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?

  • Blondie@lemmy.zipOP
    2·
    17 days ago

    GOOD! then I will have plenty of people to talk to!

    I do plan on getting licensed, I know I can buy hand held Ham, but I love a project, so I’d like to build my own out of old spare parts. The uglier the better. Any suggestions on the hand held? What sets some apart. Do you have a favorite?

    • CameronDev@programming.dev
      2·
      17 days ago

      I am not really qualified to comment on the quality of the handhelds, but have a few baofengs (don’t know the model), a quangshen uv-k6 and a radtel rt-470x. All of them likely illegal, probably excessively spectrally noisy. But they are good for road trips.

    • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      10 days ago

      Get a decent handheld first, from a well known brand, and dont mess with it. It doesn’t have to be the Japanese big three, but something like an Anyone works fine.

      Then you have something to complain to other hams with when your diy gives you trouble :)

      For the DIY part, there are plenty of plans and kits online. If you don’t know enough electronics to make a guess about the plausibility of a plan yourself, ask some old ham guy (and prepare for a lecture). I know of the truSDX and its derivatives, and had some ca. 700 km connection when playing with one and a decent antenna recently. Or if you have the electronics knowledge, the simplest way to fully DIY it would be a Morse/CW transceiver. Essentially just a narrow bandpass, power detector and local tone oscillator.