hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2240.txt

Episode: 2240
Title: HPR2240: Amateur Radio Round Table
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2240/hpr2240.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 23:33:40

---

This is HBR episode 2,240 entitled Amateur Radio Round Table.
It is hosted by various hosts and in about 54 minutes long and can rim a clean flag.
The summary is HBR Community Hams get together to talk about HAM Radio.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello everybody, welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
This is the Amateur Radio Round Table that was discussed on the mailing list and we're
just going to go through the cymbal channel here and introduce ourselves.
I'm Christopher Hobbs, done a couple of episodes here on Hacker Public Radio.
My call sign is KD5RYO, I'm a technician class amateur radio operator here in the United
States.
Hello everybody, I'm John.
My Amateur Radio call sign is Kilo Tango 4 Kilo Bravo, a US advanced call sign, a rare
breed.
There's not a lot of us left.
I currently have only participated in the New Year's Eve and community news.
I've never done an episode on my own, but I'm a 20 plus year amateur radio operator and
it's one of my favorite hobbies.
My name is Steve, call sign is KD0, IJP, and I live in South Central Kansas in the United
States.
I'm currently a general class licensed amateur, been licensed for I think five or six
years now, and I've done a couple other Hacker Public Radio episodes in the last year or
so.
So that's me.
Yeah, and that's me, that's Michael Delta Lima for Mike Golf Mike doing the European
part here.
I'm licensed in a little bit over 25 years now.
I live in Southern Germany and let's see what this this round table gets us to.
I'm Tyrell Denison, I'll sign KG5RHT about as fresh as they get.
I got my ticket over the weekend, participated in my first net just earlier tonight, and
now I sit here excited to ask you guys all kinds of fun questions and learn more about
the hobby that I've just joined.
That will be Agilent and congratulations.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, congratulations to your new license.
It's great to have new blood here.
Yeah, absolutely.
Congratulations.
I wish we had more of a European contingency because there were a lot of questions about
the rules.
And I guess I should mention too that I've been licensed since about 2003 with a couple
of year break, but I've got my original call sign back.
Speaking of the questions from the list, I only was able to come up with two questions.
The first big question that spawned a lot of discussion was from Clot 2, which is how
do I get started, and then that yielded all of the discussion about what do you want
to do, different license classes, what it's like in different countries.
So figured we could discuss that.
And then the second most popular question, I guess the only other question was from
Tech Libre, which was why do I need a license and what happens if I'd operate without one.
So when we start with Clot 2's question and then we can move into the others, I'm interested
to hear what you guys think is the best way to get rolling with everything.
My advice was to number one decide what you want to do and then number two find a club
to operate with or not operate with, but to learn from.
That just opened a giant can of worms.
So I guess from both US centric and European centric perspectives, what do you guys think
the best way to obtain one's ticket is the easiest path to that?
Are we talking about how to get the ticket or how to get your first set up once you
have it?
How to get the ticket.
This is somebody who has never known anything about the hobby at all.
I mean, it was the reason why we started this roundtable to begin with.
Just to answer questions, I was not able, I felt not up to doing it alone and I needed reinforcement.
I guess I can probably speak.
This is one thing that I'll actually have some authority in having just taken my test
lesson a month ago.
As far as resources, there's all kinds of materials, there's books, no book, no nonsense
to ancient class test prep.
Listen to that.
Don stopped for about a month driving my family crazy.
They didn't get radio time when they were in the car with me.
It was all about prepping for my test.
I read through the ARRL prep book, listen to the audio book, that for about a month,
instead of taking test, they have apps or places online, ARRL website, allow you to take
practice tests and got very quickly to the point where I could complete those after
having listened to the book once and been actively reading.
Was testing and passing quite frequently, well, regularly.
Once I started passing, I didn't stop, fortunately.
I say all that with the caveat of saying, going, coming into amateur radio, I already had
experience with sound equipment having worked as an audio engineer in live audio.
I was a bit of a musician for a while.
I also worked for a radio station, so that helped.
While I was there, I got my wings with a soldering iron and electrical components, being
cables together, replacing blunt capacitors and old radio equipment, and so I had some
experience coming into it that probably gave me more of an edge when it came to getting
comfortable quickly and passing those tests quickly.
If you're a hobbyist at all, if it's done anything with electrical work or sound equipment
or anything like that, you should take to it pretty simple, especially if you'll put
in the time to read, take the practice tests, and I really can't stress enough how valuable
having the audio book was.
