There's a lot of old Hams retiring out of the game in their 80s and 90s now.
I recently attended the funeral of the wife of an Australian Ham ~ 90 who relayed Space Shuttle communications to NASA for astronauts and their families including some sensitive "possible farewell" type calls.
This was the same person who lead me into fun projects reverse engineering the early Navstar GPS packets before they were public, and tapping into Cold War VLF transmissions out of Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt.
Someone who spent their early teens defusing live bombs in England during and post WWII, and present during the Mau Mau rebellion.
Possible but unlikely on the net, I was very young at the time although happy to tackle the puzzle parts, the people doing the hardware and other projects of that time were a kind of post war loose knit quango of former commonwealth | european south east asian post z-forces collective.
If you’re a ham this is sort of like CDW or NewEgg closing, but they’re #1 by a massive margin and well loved. No one else had the variety of stuff they did as I remember.
I'm a ham and I've used some of their products over the years. It is indeed a sad day. I am surprised that someone didn't want to buy them. It is a niche but a handful of small companies (and divisions of large ones) do quite well servicing the amateur radio market.
One thing to remember about ham radio is that there is a bit of natural bias in the demographic: a lot of the stuff involved requires a certain minimum amount of things that older people tend to have. Property being one of the keys. HF antennas, towers, etc. are essentially outlawed by HOAs and entirely infeasible for renters. Some of the equipment is pricey as well.
You can do a lot at low cost and without property, but some of the more compelling parts of ham radio are hard to reach.
This continued piece of disinformation is incredibly destructive to the hobby.
You don't need a tower or a huge piece of property to get involved with ham radio. I do most of my operation portable, sometimes operating out of a backpack and have plenty of fun with it.
If you want to put up an antenna as a renter you can easily do so on a small freestanding tripod.
I second this. You can get on HF with very little space. If you have 16ft of space, you can easily put up a temporary 10 meter dipole.
I have an HOA, so every time want to get on HF at home I put up the 10m dipole. I stick three 7ft wooden stakes in the ground, tie the dipole to them with paracord, and talk to people all over the world.
That dipole is just 2 pieces of 8 foot wire soldered to a SO-329 connector. It probably cost me $10 at most.
You can get a low powered portable HF digital rig for less than $100. With less than 20W and a homebrewed antenna you could be making contacts all over the world.
Admittedly, I'm currently making contacts all over the world right now on Hacker News. As children of the Internet, radio, at first, seems like a silly, antique hobby when the Internet has connected us together. Maybe it is just me, but there's something really fun and geeky about radio. I've been a maker for decades and I've grown a bit bored of making LED blink. HAM radio has given me a practical reason to get the solder iron out again. I really love building the crappiest equipment out of scraps and see if it'll work.
Parks on the Air is another really fun aspect of the hobby. Almost every weekend since I got my license, I go out to a nearby state or national park. I pack up my FT-991a base station in a cheap harbor freight hard case. I bring a battery, some coax, an EFHW antenna I built. I throw in antenna in a tree and sit in the park and play radio. I find it quite relaxing to get outside and see who I can talk to.
KB9VBR has a nice video what a POTA activation is like. If you're an outdoorsy type or want to be one, POTA is a fun excuse to get outside.
> Admittedly, I'm currently making contacts all over the world right now on Hacker News.
It’s the difference between crossing the ocean in an airliner vs. in a sailboat. The end results are the same, but the methods and skills are wildly different.
Eh. It might be a part of it, but the hobby just lost its luster. It used to be this magical way to connect with friends and strangers. Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.
Other aspects of the hobby aged poorly too. The ham community (and the regulators) were slow to embrace use cases that might have been interesting to younger people in the 21th century - say, mesh networking. Instead, the kids were supposed to follow in the footsteps of the old-timers and get excited about slow-scan TV, RTTY, and collecting QSL postcards.
Frankly, I don't know of any other hobby with a comparable amount of gatekeeping. It sucks because the increasingly idle spectrum will eventually get auctioned off for commercial use.
I agree. Got into it during COVID - it was really fun learning about radios, RF, building antennas and stuff. But when it actually came to using it....there's not much to do unless you really get a kick out of making contact with random people who are far away and getting points for that to win contests. It is nice to know that I can communicate thousands of miles with no infrastructure but currently I don't have a need for that.
> Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.
I know people feel that way but IMO ham radio is still magical because you can communicate across continents without any dependency on anything or anyone else.
Sure the internet is faster and more convenient, but for that IP packet to reach its destination it depends on a cast of thousands of components across dozens of providers to all be working correctly.
