Mobile Unit
Ping.
your antenna will make you an obvious place of interest.
Your question is a rather tall order for a short pithy FR reply. Get a rig, play around, get back to us in a year or so. You won’t be getting your news via Olivia MFSK or jt65a anytime soon.
We were doing digital packets before people knew what PCs were.
You can run RTTY over a radio with simplicity
You have to first start talking like Niner - Whisky Tango Foxtrot Sierra
I’ve been in the hobby 58 years and still love it as much today as I did when I got my Novice License in 1957. (please though, DO NOT link Amateur Radio and CB because they ARE NOT the same). That said, there are many digital modes in Amateur Radio. (RTTY, PSK-31, Olivia, SSTV etc just to name a few). get your Technician license and get on VHF/UHF and then upgrade to General and then finally Extra Class. (I took all of my exams when morse code was still required but it hasn’t been required for quite a while now.) You might also investigate WINLINK (more info at www.winlink.org).
Good Luck and Happy New Year!
Getting your license is fairly simple. You need to learn some basics, but those are easily done via classes (our group will start a series of classes in a few weeks... finishing with the testing) or you can learn on line like I did. ( hamtestonline.com ) My 10 year old son passed his test, and I as a 50+ year old mom got my license as well. Mr G has been a ham for over 50 years.
There are lots of reasons for having your license. Recently we had a snow emergency in town and all cell phones were tied up or down. One ham called his wife via radio to let her know he was OK, though hours stuck in traffic.
A neighboring state had an ice storm and the emergency manager assumed all was well in a hard hit county since he hadn’t heard from them. Some of our guys went up and found all phone lines and police radios were down because of the ice. They took pictures and sent them and text via winlink and got help.
We also arranged for help in a neighboring county during the big flood we had here in Tennessee. All their power was out, phone lines and emergency radios were down and they were cut off by water. There were 80 people in a shelter who needed help. We arranged for a ham to be at the shelter and set up communications with the red cross, who got the national guard on site.
Mobile Unit
See Broadband-Hamnet
I would get this magazine www.monitoringtimes.com aka Monitoring Times. It deals with many types of monitoring or radio communication. I used to subscribe to it a few years back and they had several good places for info like Ask Bob. The magazine is ran by a radio communications equipment retailer out of North Carolina. If I was starting out I would go buy a police scanner. That will allow you to monitor such things as Sky Warn. No license required to monitor. From there you can see how much time and money you want to invest in it.
Bkmrk
I have seen and heard a few rumblings in recent months about this topic, along with the assertion that the way the system works and distributed makes a kill switch "impossble."
Any links on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
Also, remember the monster building (10+ acres?) suspected to be related to the NSA or some other spook secret function, and complex believed to be an isolated Federal facility in the middle of nowhere, Utah, I think.
Anyone else remember that?
73s.
Do it, it opens up a whole new world.
And by the way, not all but much of the news you’re getting on the Internet is brought to you by the same phoney people bringing you CNN, Fox etc...It’s orchestrated, rehearsed, controlled and tainted. You’re not dealing with work a day, real people in that phoney medium.
BTW, I love it when people compare amateur radio/shortwave to computers and the Internet...It’s two totally different things...The Internet costs money to use, you’re subjected to substantial monthly bills, more and more government control in the future, network infrastructure break downs, hacks, power outages, and most of the time you’re connected via a leash or pay wire...It’s all cool when it works and ya keep paying your bills.
And if your part of the news, in a region affected by some catastrophic event, your Internet/cell will be worthless and dead.
With Amateur radio you can cruise the radio bands, talk to a guy on his small boat in the south Pacific, off the coast of Tahiti describing his little dog and his surrounding, talk to a farmer in Ohio, or a guy flying a twin engine aircraft over Alaska or a student in the Ukraine ...All done with simple basic radios and homemade antennas. Takes a bit of learning and study but that’s all part of it.
With our standard of living going southbound and people reverting back to simpler things, going back the basics, watch for things like amateur radio making a big come back...Simply because the old technology works, it’s basic,
nearly free to operate, not to mention interesting and lots of fun.
Ya won’t believe some of the people, round table discussions, etc.
And remember, even with a 10k radio station, it’s junk without an efficient antenna, put up correctly, even a wire, is all important. A simple wire antenna, nearly invisible, put up right, will talk and hear the world.
Ham Cram is a process where you spend a day studying the tests, focusing on memorizing the correct answers. It leverages your short-term memory retention to pass the test. You read through the entire test 3 or 4 times (focusing on only the correct answers), and then take it at the end of the day.
The goal is to get people into the hobby. I took the technician and general tests within a month of each other.
-PJ
iOS users seeking ham licensing: study with app
Amateur Radio Exam Prep: Technician by Patrick J Maloney LLC
https://appsto.re/us/ieMWr.i
Then get the Baofeng UV5RA Ham Two Way Radio from Amazon for $30.
Easy start.
Been a ham for 50 years now, still love the hobby and always finding new aspects to explore. For digital modes, look at PSK31, APRS, Olivia, and the new kid on the block, NBEMS. All have their strengths and weaknesses, some are more suited for HF and others V/UHF for local uses. There’s Winlink for HF email and a slew of satellites, some of which include digital messaging and beaconing capabilities.
But the bottom line is, I can take a grab-and-go radio and have worldwide voice communications within 5 minutes, totally self-contained and self-sufficient. If you want to know how, go to www.arrl.org, buy books, and start reading.
