 - Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a hobby enjoyed by severalhundred thousand people in the United States and by over a million people worldwide. Amateur radio operators call themselves "radio hams" or simply"hams."To become a radio ham, you must pass an examination. Wirelessamateur communication is done on numerous bands (relatively narrow frequency segments)extending from 1.8 MHz (a wavelength of about 160 meters) upwards through several hundredgigahertz (wavelengths in the millimeter range). There are several license classes. The more privileges a class of license conveys, the more difficult is theexamination that one must pass to obtain it. Amateur radio operation is fun, and that is one of the main reasons hamsdo it. But ham radio can provide communication during states of emergency. Hamradio works when all other services fail. After Hurricane Andrew struck SouthFlorida in 1992, the utility grid was destroyed over hundreds of square miles. Allcellular towers and antennas were blown down. Only amateur radio, the Citizens RadioService ("Citizens Band"), and a few isolated pay phones with underground linesprovided communication between the outside world and the public in the affected area. Amateur radio operators are known as technical innovators, and have beenresponsible for important discoveries. For example, in the early part of the 20thcentury, government officials believed that all the frequencies having wavelengths shorterthan 200 meters (1.5 MHz) were useless for radio communications, so they restricted radioamateurs to these frequencies. It was not long before ham radio operators discoveredthe truth, and were communicating on a worldwide scale using low-power transmitters. Thus the shortwave radio era began.
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24 Apr 2004
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