Is anyone else thinking about going back to old school tactics of the ham radio. With the build up of fediverse, Meta, flock, Alphabet and now LG tv’s now spying on us in our own homes, getting a ham license and building one of these from scratch would not only gain some different kind of knowledge, but maybe if internet/cellular networks were to fail or get “taken over” there would be a backup system of communication. The old string and can trick only works with your neighbors. I know there is some serious ramifications if you don’t get licensed and tap into ham radio frequencies, and it doesn’t take much to get one… I don’t know if ‘tuning that dial” is dying out. But we may need to. Maybe it’s a dooms-day prepper kinda thing for me to say, and I don’t consider myself one at all since I only have 3 rolls of toilet paper in my house albeit I am a Costco member. I’m just curious if anyone else that is pulling away from the fediverse is also thinking about learning the Ham radio Trade also?
Maybe an unpopular opinion and I’m sure you don’t agree but even if you’re only looking at radio for some weird apocalyptic situation, the knowledge you need to be licensed is there to teach you standards and best practices that will only improve your odds of successful communication without stepping on other people trying to do the same. Its not (all) some bureaucratic bullshit there just to make a buck or let The Man control you. You said it yourself, its easy. Just do it and know you can actually check the box without screwing up someone else’s message or screaming into frequencies nobody is listening on anyway. Its a test to make sure you’re a responsible member of a community.
I agree thats how it should be, but the licencing here in Aus doesnt line up with that.
The knowledge involved in the actual licencing isnt actually that useful for actually operating the radio. It was mostly tailored to designing radios from the ground up, and it was basically late highschool electronics.
The knowledge you need to operate the radios properly is all available online.
In my case, I am using handheld radios on the CB bands. I have limited the power correctly, but because they are capable of more power than allowed, that makes them require a licence, even when used in normal CB bands. It doesnt make sense for me to waste multiple Sundays to get a licence I am not actually going to take advantage of.
So here in Aus, it is just beaurocratic bullshit. And like I said, if it were online, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
At least over here, there are different requirements for CB and ham radios in terms of unwanted signals. Now, will anyone notice if you use a ham radio on CB? 99.9999% not, and our local enforcement body (unofficially) admits that as long as nobody complains, they don’t really care.
Also, I just scrolled through an Australian ham exam. Maybe I got lucky, but 2/3 of the questions were useful knowledge to anyone who wants to do more than press PTT on a predefined channel on a store bought walkie talkie. The remaining third was mostly operating and “ham culture”, but still. If that knowledge was common sense and high school stuff, we wouldn’t need to hold exams at all :)
I’m not opposed to the exams, just the in-person exams. Hold them online and I’ll do it tomorrow. I would actually be in favour of online exams for CB radios as well, because they are a complete shit-show at the best of times.
I think the bigger issue is using CB radios on ham bands, especially as the hand held CB radios from China are of very questionable quality/performance. They also have shit antennae usually. One of mine can transmit on airplane frequencies, which is very illegal.
Huh, do you have different bands for CB down under? Here, CB is 27 MHz only so virtually all CB devices are mono-band.
There are plenty of Chinese ham-adjacend handhelds, but they are usually VHF and up. I have a Quansheng that does basically all frequencies, give or take some shitty transmit band passes. And yes, it happily would do airplane frequencies. It is technically illegal to operate it without a ham license, and probably dirty enough to be borderline with one… A good CB should not be (trivially) able to transmit on anything but CB
Same frequencies, but we have another set of channels at 476-477Edit: Actually, seems we don’t use 27MHz, its all in the 476 to 477MHz range.Edit2: primarily we use 476-477, but we do have the 27 frequencies, just less commonly used
I also have a quansheng, dunno how well it would cope on ham bands (and obviously I don’t want to try).
The problem with “legit” CB radios, is that they are around 2-3x more expensive than baofengs and quanshengs. So its cheaper to get a more “capable” radio, and programming them to limit it to pure CB takes effort that many users won’t do.
The other issue with CB is that many people aren’t using them legally. Commercial use shouldn’t happen on CB channels, but often does (although the ACMA does enforce that occasionally).
The trucker CB channel is also a complete shit-show of racism and general abuse.
Huh, interesting. We in central Europe have 27 for classic CB, and then the newer freenet / PMR at 146 and 446. So both higher bands are basically right next to the ham bands, and many ham devices work on freenet. Freenet is also legally useable for business, many small events for example just use the license free walkie talkies.
Trucker CB is pretty dead here, it’s mostly enthusiasts and a few old fashioned Eastern European truckers now. Is it still actively used in Australia?
I think those chinese handhelds are locked to safe-ish frequencies out of the box, I installed custom firmware on mine so it would technically do all. But at that point, onecannot really claim accident any more…
Trucker CB is dying, but still gets some chatter. My radios were unprogrammed, and did have some firmware limits, but not enough to be legal.