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1. Ham radio works when nothing else does – This is what keeps us "in
business," so to speak. The primary reason we still have frequencies and
government agencies around the world go to the trouble of testing and
licensing us is ham radio's unparalleled ability to get through when nothing
else will. When disasters knock out or overload traditional communications
systems, ham radio still works, still gets the message out.
3. Unexpected band openings- You read the charts, you check the solar
flux, and you know that by all rights, the band you're on should be dead as a
doornail. But there it is, defying all logic, a band opening that lets make the
"impossible" contact. And if you're lucky enough to be there, make the
contact and get the QSL card, you get bragging rights until the next
unexpected band opening comes along.
5. Where else can you play with meteors? - This is my son's favorite
reason for becoming a ham. But think about it. What other hobby gives you
the chance to use such natural phenomena as meteors, the aurora, or the
ionosphere as part of your everyday activities?
6. Some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet – Most hams are
genuinely nice people. Sure, we’ll have our petty squabbles from time to
time, and we’ll likely debate the merits of code exams forever, but it’s very
rare to find hams who are nasty, vindictive people. They’re just not welcome
in our worldwide community.
7. Some of the smartest people you’ll ever meet – Hams come from all
walks of life and you’ll find highly educated people and even the occasional
Nobel laureate within our ranks. But you’ll also find a lot of regular people
with a lot of common sense, and people who may not have multiple college
degrees but who know an awful lot about their chosen specialty area. And
more often than not, they’re happy to share that knowledge.
8. Some of the most interesting people you’ll ever meet - Get on the
radio. Get beyond the location and signal report and start having some real
contacts. You’ll discover a world of fascinating people at the other end of
your antenna. You’ll find them at club meetings, too.
9. Some of the most generous people you’ll ever meet (along with
some of the cheapest!) – Anyone who’s ever been to a hamfest flea market
knows that hams are among the world’s premier bargain-hunters (“You can
have it for free.” “Can’t you do any better than that?”). But if you need
something – whether you’re a newly-licensed ham who needs a rig to get on
the air or you’re operating at a disaster and need some special piece of
equipment – if anybody’s got it available and can get it to you, you can use it
as long as you need it. Visiting a new place and looking for a place to eat?
Don’t be surprised to be invited to dinner.
10. Friends around the world (including those you haven’t met yet) – If
you travel, and make contact with a ham at your destination ahead of time,
don’t be surprised to be met at the airport, or taken to dinner, or given a tour
of the city or the club station, or any combination of the above. No matter
where you go, ham radio provides the opportunity for you to have a friend at
every stop.
15. What other hobby group has designed, built and had launched its
own fleet of communication satellites? None. Period. OSCAR-1 was the
first non-governmental satellite ever put into orbit (yes, even before Telstar),
and ham radio has continued to be a spacefaring hobby ever since 1961.
Plus, the SAREX and MAREX programs have put ham radio aboard manned
space flights and space stations since 1983.
On the more serious side, ham radio has also taken me in a Red Cross
vehicle through the deserted streets of lower Manhattan in the aftermath of
the 9/11 attacks, en route to a shelter where I'd be providing
communications. But how else would I have been able to help?
21. A good way to get driving directions when visiting someplace new
- If you're on the road and not sure where you're going, then getting on the
local repeater can be as good as or better than your fancy little GPS
doohickey. GPS doohickeys still occasionally tell you to drive through a field,
and more than once, I've had a local ham say, "I'm right near you and
heading in that direction. Meet me at the next exit and I'll lead you there."
You get where you're going and make a new friend at the same time.
22. A good way to find the best places to eat when visiting someplace
new - If there's one things most hams love to do more than talk, it's eat. So
you can pretty much depend on getting good advice about places to eat from
local hams. I can honestly say I've never been steered wrong, have often
discovered some delightful out-of-the-way places, and occasionally even
found myself with company for lunch or dinner (or invited to someone's
house).
