You can communicate across the world from your smartphone, send pictures and do all sort of things that 60 years ago would have been more or less impossible, so why should anyone bother with Ham Radio?
It would be interesting to note that the FCC said a long time ago that it considered that any radio signal with a wavelength shorter than 200m would be no use technically – and so the spectrum was let loose to the Hams and ever since they've been clawing it back. The world's first Ethernet link? Using amateur radio between two University computers on separate islands in Hawaii – where we got X25 from and finally through to TCP and the Internet.
The US Military bounced signals off the Moon in 1946, 7 years later hams were doing it, years before Sputnik. A fair number of engineers at Nokia also hold ham licences according to my sources, it seems to be encouraged.
So why?
Amateurs are allowed access to chunks of spectrum from LF upwards and a more or less free reign over what goes on between the limits. These are the one service that doesn't have specific channels or other design limits. To be able to experiment with modes, antennas etc in a non-commercial environment is one of the plus factors. You can buy all your equipment off the shelf, but a fairly large proportion modify or build their own to some extent.
It's a funny experience seeing what was a pile of components, now put together has just made its first contact, with just a couple of watts. Some go a bit further than that, I've seen piles of tubing turned into antennas, and other bits of kit dissembled and rebuilt to work better than it originally did. No you're not allowed to build your own iPhone, but you can build your own ham transceiver.
There is a big mixture in the community, as I've put it CW to data, LF to microwaves. CW, where you simply hand key the carrier on and off using a morse key and decode the incoming signal by ear. Data – using whatever spread spectrum mode seems to be in vogue, but it also work the other way with slow data rates meaning very narrow bandwidth.
The Amateur Community is devoted to communication, operates internationally (the only country without hams is North Korea) and is a pool of like minded engineers. We get to work on all sort of challenges and come up with some novel solutions sometimes. Who else apart from satellite engineer would be interested in the space environment and the condition of the Sun? We also have rather a more than average knowledge of geography and an appreciation that we are on a planet – especially when the signals come round the “long path”. One person said it was a hobby a bit like fishing, you switch the radio on and never be sure just who'd be communicating with you next. JY1A perhaps?
