Christopher Glanville's homepage
Amature Radio
What you need to know
To get a limited novice licence you need to have a basic understanding of
radio and electronics. This includes All sections of a FM, AM, CW, and SSB
radio and what the basic princepal of operstion is. You need a understanding
of many common types of areals.
You can find all of this info in the ARRL handbook, this book may be found
in many different electronic stores, or many other electronics books. For
infomation on the regulations you can find it at your communications
authority. There are also many different club homepages on the internet.
You would be able to contact your local ham radio grounp for more infomation.
How to Begin
To get a licence you need to sit at least two exams(for MOST countries) one
will be a regulations test and the other a theory. To get any HF priverlages
you need to know at least 5 words per minute.
From there you will need to contect any exmaner in your area. If you ask a
local ham then he or she should be able to point you in the right direction.
Otherwise you shpuld be able to contact your communications office and they
might be able to refer you to someone.
What are the costs?
I can only give you infomation about radio equipment because the prices will
change from area to area.
- For HF Gear (often used for long distance) it can range from about $100
to $7,500 ($100 if you choose make the equipment yourself.)
- For VHF (MOSTLY used for local conversations) gear it can be about $100
to $1,000
- For any paket gear it can cost from about $150 to $700 (but you need a computer)
- Areals you will be able to make your self and you will only need to pay for the metal.
What you can do with it
FSTV
Once you have got your licence you can do many things(depending on your grade)
If you have a full call licence then you can have what is called FSTV. That
is fast scan television and it is only a fancy way of saying video. With that
you can transmit home vidoes or even set up a videophone with other
interested amatures. There are many station in populated areas, and in
SOME places can be watched with your own TV. It is not very difficult to
make and aslo dosen't cost much money.
SSTV
You can also have SSTV witch stands for slow scan TV and is a fancy way
of saying picture. With this you can send to other amatures pictures of
all sorts of different things. To get the latest softwere for SSTV there
is a link on my (still in setup)
homepage With this you can send pictures over the radio and can also be
recieved.
PAKET
This is my personal favourite. I am always on the computer playing paket.
there is never a time that I am home and my computer is not monitering
paket, and even when I aren't home my TNC is on to take a call.
Is all that it is, is a network of paket stations, some that can go through
the internet and others that can connect you to local places.
With paket you can talk to people anywhere in the world. There are WWC
(world wide converse) nodes(node is what you call a paket station designed
to be used by people everywhere) that do this.
To get paket you need a TNC(terminal node controller) with a computer.
For old computers you could make your own modem and use a programe called
baycom that is a very good programe but was never made to work on modern
computers. This will cost (for a homemade modem) about aprox. $30 and for a
TNC about $125 for the cheapest.
Don't forget voice
Of corse you can use simple voice to talk to people as close as in your
own home town and as far as the other side of the world.
For example if you had a scanner you would scan the frequiences:
Australia:
144 to 148.000 - 438 to 440
LINKS
Back to my homepage click here
Back to the QSL.NET click here