I’m vacationing in Japan at the moment, visiting relatives. It is sweltering so we stay mostly indoors, but I have been a couple of trips to akihabara. Initially I only meant to buy a used ic-7100 this year, but then of course I also needed a new psu, so alinco was it. After a couple of days I realize that an brand spanking new ic-7300 was half price compared to home (provided I manage to avoid VAT coming home) so I bought one. And now I of course need a new antenna for all this fancy new equipment… It snowballs.

I know I’ll have to do mars mod on the radios. No trouble. That’s easy.

Actually my main worry is my baggage allotment when flying back home.

  • assembly@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    This popped up only my Lemmy feed and am curious who the amateur radio people talk to? I like the idea of getting a ham license just to learn more about radio but I don’t really have any desire to talk to people. Who do you talk to? What do you say? Is it just casual conversations across radios or is there more to it?

    • k1jst@lemmy.radio
      4·
      1 year ago

      I am not one to chit chat. I listen mostly and occasionally dust off the microphone when I have something interesting to add to the discussion. I also go out of my way to say hi and welcome to a new voice on the local radio repeaters, and make sure they know the local radio resources to find out what’s happening in our area.

      Amateur Radio is a vibrant community with a lot of really genuine people interested in the many different aspects of radio. Some people (like myself) enjoy building radio networks/infrastructure and doing projects that enhance our community resilience or our ability to communicate. Others like building radios themselves, or antennas, or go boxes, or a lot of other things.

      Then there are the plethora of other things you can do with amateur radio:

      • communicate locally with little or no infrastructure
      • communicate around the world with no infrastructure (all you really need is a radio, a bit of feedline and a wire antenna to talk around the world)
      • explore the radio spectrum
      • compete in radio contests
      • participate in radio events
      • experiment with electronics
      • community service/emergency communications
      • learn/teach STEM through hands on experience

      The most rewarding experiences I have in amateur radio are working with other local amateurs towards a common goal. People from a wide variety of backgrounds that all bring different skillsets and knowledge to the table that all gets combined to create some magic. It’s really fun.

    • kristoff@infosec.pub
      1·
      1 year ago

      Three months ago, we organised an infostand on amateurradio at a makerfaire … and ‘talking to people’ was hardly ever mentioned.

      Amateur radio is a technical / scientific hobby for everything about radio, radio communication, radio technology and radios propagation.

      Actually, the first thing we showed was a small WSPR transmitter and showed that with just ‘a little bit more transmission power then your wifi-router at home’ we could be receiver 4000 km away. (and explained that by transmitting a radio-signal very slowly, you can reach very long distances, … and about HF propagation, greyline propagation, and as wspr signal is so simple, you can build such a transmitter yourself)

      please do not equate hamradio with ‘talking on the radio’. That is probably the worse way to explain what our hobby is about. Ham-radio is ‘a giant playground that allows you to play around with radio-technology and learn how radio really works’.

      Kr. (ON1ARF)