In article ,
says...
I live in the woods on a farm and in the summer I am out riding my
horses, etc. But this time of year it gets pretty boring. I hate
being indoors all the time, but cant tolerate the cold very long. So,
it's spending far too much time on the internet. The net helps but
sometimes I'd rather talk than type, and hear voices besides the ones
the psychiatrists are always asking about. I am elderly, and on a low
fixed income, and can not afford much. However, I'd kind of like to
get into ham radio on a small scale. Years ago I enjoyed the CB, but
no one uses them anymore. What os involved in getting into ham. Do I
need a license for everything, or are these some public channels
(freqs)? I realize getting a license is complicated, and would be
happy with the public channels if they exist (at least for starters).
What channels would I start with? What is the bare minimum cost that
I can get a USED basic two way radio? Besides the radio, what else do
I need? I assume some sort of antenna setup. What would be the bare
minimum cost for that, again, used is fine. What else do I need to
know, buy, or do?

Like I said, I dont want this to get complicated, and my finances do
not allow any big prices. I guess there are two things would make or
break this plan, the costs, and the the license. Funds are low, and I
can barely pay the bills now. As for the license, I have a good
knowledge of electronics from way back when, mostly the old tube
equipment, but am not real up on the newer stuff, and my math skills
never were any good. So, I dont know if I would be able to pass the
tests or not, and I know learning the morse code would be tough. I
tried to learn it way back when I was in my teens, (thats ages ago),
and I tended to always get confused. My mind was much sharper back
then too.

The question, "What do I need to get into ham radio?" is one that has
more answers than you can imagine. A lot of it depends on what you want
to do on the air, how far away you want to be able to reach, and what
modes of communication you wish to use.

If you just want to talk with fellow hams in your local area, all you
would really need is a basic hand-held transceiver and a list of
repeaters in your area. A repeater is a device that receives signals on
one frequency and simultaneously transmits them on a nearby frequency.
They operate in the VHF and higher frequencies, which are normally
limited in their range by line of sight -- they don't benefit from
"skip" like on HF (and CB is in the HF band, incidentally). Repeaters
increase the range of small radios by virtue of higher power levels,
plus they are usually installed at higher altitudes for greater line-of-
sight range. Although line-of-sight is at best (like out on the ocean)
25 miles or so due to the curvature of the earth, a repeater at 10,000
feet can increase that range by many times. There's a repeater out on
Catalina Island, just off the coast from Los Angeles, which is installed
on the highest point of that island. Hams from Santa Barbara to San
Diego can converse with one another through that repeater, no problem.
So if this is all you want to do, you can easily get started with an
investment of only a couple of hundred bucks.

If you want to talk with folks around the country -- or around the world
-- then you want to operate on the HF bands. These are lower
frequencies, which require longer antennas to radiate the signals. (The
lower the frequency, the longer the antenna that is required to
effectively radiate the signal, which is why CB antennas at 27MHz are
longer than those for the 144-148MHz "two meter" amateur band.) Often,
higher power levels are also required. A basic setup, like the one I
had when I got started in ham radio, would involve a simple transceiver
like a Kenwood TS-520 and a dipole antenna. Total investment would be
on the order of $300. You can go from there on up to fancy radios like
the Yaesu FT-847 and huge beam antennas, costing many kilobucks.

There are also "exotic" modes like slow-scan or fast-scan television,
digital communications, satellite operations, and the list goes on....

To get started, the best investment you can make is in a book called,
"Now You're Talking." It's available from the American Radio Relay
League (www.arrl.org) and is a comprehensive study guide for getting
your Technician-class license. The tech license gives you full
privileges on VHF frequencies and above, all modes. If you take the
Morse Code exam with it, demonstrating your ability to receive code
signals at five words per minute, then you can also operate on some
segments of the HF spectrum. The General class license gives you
greater access to the HF bands, and the Extra class license gives you
what little that the General license leaves out. But the five words per
minute test for code proficiency is the most you'll have to take -- the
FCC no longer requires the 13wpm test for General or the 20wpm test for
Extra.

More details on all of the above can also be found at the ARRL web site
(www.arrl.org), along with study materials for all of the classes of
licenses in the US. (You didn't mention where you are, so I am
operating under the assumption that you're here in the US. If not, let
me know and I will steer you toward the information appropriate to your
country.)

One last thing, is there some sort of ham radio that goes across the
internet???? I thought I heard about something like that, or maybe I
was just having an alzheimers moment. If this is true, how does it
work?

You're talking about IRLP, or Internet Radio Linking Protocol (or words
to that effect). It allows the linking of repeaters across the
Internet, so that hams in Australia can chat via hand-held radios with
hams in England or the US or whatever. Normally a hand-held radio would
only operate over line-of-sight distances, or a little farther via a
repeater, but this way uses the Internet to hook multiple repeaters
together.

Its predecessors, in some ways, are systems like the Condor Connection
here in California. Condor links multiple 222-MHz band repeaters
together, so that whatever is said over one repeater is carried
concurrently across all of the repeaters in the network.

By the way, has anyone ever figured out why they call it "HAM"? Is it
because the old tube radios were hot enough to cook a ham on top of
them?

There are about as many answers to that as there are ham operators. No
way I'm going to take a stab at this one...! ;-)

--

-- //Steve//

Steve Silverwood, KB6OJS
Fountain Valley, CA
Email: