Amateur / Ham Radios

[Mackin USA]

Anyone into this who can help me get started assuming it doesn't cost a fortune?

I look at this stuff & have NO IDEA  

https://www.hamcity.com
&
http://www.hamradio.com

[rcjordan]

IIRC, it costs about $600 to do a decent setup.  I fair number of the old fogies  in my motorhome group are hammers(?) hamsters(?) , one is a recently-retired engineer for broadcast radio stations in Atlanta & SE market.  He's the guy who picks/sets up antennas and generator backup and can make your eyes glaze over is about 30 secs when he starts spieling off hardware specs, but he tolerates me pretty well.

[ukgimp]

Is CB too low ball?

In the UK you could get extra blocks / bands added that the regular unwashed could not easily get.

In the UK, you had to take an exam for HAM.

[ukgimp]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ2EoM2t6Uw

[Mackin USA]

TY rc

I'm interested in ALL the bands that I can legally get.

[rcjordan]

Do you just want to receive? Or transmit?  You're going to have to have a license to transmit.

[Mackin USA]

receive ONLY

I just want to HEAR, wtf is going on all over the USA 

[ukgimp]

That's just a receiver / scanner then isn't it?

[Mackin USA]

BRILLIANT

That's just WTF I need.

TY so much

[bill]

I'm studying for my Technician licence now. Hopefully I can grab the General licence the same day. They don't offer the test in my area too often, so I have until about January to study. I'm also starting to study CW (Morse code). I probably won't transmit too much voice, but with a General licence I can play with a lot more spectrum, and you can also transmit and receive e-mail on the data bands.

Not sure if it's kosher, but I should be able to PGP encrypt e-mail and send secure communication without the net. Even in a SHTF situation where the Internet goes down this mesh network should technically still be operational (WinLink) via radio. It's pretty slow, but it appears to work pretty reliably.

I fear how much this is going to cost. I'm already looking at radios and antennas that appear to be a bit expensive.

There are some starter radios made by BaoFeng that some are recommending that are as cheap as $30. You could buy them to listen locally, but broadcasting on them requires a license.

[Mackin USA]

TY Bill

If the WWW goes down for any reason I wish to know wtf is going on.

http://www.winlink.org/ may be just what I need.

"Should bad things happen, we might lose the Internet, or get disconnected, power lost, or worse.  HAM radio operators will be there, ready to connect us, get things organized, send messages"

QUORA dot com

[ukgimp]

I would want one with big dials :-)

You would need to check out high gain antennae.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ICOM-IC-R75-HF-VHF-0-03KHZ-TO-60MHZ-COMMUNICATIONS-RECEIVER-/311726453276?hash=item489458321c%3Ag%3AlGIAAOSwx2dYDQQE

I don't know the frequency ranges but it can't be too hard to find out.

If you are planning for end of days you might need to look at valves, as during nuclear activity transistors don't work, they fry.

For the sale of it I would get a CB too, just in case you ever wanted easy access to transmission.

[Mackin USA]

YEP

Protect your electronics:

https://www.amazon.com/Faraday-EMP-Bags-FULLY-SPECCED-Electro-shielding/dp/B00WLI5G7G/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1477306502&sr=1-3&keywords=faraday+bag

[Brad]

CB could be very handy locally in an emergency. 

It's not Ham, but I have a battery powered short wave receiver that I used to be able to get BBC world service on.  It's been so long I don't even know if they are still transmitting in SW.  Anybody know?

[Mackin USA]

WELL

It looks like the MAIN THING is the Antenna.

http://www.wikihow.com/Build-Several-Easy-Antennas-for-Amateur-Radio

Any ideas?