81–90 of 216 posts
My 5G mobile PHONE can provide me with 200MHZ of bandwidth and frequency range from 400 MHz to 7 GHZ So yes, HAM is DYING because outdated legislation is denying me same goodness in my mobile 6Watt radio.
I wished we had the USA's books and exam guides. It all looks like such a smooth licensing process. In South Africa - there only seems to be two licensing opportunities per year and I think I need to travel to another province to take exam. I have an uncle that is quite deep into the hobbie and he is also an E.E. He has this basement lab full of electronics and radio gear that just makes me a software dev giddy with excitement :) Think dexter lab !
ps. Any hams in and around Cape Town that wants to give me a quick intro or hands-on experience :) ??
Ps2. SideNote: Ive been trying to get into old school irc again. Had some good friends and community back in the 90s there.
As someone who has looked on into the hobby in Canada. I feel there needs to be another class for people who just want to use a store bought radio. I have to take time to study an exam about how increasing x changes y, and all these other fun facts about radio equipment. However the draw for me is talking to people, not building radio equipment. Just my two cents.
Having an EE background definitely helps with the advanced exam though
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>You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng. I'm welcome to being corrected, however my understanding is that I'd need a full license to legally broadcast on those bands.
Ah, sorry! I misunderstood what you meant. You are correct. You're likely aware that you can get CB/MURS/FRS type radios without a license, but that wouldn't help that much. It would be nice to have a small slice of each ham band that would be available to non-licensed folks, but the hardware would be tricky, you'd have high physical capability (and cost) but it would have to be locked down to basically a 'slice sele…
My 5G mobile PHONE can provide me with 200MHZ of bandwidth and frequency range from 400 MHz to 7 GHZ So yes, HAM is DYING because outdated legislation is denying me same goodness in my mobile 6Watt radio.
It's also generally very illegal as a hobbyist to build and operate your own transmitter, except with an amateur radio licence. If you're more interested in how the phone works and building your own, than just using it, that's what amateur radio is for.
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Glad you found me :) Here's the main site where you can learn more: http://js8call.com/ And a video walkthrough I did just a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz0Cpkaol-o
Thanks for your work. JS8Call seems really cool, but I can never make any contacts with it. Maybe bad luck, but every time I try on 20m through 80m there's nobody on the other end. (FT8 and friends working fine.)
There are plenty of ways to communicate with whoever you want, however you want, whenever you want and completely encrypted too!
I see a lot of anecdotes of special distaster cases when HAM was the magical solution, but I don't remember normal communications infrastructure not being available for the last 30 years. Perhaps this is more of a thing in sparsely populated countries?
I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites, intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio, listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just generally see the invisible world of wireless commun…
Any recommended resources to get started with SDR?
Or this nicer one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011HVUEME/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Zl...
Sdr# for Windows. GQRX for the others. For a blog with help and project ideas check out http://www.rtlsdr.com/
I'm curious as to why you would bother with HAM. It used to give you something that wasn't available otherwise, but that hasn't been the case for a very long time. There are plenty of ways to communicate with whoever you want, however you want, whenever you want and completely encrypted too! I see a lot of anecdotes of special distaster cases when HAM was the magical solution, but I don't remember normal communicatio…
Just like people who own old motorcycles and tinker with them and join biker gangs. Similar idea
I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites, intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio, listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just generally see the invisible world of wireless commun…
Specifically you're talking about RTL-SDR, a hacked soundcard that can receive a lot of frequencies. The channels you can legally transmit back on for a few hudred dollars more are FRS/GMRS family/business radio channels. (Speaking about USA only here, since that's the only radio location I know about). tl;dr for the rest of my post: ham radio is the best type of radio for hackers. Undoubtedly you can have tons of fu…