As one of my side projects, I decided to get my technician amateur radio license. I wanted to do this because I thought it would be fun to operate a radio and because I wanted to learn the engineering, physics, and logistics of it all. I also thought it was interesting to be able to host all of this independently and basically have the freedom and ability to transmit over long distances.
Honestly, I thought that getting my license would be an easy two day affair with a quick test at the end, however, that was not the case. I ended up learning way more than I thought and I am very thankful for that. I got to learn the basic science and physics of how radios and radio waves work, basic electronics, how to read wire diagrams, how antennas and wiring everything together works, the safety of both electrical components and RF (Radio Frequency) exposure, how to set up a station in the most effective manner, and finally how to operate a radio officially.
While I am not the resource for the instructions or how to obtain an official license I will state the organizations that assisted me in the process. The National Association for Amateur Radio (ARRL) is a great place to start as I would say they are one of the largest if not the largest organization in the activity. They have news about the activity, helpful documents to print such as Amateur Radio Bands or allocations, resources to study and take practice exams, and I am sure a bunch more. I have not explored everything there, but they have come in handy numerous times for finding information that I needed. Furthermore, there is also HAMSTUDY by Signal Stuff. This is the place were I learned everything and found my exam center. They also have a book and practice tests that can be reviewed as well. The version I read was quite AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated from what I believe, so there is that to be aware of, but in terms of content, it was spot on.
I will say it did take me quite awhile to even hear a single person on the radio, but that was because I was trying to use the national call frequencies and did not know how to access the local repeaters. That is where another great tool comes in which is ReaperBook. There one can search by location, callsign, or frequency and get all of the information that one needs to know. Once that is known, getting onto the local repeaters is easy and one can hear all of the talk of the town. One example of this is I had my radio on when I was working at my desk and I heard someone complaining about the traffic on the local highway. An older gentleman responded with directions on how to go around using back roads. I then listened with amusement as the two worked together to go around the traffic. This is a funny example of how using amateur radio on the local network can come in handy sometimes :)
Currently I am using a Baofeng GT-5R. I know that its most certainly not the best option, but for the price it's what I went with. So far I have not had too much trouble using it and it does what I need it to do at my level of expertise. The only modification that I have done to it is that I added a 2m/70cm Dual-Band SMA Female antenna by SignalStuff to it so that I could have better transmissions and reception. Furthermore, it works well with CHIRP.
CHIRP is another important tool that I use for my radio. It is an open source tool to program most radios. Basically, within it I can type out all of my frequencies and repeater configurations, save it to an image, then flash my radio with that image so I know exactly how its programmed. This saves a lot of time as otherwise I would have to set that all up using the buttons on the radio and the one time I did that, I wasted about 30 minutes…
Anyways, amateur radio is cool and one can learn a lot from it. I hope that more people get into it as its a very effective and reliable way of alternative communication.