With ham radio, you just need the radio and a generator and the laws of physics to communicate across the globe. That's pretty magical!
Maybe it’s just because I’m an EE, but I really got into the data modes too. Like did you know how stupid simple old school
pagers are to create signals for? You have to make some slight modifications get them into the Ham Bands (or buy a new one, apparently a thing!) but after that it’s just 512 baud FSK.
Fascinating! Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment? What band do you use? Now I want to try this.
> Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment?
There are many cases of overlap. The "upper" pager band is 929-931 MHz. There is a lot of adaptable commercial 900 MHz equipment knocking around. There are also agile transceivers ICs like STM32WL than can tune 150-960 MHz continuous, for example. The lower pager bands are at the lower end of VHF. You can make transceivers at those frequencies from through-hole parts and cheap tools.
The great thing that has emerged recently is low cost RF tools. You can get cheap, hobbyist grade RF instruments for a song today. NanoVNC, TinySA, affordable antenna analyzers and more can do things that cost thousands of dollars only 10 years ago.
Last night I got a place to stay in Switzerland through a PSK-31 QSO. Didn’t even ask. Mentioned that we would like to visit the country in the next couple of years, and it just so happened the ham I was contacting lives on top of an Alp next to a monastery. When he found out Switzerland was on our list, he enthusiastically offered to make whatever arrangements necessary for us to stay at the monastery to visit. I’m definitely sending him a QSL card.
Sure, that interaction could have happened on the internet, but it is highly unlikely to have done so, given how I (and most people) use the internet. And no one is calling random foreign strangers on their phone.
Perhaps radio is no longer “magical,” but it is still serendipitous. When I sit down, I have no idea who or where will be receiving my RF. I have talked to a wider variety of people all over the world with my radio than I ever have with my laptop—at least in terms of real conversation and not just interacting on a reddit post or what have you. And, sure, plenty of QSOs are also just about your rig, your antenna, the weather, etc., but even being marginally curious about others’ lives usually garners some interesting conversation.
These are people with whom I would never have had the chance to converse without the happenstance of the ionosphere. So, I dunno, seems pretty magical to me. Maybe the broader issue is that folks generally aren’t interested in having random encounters and conversations with others.
As far as the gatekeeping aspect, that’s definitely a problem. The number of sad hams out there still bitching about how “FT8 isn’t real radio” is too damn high. But it’s a big hobby, and there are more licensed hams in the US now than there ever have been in terms of raw numbers, and it’s pretty close to an all-time high as a proportion of the population, too. So I think there’s room for optimism about it.
It’s all what you make of it. I have built antennas to talk to Amateur Radio satellites, launched PicoBalloons (one went over Iran just as the attack was kicking off a couple weeks ago), NOAA APT and GOES LRIT capture, SDRs, Parks on the Air (which honestly has reinvigorated ham radio ALOT), WSPR, FT8/4, Shortwave Radiogram, etc
Then there is Ham Radio Crash Course, Long Island CW Club (Morse code has made a big comeback), and contesting which when that happens the bands are slammed
I have even sent memes over SSTV or captured imagery from the International Space Station. I have made QSOs with an Astronaut from my backyard with an HT.
Anyways there are lots of things to do. I am in a HOA and my end fed is installed in my attic. No one knows
There’s also flagpole antennas.
Oh and I forgot about DMR and DSTAR or PiSpots. Raspberry Pi is big in ham radio
I'm wondering how feasible it is for individuals to crack encrypted communication, and hack radios, preferably secured ones but I don't know where to buy one. Those encrypted radios in the 70s and 80s must be obsolete, right?
I'm not into communicating with other people. Hacking computers and radios seem to be a lot more interesting.
>Frankly, I don't know of any other hobby with a comparable amount of gatekeeping.
Personal computing, and particularly FOSS.
>the hobby just lost its luster. It used to be this magical way to connect with friends and strangers. Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.
I surmise personal computing tomorrow will be the ham radio of today. We're already seeing the disillusionment among the masses and particularly the young.
This is not the case. Federal laws preclude HOA bylaws, municipal and state law from blocking antennas for satellite TV and radio service and antennas for terrestrial fixed internet service. It says nothing about antennas for amateur radio service. As such, almost all HOAs ban antennas for amateur, CB or any other purpose not protected by federal law.
The ARRL tried for years to obtain the same protected status for amateur radio antennas and failed. They've since ceased lobbying for this as it is costly. Occasionally one legislator or another tries to get the language passed and it is always shot down.
My neighbor, around 1984 or so had what appears to be the LP-1009A antennae right by my bedroom. No one believed me when I told my family and friends that I could hear a person speaking French from my record player.
