Ham Radio For Dummies E-Book

H. Ward Silver

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 512

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

An ideal first step for learning about ham radio Beyond operating wirelessly, today's ham radio operators can transmit data and pictures; use the Internet, laser, and microwave transmitters; and travel to places high and low to make contact. This hands-on beginner guide reflects the operational and technical changes to amateur radio over the past decade and provides you with updated licensing requirements and information, changes in digital communication (such as the Internet, social media, and GPS), and how to use e-mail via radio. * Addresses the critical use of ham radio for replacing downed traditional communications during emergencies or natural disasters * Provides updates to all documentation of the American Radio Relay League * Explains recent changes to picking your own call sign * Places a special emphasis on the major reasons people get into amateur radio: emergency communication, digital communication, and do-it-yourself science * Looks at online mapping and charting of websites Whether you're just getting turned on to ham radio or already have your license, Ham Radio for Dummies, 2nd Edition helps you with the terminology, the technology, and the talknology.

Leseprobe

Ham Radio For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938107

ISBN 978-1-118-59211-3 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-59220-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-59204-5 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Ham Radio For Dummies, 2nd Edition®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/hamradio to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Ham Radio

Chapter 1: Getting Acquainted with Ham Radio

Tuning into Ham Radio Today

Using electronics and technology

Joining the ham radio community

Making contacts

Roaming the World of Ham Radio

Communicating with Ham Radio

Building a Ham Radio Shack

Chapter 2: Getting a Handle on Ham Radio Technology

Exploring the Fundamentals of Radio Waves

Frequency and wavelength

The radio spectrum

Getting to Know Basic Ham Radio Gadgetry

Basic station

Miscellaneous gadgets

Communication technologies

Dealing with Mother Nature

Seeing how nature affects radio waves

Dealing with noise digitally

Chapter 3: Finding Other Hams: Your Support Group

Joining Radio Clubs

Finding and choosing a club

Participating in meetings

Getting more involved

Exploring ARRL

ARRL’s benefits to you

ARRL’s benefits to the hobby

ARRL’s benefits to the public

Taking Part in Specialty Groups

Competitive clubs

Handiham

AMSAT

TAPR

YLRL

QRP clubs

Interacting in Online Communities

Social media

E-mail reflectors

E-mail portals

Attending Hamfests and Conventions

Finding hamfests

Prepping for a hamfest

Buying at hamfests

Finding conventions

Finding Mentors

Getting a hand from Elmer

Finding help online

Part II: Wading through the Licensing Process

Chapter 4: Figuring Out the Licensing System

Getting an Overview of the Amateur Service

FCC rules

Frequency allocations

Choosing a Type of License

Technician class

General class

Amateur Extra class

Grandfathered classes

Getting Licensed

Studying for your exam

Taking the licensing test

Understanding Your Call Sign

Call-sign prefixes and suffixes

Class and call sign

Chapter 5: Studying for Your License

Demystifying the Test

Finding Resources for Study

Licensing classes

Books, CDs, and websites

Online practice exams

Locating a Mentor

Chapter 6: Taking the Test

Finding a Test Session

Signing Up for a Test

Public exams

Exams at events

Private exams

Getting to Test Day

What to bring with you

What to expect

What to do after the test

Chapter 7: Obtaining Your License and Call Sign

Completing Your Licensing Paperwork

Finding Your Call Sign

Searching the ULS database

Searching other call-sign databases

Identifying with your new privileges

Registering with the FCC Online

Registering in CORES

Associating your call sign with your ID

Picking Your Own Call Sign

Searching for available call signs

Finding call signs available to you

Applying for a vanity call sign

Maintaining Your License

Part III: Hamming It Up

Chapter 8: Making Contact

Listen, Listen, Listen!

