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Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?

#61

Post by airbreather »

I am in Australia and got a US General class license because for some time the Australian licensing was in total chaos while changing over to new arrangements.

I did it online thru the New York Radio Club (?).

I did Novice then General in about 30 minutes. I studied for maybe 6 hours immediately prior.

I grew up from age 5 in my Dads ham shack in NZ - every single thing he had made, transmitters, receivers, antennas, the feed wire, oscilloscope, signal gens, grid dip oscillator etc with many parts salvaged. In NZ in those days that is how most people did it, at least partially.

I also have an Electrical Engineering degree.

So sort of had a bit of background working knowledge, which meant I wasn't starting from scratch.

KK7RBX

Re: Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?

#62

Post by GJim »

Jtsummers wrote: post #58
GJim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I like exposing my home address by providing my callsign with my HN account Please explain. Surely one simply opts out of having ones address published in your countries call book?

In the US it's a public database, and you don't get to opt out of providing your name and a mailing address ( mailing , needs to be valid but doesn't need to be your home address, PO Boxes work). https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp

Wow!

I know American data protection law is pretty poor, but that really is shocking; such data should not be made public without the users explicit opt-in consent.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?

#63

Post by Jtsummers »

GJim wrote: post #62
Jtsummers wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US it's a public database, and you don't get to opt out of providing your name and a mailing address ( mailing , needs to be valid but doesn't need to be your home address, PO Boxes work). https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp

Wow! I know American data protection law is pretty poor, but that really is shocking; such data should not be made public without the users explicit opt-in consent.

A lot of information is out there for a lot of people in the US. Here you can find salary information for GA state employees by name: https://open.ga.gov/openga/salaryTravel/index. If you don't know their name, you can search by organization and get a big list of people and how much they make each year.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?

#65

Post by tablarasa »

I got my license because I'm an offshore sailor. It is useful as safety and communication equipment (radio nets to keep track of other boats, their weather and fishing conditions :), and let your would-be-rescuers know your position and status), but also for sending and receiving data. It is my primary interface for weather info at sea using traditional weatherfax, but also more modern GRIB extraction. I can even update my blog using my SSB on HAM frequencies at sea. It's fun. Never had a shoreside station though.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?

#69

Post by markus_zhang »

fidotron wrote: post #41

Similar. Experience of Canadian ham scene though is it's almost all just buying/selling equipment, to the point some channels were occupied by automated announcements of what people were buying and selling. APRS is fairly well used though, and by far the best way to find what is in the local area. For better or worse the more dynamic and technically interesting stuff now seems to be with SDR and Meshtastic/Meshcore.…

Also Canadian, and struggling to find a usage out of it. I don't even have a ham radio, yet. Maybe I'll just the connection to purchase some equipment, such as an oscilloscope.
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