From me, just being able to while I was driving, I'm also a bit of a runner, so while I was
out running, I was just listening to that and getting all of the stuff that you just really
have to have memorized and ready to pull out in that test situation into my head so that
I was good to go and yeah, passed the first time January 2nd, and the FCC granted me my
license a week ago tomorrow, so that's Friday.
I can't hear Ken asking, what's the ARL?
Oh, sorry.
That would be, did anybody got that off the top of head?
That's the amateur radio relay league, that's the one.
That's the United States organization or that centers on amateur radio in United States.
What I was going to add is if you're in United States, if you go to www.arl.org and off
the homepage, there's a button that talks about licensing, education, and training, and
how to get your license, a listing of clubs in your general area.
In other countries, the best thing is to do your duck go or Google search for amateur or
ham radio and your country, and you will probably within one or two clicks be on a similar
page for the country that you're in.
Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty good advice there from both of you.
I was just going to break it down just a slight bit and just simply say that at least
in the United States, if you want to become an amateur radio operator, all you really
have to do is pass the test and make an application to the FCC.
That's the mechanics of it, and so the way you go about doing that is you find a testing
session. As John said, you can go to the ARRL website or other websites and do a search
on where a testing session is going to be in your area, because all of the testing is
done by volunteer examiners, and so you'll find them all over, and then you just go there,
you take the test, you fill out the application, they send it into the FCC for you, and then
a few weeks later you get your call sign, and that's really all there is to actually
going about getting the license. What you do with it then afterwards, of course, is the
next step.
That's an excellent addition, and I'm glad you guys mentioned the ARRL. When I first received
my license back in 2003, I had hands around me, so they kind of coaxed me into it, and
when I let my license lapse and went back to get another license, I had trouble figuring
out if there was any activity in the area, and the ARRL website was how I found a local
club where the volunteer exam coordinator was, and where I got my technician exam scheduled
and where I tested. That brings up another point that in the United States there are three
levels of licensing at the moment. There are other levels that you cannot get any longer
with our advanced friend, John here, but there is, at the moment, the technician class,
general class, and extra class licenses, each come with different privileges, and I think
it's probably fair to say that most hands start in at least in the US with the technician
class privileges. I'm not sure what the different classes are around the world though.
Here in Germany, we also have entry-level classes, which are a little bit easier to obtain,
and then you learn and update your license to have full access to all the bands allowed.
One other thing I was going to mention, one of you mentioned that you let your license lapse,
I did that too actually, and the way that works in the US anyways, at least the way it is now,
is once you are licensed, that license is good for 10 years, and after 10 years you have to
renew it, and there's nothing you have to do, no test, you have to take, you just have to say
I want to renew it, but if you don't do that, then you get a two-year grace period, and if you don't
do anything within those two years, then your license is expired, and if you want to license
again, then you have to start over, and I actually went through that process as well a number
of years ago.
An important point to raise with that too is we have these call signs, and these call signs
are not us, they are our station identifiers. When your license expires and is lapsed,
you no longer have your call signs, so then you'll have to do like I did, and file for
a vanity call sign to get your old call sign back, so my call sign when I first tested
was Kilo Delta 5 Romeo Yankee Oscar, which is what I have now. When it finally expired,
they assigned me Kilo Girl 5 Quebec Delta Quebec, didn't care for that, and filed for a vanity call
within about a month, I had my old call sign back, it was available, nobody else had taken it.
So that's another point to bring up, I guess, is if you do get your license and you don't like your call sign,
at least in the United States, you can file for almost anything you want.
Yeah, similar here, you can get a special call sign or something you like, but once you have it
and you normally, until you upgrade, you keep it.
Yeah, I think that's a difference, at least currently in the US, you can, I don't know if there's
any minimum time that you have to keep a license, I think you can keep applying for vanity call signs
until you get the one that you really like, at least I know some people that have changed call signs
two or three times in a two or three months period, which I don't quite understand,
but nonetheless, it is possible.
Yeah, don't get me started on that.
Yeah, it's hard to keep up with people sometimes, we get so accustomed to these stations being the actual people
and that's another good point to mention, if you are not licensed, again, speaking from the United States Centric,
your point here, if you can find an amateur radio event in your area and probably the best one for a lot of people
that you can find a field day event, you can operate under somebody else's call as long as they're present there
with you at the radio, so if you should find a club and you're not sure if you want to get your license,
you could reach out and contact that club and they're often very supportive of people looking to get in the hobby
and you may be able to join them on of their events and give some time in on the air before ever acquiring your license.
