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What is Amateur Radio?
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a hobby
enjoyed by several hundred thousand people in the United
States and by over a million people worldwide. Amateur
radio operators call themselves "radio hams" or simply
"hams."
To become a radio ham, you must
pass an examination. Wireless amateur communication is
done on numerous bands (relatively narrow frequency
segments) extending from 1.8 MHz (a wavelength
of about 160 meters) upwards through several hundred
gigahertz (wavelengths in the millimeter range). There
are several license classes. The more privileges a class
of license conveys, the more difficult is the
examination that one must pass to obtain it.
Amateur radio operation is fun, and that is one of the
main reasons hams do it. But ham radio can provide
communication during states of emergency. Ham radio
works when all other services fail. After Hurricane
Andrew struck South Florida in 1992, the utility grid
was destroyed over hundreds of square miles. All
cellular towers and antennas were blown down. Only
amateur radio, the Citizens Radio Service ("Citizens
Band"), and a few isolated pay phones with underground
lines provided communication between the outside world
and the public in the affected area.
Amateur radio operators are known as technical
innovators, and have been responsible for important
discoveries. For example, in the early part of the 20th
century, government officials believed that all the
frequencies having wavelengths shorter than 200 meters
(1.5 MHz) were useless for radio communications, so they
restricted radio amateurs to these frequencies. It was
not long before ham radio operators discovered the
truth, and were communicating on a worldwide scale using
low-power transmitters. Thus the shortwave radio era
began.
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