23. A good way to keep in touch with faraway friends and relatives -
This works best if both of you are hams. You can set up skeds (schedules,
for the uninitiated) and meet on the air. I remember a former boss of mine
used to meet every Saturday afternoon on the air with a group of old friends
who were literally scattered all over the world. Even an unlimited long-
distance plan won't let you do that.
26. Informal way to improve technical skills - Maybe you don't consider
yourself a particularly technical person. Maybe you do. Either way, as you do
different things in ham radio, you'll find that you need to measure something,
solder something, build something, fix something, etc. As you learn how to
do what needs to be done, you also learn more about how and why things
work as they do (or don't), and before long, you suddenly find yourself
helping someone else do something that you needed help with not too long
ago.
28. Practical uses for high school math - If algebra and geometry
seemed like exercises in futility when you were in high school, with no
possible application in real life, ham radio lets you put that dusty knowledge
to use. If you can attach one end of a wire antenna to a tree at 50 feet, and
the other end to the top of a 20-foot pole 75 feet away, how long can the
antenna be?
29. Practical uses for high school physics - If your hamming interests
extend beyond your local repeater, you're going to need to learn something
about propagation, sunspots, satellites, moonbounce or APRS, and that
means you're going to be putting some basic physics knowledge to use. And
if you never learned it in school, guess what? You're learning it now! And it
will actually make sense because there's an immediate practical use.
30. A good way to learn about virtually any topic - Hams come from all
walks of life and know something about just about everything … and it's not
too hard to find someone who knows more than you do about just about
anything. And the best thing about hams is that we love to talk and help each
other out. No matter what it is you need to learn about, chances are you can
find a ham somewhere to help you with it.
31. Lifelong friendships - The absolute best thing about ham radio is the
great people you get to meet. Untold thousands of hams have made lifelong
friends among fellow hams they've met on the air, at club meetings, events or
hamfests.
33. A good way to bridge the generation gap - Ham radio makes no age
distinctions and getting together with other hams, either in person or on the
air, provides a great opportunity to get to know people either younger or older
than you are -- as peers and equals.
34. People named Joe - Now this might be stretching things just a bit, but
it really illustrates just how wide-ranging ham radio is. Among our ranks are
at least three people from widely different backgrounds who share two things
-- they're all hams and they're all named Joe:
Joe Walsh, WB6ACU, Rock 'n Roll star, guitarist with the Eagles, first
became a star as a member of the James Gang.
Joe Rudi, NK7U, retired Major League Baseball player, played with the
Kansas City and Oakland A's, the (then) California Angels and the Boston
Red Sox; he also went to the World Series with Oakland three times, in 1972,
73 and 74.
Joe Taylor, K1JT, Nobel Prize winning scientist and developer of the "JT"
software suite that has made it possible for stations with average setups to
take advantage of such VHF/UHF modes as meteor scatter and
moonbounce. Speaking of which…
35. Moonbounce - C'mon, let's get real here. In what other hobby can you
talk to people by bouncing signals off the moon? The only other people who
would even think about something like that are amateur radio astronomers …
but did we mention that it was a ham named Grote Reber who invented radio
astronomy in his back yard, using knowledge he'd gained in ham radio?
36. Working DX - This is what makes ham radio unique and, for many of
us, is the central attraction of amateur radio. Our ability to talk directly with
other people from other cultures and other countries - even countries with
which our government doesn't get along - helps break down stereotypes and
enhance international goodwill.
39. Contesting - This is a sport that requires more mental than physical
agility and allows those of us with a competitive spirit -- regardless of
physical abilities -- to "go for the gold." In addition, contests bring many rare
locations on the air, providing excellent DXing opportunities even for the non-
competitors among us. CQ sponsors a half dozen annual contests, including
the two most popular, the CQ WPX Contest and CQ World Wide DX Contest.