Listening on different bands

Understanding sub-bands and band plans

Tuning In a Signal

Listening on SSB

Listening to digital or data signals

Listening to FM channels

Listening to Morse code

Listening on HF

Listening on VHF and UHF

Deciphering QSOs

Chewing the rag

Meeting on nets

Contesting and DXing

Making Your Own Contacts

Making contact on an HF band

Making contact via repeater

Making contact via Morse code or digital mode

Failing to make contact

Breaking in

Having a QSO

Calling CQ

Saying the long goodbye

Chapter 9: Casual Operating

Operating on FM and Repeaters

Finding a repeater

Using repeater access tones

Using simplex

Setting up your radio

Making contacts, FM style

Recognizing Repeater Features

Autopatch

Repeater networks

Chewing the Rag

Knowing where to chew

Knowing when to chew

Identifying a ragchewer

Pounding Brass: Morse Code

Copying the code

Sending Morse

Making Morse code contacts (CW)

Receiving Messages Afloat and Remote

Using Winlink

Connecting with Airmail and Winlink

Chapter 10: Operating with Intent

Joining an Emergency Organization

Finding an emcomm group

Volunteering your services

Preparing for an Emergency

Knowing who

Knowing where

Knowing what

Knowing how

Operating in an Emergency

Reporting an accident or other incident

Making and responding to distress calls

Supporting emergency communications outside your area

Providing Public Service

Weather monitoring

Parades and sporting events

Participating in Nets

Checking in

Exchanging information

Handling Traffic

Chapter 11: Operating Specialties

DXing

DXing on the shortwave bands

DXing on the VHF and UHF bands

Taking Part in Radio Contests

Choosing a contest

Operating in a contest

Taking tips from winners

Chasing Awards

Finding awards and special events

Recording qualifying contacts

Applying for awards

Mastering Morse Code

Starting with Farnsworth

Sharpening your skills

Operating at Low Power (QRP)

Getting started with QRP

Getting deeper into QRP

Getting Digital

PSK modes

Radioteletype

PACTOR and WINMOR

Packet

MFSK modes

Amateur WLAN and high-speed data

Digital voice (D-STAR and Codec2)

APRS

Operating via Satellite

Getting grounded in satellite basics

Accessing satellites

Seeing Things: Image Communication

Slow-scan television and facsimile

Fast-scan television

Part IV: Building and Operating a Station That Works

Chapter 12: Getting on the Air

Setting Goals for Your Station

Deciding what you want to do

Deciding how to operate

Allocating resources

Choosing a Radio

Radios for the HF bands

VHF and UHF radios

Software-defined radio

Choosing Filters

Choosing an Antenna

VHF/UHF antennas

HF antennas

Mobile and portable antennas

Feed line and connectors

Supporting Your Antenna

Antennas and trees

Masts and tripods

Towers

Rotors or rotators

Radio accessories

Choosing a Computer for the Shack

PC or Mac or . . . ?

Digital modes

Radio control

Remote control

Hardware considerations

Buying New or Used Equipment

Upgrading Your Station

Chapter 13: Organizing Your Shack

Designing Your Ham Shack

Keeping a shack notebook

Building in ergonomics

Viewing some examples

Building in RF and Electrical Safety

Basic safety

Lightning

RF exposure

First aid

Grounding Power and RF

Grounding for AC and DC power

Grounding and bonding at RF

Chapter 14: Housekeeping (Logs and QSLs)

Keeping a Log

Updating your little black radio book

Keeping your log on a computer

Selecting Your QSL Card

Sending and Receiving QSLs

QSLing electronically

Direct QSLing

Sending via managers

Bureaus and QSL services

Chapter 15: Hands-On Radio

Acquiring Tools and Components

Maintenance tools

Repair and building tools

Components for repairs and building

Maintaining Your Station

Overall Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Your Station

RF problems

Power problems

Operational problems

Troubleshooting Your Home and Neighborhood

Dealing with interference to other equipment

Dealing with interference to your equipment

Building Equipment from a Kit

Building Equipment from Scratch

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 16: Ten Secrets for Beginners

Listen, Listen, Listen

Buddy Up

Know Your Equipment

Follow the Manufacturer’s Recommendations

Try Different Things

Know That Nobody Knows Everything

Practice Courtesy

Join In

Get Right Back in the Saddle

Relax, It’s a Hobby!

