Ham Radio - what is it?

Ham Radio is essentially a service to the community where individuals who have used their time, knowledge and equipment to serve the community in a variety of ways but usually by providing communication services when the other services have failed or just for the fun of it. Lets look at these one by one:

Ham radio operators offer their time!
First of all to be a radio ham one has to go through a process by which you get licensed by the authorities in the country you live. This procedure is usually also agreed to by international treaty in the International Telecommunications Union to which large number of countries are members and signatories. The time the ham has to spend learning the theory and legal stuff is a sacrifice but is surely rewarded later.

The licensing procedure usually involves a technical examination by a representative body in which the candidate is required to pass 2 sections of the exam the one being theory of radio physics and the other usually is some sort of knowledge of the local radio regulations. Once this is completed successfully the operator sometimes has to do and pass a practical demonstration where he/she shows himself or herself to be a competent operator of the radio equipment on the frequencies and at the power levels that he/she is allowed to use.

Ham operators offer their knowledge!

Wonderful because when all this is done the world opens up. When conditions are good and equipment is properly set up the operator can literally switch the radio on and at the turn of the button on the radio get in touch with the whole wide world. It is such a feeling of accomplishment to experience installing a home made antenna connecting it to a length of antenna cable and attaching it to the radio. When all this is done and you hear that station on the other side of the world on short wave or even on the other side of town with the very high frequencies.

The knowledge that one has as a ham operator means that when that is applied properly it leads to being able to select the right frequency band for the time of day and the distance as well as the varying conditions to have successful communications between two or more points.

Yes some people might say why do it with radio when we have the internet and the chat rooms and voip? Well the truth of the matter is that all that is available because of the interest of experimenting amateur radio operators through the years. May a new development like wifi etc has come the road where the first prototype was first tested by amateur operators somewhere.

Apart from that we have to look at the problems faced by the emergency services during times of disaster like tsunami's, earthquakes, hurricanes and wild fires. The agencies are reliant on effective communications in such times - more often than not the telephone systems are either over stressed due to the high call volumes, or rendered completely useless due to damage to the cables. Even cellular communications could be rendered unavailable due to them also relying on the cables from the telephone company to get to the switches and exchanges from the towers you and I connect to. The agencies has their own radio systems and hopefully it will be operational, but limited as not many might have access to the frequencies.

Ham operators use their equipment in service!

The numbers of the people operating in the ham bands with equipment that is often tested in simulation exercises and in less than ideal circumstances often with only emergency power from either batteries or generators where the tests were done to determine abilities.

Over the years the ham radio community has shown that through dedication and with the assistance of fellow hams they could step in and fill the void that might happen in emergencies - while they will thoroughly enjoy the ability afforded to them to get in touch with as many people as possible from as many countries as possible on as many frequencies as possible.

Written by
J D
Pretoria
South Africa