Fun Things to Do With a Ham Radio

Video Transcript

"Hi, for Expert Village, I’m Kurt. We’re continuing our series on amateur radio today, and we are looking at the fun things you can do once you become a Ham Radio operator. The fifth thing is yes, you can- using this unit, you can actually talk to an astronaut! The International Space Station has an amateur radio station up there, and licensed Ham astronauts take time to make contact with mostly children in schools on earth. There are also two, or at least three perhaps, amateur radio satellites that you can bounce signals with a directional antenna, and communicate to other Hams around the globe. Digital communication modes is number six. You can connect a computer to these things and use software to communicate digitally over the air. Some of these digital modes can be more effective in marginal transmission conditions, when over the air is really hard. And it’s error free, which means you actually get the real communication. Number seven, we’re getting close here, internet communication. You can set up a URL, and have communication that way, across the amateur bands, or you can use another mode as well. And, this is called IRLP, and this uses local repeaters. A person on this can actually just communicate- “N7QJM using the repeater here in the Seattle area. Anybody out there from Hawaii or some others?” You can actually broadcast in other parts of the world using these repeaters that are linked together. Now be sure to check with your neighborly ham radio operator if you have questions, or you can email me, as well. And lastly, I love the rag shoe! We just call it talking, and hamming it up on the Ham bands. I’ve talked to people all over the world, including Antarctica, a 767 airline pilot on his way to Heathrow in London, over the Atlantic. I’ve bounced signals off of meteors as they were coming through the atmosphere, and through comet tails, which is kind of cool, when they drop by in our area! Now that pretty much concludes this one. Our next session, we’re going to talk about the future. What’s out into the future in amateur radio? Until then, this is N7QJM. We are QRT and 73’s to you."