Chapter 17: Ten Secrets of the Masters

Listening to Everything

Looking under the Hood

Studying Ham Radio History

Keeping the Axe Sharp

Practicing to Make Perfect

Paying Attention to Detail

Knowing What You Don’t Know

Taking Great Care of Antennas

Respecting Small Improvements

Being a Lifelong Student

Chapter 18: Ten First-Station Tips

Be Flexible

Study Other Stations

Budget for Surprises

Shop for Used-Equipment Bargains

Build Something Yourself

Get Grounded Early

Save Cash by Building Your Own Cables

Build Step by Step

Find the Weakest Link

Make Yourself Comfortable

Chapter 19: Ten Easy Ways to Have Fun on the Radio

Find People Having Fun — and Join In

Take Part in Special Events and Contests

Challenge Yourself

Collect Some Wallpaper

Join the Parade

Go Somewhere Cool

Squirt a Bird

Pick Up a Second (Or Third) Language

Do Shortwave Listening

Visit a New Group

Appendix A: Glossary

Appendix B: The Best References

Public service

Digital or data modes

DXing resources

Contesting

Satellites

Mobile operation

Radio technology and electronics

Antennas

VHF/UHF/microwave

Propagation

About the Author

Cheat Sheet

Connect with Dummies

Introduction

You may have come across ham radio in any number of ways. Maybe you browsed a website that has some ham radio content, such as a project on a do-it-yourself website or in a YouTube video. Hams also play key roles in movies such as Contact and on television series such as Last Man Standing, in which Tim Allen plays a ham who has stations in his basement and at work. Several cartoon characters on The Simpsons are hams, too! You’ll discover hams and ham radio by reading about them in newspaper and magazine articles, by seeing them in action performing emergency communications services, by interacting with a teacher or professor, or maybe by talking to a friend or relative who enjoys the hobby. Interestingly enough, ham radio has room for all these activities. Ham radio includes a mad scientist or two, but most hams are just like you.

The traditional image of ham radio is of a room full of vacuum tubes, gears, flickering needles, and Morse code equipment, but today’s hams have many more options to try. Although the traditional shortwave bands are certainly crowded with ham signals hopping around the planet, hams now transmit data and pictures through the airwaves; use the Internet, lasers, and microwave transmitters; and travel to unusual places high and low to make contact, even to and from the International Space Station.

Simply stated, ham radio provides the broadest and most powerful wireless communications capability available to any private citizen anywhere in the world. Because the world’s citizens are craving ever-closer contact and hands-on experiences with technology of all sorts, ham radio is attracting attention from people like you. The hobby has never had more to offer and shows no sign of slowing its expansion into new wireless technologies. (Did I say wireless? Think extreme wireless!)

About This Book

I wrote Ham Radio For Dummies, 2nd Edition, for beginning hams. If you’ve just become interested in ham radio, you’ll find plenty of information here on what the hobby is all about and how to go about joining the fun by discovering the basics and getting a license. Many books about ham radio’s technical and operating specialties are available, but this book introduces them briefly so you can get up to speed as quickly as possible.

If you’ve already received your license, congratulations! This book helps you change from a listener to a doer. Any new hobby, particularly a technical one, can be intimidating to newcomers. By keeping Ham Radio For Dummies handy in your radio shack, you’ll be able to quickly understand what you hear on the airwaves. I cover the basics of getting a station put together properly and the fundamentals of on-the-air behavior. Use this book as your personal radio buddy, and soon, you’ll be making contacts with confidence.

You can read this book in any order. Feel free to browse and flip through the pages to any section that catches your interest. The sidebars and icons are there to support the main story of each chapter, but you can skip them and come back to them later.

The book has five parts. Parts I and II are for readers who are getting interested in ham radio and preparing to get a license. Parts III and IV explain how to set up a station, get on the air, and make contact with other hams. Part V is the Part of Tens (familiar to all For Dummies readers), which presents a few tips and secrets of ham radio. The appendixes consist of an extensive glossary and a long list of excellent references — both online and off — for you to use as you branch out and expand your ham radio career.

Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending that the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this book as an e-book, you’ve got it easy; just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, I made some assumptions about you. You don’t have to know a single thing about ham radio or its technology to enjoy Ham Radio For Dummies, 2nd Edition, and you definitely don’t need to be an electrical engineer to enjoy this book.

But I ask two things of you:

You have an interest in ham radio.

You know how to use a computer well enough to surf the web.

Due to the broad nature of ham radio, I couldn’t include everything in this book. (Also, if I’d done that, you wouldn’t be able to lift it.) But I steer you in the direction of additional resources, including websites, that will help you follow this book with current information and explanations.

