Amateur radio has some advantages over cellular telephones in that you can send voice, pictures and text messages without having to go through a service provider, being tied to a two-year commitment, and paying a monthly access fee.
You do have to learn something about the inner workings of radio, FCC Rules, and you must obtain a license by taking a written exam.
If you are blind, or otherwise handicapped, you may be offered an oral exam instead, as the situation dictates. The people testing you for your license are thenselves licensed amateur radio operators from the community you live in, not some Government employee whose job is to come in to town and administer tests and then leave town.
You do not have the choice to talk with your next door neighbor over the radio, or talk to your mother-in-law via the radio, like you can with the telephone, unless these people are also licensed radio amateurs, but you sure can meet some interesting new friends in far-away places, even over in the next county, even the next state.
Not bad for a free service which does not meter how many minutes that you use, eh? How about talking clear across the country, even to people on another continent? Just think of the big phone bill that can ring up! It costs you nothing. Why, you can even talk live via satellite, and speak with the astronauts on board the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station! Naturally, these resources are limited, and only a few people can talk at any given time. The astronauts are kept fairly busy with the work they were sent up to do, but some of their experiments involve talking with amateur radio operators in their homes and cars here on the ground. Some of the most exciting work that they do along this line is to speak directly with schoolchildren via amateur radio in organized school contacts. That puts the thrill of space exploration specifically, and science in general, right into people's homes like nothing else can. The children can excitedly tell their parents what they did today!
Let's see now: I did not cover all aspects of amateur radio just yet. You are familiar with TV broadcasting, of course. While you cannot broadcast television programming from your home that was produced for broadcast television, you can transmit television pictures to other radio amateurs, like, say, your recent vacation movies, slides and animation artwork, or live television views of yourself. These pictures can actually be displayed on your television set. If you live in the Phoenix Metro area, and particularly the west side, you can watch amateur television on your home TV. All you do to accomplish this is to remove any cable or satellite service connected to the TV antenna input, and connect an outdoor UHF antenna. Point the antenna toward Shaw Butte in north Phoenix, and if possible, mount the antenna on the mast so its straight elements are up and down instead of parallel with the ground.
You will now need to set the TV up for Cable instead of antenna on its setup menu, and then tune to channel 57.
Amateur television is not on the air continuously as is broadcast TV, so you will have time when you will see no signal. But when the Space Shuttle is on a mission, you will see NASA-TV continuous coverage from launch to landing over the amateur television station on Shaw Butte if you have your TV set to Cable channel 57 and an outside antenna connected instead of your cable box.
Amateur radio operators are permitted to retransmit NASA-TV mission coverage whenever a Space Shuttle is in orbit, because of FCC Rules permitting this , and because amateur radio is an integral part of the Space Program these days.
Did you know that astronauts study amateur radio and pass a test for their license before they go into space? This is why we can speak with astronauts from the comfort of our home.
Did you know that radio signals travel at the speed of light?
That's right! Your message will get across the street faster by radio than it will if you yell, because your voice carries at about 750 miles per hour, while the radio signal carries at 186,282 miles per second!
Please feel free to contact us here at the Superstition Amateur Radio Club, which is based in Mesa, AZ, for more information, and we invite you to check out these pages for more information about how to obtain your license: We offer classes and license exams.