What's Amateur Radio?

From: jsollows@direct.ca (Jim Sollows)
Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.misc
Subject: Re: Someone Please Answer My Question
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 1995 04:28:34 GMT
Organization: Internet Direct
Message-ID: <44qe05$9me@grid.Direct.CA>
References: 

ted31@gordon.ricks.edu (Katrina Bennett) wrote:

>Please excuse my ignorance, but exactly what is a "Ham".
>A quick response in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
>                        Thank you,
>                           Katrina Bennett
>                            ted31@gordon.ricks.edu

What's Amateur Radio?

People who pursue the hobby of using a personal radio station to
communicate, purely for noncommercial purposes, with other radio
hobbyists,call it ham radio or Amateur Radio. They call themselves
Amateur Radio operators, ham radio operators or just plain "hams."

You already know a little about the hobby--hams communicate with other
hams, around the block, on a distant continent--or from an orbiting
space station! Some talk via computers, others prefer to use regular
voice communications, and some use the efficient and enjoyable
19th-century technology known as Morse code. Some hams help save
people's lives by handling emergency communications following a
natural disaster or other emergency. Some become close friends with
the people they talk to on the other side of the globe--then make it a
point to meet one or more of them in person. Some can take a bag full
of electrical parts and turn it into a station accessory that improves
their station's reception of distant radio signals. Some hams talk by
bouncing signals off the moon; some hams talk via full-color, two-way
TV.

A Hobby of Diversity

What types of people will you meet as a ham? If you walk down a city
street, you'll pass men and women, girls and boys, and people of all
ages, ethnic backgrounds, and physical abilities. They're office
workers and students, nurses and mail carriers, engineers and truck
drivers, housewives and bankers. Any of them might be a ham you will
meet tonight on your radio.

If you drive your car on the interstate this weekend, you'll see
people on their way to a state park, a scout camp, a convention, an
airport or a computer show. The young couple going to the park to hike
for the day have their hand-held ham radio transceivers in their
backpacks. When they stop on a scenic hilltop for a rest, they'll see
how far away they can communicate with radios no more powerful than a
strong flashlight. (Tens or even hundreds of miles!) And those same
radios will be very useful in summoning help or getting directions if
their car breaks down or they get lost in following their hiking
trail.

The father and son on their way to scout camp will soon be canoeing
with their scout troop. After setting up camp, they'll get out a
portable radio, throw a wire antenna over a branch, and get on the
air. Aside from the enjoyment of talking with other hams from their
campsite, their radios give them the security of having reliable
communications with the outside world, in case of emergency. 

The family driving to the ham radio convention will spend the day
talking with their ham friends, including two they've never met but
know quite well from talking to them on the air every week. They'll
also look at new and used radio equipment, listen to a speaker talk
about the latest ways computers can be used to operate on the Amateur
Radio bands, and enjoy a banquet talk by a NASA astronaut who also
happens to be a ham radio operator.

What else can you look forward to in Amateur Radio, in kicking around
on the ham bands? You might catch yourself excitedly calling (along
with 50 or more other hams!) a Russian cosmonaut in space, or a sailor
on the Coast Guard's tall ship Eagle. You could be linked via packet
radio--Internetlike computer-to-computer contact--with an Alaskan
sled-dog driver, a rock star, a US legislator, a Major League baseball
player, a soldier on active duty, a king. A relaxing evening at home
could find you in friendly radio conversation with a ham in Frankfort,
Kentucky, or Frankfurt, Germany--or both, at the same time. Amateur
Radio knows no country boundaries, and brings people around the world
together as good friends.

NB. The above is courtesy of the ARRL website