"This is whiskey-five-golf-sierra-bravo on Boston's two-three repeater, listening."
That's me on my radio tuned to 145.23 MHz with an 88.5hz PL broadcasting a call to any station monitoring the BARC repeater and interested in chatting, or "rag chewing" as Ham's like to call it. I am a licensed amateur radio operation, a Ham. My FCC issued Amateur Radio Technician's license allows me to transmit within power limits and content restrictions on a specific subset of the radio spectrum. My call sign, or station, is W5GSB. It used to be KB1KVQ, but I had it changed because the 'B' and 'V' are commonly misread by other stations which leads to confusion ("Did I copy your call as KB1KBQ?" - "That's a negative, its KB1KVQ." - "Oh, KV1KVQ?" - "Negative, that's kilo-bravo-one-kilo-victor-qubec" - "Roger that KB1KVQ." What a painful, common, and totally avoidable experience). I use my Yaesu VX-5R hand held to get on the 2 meter band. I've also setup a nice Yaesu FT-1000D to a super-discone multi-band antenna on the roof of my Beacon Hill apartment's building here in Boston, MA. That rig is designed to operate on frequencies outside of my current license. To use it I'll have to finish learning more about radio policies, practices, and technologies and master morse code at five words per minute receive. With that I'll be able to take a test and then gain the General license rating.
Today The Connection, a regular show on WBUR (Boston's National Public Radio (NPR) station) about the resurgence of amateur radio. This is excellent news, especially in an age of VoIP, IM, and Podcasting. Radio is important to many different aspects of our daily lives, most everyone deals with a few radio sources every day. From WiFi to cellular, microwaves, to pagers, its all radio in action. Radar weather reports and in use in to prevent collisions is another prime example. Radio is everywhere in our modern society.
When wired methods of communication fail, point to point radio takes over. In a severe emergency the cell phone network can fail, your cell phone won't work. Not even the nifty "walkie-talkie" feature in it. You'll be left in the cold. Ham radio enthusiasts all over the world practice for these eventualities. They setup methods of finding, contacting, and communicating with others to get information into and out of disaster zones. The recent tsunami is a good example of such a case, as was the invasion of Iraq. In both cases amateur radio was used to relay messages into and out of places where other communications methods couldn't reach.
I'd encourage everyone to participate in the hobby. Its easy, fairly inexpensive, and fun. Study the test questions for the Technician's license and take the test, see what you're missing.
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