I tend to agree with the many people that say that ham radio is a dying hobby - both literally because it's practitioners are becoming silent keys by the hundreds a day, and newcomers are in it only to meet the minimum requirements for legally using cheap Chinese handheld radios (if they do so at all) and to use high-power transmitters for drone control and video, or as "preppers," and figuratively in that there are a lot fewer innovations in radio by radio amateurs today than there were several years ago, when the science of radio was primarily in the hands of hobbyists. Now it's in the hands of telecom corporations, academic and research institutions, and the defense industry, meanwhile ham radio is more or less still stuck in a bygone era, slowly coming to the present time through grassroots innovations in software defined radio technologies, the free and open source codec2, extremely robust synchronous digital modulations for shortwave channels, which are slowly starting to be recognized by the mainstream.
We don't have the kinds of technologies in a ham radio that we take for granted in our cell phone - yet - and bringing ham radio up to speed really hasn't been a priority of its licensees since a lot of them are members of the aforementioned industries who take pleasure in antiquated pastimes, not unlike maintaining and restoring historic vehicles. Younger people don't have really have a good reason to join, and several are led astray by the large gap in age. I got in it at 15, and since it gave me a lot of technical background, it led me to a career. Now in my 20's, I'm finding less interest in it seeing it's basically a bunch of people exchanging names over the air, and sending proof of that exchange over the internet. A lot of youth cannot fathom why you need the radio when you have the internet already. There are a million more facets to ham radio than that, but it's hard to see the forest through the trees.
A lot of the advances in ham radio merely tacks on a previous invention to the face of the service, such as this one. It's pretty cool, nobody has done it before and it might be a worthwhile and noble task to apply it to other forms of radio communication, but it - and other recent innovations - kind of lacks the "wow" factor ham radio needs to resurrect itself from it's path to obsolescence.
I agree completely. I've also found that the community can be, at times, fairly hostile to the hacker mentality. I've often asked people about trying to get manufacturers to open source their firmware such that it could be modified and improved but I usually just get a line about how "nobody wants to do that so why should they?" or that it's a "waste of their time". The old men seem to only care about playing with shiny new radios but don't seem to care about doing anything interesting with them. I will say though, Travis Goodspeed and his work has been a huge bright spot in an otherwise bleak landscape. He's reverse engineered radio firmware, built a ham watch out of a casio calculator watch and an MSP430, and created a ham satellite tracking dish among other things. I really wish we had more people like him.
You also mention the preppers... I've come to find that they're basically the only thing keeping the hobby afloat at this point. All of the .22 hoarders keep buying up truckloads Baofengs, Icoms and Yaesus and while some get drawn into it, a lot seem to stick them in the basement and never even bother to get licenced or learn how to use them. There seems to be some internal regret about hitching the hobby to that group but it was all but inevitable given the central nature of EMCOM to the hobby.
I suggest you step outside of the "Baofeng vs Yaesu" box and explore HF. There is tons of open source hardware and software stuff going on, and it's growing rapidly. Also see my reply to your comment's parent.
> slr555: Amateur radio may seem like a quaint hobby for old timers but there are a number of newer hybrid operating modes that play nicely with the digital world.
Your argument is equivalent to arguing that because cruise ships exist, surfing isn't fun.
Amateur radio is a way of interacting much more closely with the physics of radio and radio wave propagation than it is simply a method of communication.
Just as a surfer will paddle out and wait for the perfect set to roll in, amateurs look forward to the right combination of sunspots and low atmospheric disturbance, and when it happens it's pure fun, just like catching a wave at the beach.
The mobile phone and satellite networks are big budget designs that have turned into mostly advertising funded infrastructure that provides a small improvement over the entertainment of old fashioned TV. Due to the market power of advertisers and carriers, we even have interruption ads and bandwidth throttling.
Amateur radio is something so much more pure. It's more like camping than simply mass-produced lodging... more like adventure travel than staying at a Marriott.
If you look at ham radio and see deficiencies compared to the mobile and satellite networks, I think you're looking for something very different than what most amateurs have found.
Amateur radio lets you build the simple version of a lot of things...everything from simple antennas, simple direct conversion or superhet receivers, phased systems, etc.
Not only can you build it and use it, you can tinker with it and learn and enjoy every aspect of the experience. Magnus Carlson was interviewed recently and said that his biggest wish is that he could learn chess all over again as a beginner. He's the best and yet the highest form of pure fun he's found is in being a beginner and experiencing the joy of developing a mastery of something rich and complex. Amateur radio lets you dig into the fundamentals... the physics of passive components all the way to the most advanced nuances of beamforming and coding theory.
The social aspect of getting on the air and having a chat or making contact with a new country, etc., ads a social and human layer on top of the technical foundation, which is an altogether different aspect of the hobby.
Contesting and DXing are fast and slow versions of a similar thing. They include both flow state like video games and medium and long term strategy for station building and skill enhancement.
When people ask why I like contesting I tell them "imagine if video games were real". I don't need to pretend I'm an antisocial gangster or member of the military to get a major adrenaline rush and do a flow activity that is using real physics and where my success depends on my mastery of the real physical world, not just some game developer's pretend version.
I think we're at a fascinating crossroads where amateur radio is more appealing than ever... for the following reasons:
- mobile phones are now just an obvious and ubiquitous piece of tech. Infra-red remote controls used to get people excited when they first came out for channel flipping. The latest and greatest smart phones are still getting that kind of excitement, which is temporary.
