyboard, pictures, etc).
- To build an internet (e.g. building WiFi meshes with extra power [AREDN], AX.25 packet, WinLink).
- Used as a tool during emergencies (see ARES/RACES/CERT).
- Chat completely randomly (it’s just one big discord channel, but you can only hear some people).
- Chasing the challenge of unusual radio propagation (earth-moon-earth, meteor bounce, tropospheric ducting, aurora).
- Chasing the challenge of collecting the most point-to-point contacts (contests).
- Chasing the challenge of difficult radio propagation (microwave links).
- Constructing and using radios that you cannot buy off the shelf parts with (usually with those funny microwave guys).
- Higher power versions of things unlicensed folks cannot do (RC toys, Meshtastic/LoraWAN, WiFi, etc).
- Historical preservation (restoring old radios, keeping ship-shore coastal stations running [e.g. Maritime Radio Historical Society]).
- Conducting scientific experiments (HamSCI, and I conducted one listening to the ionosphere during the recent total eclipse).
- Building and controlling satellites (AMSAT).
And there’s even more. The way to view ham radio is the government grants you a license to operate on many pieces of radio spectrum so long as you can show your technical ability to not cause harm (interference, safety, and things that will prevent you from blowing up your radio as well as find success in using it). What you do with that spectrum is up to you!
GREAT answer. It’s funny how I got into ham radio because I thought it seemed a cool way to talk to people… and now I almost never use voice and mostly do what you listed above.
To answer you seriously, yeah kinda! It’s a way of communicating without any internet access. You can talk with people around the world if you want. And it opens up to a whole community of people that really like the hobby.
So people pick a topic and just start talking? It’s kinda a niche hobby, so there’s probably a lot of like-minded people, but what if somebody starts going off on a tirade?
Then you switch to someone else. Also its not just about talking. You can track a number of things: sensor readings, track satellites, airplanes, boats, etc…
What is the practical application of tracking stuff, like are you guys literally just telling each other where stuff is or what does an average tracking session look like?
Edit: I’m very interested in the idea of amateur radio operating, but I guess I’m trying to picture what it would be like practically and wondering if that’s something I’d be into, you know?
Sometimes, in times of disaster or something like that, ham radio operators can keep the flow of information in and out going when Internet or phone communication lines are down.
Other than that, it’s mostly just experimentation and trying to push the envelope of wireless communications. People flex on each other by making contacts further and further away, and as the other person said, doing cool shit like talking to the ISS.
For local reception, receivers with RTL2832U chips are a cheap option. They are also called RTL-SDR. I have simply been using a long wire as a “random wire antenna”. Some of the older dongles also need an upconverter to be able to tune into low HF frequencies:
An upconverter for the RTL-SDR translates low HF frequencies ‘up’ into ones that are receivable by the RTL-SDR. This is a different method to the direct sampling mode used in the V3 dongles to achieve HF reception.
Quoted source: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/a-homebrew-one-transistor-upconverter-for-the-rtl-sdr/
rtl433 on github is a joy to collect data and send somewhere
Thanks for sharing. It seems like there’s a lot of supported options. Many of them, I have no idea what are, but cars and doorbells are easy enough to understand, at least. Do you have any examples of interesting, less obvious use cases of your own, or of others’?
sure. well i am cheap. my neighbours arent. they have fancy stations like Bresser Weather. so why not share data like a proper pirate? i bought several rtl sticks by now. one i use in a pi/nuc/etc to just run https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433 which has the excellent possibility to send the captured data over mqtt. so one line in terminal gives me weather data.
you could also grab flightpositions with the stick…if you share those you get even more data: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl433-plugin-for-sdrsharp-updated/
still too boring? gnuradio could helpp find interesting frequencies and you might wanna google what they are for. you can also grab an send sensordata from busstationdisplay, temperaturecontrol of houses, tire pressure of passing cars etc. you could use that data in homeassistant/nodered or whatever to trigger alerts…like that police car is close by, shutdown shutdown… and so on. new cars are so chatty.
Do you need a license to buy a receiver to listen in?
Edit: the following is for the US
You do not need a license to listen to ham radio with a traditional transceiver. You only need a license to transmit.
There are no licensing requirements for equipment purchases.
I have a handheld ham. The baofeng ones with no license. Come to get me FCC
When I use them to communicate, I use FRS frequencies, which are still not legal technically, but no one will even know.
Tbh, I can’t condone that as a ham myself. And yes, you can be caught. It happens all the time and fines are hefty.
The basic ham license (called “Technician”) is very easy and cheap. Just get one.
It happens all the time?
Relative to the prevalence of ham as a hobby
Yes. It is not uncommon.
Also, the license gives one some knowledge about what one is actually doing with the transceiver. Without that it isn’t really a hobby anyway. It just becomes an illegal walkie talkie.
Don’t fuck around with the FCC, it stands for Fucking Consequences, Cunt!
No
No, only the British are dumb enough to require a license for a receiver.
You can go buy whatever radio you want and listen to hams tell each other where they’re from and lie about how well they’re hearing each other. Which is most of what they do on shortwave. 1. Ham radio is a game to most of them, the game is “exchange callsigns with people from as many places as you can.” 2. There is a law (CFR 97.113(5)) that prohibits “Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services.” I read that as it’s illegal to have a weekly Wednesday at 5 PM EDT chat with your buddy in Tuscon on 20 meters because the cell phone network can also accomplish that. So are scheduled ragchew nets legal?
If you’re going to play around with an HF receiver, ignore the hams and listen out for numbers stations, they’re way fucking cooler than us licensed radio dorks.
Don’t transmit without a license. If we can hear you, we can find you. Radio isn’t like the internet, radio travels in straight (ish) lines. You’re literally shining a light into the sky, we can tell where it’s coming from. Hams won’t do anything to you. No, that’s what the FCC is for.