Yeah, things have been relaxed a little bit on our side.
There are at least greeting messages allowed from non-licensed people to say at least hello
and there are educational call signs, so someone can apply for an educational call sign that's...
I'm missing the prefix right now and those are intended for people who are preparing for a test
and they can use this call sign in the presence of the call sign holder to do radio contacts as a learning experience.
Well, since we're talking about how you go about getting your license,
one of the things I was going to mention is just as a piece of advice for somebody out there considering it,
you know, the hobby of amateur radio is huge. There's many, many different things you can do and it can get overwhelming.
And so one of the pieces of advice that I give to people is don't try to figure it all out before you go get your license.
You'll probably never do it. So, you know, once you decide, yeah, I think I want to try, you know,
become an amateur radio operator, study for your test, go find a testing location, take your test, get your license,
and then, you know, find other people that can help you figure out what it is you want to do.
Don't try to figure it all out ahead of time or you'll never do it.
I think that's great advice. I hammered off a huge list and the thread on the mailing list of things you can do.
And it occurred to me as I was going through some of the testing material that you'll learn about various things that you can do through that.
And you made a good point too about finding someone to help you in the hobby we generally call that an elmer, right?
I never really had an elmer and they're kind of hard to find in my region, but this concept is sort of a mentor guiding you through the hobby and helping you find what you want to do.
The other thing that can really help with that is if you do find a club, you know, and usually if you find your volunteer exam coordinator, you will find a club.
A lot of clubs are typically focused on a particular activity.
You know, here we have a UHF society and we have, there's a couple of groups that do emergency communications.
And at one point there was a group that was doing DXing, which is making long distance contacts.
If you find one of those groups, you may find that you enjoy what they're doing and then you can get your advice from them and figure out what to do from there.
Which also goes into the question that was asked, you know, how do you pick your equipment?
I think you kind of pick your equipment based on the direction you've chosen in the hobby as well. So yeah, it is a vast, vast hobby and a lot of things to get into.
Yeah, I think material is the most, most diverse hobby you can ever ever choose because there's so many aspects and they are all under the umbrella of amateur radio.
So if you take people playing with microcontrollers, playing with quadcopter or whatever, you can find those things all under the umbrella of amateur radio in an amateur radio context.
And I think getting in touch with the club and also for your first station setup, whatever brings you in contact with the locals is a good choice for starting radio equipment.
If you are in a densely populated area where you have repeater stations on VHF, UHF frequencies, you can reach within a handy talky.
Then this would be a great station to start to get you just in contact with the local people and then find out what they do, what interests you.
And if you are in a widespread country, it might be a shortwave on some frequency to get in touch with those people.
But I think whatever gets you in touch with the locals is a good starting point.
Well, they add a little bit to what Chris said there about getting involved with the club.
You know, one of the hardest things, at least for me, I think this is a personality thing, but at least for me, when I first got my license, I got a radio and I was kind of scared to talk at the radio.
I mean, I didn't know what to do and anything like that.
And so one of the things that you'll find is in a lot of areas, there's like organized nets.
In fact, I think Tyrone may have said something about the fact that he checked into his first net.
And that's basically just an organized get together over the air where usually somebody kind of leads the net and people can check in and talk.
And everything. And it just helps you relax a little bit.
And you can listen to what other people are doing and then you can kind of follow suit and go that way.
Another thing, the local club that I'm a member of here in South Central Kansas, we do a lot of communications for things like bike rides, bike rides for raising money for some things.
And so then we do communications for that.
And again, that's an organized event where you can really learn a lot about operating by watching what other people are doing and then following suit.
Yeah, club stations are a great way to get into into operation.
I remember my first most code contact after after I got my license to do more code.
And I was basically keying in on different side.
What the other guy wrote on the sheet of paper because I was far too nervous to do it on my own, at least the first contact.
The second one was my own. And so I got with a holding hand and got into it.
Well, there is a lot of protocol on the radio.
And I think the word that was said over and over that makes most sense is listen.
When you do finally get your radio and you're trying to participate in one of the many activities, always listen for a while before you jump in.
Listen to a net or listen to a conversation or something of that nature.
