Can you point us toward an intro activity and equipment?
Comment on Amateur Radio Has Never Been More Affordable — So Why Do Some Things Seem So Expensive?
lazylemons@lemmy.today 1 week agoFor me it is in part what you said. Radio birdwatching is actually pretty fun just bumping around the spectrum to see what you can find. There is the communication aspect of course. There is a bit of an emergency preparation aspect to it too. You can also do things like listen to satellites and get images from them or use the ISS as a repeater to get contacts from much further away than usual. It is a very broad hobby to get into. I am the youngest operator by probably 30 years in my area which is an interesting experience but it is cool to be able to operate old analog technology since I also grew up in the internet age (mostly). The entry price point into the hobby is relatively low now. I spent maybe 50 USD when I first started, unfortunately as you get more skills and interest the cost for equipment to do things you wanna do definitely goes up.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Mikina@programming.dev 1 week ago
Thank you, that makes sense. I’ve always been a fan of analog technology (although I never really got the motivation to actually look into it seriously), so I can imagine that being fun.
It does sound pretty interesting, I didn’t know you can get such a long range contacts. I can imagine it is a pretty nice community!
almalexia@lemmygrad.ml 1 week ago
Amateur Radio can also be a digital mode of communication. AX.25 as an example, is probably the most common protocol for packet radio communication.
Where normally you would speak into the radio and talk with someone you can instead use a TNC that would produce digital tones (much like dial-up internet) that can then be used to send digital information.
This is a gross simplification of the process and I am sure I have messed up part of the description. But as an example of what you can do with that is running a forum/bbs only with radios, sending emails over radio, and sending images over radio, etc…
Radio is neat