Amateur radio, sometimes known as ‘ham radio’ is a very old hobby that has been in existence for over a century. The fundamental core of the hobby is to achieve communication using electromagnetic (radio) waves.
Today the hobby has many facets, with enthusiasts enjoying many different modes of communication such as the original CW mode (continuous wave e.g. Morse Code), voice communication, slow scan and high resolution TV, plus digital communication using a computer to extract information from incredibly weak signals.
The digital communication modes have the great advantage that they open up the hobby to those who might be hearing impaired.
Amateur radio signals are sometimes reflected by natural phenomena such as meteors, and for the extreme distance enthusiast with the right equipment, it is even possible to use the moon as a reflector for your radio signals !
Over the years, groups of amateurs have even designed and built satellites and had them launched as piggy-back payloads to other commercial satellite launches. Those satellites provide yet another way that amateurs can communicate with each other.
So why not give the hobby a try. The sky is literally the limit.
Getting started
The radio spectrum is vast, covering from about 135kHz all the way to 250GHz. At various points within the spectrum small pieces are made available for radio amateur use, and these pieces are called ‘bands’.
Using frequencies at the very low and very high end of the spectrum needs great experience, so the majority of amateur radio activity takes place on the more accessible frequencies between 1.8MHz and 440MHz.
To find out more about all the frequency bands available to UK radio amateurs, you are recommended to visit the band plans section of the RSGB web site.
To transmit on the amateur radio bands, you need to have a license. However, anyone can be a ‘SWL’ or Short Wave Listener for which no license is needed. That is a good way to become familiar with the various communications modes in use, and very little equipment is needed.
A very low cost way of getting started is to use a RTL-SDR (Software Defined Radio) dongle such as the one shown here. With suitable antenna, and when connected to a laptop or desktop PC, it is possible to explore many of the amateur bands between about 24MHz and 1.75GHz. To access amateur bands below 24MHz, upconverters are available.
With a software defined radio, information across a wide part of a radio band is converted into digitial data for processing in your computer. It is also possible to share this raw radio data across the internet for others to access, and many amateurs are actively doing this. The RSGB have this page listing currently active WebSDR receivers available for anyone to connect to.
If you have a suitable computer, you can start listening for free !
Getting Licensed
(content coming soon !)