It's an interesting question, one which the hobby is struggling with as a whole. Historically, there have been several reasons:
- you get to chat (voice) with people in other places - you get to send digital messages to people in other places - you get to play around with cool electronics and invent things - you can help with civic communication events (eg. parades, etc.) - you can help in emergency situations (natural disasters, etc.) To be honest, I suspect it was mostly the first 2 or 3 on that list that has historically drawn people to the hobby. And over the years, those aspects have been more easily filled by things like free long-distance, cell phones, email, XMPP, Facebook, etc. And for the electronics experimenters, it's much easier to play with an arduino, propellor, etc., than to study, get a license, and start fabricating your own RF circuits. As a licensed ham radio operator, I find myself more interested in the last couple of bullet points, about civic and emergency communications. As an emergency communication medium, for example, it's nice since it only requires a little bit of equipment and some power, and you can communicate over very long distances. No cables or fiber or microwave dishes need to be set up. It won't win any bandwidth contests, but it's great for handling messages from a disaster area like the "Hey Mom. I'm okay." sort of things. In recent years, even those emergency communication duties get pushed off to other services though. I mean things like TERT [1] still exist, and use ham radio, etc., but in larger disaster areas (eg. earthquakes in Haiti), it's become much easier to set up emergency cell towers with a satellite backhaul, especially with projects like OpenBTS [2]. In the end, I'm still not sure what place ham radio will have in the future. I just don't know. Lloyd [1] http://www.utahcountyonline.org/dept/Sheriff/Operations/EmergencyServices/TERT.asp [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBTS or http://openbts.org/ On 05/20/2013 01:37 PM, S. Dale Morrey wrote: > Since I won't be able to attend (still in Ecuador). Can someone tell me > why one would get into HAM now days vs FRS or CB? Just like what are the > advantages etc? > > > On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Steve Meyers <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 5/12/13 10:41 PM, Steve Meyers wrote: >>> Date: Tuesday, May 21st, 2013 >>> Time: 7:30 PM >>> Location: UVU Business Resource Center >>> Presenter: Josh Tolley (a.k.a. eggyknap) >>> >>> Ham radio used to be where aspiring hackers got started. Amateur radio >>> is still a vibrant world with much to teach the interested geek. We'll >>> talk about where ham radio fits in the hacker arsenal today, and cover >>> everything you need to pass the FCC's licensing test and get on the air. >>> >>> We will be meeting at the UVU Business Resource Center. >>> >>> Directions & Map: http://www.plug.org/uvu >>> Meetup Page: http://www.meetup.com/Utah-Open-Source/events/118592222/ >>> PLUG Announcement: http://www.plug.org/node/197 >> >> /* >> PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net >> Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug >> Don't fear the penguin. >> */ >> > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