Icons Used in This Book

While you’re reading, you’ll notice icons that point out special information. Here are the icons I use and what they mean.

This icon points out easier, shorter, or more direct ways of doing something.

This icon goes with information that helps you operate effectively and avoid technical bumps in the road.

This icon signals when I show my techie side. If you don’t want to know the technical details, skip paragraphs marked with this icon.

Whenever I could think of a common problem or “oops,” you see this icon. Before you become experienced, it’s easy to get hung up on little things.

This icon lets you know that some regulatory, safety, or performance issues are associated with the topic of discussion. Watch for this icon to avoid common gotchas.

Beyond the Book

Appendix B provides a long list of great resources for you, so definitely start there when you have questions about topics that aren’t covered in the rest of the book.

Next, you'll want to keep your eCheat Sheet handy; that's where I've collected the information you're most likely to need on a day-to-day basis while you're building up your ham radio know-how. You'll find a summary of your Technician (and soon-to-be General) class license privileges and other stuff you'll want in your shack or at your fingertips. The eCheat Sheet is available at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/hamradio.

Finally, if you browse to www.dummies.com/extras/hamradio, you'll find additional online material: useful stuff that you'll be glad you can access online from anywhere.

Where to Go from Here

If you’re not yet a ham, I highly recommend that you find your most comfortable chair and read Parts I and II, where you can discover the basics about ham radio and solidify your interest. If you’re a licensed ham, browse through Parts III and IV to find the topics that interest you most. Take a look at the appendixes to find out what information is secreted away back there for when you need it in a hurry.

For all my readers, welcome to Ham Radio For Dummies, 2nd Edition. I hope to meet you on the air someday!

Part I

Getting Started with Ham Radio

Visit www.dummies.com for more great For Dummies content online.

In this part . . .

Get acquainted with ham radio — what it is and how hams contact one another.

Find out about the basic technologies that form the foundation of ham radio.

Discover how hams interact with the natural world to communicate across town and around the world.

Get acquainted with the various types of ham communities: on the air, online, and in person.

Visit www.dummies.com for more great For Dummies content online.

Chapter 1

Getting Acquainted with Ham Radio

In This Chapter

Becoming part of ham radio

Exploring ham radio

Making contact via ham radio

Constructing your own radio shack

Ham radio invokes a wide range of visions. Maybe you have a mental image of a ham radio operator (or ham) from a movie or newspaper article. But hams are a varied lot — from go-getter emergency communicators to casual chatters to workshop tinkerers. Everyone has a place, and you do too.

Hams employ all sorts of radios and antennas using a wide variety of signals 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 public service, and for experimenting with radios and radio equipment. They communicate by using microphones, telegraph or Morse keys, computers, cameras, lasers, and even their own satellites.

Hams meet on the air and in person, in clubs and organizations devoted to every conceivable purpose. Hams run special flea markets and host conventions large and small. Some hams are as young as 6 years old; others are centenarians. Some have a technical background; most do not. One thing that all these diverse people share, however, is an interest in radio that can express itself in many ways.

This chapter gives you an overview of the world of ham radio and shows you how to become part of it.

Tuning into Ham Radio Today

Hams enjoy three aspects of ham radio: technology, operations, and social. Your interest in the hobby may be technical, you may want to use ham radio for a specific purpose, or you may just want to join the fun. All are perfectly valid reasons for getting a ham radio license.

Using electronics and technology

Ham radio lets you work closely with electronics and technology (see Chapter 2). Just transmitting and receiving radio signals can be an electronics-intensive endeavor. By opening the hood on the ham radio hobby, you’re gaining experience with everything from basic electronics to cutting-edge wireless techniques. Everything from analog electronics to the latest in digital signal processing and computing technology is available in ham radio. Whatever part of electronic and computing technology you enjoy most, it’s all used in ham radio somewhere . . . and sometimes, all at the same time!

In this section, I give you a quick look at what you can do with technology.

You don’t have to know everything that there is to know, though. I’ve been in the hobby for more than 40 years, and I’ve never met anyone who’s an expert on everything.

