Ham Radio
Ham radio invokes a wide range of visions. Maybe you have a mental image of a ham radio operator (ham) from a movie or newspaper article. But hams are varied a lot from go-getter emergency communicators to casual chatters to workshop tinkerers. Everyone has a place. Ham radio operators use all sorts of radios and antennas on a wide variety of frequencies to communicate with other hams across town and around the world. They use ham radio for personal enjoyment, for keeping in touch with friends and family, for emergency communications, and for experimenting with radios and radio equipment. They communicate using microphones, telegraph, or Morse code.
Ham radio operators meet on the air and in person. Ham radio clubs and organizations are devoted to every conceivable purpose. They have special ham radio flea markets and host conventions. Ham radio operators as young as six years old and some over 100 years of age have been operating ham radios since before ham radio licenses even existed. Some but not all hams have a technical background. But the one thing ham radio operators have in common is an interest in radio. Ham radio is full of electronics and technology. To begin with, transmitting and receiving radio signals is a very electronics intensive endeavor. After you open the hood on ham radio, you're exposed to everything from basic direct-current electronics to cutting-edge radio-frequency techniques. Everything from analog electronics to the very latest in digital signal processing and computing is available in ham radio. Ham radio operators also develop their own software and use the Internet along with radios to create novel hybrid systems. Hams developed packet radio by adapting data transmission protocols used over computer networked to amateur radio links. Packet radio is now widely used in many commercial applications. Voice and Morse code communications are still the most popular technologies by which ham radio operators talk to each other but computer based digital operation is gaining fast. The most common home station configuration today is a hybrid of the computer and radio. Some of the newer radios are exploring software-defined radio (SDR) technology that allows reconfiguration of the circuitry that processes radio signals under software control. Along with the equipment and computers, ham radio operators are students of antennas and propagation which is the means by which radio signals bounce around from place to place. Ham radio operators take an interest in solar cycles, sunspots, and how they affect the Earth's ionosphere. For ham radio operators, weather takes on a whole new importance, generating static or fronts along which radio signals can sometimes travel long distances. Antennas, with which signals are launched to take advantage of all this propagation, provide a fertile universe for the station builder and experimenter. |