And Michael, if it makes you feel any better, I've been doing both satellite and CW for years.
And I still write down everything. I write scripts down constantly.
So there's just often a lot to remember.
So I can't always keep it in my head. And I still get a little mic shy.
That's another good thing to bring up. Sometimes it's a little, you may get a little nervous, it's a little scary talking on the radio.
But everybody is so friendly. And if you commit a faux pas or something like that, people rarely ever berate you.
And if they do, you can just turn the VFO knob and move on to another place.
People are always willing to help. It seems.
What's CW? What's a VFO?
That's a good point. So CW, I believe, is abbreviation for Currier Wave.
But we're talking about Morris Code here, international Morse. And then VFO is a variable frequency oscillator.
It is the knob you use to change the frequency you are currently listening to or transmitting on or both depending on your radio setup.
Yeah, I think VFO is just the mode of most modern radio equipment where you can continuously in some increments, change the frequency as opposed to memory mode where you normally have stored fixed channels.
And CW, I think it's continuous wave. And I was always wondering, why is it continuous wave if you key it turned on and off.
Does anybody know for sure why it's called continuous wave?
It's a continuous carrier. When it's on, it's, it's, it does not also, it does not oscillate.
It is not what's the word modulated.
Yeah, I think that's the issue. You're not, you're not modulating the carrier. You're just turning the carrier on and off.
Yeah, I think it comes from from the very, very old days as a contrast to spark, which was not just so continuous the wave because you have the spark.
You're turning the, the oscillation and then it tape us down until the next spark recognized it. So I think the continuous wave is continuous while keyed down and not so, so very able as a spark generated signal.
We should probably talk a little bit. We mentioned CW and that's, that's just a name that we use for more code.
It used to be in the United States, at least, when you got your, even your very basic level ham radio license, you had to know Morse code.
You had to pass a Morse code test five words per minute if I remember right. And in fact, I had to do that the first time I got a license.
That's no longer the case. And you can get into a lot of arguments as to whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
But it used to be that people were maybe a little bit frightened of getting a ham license because they had to learn Morse code.
That's not the case here anymore. I'm curious over in Germany, do you have to have to learn Morse at all?
No, no, no longer. So when I started, there was a basic VHF UHF license starting at two meters, which is 144 megahertz in the higher frequencies, which did not require most code.
And if you wanted to go on shortwave frequencies below 30 megahertz, you needed Morse code into two speeds.
One was 30 letters per minute, which would be about five words per minute. And the full license, which allows a loud access to all frequencies and the higher output power was 10 words per minute.
But it has has been dropped since since then.
We just have to bring some why I have. Oh, that brings up why I am still and have the advanced license.
I'm an old guy and when people look, look, look me up on a website called qrz.com, they see it's an advanced call sign.
It means I'm a dinosaur, but it also means that I passed 13 words a minute all those years ago. I actually never did pass 20.
I tried a couple times, but I was having too much fun on the air with the privileges I had, but the funny thing is hated learning Morse code.
And once I started doing it, I actually have always enjoyed it. It took a while, but once I got it, I enjoyed it.
Now I don't use much of it. I use what we call digital modes. I like to use my computer to do my talking.
So since we're bringing up more acronyms here, just let me say that VHF is very high frequency. UHF is ultra high frequency.
And those are pretty common for short range communication. I'm just going to be as simple as possible with it.
And then we also will probably talk a little bit and have talked a little bit about high frequency short way being included in that.
And that usually goes a little bit further.
Also, I guess since we're jumping into different modes of operations, why don't we talk a little bit about what each one of us do?
Because we have a pretty vast experience here. It seems so why don't we talk a little bit about the modes of operation that we like to use and just kind of go down the list.
So for me, I'm interested in CW. I got my license before or I'm sorry after the CW requirement was lifted because it was a deterrent for me.
But like a lot of others, I'm finding Morse code is a enjoyable aspect of the hobby. So I like to do QRP or low power Morse code.
I also like to work satellites, so I like to bounce my radio signals off satellites and talk to other people.
And I tend to do just terrestrial repeater type things.
So when we move down the list and see what everybody enjoys doing.
All right, well, I'll jump in. I have done everything from bounce signals off of satellites, off of meteorites, and I do most what we call work on the digital modes where you're using a computer to generate tones
and put them out over the airwaves to communicate with low power currently have worked over 100 different countries on almost every band that amateur radio has privileges and accept for well from 80 meters all the way.