Design and build

Just as an audiophile might, you can design and build your own equipment or assemble a station from factory-built components. All the components you need to take either path are widely available in stores and on the web. The original do-it-yourself (DIY) technical hobbyists, hams delight in the ethic known as homebrewing, helping one another build and maintain stations.

Create hybrid software and systems

You can also write your own software and create brand-new systems that are novel hybrids of radio and the Internet. Hams developed packet radio, for example, by adapting data transmission protocols used in computer networks to amateur radio links. Packet radio is now widely used in many commercial applications.

Also, the combination of GPS radiolocation technology with the web and amateur mobile radios resulted in the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS), which is now widely used. For more information about these neat systems, see Parts III and IV of this book.

Digitize your radio

Voice and Morse-code communications are still the most popular technologies that hams use to talk to one another, but computer-based digital operation is gaining fast. The most common home-station configuration today is a combination of computer and radio. The newest radios are based on software-defined radio (SDR) technology, which allows the radio to change itself on the fly to adapt to new conditions or perform new functions, as you see in Part IV.

Experiment with antennas

Besides being students of equipment and computers, hams are students of antennas and propagation, which is the means by which radio signals bounce around from place to place. Hams take an interest in solar cycles and sunspots and in how they affect the Earth’s ionosphere. For hams, weather takes on new importance, generating static or fronts along which radio signals can sometimes travel long distances. Antennas launch signals to take advantage of all this propagation, so they provide a fertile universe for station builders and experimenters.

Antenna experimentation and computer modeling is a hotbed of activity for hams. New designs are created every day, and hams have contributed many advances and refinements to the antenna designer’s art. Antenna systems range from small patches of printed circuit-board material to multiple towers festooned with large rotating arrays. All you need to start growing your own antenna farm are some wire, a feed line, and some basic tools. I give you the full lowdown in Chapter 12.

Enhance other hobbies

Hams use radio technology in support of hobbies such as radio control (R/C), model rocketry, and ballooning. Hams have special frequencies for R/C operation in their 6 meter band, away from the crowded unlicensed R/C frequencies. Miniature ham radio video transmitters (described in Chapter 11) frequently fly in model aircraft, rockets, and balloons, beaming back pictures and location information from altitudes of hundreds or thousands of feet. Ham radio data links are also used in support of astronomy, aviation, auto racing and rallies, and many other pastimes.

The radio in your pocket

You already use a radio to transmit all the time, although you probably don’t think of it that way. Your mobile phone is actually a very sophisticated, low-power portable radio! You don’t have to get a license to use it, of course; the phone company takes care of that. Nevertheless, your phone is really a radio, transmitting and receiving radio waves that are very similar to some of the radio waves that hams use. As you find out more about ham radio, you’ll also find out more about radio waves in general, and you’ll begin to look at your mobile phone in a whole new light.

Joining the ham radio community

Hams like to meet in person as well as on the radio. This section discusses a few ways to get involved.

Clubs

Membership in at least one radio club is part of nearly every ham’s life. In fact, in some countries, you’re required to be a member of a club before you can even get a license.

Chapter 3 shows you how to find and join clubs, which are great sources of information and assistance for new hams.

A particularly beneficial relationship exists between ham radio operators and stamp collectors, or philatelists. Hams routinely exchange postcards called QSLs (ham shorthand for received and understood) with their call signs, information about their stations, and (often) colorful graphics or photos. Stamp-collecting hams combine the exchange of QSLs with collecting by sending the cards around the world with colorful local stamps or special postmarks. Foreign hams return the favor by sending stamps of their own. The arrival of those cheerful red-and-blue airmail envelopes from exotic locations is always a special treat. You can find more information about the practice of QSLing in Chapter 14.

Hamfests and conventions

Two other popular types of gatherings are hamfests and conventions. A hamfest is a ham radio flea market where hams bring their electronic treasures for sale or trade. Some hamfests are small get-togethers held in parking lots on Saturday mornings; others attract thousands of hams from all over the world and last for days, even in these days of eBay!

Hams also hold conventions with a variety of themes, ranging from public service to DX (see “DXing, contests, and awards,” later in this chapter) to low-power operating. Hams travel all over the world to attend conventions so they can meet friends formerly known only as voices and call signs over the crackling radio waves.

