by Thomas (K4SWL) When I meet a newly minted amateur radio operator, I often start by telling them, “You couldn’t be entering our community at a better time!” And I really mean th…
Everyone does the hobby differently, but for me I like to listen to folks talking to each other. You could have a guy in Nebraska chatting it up with someone in Australia just talking about whatever. I know this doesn’t seem as impressive in the age of the internet, but it was essentially an audio version of the internet before the Internet proper existed for the public.
There are also Radio Nets that happen, pretty much just organized gatherings on a repeater for discussion of a specific topic, kind of like a forum. I like to participate in those because it’s very structured and orderly and they cover a lot of interesting topics.
There are yet others who like to do a myriad other things, like see how many hams in other countries they can contact in a day, or learn and communicate in CW/Morse code, or go out to the wilderness/parks to establish contact with someone doing the same thing. The more mechanically inclined might build their own rigs, antennas and shacks and test/use those.
These are just a few activities that I can think of off the top of my head, there’s many, many more. It’s quite a varied hobby!
I had no idea you could get such a long range contacts, that’s cool. It does sound like a nice community.
Also, it sounds pretty impressive to me, even though I’ve never experienced lack of internet/mobile phones. While I had it granted for basically all my life, I have a respect for analog things, and have been a fan of sending letters. I have the luxury that I can romanticize the slower/analog way of living, without actually having to live through it to ruin my experiences, hah!
Thanks, this post has inspired me, while it’s not exactly HAM, I was considering getting Meshcore/Meshtastic relays, which I assume is kind of similar but chat instead of voice, so I might look into it some more. I assume the communities might be similar, and it sounds like a nice hobby.
Everyone does the hobby differently, but for me I like to listen to folks talking to each other. You could have a guy in Nebraska chatting it up with someone in Australia just talking about whatever. I know this doesn’t seem as impressive in the age of the internet, but it was essentially an audio version of the internet before the Internet proper existed for the public.
There are also Radio Nets that happen, pretty much just organized gatherings on a repeater for discussion of a specific topic, kind of like a forum. I like to participate in those because it’s very structured and orderly and they cover a lot of interesting topics.
There are yet others who like to do a myriad other things, like see how many hams in other countries they can contact in a day, or learn and communicate in CW/Morse code, or go out to the wilderness/parks to establish contact with someone doing the same thing. The more mechanically inclined might build their own rigs, antennas and shacks and test/use those.
These are just a few activities that I can think of off the top of my head, there’s many, many more. It’s quite a varied hobby!
I had no idea you could get such a long range contacts, that’s cool. It does sound like a nice community.
Also, it sounds pretty impressive to me, even though I’ve never experienced lack of internet/mobile phones. While I had it granted for basically all my life, I have a respect for analog things, and have been a fan of sending letters. I have the luxury that I can romanticize the slower/analog way of living, without actually having to live through it to ruin my experiences, hah!
Thanks, this post has inspired me, while it’s not exactly HAM, I was considering getting Meshcore/Meshtastic relays, which I assume is kind of similar but chat instead of voice, so I might look into it some more. I assume the communities might be similar, and it sounds like a nice hobby.