The Chicago Marathon has an association with the North Shore Radio Club to provide emergency communications. With so many people concentrated in a very small area, cellphones are not reliable. This has likely saved lives.
The recent hurricane to hit North Carolina had enormous support from ham radio as evidenced by someone who lost all power and internet: https://qrper.com/2024/11/helene-aftermath-update-insurance-.... There were many instances there of power lines not being down, but simply not existing any more.
A recently concluded event, called the CQ World Wide contest, had over 30,000 participants. A large station will make as many as 10,000 contacts in a 48 hour period exchanging basic information. Some countries call this "Radio Sport".
A US-based contest, called Sweepstakes had been going on since 1930.
A very fun event is called Field Day and takes place in June. It covers North America and participants set up emergency communication facilities as well as presenting ham radio to the public.
A recently-formed activity called Parks On The Air encourages setting up often very temporary stations in parks across the world. Activity on this is nowadays quite high with all manner of awards. See https://pota.app/ for details and index to activities.
A similar activity, called Summits on the Air (SOTA) has participants climbing peaks and putting them on the air. Some of the participants take up a challenge of building a portable station that weighs less than one pound, as some of the trails to get to the peaks require lots of hiking.
Some of the more capable hams spend significant time and energy building stations, such as K3LR: http://www.k3lr.com/. This is one of the biggest stations in the world.
One of the more significant challenges is to bounce signals off the moon and contact other hams. This is quite difficult and requires lots of RF power as well as serious antennas. The WSJTX set of protocols has made this easier, but not simple.
There are also satellites that support two-way ham radio communication. See https://www.amsat.org/ for detailed information.
There is an enormous amount of activity in building your own rigs, particularly low-powered rigs. See https://qrp-labs.com/ for example. There are many, as well as instructions on how to build them from components.
Many of these are not possible to do on the internet. For example, contacting 10,000 other stations in a 48 hour period with point-to-point communication. Or bouncing signals off the moon.
Adventurous souls often travel to nearly inaccessible locations to put them on the air. One recent example is an expedition to Bouvet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Y0J_Bouvet_Island_DXpedition. I had the fortune to go to Vanuatu in 2000 with a group from our club.
An activity that is declining in popularity is to collect contacts with US counties, of which there are 3,007 in the US. The emphasis in this is contact with mobile stations from the counties.
This is only a summary and there are many other activities and fields of interest in Ham Radio. It can simply do some things that are not feasible on the internet, and can support activities that the internet normally handles when thing go down.
If you look at K3LR's web site, you can see his support of youth.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up! My own interests are largely related to understanding EM physics and technology - Ham radio provided the conduit, pun intended.
Yep. It is amazing. I have a friend who operates one of the positions during CQWW SSB.
Line noise and other RF noise is the bugaboo of ham radio operation, particularly in an urban area. Tim gave a talk at RSGB some time ago where someone asked him what the noise level was at his station. His answer was "S 0" even though he lives in a suburban area. He has excellent relationships with his neighbors.
With the advancement of satellite technology, which can provide cell service even during natural disasters when traditional terrestrial communication infrastructure is disrupted, I wonder if amateur radio use in emergencies will be superseded.
If I'm incorrect, I'd appreciate it if you could explain why. While I see amateur radio continuing to have value in educational and hobby contexts, I'm skeptical about its ongoing importance in emergencies , which seems to be a primary motivator for many enthusiasts.
As one example, satellites won't help in situations such as marathons. The problem with marathons is the number of devices that are trying to access a limited spectrum. A satellite station will have bandwidth limitations as well, as its most likely use is through WiFi.
The example in the QRPer article above indicates a different limitation. He did have a satellite dish for internet access, but there was no way to distribute that signal over multiple mile radius, which is what he did with both FM simplex and at some point with 2 meter repeaters. For such communication to work, all parties would need a dish.
He invited neighbors to come over to use his internet service so they could make wifi calls to family.
His daughters and wife staffed the FM channels, keeping the local net alive.
Ham frequencies aren't run as a free for all where everyone is trying to contest the frequencies. During communications, there is typically a person who controls the frequency, designating who should talk at any given time and keep things orderly. The same applies for emergency comms.
Will such a system handle a sudden demand nearing the maximum capacity of its terrestrial counterpart? That's really the crux of the issue: in an emergency public networks can be overwhelmed.
Many county government agencies don't work with hams anymore because they have sat links and other communication available to them. I'm sure as technology progresses and it becomes feasible and affordable to give individual first responders satcom abilities, but I'm not sure that every person with a cell phone will be able to stabily access satcom in an emergency for a while yet.
Satelite still is centralized, needing a core to handle billing and routing. In time of war, it is quite easy to disable, and it remains fragile due to complexity, whilst being in someone else's control.
HAM radio is robust, has no outside dependency, and is fully in control of people using it. You just need to have the equipment, no ifs or buts.
One natural disaster is solar storms, which can take out sattelites; another possibility, to dial it up to over 9000, is that sattelites will be a likely target in WW3.
Finally, sattelites and the tools to communicate with them are relatively expensive, while you can get e.g. a Baofeng hand radio for $20-$30.
The recent hurricane to hit North Carolina had enormous support from ham radio as evidenced by someone who lost all power and internet: https://qrper.com/2024/11/helene-aftermath-update-insurance-.... There were many instances there of power lines not being down, but simply not existing any more.
A recently concluded event, called the CQ World Wide contest, had over 30,000 participants. A large station will make as many as 10,000 contacts in a 48 hour period exchanging basic information. Some countries call this "Radio Sport".
A US-based contest, called Sweepstakes had been going on since 1930.
A very fun event is called Field Day and takes place in June. It covers North America and participants set up emergency communication facilities as well as presenting ham radio to the public.
A recently-formed activity called Parks On The Air encourages setting up often very temporary stations in parks across the world. Activity on this is nowadays quite high with all manner of awards. See https://pota.app/ for details and index to activities.
A similar activity, called Summits on the Air (SOTA) has participants climbing peaks and putting them on the air. Some of the participants take up a challenge of building a portable station that weighs less than one pound, as some of the trails to get to the peaks require lots of hiking.
Some of the more capable hams spend significant time and energy building stations, such as K3LR: http://www.k3lr.com/. This is one of the biggest stations in the world.
One of the more significant challenges is to bounce signals off the moon and contact other hams. This is quite difficult and requires lots of RF power as well as serious antennas. The WSJTX set of protocols has made this easier, but not simple.
There are also satellites that support two-way ham radio communication. See https://www.amsat.org/ for detailed information.
There is an enormous amount of activity in building your own rigs, particularly low-powered rigs. See https://qrp-labs.com/ for example. There are many, as well as instructions on how to build them from components.
Many of these are not possible to do on the internet. For example, contacting 10,000 other stations in a 48 hour period with point-to-point communication. Or bouncing signals off the moon.
Adventurous souls often travel to nearly inaccessible locations to put them on the air. One recent example is an expedition to Bouvet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Y0J_Bouvet_Island_DXpedition. I had the fortune to go to Vanuatu in 2000 with a group from our club.
An activity that is declining in popularity is to collect contacts with US counties, of which there are 3,007 in the US. The emphasis in this is contact with mobile stations from the counties.
This is only a summary and there are many other activities and fields of interest in Ham Radio. It can simply do some things that are not feasible on the internet, and can support activities that the internet normally handles when thing go down.
If you look at K3LR's web site, you can see his support of youth.