Emergency teams

Because of their numbers and their reliance on minimal infrastructure, hams bounce back quickly when a natural disaster or other emergency makes communications over normal channels impossible. Hams organize themselves into local and regional teams that practice responding to a variety of emergency needs, working to support relief organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, as well as public-safety agencies such as police and fire departments.

Fall is hurricane season in North America, so every year, ham emergency teams gear up for these potentially devastating storms. These teams staff an amateur station at the National Hurricane Center in Florida (www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw) and keep The Hurricane Watch Net busy on 14.325 MHz (www.hwn.org).

After big storms of all types, hams are the first messengers from the affected areas, with many more operators around the country standing by to relay their messages and information. During and after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, for example, hams were on the job providing communications at emergency operations centers and in the field. Government agencies had to focus on coordinating recovery and rescue efforts, so the hams trained as emergency response teams helped them by handling health-and-welfare messages, performing damage assessments, and providing point-to-point coverage until normal communications system came back to life in the following days. To find out more about providing emergency communications and public service, see Chapter 10.

On the last full weekend of June, hams across the United States engage in an annual emergency-operations exercise called Field Day, which allows hams to practice operating under emergency conditions. An amateur emergency team or station probably operates in your town or county; go visit! The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), which is a national association for amateur radio, provides a Field Day Station Locator web page (www.arrl.org/field-day-locator) that shows you how to find the team or station nearest you.

Community events

Hams provide assistance for more than just emergencies. Wherever you find a parade, festival, marathon, or other opportunity to provide communications services, you may find ham radio operators helping out. In fact, volunteering for community events is great training for emergencies!

Making contacts

If you were to tune a radio across the ham bands, what would you hear hams doing? They’re talking to other hams, of course. These chats, called contacts, consist of everything from simple conversations to on-the-air meetings to contesting (discussed later in this chapter). This section gives you a broad overview of contacts; for more info, see “Communicating with Ham Radio,” later in this chapter. I discuss contacts in depth in Chapter 8.

Ragchews

By far the most common type of activity for hams is just engaging in conversation, which is called chewing the rag. Such contacts are called ragchews. Ragchews take place across continents or across town. You don’t have to know another ham to have a great ragchew with him or her; ham radio is a friendly hobby with little class snobbery or distinctions. Just make contact, and start talking! Find out more about ragchews in Chapter 9.

The origins of the word ragchew are fairly clear. The phrase chewing the rag was well known even in the late Middle Ages. Chew was slang for talk, and rag, derived from fat, was a reference to the tongue. Thus, people began to use chewing the rag to describe to conversations, frequently those that took place during meals. Later, telegraph operators picked up that use, and hams picked it up from telegraphers. Because most of ham radio is in fact conversation, ragchewing has been part of radio since its earliest days.

Nets

Nets (an abbreviation for networks) are organized on-the-air meetings scheduled for hams who have a shared interest or purpose. Here are some of the types of nets you can find:

Traffic: These nets are part of the North American system that moves text messages, or traffic, via ham radio. Operators meet to exchange (relay) messages, sometimes handling dozens in a day. Messages range from mundane communications to emergency health-and-welfare transmissions.

Emergency service: Most of the time, these nets meet only for training and practice. When disasters or other emergencies strike, hams organize around these nets to provide crucial communications into and out of the stricken areas until normal links are restored.

Technical service: These nets are like radio call-in programs; stations call in with specific questions or problems. The net control station may help, but more frequently, one of the listening stations contributes the answer. Many technical-service nets are designed specifically to assist new hams.

Swap: Between the in-person hamfests and flea markets, in many areas a weekly local swap net allows hams to list items for sale or things they need. A net control station moderates the process, putting interested parties in contact with each other; then the parties generally conduct their business over the phone or by e-mail.

Mailbox: If you could listen to Internet systems make contact and exchange data, a mailbox net is what they’d sound like. Instead of transmitting ones and zeroes as voltages on wires, hams use tones. Mailbox nets use computer radio systems that monitor a single frequency all the time so that others can connect to it and send or retrieve messages. Mailboxes are used for emergency communications and for travel where the Internet isn’t available.