44. A good way to collect really cool postcards from around the world
- QSL cards are good for more than award credit -- a good QSL collection is
a treasure-trove of postcards from all over the world, of interest to many
people with no real interest in ham radio. Many cards tend to be distinctive or
reflective of the culture from which they are sent. The QSL collection of a
deceased ham became the centerpiece of the successful book, Hello, World:
A Life in Ham Radio, by Danny Gregory (KC2KGT) and Paul Sahre
(KC2KHN), which looked at the cards as folk art from around the world. The
authors became hams only after immersing themselves in the world of
amateur radio while researching the book.
45. Nearly endless variety of different things to do, on and off the air -
You really have to work hard at being bored if you're an active ham. Virtually
nobody's "done everything" in ham radio, so there's always some new mode
or new band to try out, or some new award or contest to go after. Off the air,
it's the rare ham whose station is ever "just right," so there are improvements
to be made as time and budget permit. You can spend pleasant hours
organizing your QSL cards or seeing if you qualify for some new award. Plus,
there are club meetings, hamfests and conventions to attend, public service
events to help with or vacation spots from which to operate. Even if you're
homebound, ham radio can keep you in touch with friends - both old and new
- in the outside world.
46. Worldwide DX on 6 meters (sporadically and somewhat
unpredictably) - One of the reasons 6 meters is called the "Magic Band" is
that, with enough patience, you can work some great DX on what's normally
a local band. The best of the best comes every 11 years or so, at the peak of
each sunspot cycle, when the band opens up for worldwide DX. But there
have been occasional transoceanic openings observed even at solar
minimum.
47. Double-hop sporadic-E - You don't have to wait 11 years for this,
although it happens more frequently at sunspot peaks. While "regular"
sporadic-E propagation on 10, 6 and even 2 meters is predictable and can
open up a seemingly dead band for some good domestic DX, double-hop
sporadic-E can give you cross-country contacts on 6 in between sunspot
peaks. Summertime is best for this type of propagation.
49. TEP and aurora - These propagation types are most often limited to
certain geographic areas -- you generally need to be in or near the tropics to
take advantage of Trans-Equatorial Propagation, or TEP, which links two
locations that are equidistant from the magnetic equator and accounts for 6-
meter contacts between Texas and Argentina, for example. On the other
hand, you generally need to be pretty far north to bounce radio signals off the
Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) to make long distance VHF contacts. (It is
occasionally possible for stations outside the normal TEP and Aurora zones
to make contacts via these modes.)
51. Hamfests - Sure, we hams love to talk to each other on the air, but we
like getting together in person just as much. And when you throw in some
bargains, who can resist? Hamfests are part social gathering, part flea
market for used "stuff" and, particularly for the bigger shows, part trade show
for learning about and buying all sorts of new gear.
52. Dayton - The biggest of the big hamfests, the Dayton Hamvention™ is
something every ham should try to attend at least once (warning: it's habit-
forming). Thousands of hams from all over the world flock to southwestern
Ohio each spring to see what's new, look for bargains in the massive flea
market (if you can't find it at Dayton, you can't find it), renew old friendships
and start new ones.
53. Field Day - This is the ARRL's annual emergency communications
exercise, but it's really so much more -- part contest, part campout, part
barbeque, part family weekend, and oh yes, part emergency preparedness
exercise. Hams who participate in just one competitive event each year
generally take part in Field Day.
54. Building your own gear - This is a tradition that has been part of ham
radio since its beginnings. Back then, of course, building your own gear was
a necessity. Today it's a challenge and a rare opportunity in our
prefabricated, use-it-up-and-throw-it-out world to actually build something
useful with your own two hands (and assorted tools).
56. Operating QRP from some remote location - The opportunity to get
on the radio from a remote location has its own distinct challenges and
pleasures, both of which are multiplied when you decide to do it with low
power (QRP).
58. Experimenting with new modes & new technology - The future of
radio communications is -- or should be -- in our hands. We have been given
the freedom and flexibility to try new ways of communicating or to find new
ways of using existing technology. We need to continue to be pacesetters in
advancing communications technology.