Amateur Radio

[InbetweenDreams]

Alright figured I would make a post talking more about what ham radio is and why I even bother with a hobby that is as popular as disco...

Well ham radio or amateur radio is a hobby for most, some it is about emergency communication... Eh well I think this page explains it better...

http://www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio

Anyway. What kind of got me interested in radio, generally speaking was when I was a teenager after moving to North Carolina. My grandpa passed away and I remember him listening to the Red's game on 700 WLW out of Cincinnati, Ohio. I remember one evening, playing around with a radio and picking up 700 WLW from over 300 miles away, how it is that possible? Well I learned more about it later on that it is called skywave, some just call it skip.

Skip is what makes amateur radio what it is. I mean there are all kind of different modes, modulations, antennas and gear but what makes it really cool is the fact that you can talk abroad....even with as little as 5 watts of power....or in your car going down the road. Now the internet has augmented amateur radio as such that you can do things like digital text modes like I'm talking to people in a chatroom... PSK31 is an example...

Screenshot of Digipan which allows you to use PSK31 (31 baud) to talk over HF bands...



Skip, yes lets talk about skip...

The sun changes how the ionosphere behaves as such that certain wavelengths get reflected back down to Earth. At night, for instance, the broadcast AM band at night will bounce off the ionosphere and many of the "clear channel" stations such as 700 WLW can pretty well be heard all over the Eastern United States. There are some circumstance where it can go further....a lot further, like Scotland for instance...which is about 3,700 miles away...




That's the broadcast band, now higher frequencies such as VHF (Very High Frequency - 30 MHz - 300 MHz) require a little more things to happen. Typically referred as E-Skip, charged particles in some of the lower layers of the ionosphere can reflect higher frequency radio waves back to Earth... such as the FM Broadcast band along with other amatuer operator bands such as the 6 meter (50-54 MHz) and 2 meter bands (144-148 MHz). There are other conditions where long distance communictions (DX) are possible such as tropospheric ducting which can occur pretty much on any frequency, even in to the GHz or microwave bands.

For me that is what is most interesting, because these events are less common on VHF...

Now other bands skywave occurs during the day time or sometimes seasonal and depends on the solar cycle, sunspots can help or hinder skywave on certain bands.

Anyway here's what I currently have...


There are a few things that don't really deal with the radios, like my little 1U server there on the left... But I have a 10 meter radio and a 2 meter radio which go to an antenna switch...

Outside I have a discone antenna (at the top of the pole) and not in the picture a 10 meter dipole...



Picture of a 10 meter dipole... mine is a but droopy since I opted to go cheap and used two mobile whip antennas (which might be causing me some problems...



Anyway more about the hobby. It can get expensive... I mean you have to have a radio, you have have coax cable (the correct stuff too), you have to have something like a tower or mast, or in my case a tripod to put the antenna(s) on. You have to buy or make an antenna. If you ask me in most cases it is cheaper to put a radio in your car than at your house. I worked out of my car for a couple years before I got stuff set up inside the house. At any rate you can sometimes find good deals online or from swap meets and so on. However, me I don't like taking risks so I like to buy new stuff most of the time. I have been very fourtunate to have had a lot of help in getting either equipment or help with setup but I am hardly close to being finished. Hopefully once I get some stuff fixed, replaced I can maybe do some videos.

Now to get a license, at least here in the US. You do have to study, there is a test you have to take for each of the licenses, like the technician is easy, mostly basic stuff. It does cost you something like $20-30 from what I can remember. You do have to renew every 10 years.