Which is the they call it when I should I should have wrote everything down, but I am I have always been mic shy from the time I started in the hobby and I do much better using something other than my voice to communicate.
I could go probably for hours on the fun stuff that I've done and the people I've communicated with from astronauts to you name it.
I may very much a big advocate of just sticking your feet in the water and trying a little bit of everything and there's a lot to try.
Well, that's a good summary there. As far as myself, I have not learned CW or Morse code, so I haven't done any of that work, although it's on my list of things I'd like to do someday.
Most of the work that I do is local repeater type stuff, which this would be that what Chris was saying the UHF and VHF frequencies where there's a repeater that's local or not too far away.
And so when I talk the repeater hears me and then repeats what I've said to anybody listening basically and it's a way that a lot of local communication is done.
So I do quite a bit on that with nets and things like that. And then I've also done a fair amount of HF work, which is the high frequency mostly in the 20 meter band some in the 40 meter band.
And that's where you can talk hundreds or thousands of miles away. And I've talked to most of the states in the US and a few European countries as well.
Okay, so I would not have learned Morse code if I wouldn't have had to. But I like it. I'm not particularly good at it. But when I am doing a contact on the on the shortwave bands, which is embarrassing the rare, then I try to do it in Morse code.
And there's a normally some field day activities during several events in the year, but not really much from from home.
And the most active part right now is amateur radio direction finding where I take part in local competitions quite frequently.
I do it normal local local repeater stuff talking on the local frequencies directly to club members and so on.
And that's basically it.
So I, like I mentioned, I've just gotten on the radio yet other than that's what we call phone, which is just talking into my radio and listen to other people that way as opposed to working with CW and Morse code were doing stuff with digital.
I'm excited to do both.
Like Chris mentioned, got interested in amateur radio years ago when there was that required tests for CW and this was intimidated by having to take a test.
Morse code was so never got it.
And when it came back around to be of interest to me this time.
But with that being lifted, I was much happier to go take that test and pass it.
And then I'm actually interested in doing things like Morse code now, just barely in the process of starting to learn my Morse code alphabet so I can do CW and send that further.
And then digital stuff as well.
John, I'm excited to some of the stuff that you've been able to do in the digital modes because I'm just begun to kind of understand what's possible with that.
Another interesting thing that I've heard about would be.
They call them Foxhunts where they'll take a transmitter and I don't know that any of the clubs around here do this.
If not, I'd love to be someone to help initiate that.
Take a transmitter and hide it in the region and everybody tries to track down that transmitter by listening and.
But having that direction and basically kind of like anyone is familiar with geocaching.
Geocaching but instead of using GPS coordinates, you're using your highly directional radio to locate the device.
That's really fun. I've also got two young boys.
And a daughter that.
Really glad to get involved in the hobby of introducing them to things like this so that they.
Any young age.
Those were kind of where my interests lie or my interests then experience at this point.
But that's that's where I want to go with the hobby.
Yeah, for example, that is official term is the radio amateur radio direction finding AR DF.
Yeah.
And that's what I would I'm doing with normally five transmitters hidden in the forest.
Transmitting in a sort of round round drop in fashion.
And you have your receiver.
And it's it's.
Very, very nice for non licensed people because all you need is to take a receiver borrow one and be.
Introduced and instructed how to use it and then you can go off and find those transmitters.
And have fun.
Yeah, that that sounds like a blast to me.
I'm personally one that enjoys being out in the woods.
So any excuse to.
But for me, so.
That it's a find if there are any clubs that do those and if not maybe.
Be someone who is that started.
I think it's excellent that you mentioned that it's something that not amateurs or non licensed folks can get into.
And direction finding is certainly an excellent thing for that because it is.
It is a risk you can do it with the receiver.
So I think that brings up another good point to it is possible to listen to amateur radio operators talk if you're interested.
Michael has mentioned a couple of times short a couple of times here shortwave with a simple shortwave receiver.
Now the.
It's the word I'm looking for the receipt filter or the or the.
The receiver makes it difficult to is not a very narrow filter on it.
So it makes it difficult to hear Morse code and Morse code isn't we've talked about that a lot.
It's not a huge part of the hobby, but it is just one of these many aspects.
But you can often tune around a shortwave receiver on these different high frequency bands and listen to amateur's talking.
If your receiver has capability of doing side band single side band.
