Amateur Radio

Technology, experimenting, fiddling, and prepping come together in ham radio. POTA, antenna building, and radio transceiving are explored here. One hundred years ago, amateur radio enthusiasts hacked together radio communication systems. Not content to just consume content, they want to know how to create it.

Amateur radio operators ensure communities could continue to communicate even if the normal means of communication were disrupted. Amateur radio evolved from scientists and nascent engineers exploring the various uses for electricity to a niche industry of radio manufacturers, hobbyists, and lots of amateur scientists and inventors who from time to time get together in person (club meetings and regional conventions, aka hamfests) and en mass on the air (e.g. contests and field days), but generally work rather quietly to build knowledge and skills in a fairly esoteric technical field that forms the foundation of cell phone, wifi, and satellite communication technology that nearly everyone uses daily. The combine today into field operations As anxiety about over-dependence on the vast systems upon which we depend grows and people explore self-sufficiency and community-mindedness, amateur radio offers a space to develop some rather arcane knowledge.

Here are the ways amateur radio scratches that itch for me.