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“Is anyone out There?” - HamRadio
(lemmy.zip)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
15 points (77.8% liked)
No Stupid Questions
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!amateur_radio@lemmy.radio
Plenty of people do are still doing ham radio.
~~There isnt much risk being unlicenced, enforcement seems sporadic and unreliable.~~ I own a bunch of handheld radios that ideally I should have a licence for, but for road trips it hardly matters.
But at the same time, getting licenced isnt expensive or difficult, so you may as well just do it. The only reason I haven't is that I don't want to waste a bunch of Sundays going to a class to listen to year 10 electronics.
This is awful advice considering how utterly simple it is to get licensed.
Speaking for US licensees, one only needs to memorize the question bank (legal and encouraged) and take the exam.
It can be done remotely. I did all of mine remotely, and have never set foot in any club or classroom.
Operating without a license will quickly become apparent to any experienced operator. Do not do this.
If one thinks the airways are dead, please check this spectral image of 20m I snapped a couple of years ago: https://lemmy.radio/post/3735300
I agree in general, but not every country has a simple and easy licencing system. And if your just acquiring radios for shit-hits-the-fan scenarios, rather than regular use, expending the effort for a licence doesnt make sense to me.
In Aus, its a multiday in person class, with exams at fixed times during the year. And I've seen the course work, its mindnumbingly easy, it should be an online multiple choice. I would do it in a heartbeat if it were online.
Maybe an unpopular opinion and I'm sure you don't agree but even if you're only looking at radio for some weird apocalyptic situation, the knowledge you need to be licensed is there to teach you standards and best practices that will only improve your odds of successful communication without stepping on other people trying to do the same. Its not (all) some bureaucratic bullshit there just to make a buck or let The Man control you. You said it yourself, its easy. Just do it and know you can actually check the box without screwing up someone else's message or screaming into frequencies nobody is listening on anyway. Its a test to make sure you're a responsible member of a community.
I agree thats how it should be, but the licencing here in Aus doesnt line up with that.
The knowledge involved in the actual licencing isnt actually that useful for actually operating the radio. It was mostly tailored to designing radios from the ground up, and it was basically late highschool electronics.
The knowledge you need to operate the radios properly is all available online.
In my case, I am using handheld radios on the CB bands. I have limited the power correctly, but because they are capable of more power than allowed, that makes them require a licence, even when used in normal CB bands. It doesnt make sense for me to waste multiple Sundays to get a licence I am not actually going to take advantage of.
So here in Aus, it is just beaurocratic bullshit. And like I said, if it were online, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
At least over here, there are different requirements for CB and ham radios in terms of unwanted signals. Now, will anyone notice if you use a ham radio on CB? 99.9999% not, and our local enforcement body (unofficially) admits that as long as nobody complains, they don't really care.
Also, I just scrolled through an Australian ham exam. Maybe I got lucky, but 2/3 of the questions were useful knowledge to anyone who wants to do more than press PTT on a predefined channel on a store bought walkie talkie. The remaining third was mostly operating and "ham culture", but still. If that knowledge was common sense and high school stuff, we wouldn't need to hold exams at all :)
I'm not opposed to the exams, just the in-person exams. Hold them online and I'll do it tomorrow. I would actually be in favour of online exams for CB radios as well, because they are a complete shit-show at the best of times.
I think the bigger issue is using CB radios on ham bands, especially as the hand held CB radios from China are of very questionable quality/performance. They also have shit antennae usually. One of mine can transmit on airplane frequencies, which is very illegal.
Huh, do you have different bands for CB down under? Here, CB is 27 MHz only so virtually all CB devices are mono-band.
There are plenty of Chinese ham-adjacend handhelds, but they are usually VHF and up. I have a Quansheng that does basically all frequencies, give or take some shitty transmit band passes. And yes, it happily would do airplane frequencies. It is technically illegal to operate it without a ham license, and probably dirty enough to be borderline with one... A good CB should not be (trivially) able to transmit on anything but CB
~~Same frequencies, but we have another set of channels at 476-477~~
~~Edit: Actually, seems we don't use 27MHz, its all in the 476 to 477MHz range.~~
Edit2: primarily we use 476-477, but we do have the 27 frequencies, just less commonly used
I also have a quansheng, dunno how well it would cope on ham bands (and obviously I don't want to try).
The problem with "legit" CB radios, is that they are around 2-3x more expensive than baofengs and quanshengs. So its cheaper to get a more "capable" radio, and programming them to limit it to pure CB takes effort that many users won't do.
The other issue with CB is that many people aren't using them legally. Commercial use shouldn't happen on CB channels, but often does (although the ACMA does enforce that occasionally).
The trucker CB channel is also a complete shit-show of racism and general abuse.