You can also just get a scanner that's capable of VHF UHF and you can often pick up local repeaters and things like that.
And there's usually that you know the A. W. R. L. has band charts that tell you what frequencies are available to listen to.
And sites like repeater book and art side pub and your local club sites will have lists of repeaters and A. W. R. L. will have like the national calling frequencies and that sort of thing.
So there's a lot of space for people to tune around and listen before they ever get their license if they want to hear what hands are up to.
On the thought of the shortwave receivers.
Many of them that are in the that don't cost a whole lot 30 to 40 US dollars will have a setting for single side band or SSB.
If they don't another thing to look for is something called beat frequency oscillator BFO which will also allow you to listen to single side band transmissions and CW.
A little bit easier way back when before I was licensed I had a shortwave radio that had a BFO and it opened up a whole new avenue of listening.
And it kept kept the interest and up and because if you hear it without it it just sounds like Donald Duck talking and with it you're able to pull out to voices and hear some of the fun stuff that people are talking about.
So the first receiver I had was a direct conversion receiver I was given by my uncle which was a kid of the German amateur radio club in the 80s.
And it was for 20 meters for 14 megahertz and there I could listen to to Mars code which I wasn't able to decode at the time.
But also to single side band voice communication and could hear stations all over Europe and I think some some further DX contacts.
It was interesting to throw a piece of wire out the window and get your feedback.
And that's what that meter discussion is.
So I wish we would have had a few more you know deeper questions we probably will get some deeper questions after this goes out.
I'm sure there will be some hopefully there'll be if there's one person that it becomes interested after after this goes out.
On HPR I'll be very happy.
But I imagine there'll be quite a few others.
Well I think you're right and that reminds me that we did not answer our second and final question which is what happens if you operate without a license.
And why should I get a license if I can operate without one?
Well I have some personal experience in this realm part of where I became an amateur radio operator is I was building transmitters before I knew what amateur radio was.
I was building transmitters and I clobbered a local FM station.
It was a very high power but I just happened to be close enough to them that I walked all over their signal and then I received a nasty gram in the mail letter from our fine friends at the FCC telling me I should stop.
I brought it into work where I was a bench tech and they told me all about amateur radio and how I can transmit legally.
And so that's how I jumped into it.
There are people who do transmit illegally and by legally I mean without a license I think in the United States this concept of free banding is popular where they modify CB radios and end up transmitting on the amateur bands.
I'm not sure about all of the legal repercussions and you guys might be able to speak to them but I believe from what I've seen mostly people just get fined for operating without a license.
And I don't know if you can get a license if you are caught operating without a license I would have to look at the laws but I would definitely encourage people to get a license if they are going to transmit because the fines are often pretty hefty.
In addition to the fines I think sometimes the FCC has the authority to seize equipment too.
Yeah, I believe that's true in the United States and other places and what I tell folks is if they really want to know why would you want to have a license.
If you don't have a license most amateur radio operators won't communicate with you or if you make up something with the internet.
If you give a fictitious call sign I know within 10 seconds 20 seconds with the power of the internet that you're not who you say you are or what you're you know the fake station identification is not not good.
And it takes the fun out of it once you have a license you'd be surprised how many people you can talk to and it's well worth it to me plus you know I'm cheap I don't want to give the government any money I don't have to.
Let's be fair in the United States is 15 bucks I think most people can scrape that together 15 bucks is a lot better paying 15 bucks for licenses a lot better than however many thousands for radio fine.
Yeah, I don't know how big the fines or the charges are but I think it's it can go up to into real crime.
So and to have your amateur radio license it allows you to communicate with other amateur radio operators and not with any other stations and in German amateur radio law it's explicitly stated that amateur radio the one of the main purposes of amateur radio is education and experimentation and so on.
And to be able to do this they acknowledge that you have to for experimentation you have to be able to build your own transmitters and so on.
And this is a privilege which in my point of view is under emphasized in most times that we are the only radio service that is allowed to build their own transmitters and to care for complying with the regulations.
But we can do it on our own we can modify commercial equipment we can build it completely by our self design it and no other service is allowed to do so they all have to be have to use certified equipment and we are the only ones who can can experiment legally on this on this road.
Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't really thought of it that way but the aspect of experimentation is unique in the in the amateur radio frequencies and I guess just to clarify on this I mean the reason why there's a license necessary at all.