DXing, contests, and awards

Hams like engaging in challenging activities to build their skills and station capabilities. Following are a few of the most popular activities:

DX: In the world of ham radio, DX stands for distance, and the allure of making contacts ever more distant from one’s home station has always been part of the process. Hams compete to contact faraway stations and to log contacts with every country. They especially enjoy the thrill of contacting exotic locations, such as expeditions to uninhabited islands and remote territories, and making friends in foreign countries. When conditions are right and the band is full of foreign accents, succumbing to the lure of DX is easy.

Contests: Contests are ham radio’s version of a contact sport. The point is to make as many contacts as possible during the contest period by sending and receiving as many short messages as possible — sometimes thousands. These exchanges are related to the purpose of the contest: to contact a specific area, use a certain band, find a special station, or just contact the most people.

Awards: Thousands of awards are available for various operating accomplishments, such as contacting different countries or states.

Special-event stations: These temporary stations are on the air for a short time to commemorate or celebrate an event or location, often with a special or collectible call sign. In December 2012, for example, the Marconi Cape Cod Radio Club set up a special temporary station at the location of Marconi’s Wellfleet trans-Atlantic operations. Find out more on the club’s Facebook page by searching for KM1CC - Marconi Cape Cod Radio Club.

If you enjoy the thrill of the chase, go to Chapter 11 to find out more about all these activities.

Hams around the world

Where are the hams in this big world? The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU; www.iaru.org) counts about 160 countries with a national radio society. Counting all the hams in all those countries is difficult, because in some countries, amateur stations and operators have separate licenses. Nevertheless, the best estimate is that there are about 2 million amateur station licenses worldwide and perhaps twice that many amateur operator licenses. The United States alone had more than 700,000 hams as of 2012 — the most ever.

You may not be surprised to hear that China has the fastest-growing amateur population; Thailand and India aren’t far behind.

Roaming the World of Ham Radio

Although the United States has a large population of hams, the amateur population in Europe is growing by leaps and bounds, and Japan has an even larger amateur population. With more than 3 million hams worldwide, very few countries are without an amateur (see the nearby sidebar “Hams around the world”). Ham radio is alive and well around the world. Tune the bands on a busy weekend, and you’ll see what I mean!

Hams are required to have licenses, no matter where they operate. (I cover all things licensing in Part II of this book.) The international agency that manages radio activity is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU; www.itu.int/home). Each member country is required to have its own government agency that controls licensing inside its borders. In the United States, hams are part of the Amateur Radio Service (http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/services/amateur.html), which is regulated and licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Outside the United States, amateur radio is governed by similar rules and regulations.

Amateur radio licenses in America are granted by the FCC, but the tests are administered by other hams acting as Volunteer Examiners (VEs). I discuss VEs in detail in Chapter 4. Classes and testing programs are often available through local clubs (refer to “Clubs,” earlier in this chapter).

Because radio signals know no boundaries, hams have always been in touch across political borders. Even during the Cold War, U.S. and Soviet hams made regular contact, fostering long personal friendships and international goodwill. Although the Internet makes global communications easy, chatting over the airwaves to someone in another country is exciting and creates a unique personal connection.

Since the adoption of international licensing regulations, hams have operated in many countries with minimal paperwork. A ham from a country that's a party to the international license recognition agreement known as CEPT (an international treaty that enables countries to recognize one another's amateur licenses) can use his or her home license to operate within any other CEPT country. The ARRL provides a lot of useful material about international operating at www.arrl.org/international-regulatory.

Communicating with Ham Radio

Though you make contacts for different purposes (such as a chat, an emergency, a net, or a contest), most contacts follow the same structure:

1. You place a call to someone or respond to someone else’s call.

2. You and the other operator exchange names, information about where you’re located, and the quality of your signal so you can gauge transmitting conditions.

3. If the purpose of the contact is to chat, proceed to chat.

You might talk about how you constructed your station, what you do for a living, your family, and your job, for example.

Except for the fact that you and the other ham take turns transmitting, and except that this information is converted to radio waves that bounce off the upper atmosphere, making a contact is just like talking to someone you meet at a party or convention. You can hold the conversation by voice, by Morse code, or by keyboard (using a computer as intermediaries to the radios). You won’t find a great purpose in the average contact except a desire to meet another ham and see where your radio signal can be heard.

