Ham Questions

[SCPD]

I am interested in HAM radio, I've been around radios all my life but I've never really been around HAM's. I live in Chester County, PA and I have a beach house in upstate NY, Is it possible to be able to talk from Chester County to NY? How do I get into ham radio? Is there any just general ham frequency's that I can start listening to? Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[N4JKD]

Ham radio is simple to get into. Check out American Radio Relay League | ARRL - The national association for AMATEUR RADIO for info on everything you need. I have been a ham for a year and thoroughly enjoy it. If you have a scanner, you can monitor 2 meters and 70 cm bands. Ham is one of those things, when you get into it, you either into it or your not, and I am really into it. With FM voice, (2m, 220mhz, 70cm 6m) you can hit repeaters and talk roughly 50-100 miles. Get your general, and you can get on HF bands and talk all over the world.

 

[SCPD]

What are some ham frequency's that i can start to listen to that are generally active all over the country?

 

[N4JKD]

There really is none. Different ham frequencies in different places....if you want to hear stuff from all over the country or world, you need to get an HF or shortwave radio. 2 meters and 7cm is like a FM broadcast radio station...you can hear the station for so long than it fades out. HF uses signals bounced off the atmosphere and back to earth for long distance communications. That's how AM radio works....ever listen to AM radio and hear a station from several hundred miles away? That's why

 

[nd5y]

What are some ham frequency's that i can start to listen to that are generally active all over the country?

If you only have a scanner search from 144-148 in 5 kHz steps and 440-450 in 25 kHz steps. There is probably more activity in those bands in most places.

For the complete list of ham band see Graphical Frequency Allocations

To find repeaters in your area check the repeater databases listed at http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Amateur_Radio

 

[rfguygg]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Also, you can talk all over the world on uhf/vhf with IRLP. Check out status.irlp.net to find frequencies.

 

[cifn2]

A nice program for Amateur Radio Operators is Echolink, you can talk on repeaters via your pc. I would check out the local repeaters in your area. I use the site Artsci Pub, it lists repeaters by location - Amateur Radio Repeater database - Updated daily