Hipster Wi-Fi (AKA Amateur Radio)

[lurker]

I don't think this fit the spirit of the creativity thread, so I'm making a separate thread about it. Here's a picture of my radio shack. The thing on the bottom of the stack is an antenna tuner, which prevents signals generated by the radio from being reflected back to it and potentially causing damage. Above that is a radio that operates on the HF bands (between 3 MHz and 30 MHz). It's used to communicate over long distances using ionospheric refraction. Above that is a radio meant for satellite communication that operates on the VHF (~144 MHz) and UHF (~440 MHz) bands. The smaller radio at the top is a battery operated low power radio meant for outdoor use. It can transmit on HF, VHF and UHF.

All three radios are capable of transmitting using AM, FM, Single Sideband (which is like AM but with half the signal suppressed), radio teletype (a very old way of transmitting text) and CW (Morse). They also have a built in sound card that can act as a modem. I am partial to using Morse, as it has the narrowest signal bandwidth out of all the modes, meaning you can send a signal further using less power. I just communicated with someone about 1400 miles away using 5 watts of output power, which is about as much as an old incandescent night light.

I got my technician class ham license back in late 2019 in an effort to branch out and make friends as an adult... just in time for the pandemic. I now have my extra class license. Ham radio is an extremely deep hobby. The areas I'm most interested in are satellite operation, Morse code, and packet radio (chiefly using modded wi-fi gear, but also using sound card modems to send packets over voice channels).

A neighbor of mine who is my de facto elmer (mentor) likes launching balloons carrying radio trackers. They can circumnavigate the globe, several times if you're lucky. The club I run with is thinking of putting on a fox hunt, which is where one person hides a transmitter (the fox) and everyone else has to find it using radio direction finding techniques.

I had a chance to get a ham license back in the 90s when I was 12 or so. There was a walkie talkie fad going around the school at the time. The teachers decided to capitalize on our interest by inviting someone from a local ham club to speak to us about the hobby. I was amazed that you could talk to people around the world. My crappy toy walkie talkie could only reach about 20 feet down the sidewalk. Two things prevented me from pursuing my license: Morse code was still required at the time, and I would not have had the discipline back then to see it through, but mostly I was confused what lunch meat had to do with wireless communication. Turns out the term ham comes from a slang word for amateur, the ultimate origin is uncertain, but it's also where we get the term hammy acting.

Part of me wishes I had gotten my license back in the 90s. Talking to people around the world would have born some amount of novelty in and of itself for me back then, as the web was still in its infancy. For now the attraction for me is the idea of going as far as I can with as little power and intervening infrastructure as possible. I read an account from an article in a radio hobbyist magazine from around 1914, when the concept of wireless communication was still fairly new. The writer described in almost religious terms the feeling of floating disembodied in the ether, seeking to commune with other souls across hitherto unfathomable distances. Sometimes I wish I could feel the wonder he felt...

[Visions1]

What's your code? My aunt and uncle do Ham Radio!

[lurker]

What's your code? My aunt and uncle do Ham Radio!

Call signs are personally identifiable information since they're linked to your name and address in a public database, so I don't give mine out online. They're even linked to your email, but the FCC is kind enough not to make that public, at least.

[Visions1]

Oh. Well that goes to show how little I know. Sorry about that.
But hey, maybe one day you'll contact them, or even meet them.

[Man in Space]

My father used to be a ham. He still has his set.

[lurker]

Oh. Well that goes to show how little I know. Sorry about that.
But hey, maybe one day you'll contact them, or even meet them.

If you know what area of ham radio they're into I might just bump into them on the air some time. I'm mostly into Morse on the more traditional HF bands, but I also do SSTV (analog image transmission) and various digital text printing modes, and I occasionally log onto packet bulletin board systems if the sun feels like cooperating.

My father used to be a ham. He still has his set.

Ham radio can be a both an expensive and an exhausting hobby. We just trimmed some limbs in our back yard, so I wanted to play around with my satellite radio since I have a clearer view of the Western sky. Unfortunately I just found out I need to go up and fix some issues with the coaxial cable leading from my radio to the antennas. It's likely water inside the coax. I do not want to drag out the ladder and climb up there right now.

As for the expensive part, a lot of people (including myself) get into the hobby by buying cheap barely legal Chinese walkie-talkies. That gives you the impression that this is an affordable pass time. Nope. You're looking at $1000 USD for an HF radio, and that's the LOW end. Then comes the antenna. You'd think antennas would be cheap because they're inert hunks of aluminum. Turns out they can be more expensive than the radios. It's also expensive in terms of space. It took me forever to carve out this little corner of the house to use as my shack, and HF antennas can easily span the length of a suburban yard.

The thing is, the big draw for people in the past was that you could talk to people locally and internationally for the cost of the equipment. That died in the 90s with the rise of cell phones and the internet, so it can be hard to get people interested. Like I said in the OP, I wish I were around back then to experience what it was like when this was a unique experience.