I mean organizations like the FCC in the US and other organizations in other countries I mean they're charged with you know making sure that the radio frequencies the radio spectrum if you will is you know used as it you know is used useful for everybody and there's not you know abuse of that.
And so you know there are a few frequencies that are public frequencies that anybody can use without a license but they're very limited there's a limited amount of power that you can transmit and all of that.
And then of course there's the license spectrum that commercial people use they pay a lot of money to gain access to that frequencies and they use it with certified equipment.
But then they've carved out these you know few frequencies relatively small ranges of frequencies but all over the spectrum that are allocated to amateur use and if you get a free license then you can use those in a lot of different ways.
Yeah I think those are excellent points. One of the major aspects of the hobby is definitely experimentation and it's nice to have that.
The other major aspect of the hobby is community building which I think will sit well with listeners of hacker public radio.
In fact I think we've got two things there experimentation real big for the community and community itself and goodwill.
And again as John said if you are making something up or you're just blathering on the radio amateurs will tune away from you and not participate we like to keep our bands friendly and we like to keep them free of what we call QRM or malicious interference.
So yeah anybody that is thinking about utilizing the amateur bands without a license I would just strongly encourage you to study a little bit and in the process of studying you'll definitely learn a lot and go the legal route for sure.
Okay guys I have gone through that thread and I don't see any other questions so I guess at this point we'll go ahead and wrap it up if any of you have any closing remarks please go ahead.
The only thing I want to say is I'm pleased to that so many people showed up five and we're all licensed that's awesome I didn't know there were any hands that were listening to hacker public radio so this is great.
So thanks for showing up and I would also ask the community if you have any questions shoot us a message on the mailing list or you can contact me directly.
You can find my contact information on any of my posts on the mailing list.
Ask us your questions if we missed something let us know if you want to know about a particular mode of operation or you want to know more about radio theory or whatever just reach out.
Or if you want to contribute with special knowledge if there's some mode you you like to do your good at or you have special knowledge about joining and Jared.
Yeah I echo all of those sentiments. I guess just as in terms of wrapping things up I mean the two pieces of advice that I think I would offer to anybody that's thinking about getting an amateur radio license and these have already been said I'm just going to restate them.
One you know go ahead and do it I mean you don't have to get it all figured out first just go ahead and find some people to help you find a testing session and and dive in.
And then the other thing is you know find a club or find somebody that's licensed and learn from them and you'll you'll get it all figured out in a pretty short order.
And I have a few a couple things since you listen to hacker public radio you know about podcasts listen just on in your pod catcher if it has a search feature search for amateur radio.
There's some real good ones there's one that is a a a gentleman that has participated in put out some shows K5 to you X he does a podcast called Linux in the hamshack.
It has Linux ham radio amateur radio excellent podcast search for those if you already listen to podcast listen listen to a few more there's some on a twit network that's that can be good.
At at times it's both video it's video and it it's good yeah definitely post something in the hacker public radio you know in the email stuff I'm reachable by my call sign.
If you look up my call sign and you send you you take the time to figure out how to do that if you google my call sign kt4kb you'll you'll find a way to reach me.
I'll be glad to to answer anything and that I know of and technical or on technical fun or or not fun and even some funny stories about getting knocked across the room a few times.
I'm glad you brought up the podcast yeah I listen to Linux and the hamshack as well it's a great podcast and I'll plug one other that I have been listening to for about a year now and that's ham radio 360 I just google for ham radio 360 it's an excellent podcast especially especially for beginners but even seasoned folks as well I'm not associated with it at all but I just want to make that plug.
Okay so thank you a lot for for participating all of you and I think there are many many more hams in the community and they they can participate here also show me should we try to find a more Europe friendly date for the next for the next session.
I am definitely on board with that I feel bad that kin couldn't join us tonight and since he is not here and you guys brought up podcasts I will do kin's job for us right now.
If you've ever thought about making a podcast if you've ever thought about recording anything and you're listening to hacker public radio this is the place to do it.
Go listen to my podcast my episodes and listen to the horrible quality with which I produce them I assure you you can do better with it and can and some string go out find a topic record something for us submit it it's super easy we're community that exists on podcasts created by our listeners and we sure could use your podcast as well thanks.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org we are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
Today's show like all our shows was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording a podcast then click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomicom computer club and it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show please email the host directly leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself unless otherwise status today's show is released on the creative comments,
attribution, share a light 3.0 license.