A question that I’m frequently asked about ham radio is “How do you know where to tune for a certain station?” Usually, my answer is “You don’t!” Ham radio operators don’t have specific frequency assignments or channel numbers. This situation is a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that ham radio gives you unparalleled flexibility to make and maintain communications under continually changing circumstances. The bad news is that making contact with one specific station is hard because you may not know when or on what frequency to call. Hams have found many workarounds for the latter problem, however; the result is an extraordinarily powerful and adaptive communications service.

Building a Ham Radio Shack

For me, the term radio shack conjures visions more worthy of a mad scientist’s lab than of a modern ham station. Your radio shack, however, is simply the place you keep your radio and ham equipment. The days of bulbous vacuum tubes, jumping meters, and two-handed control knobs are in the distant past.

For some hams, the entire shack consists of a handheld radio or two. Other hams operate on the go in a vehicle. Cars make perfectly good shacks, but most hams have a spot somewhere at home that they claim for a ham radio.

I discuss building and running your own radio shack in Part IV of this book. For now, though, here’s what you can find in a ham shack:

The rig: The offspring of the separate receiver and transmitter of yore, the modern radio, or rig, combines both devices in a single compact package about the size of a large satellite TV receiver. Like its ancestors, the rig has a large tuning knob that controls the frequency, but state-of-the-art displays and computer screens replace the dials and meters.

Computer: Most hams today have at least one computer in the shack. Computers now control many radio functions, including keeping records of contacts. Digital data communications simply wouldn’t be possible without them. Some hams use more than one computer at a time.

Mobile/base rig: For operating through local repeater stations, hams may use a handheld radio, but in their shacks, they use a more-capable radio. These units, which are about the size of hardcover books, can be used as either mobile or base rigs.

Microphones, keys, and headphones: Depending on the shack owner’s preferences, you’ll see a couple (or more) of these important gadgets, the radio’s true user interface. Microphones and keys range from imposing and chrome-plated to miniaturized and hidden. The old Bakelite headphones, or cans, are also a distant memory (which is good; they hurt my ears!), replaced by lightweight, comfortable, hi-fi designs.

Antennas: In the shack, you’ll find switches and controllers for antennas that live outside the shack. A ham shack tends to sprout antennas ranging from vertical whips the size of pencils to wire antennas stretched through the trees and supersize directional beam antennas held high in the air on steel towers. See Chapter 12 for more info on antennas.

Cables and feed lines: Look behind, around, or under any piece of shack equipment, and you find wires. Lots of them. The radio signals pipe through fat, round black cables called coaxial, or coax. Power is supplied by colored wires not terribly different in size from house wiring. I cover cables and feed lines in detail in Chapter 12.

The modern ham shack is as far removed from the homebrewed breadboards in the backyard shed as a late-model sedan is from a Model T. You can see examples of several shacks, including mine, in Chapter 13.

Where did the phrase radio shack come from? Back in the early days of radio, the equipment was highly experimental and all home-built, requiring a nearby workshop. In addition, the first transmitters used a noisy spark to generate radio waves. The voltages were high, and the equipment was often somewhat a work in progress, so the radio hobbyists often found themselves banished from the house proper. Thus, many early stations were built in a garage or tool shed. The term shack carries through today as a description of the state of order and cleanliness in many a ham’s lair.

Ham: Not just for sandwiches anymore

Everyone wants to know the meaning of the word ham, but as with many slang words, the origin is murky. Theories abound, ranging from the initials of an early radio club’s operators to the use of a meat tin as a natural sound amplifier. Of the many possibilities, the following theory seems to be the most believable.

“Ham: a poor operator” was used in telegraphy even before radio. The first wireless operators were landline telegraphers who brought with them their language and the traditions of their much older profession. Government stations, ships, coastal stations, and the increasingly numerous amateur operators all competed for signal supremacy in one another’s receivers. Many of the amateur stations were very powerful and could effectively jam all the other operators in the area. When this logjam happened, frustrated commercial operators would send the message “THOSE HAMS ARE JAMMING YOU.” Amateurs, possibly unfamiliar with the real meaning of the term, picked it up and wore it with pride. As the years advanced, the original meaning completely disappeared.