Logs are not required, but many hams do keep logs. Newer digital systems and software-defined radios sometimes keep these logs automatically.
However, she has a Technician’s License, which is the entry-level ticket and she is restricted to a few bands. Most local communications takes place on the VHF band (usually 144 MHz-148 MHz) and the UHF 420-450 MHz). There is a lesser used band at 222 MHz - 225 MHz that she could use, but the radios that operate in this band are more rare.
These VHF and UHF bands do not propagate much over the horizon, so they work either radio-to-radio over a few miles separation or they talk to a repeater (like a cell tower) that is usually 1000’ in the air co-located on a commercial tower.
Normal chit-chat (”Rag-chewing”) on VHF/UHF is rarely logged because you are usually talking with known club members who own and maintain the repeater. Several times a year, there are contests where operations compete to make as many connections as possible in a fixed period of time, and logging is necessary, but newbies rarely participate in these contests.
A newer generation of digital radios is emerging and are inexpensive. Some of them automatically broadcast your callsign and it appears on the receiver’s radio display.
BTW, her look-ups are now at 130, up from 50 this morning.
The FCC may have a recording of her, but that would be a guess.
If she and her hubby wanted to go radio-to-radio from their cars, they could buy a simple 25-40 watt rig for under $300 each and use a roof-mounted magnetic base antenna about 24” tall.
There are more advanced communication schemes that I have skipped over (Motorola DMR, ICOM D-Star, Yaesu Fusion, etc.), but they take a lot of knowledge or assistance to set up properly.
The morse code stuff and the shortwave radios that communicate around the world are not really available until a Technician licensee upgrades their license to “General Class”, which does require knowledge of electronic circuits, antenna theory and other aspects of radio propagation and the FCC rules.
To ballpark the “big” or “small” size of the hobby, I have spent about $2000 on equipment and can cover almost every band with my General Class license. If I went nuts and bought the best equipment available, I would have a hard time spending more than $20,000.
Although Art Bell, a ham operator of Coast-to-Coast AM fame, has an antenna farm that rivals the NSA...
https://www.smeter.net/w6obb/antenna-farm.php
Hope this helps...
Thanks FRiend :)
So, does hubby have a license, and who else in DC got their license right around that time?