On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:11:49 EST, Steve Bonine wrote:

The Technician class license has full privileges, including voice, on
frequencies that are dubbed VHF and UHF.

And much higher frequencies, including microwaves.

At these frequencies,
communication is "limited" to line-of-sight. However, hams have built
repeaters, which generally are on some high place and are line-of-sight
to a large area. The bottom line is that the Tech privileges allow you
to communicate over most large urban areas.

Some hams have added other radio equipment to link together several
repeaters to cover large areas. One linked system in the western USA
is the Intermountain Intertie http://utahvhfs.org/snowlink.html which
covers much of central and southern Idaho, southwestern Wyoming,
northern Utah, western and southwestern Utah, northwestern Arizona,
and northeastern and southeastern Nevada.

The ultimate repeaters, range-wise, are the satellites which hams have
placed in orbit. See http://www.amsat.org/ It is possible to
communicate using these satellites with a hand-held 5-watt radio and a
hand-held directional antenna.

Amateur radio equipment is standard on the International Space Station
(ISS). Most of the astronauts are licensed hams, and in their spare
time they will get on the radio to have fun.

The satellites and the ISS all use VHF and UHF frequencies which a
Technician license covers.

The ultimate long-distance path is bouncing your signals off the moon
and back to earth. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_%28communications%29
The Technician license covers this.

Dick, AC7EL