- Now, if my mobile phone doesn't get a good signal inside a restaurant or elevator, it irritates me in the way that a flickering fluorescent bulb irritates me. It's supposed to work. Amateur radio is the opposite. When I hear that bizarre sound of MSK144 as a meteor charges a tiny swath of the ionosphere, suddenly communication exists where none had a moment earlier, and then just as suddenly it's gone... it's a form of magic in the same way that lighting tinders while camping on a damp or windy day feels like magic. In that moment one relates to the many others who have felt that same magic, that same wonderment.
Why do humans surf waves, climb mountains, sail the oceans in small boats, explore jungles and rainforests, and aspire to explore the solar system and universe? There is a human quality of being fascinated with the universe in its raw state and encountering it without whatever luxuries or guard rails are normally used to tame it and make it safe for everyone.
Also, we're currently at the beginning of a renaissance of hardware hacking. You can download Eagle or Circuitmaker (altium) and built all kinds of circuits and boards. There are so many great parts that the mobile industry makes at volume that are useful for all kinds of fun tinkering, but the usefulness and broader business applicability of the kinds of stuff we can build these days goes far beyond what anyone could do during the 1960s and 1970s when many modern hams came of age.
So in a nutshell, RF is cool, radio wave propagation is cool, and building stuff is fun and satisfying. Amateur radio is the most amazing physics video game and it's actually real.
Exactly... it can be a lot more than just 'communicating' with some appliance you bought.
As a ham experimenter/hacker, there are so many -challenges- you can try to meet. Line-of-sight is way too easy.
Say you're in the US; think you can talk to someone in Europe or Australia with 3 watts? You can, maybe, after you learn a bunch. If you're good enough. Or not. Might that be easier with data? Maybe. How sharp will your filters need to go? How far down in the noise your chip? Nobody else will know, but you will.
Or, if you own a farm, and miles of wire, try that at 475kHz. Be careful, you might get pulled into radio astronomy.
I have been reading a Micheal Faraday bio. It's such a great story. This guy had zero mathematical knowledge and just loved tinkering. And purely through hundreds and hundreds of experiments developed such an astounding intuition of how so many things worked. I am quite sure he would upvote your comment.
I really enjoyed reading what you wrote. I've been dancing around the edge of the ham radio community and your post felt like a warm invitation into the realm.
Do it. I'm curious what aspects have sounded interesting to you. It's a very welcoming community, and many many sub-communities. Don't hesitate to ask if there's anything you're wondering about.
Glad my post helped nudge you toward a fun and fascinating hobby!
Some of it is interest in the spectrum and the need for long range bidirectional radio for modern "hacking" interests isn't there, and what you said, that everything is so closed source and locked up by the hardware vendors, that open, cross platform development isn't intuitive.
I haven't looked at SDR, though, so I could be off base.
I think HAM radio could be more interesting if there were some compromise between "you can use lots of power but you need a license and you're prohibited from doing anything useful except in an emergency" of HAM and "you can use a little bit of power and don't need a license, but you can send whatever traffic you want" of 802.11-type unlicensed spectrum devices.
For instance, I would be more interested in packet radio if there was a shared band that required a proficiency test like HAM radio, but with more permissive rules. For instance, being able to use crypto or relay Internet traffic (which might have music or swear words). The usual argument is that if you let commercial traffic into the HAM bands, it'll just turn into a free-for-all and you'll have a bunch of crowded bandwidth with angry people, but in that case at least the bandwidth will get used by somebody.
Maybe there is a niche for "license free" radio communications as a hobby? It could operate at two levels.
The first level is to operate completely inside the rules. The rules don't say that a device can't radiate, just that it has to be within very strict "unintentional radiator" limits which are judged to produce negligible interference. How far can communications be pushed within these limits?
The second (more risky) level is to operate on the basis of living within the spirit of the law, but not the letter. The spirit of the law is that you shouldn't cause any interference. At this level, you transmit, but in such a manner that you never interfere with anyone else. How do you do it? That's why it would be an interesting hobby, as it would be truly state-of-the-art. (Think cognitive radio on steroids.) The fact that you don't get caught would be a metric of success: in the best case that your transmissions have never been detected, or in the worst that you haven't interfered with someone and prompted a complaint. Of course if you mess up you're in it big time.
For anyone who thinks this is the most cutting edge thing happening in amateur radio, there's some much more interesting development in the fields of SDR and signal propagation. Take a look at FT8/JS8call for instance.
On the subject of the linked article, I've been wanting to try something like this with SSB audio to see how well the algorithms can understand it. I could provide a broadband SDR IQ recording of lots of SSB audio if anyone wishes to give it a try.
We don't have the kinds of technologies in a ham radio that we take for granted in our cell phone - yet - and bringing ham radio up to speed really hasn't been a priority of its licensees since a lot of them are members of the aforementioned industries who take pleasure in antiquated pastimes, not unlike maintaining and restoring historic vehicles. Younger people don't have really have a good reason to join, and several are led astray by the large gap in age. I got in it at 15, and since it gave me a lot of technical background, it led me to a career. Now in my 20's, I'm finding less interest in it seeing it's basically a bunch of people exchanging names over the air, and sending proof of that exchange over the internet. A lot of youth cannot fathom why you need the radio when you have the internet already. There are a million more facets to ham radio than that, but it's hard to see the forest through the trees.
A lot of the advances in ham radio merely tacks on a previous invention to the face of the service, such as this one. It's pretty cool, nobody has done it before and it might be a worthwhile and noble task to apply it to other forms of radio communication, but it - and other recent innovations - kind of lacks the "wow" factor ham radio needs to resurrect itself from it's path to obsolescence.