They offer a huge catalog of low cost equipment. Some of it is very popular and much of it is pretty niche. Quality is occasionally an issue: you buy their stuff with expectations commensurate to the price or you risk being disappointed. That is a feasible business model with hams, however. Then again, maybe not?
I can't think of any one thing they make that isn't available elsewhere. Some of their bread and butter tools, like their classic antenna analyzers, are completely out classed by newer alternatives today. For a long time, however, MFJ was the only affordable source for things like that.
One of the niche MFJ products I bought is a 20 meter telescoping vertical antenna element. That's like an old fashioned car radio antenna but 5.2 meters long. Even that is made by competitors today.
That's a good point. I'm sure the NanoVNA and similar gadgets have utterly demolished the market for dedicated antenna analyzers, and those really were MFJ's bread-and-butter products.
Actually, comparing the price to the quality/functionality, MFJ stuff is usually priced at a premium versus the kit or one-man-shop devices that they copied. Pricing also seldom changed in response to lower demand (thinking of the venerable MFJ-1270 TNC as interest in packet radio fell off in the late '90s and early '00s). Then there is the case where MFJ bought the rights to Coastal Chip works TNC-X and TNC-Pi and the prices went up significantly. MFJ has been a one-stop-shop for a lot of ham radio gadgets and accessories but were seldom the best value on the market as the pricing reflected their "No Matter What" warranty.
Other than an older Ameritron amplifier, which may predate the MFJ acquisition, I see nothing with the MFJ logo looking around my "shack". I moved on from MFJ many years ago and sought better alternatives. Some years ago I bought a Rig Expert AA230-ZOOM analyzer that is far more capable, stable, and compact than any of the MFJ analyzers I had used prior. I also have a NanoVNA that I use for 70cm that is beyond the range of the AA230-ZOOM. Other items in the shack are better built and better performing than their MFJ counterparts such as a West Mountain Radio DC power strip and Palstar and LDG tuners.
I am concerned about the fate of Ameritron and Hy-Gain. These two product lines have a strong history that pre-dates their acquisition by MFJ and it would be a shame to see them disappear from the ham radio marketplace.
I also heard "Mississippi's Finest Junk" as well. To be fair, I found the MFJ items I had to be able to the job. It was never best of breed but was always serviceable.
I have a ton of MFJ in my shack, and some MFJ hooked up to the radios I'm using on a daily basis; MFJ's loss will be felt in the amateur and public safety industries.
Edit to add:
Whenever I've had issues with one of their products, they literally walked me through disassembling and testing their products on the phone together -- and the staff there working the phones was knowledgeable, kind, and the type of folks you'd hear in the background at their tables/booths at hamvention and other radio-focused events. This isn't just a loss for everyone who uses MFJ, this is going to be felt amongst retailers as well as folks who are in that community. Their products were built well, tested to work, and rock solid: truly generational gear.
It's a bit sad to make such a decision when you're almost 80. Realizing the importance of time with your family so late gives you so little time.
A few years ago, I read about the regrets of dying people, and many of them related to spending more time with their families... That was one of the reasons I decided to close my company last year (after 20 years; I'm 45 now) and start over, working with just a few customers, making less money but having more time. Now, I only work part-time to have the chance to spend more time with my loved ones.
You have to be in a position of extreme privilege to even make a decision like that. I'm barely getting by and yet work more than I should. I don't have the option of just working less.
People over a certain retirement age get a thing called a "pension". I don't know if I'd consider it extreme privilege, but it's supposed to enable them to live without working.
I’d debate that Martin likely went to work every day of his life enjoying what he did… for -decades- he got to invent, market and see an entire global ham radio market use his products… he’s one of the good guys, taking a corner of Mississippi and bringing in electronics manufacturing jobs from a niche hobby.
Are they the most reliable? Eh no.. but that’s also half the fun of ham radio… fix it yourself. Now, if I had just purchased a DOA 2kw amplifier maybe not but ;)
Martin personally gave me a tour of the factories back in 2002. I got to see first hand things being made from parts. I overheard him pitching an idea to an engineer, and then a year later seeing the product reviewed in QST. I still use the clock he gave me.
Mostly digital. For an extra $25 per anum one can still get the print QST mailed as it always was but for the regular membership dues QST is digital only. However, the membership dues also include digital access to National Contest Journal, QEX, and On The Air. Perhaps it was at my suggestion along with others but ARRL has enabled PDF downloads of all content via the digital provider. These PDFs are fully text searchable and much smaller than a "print to PDF" version that was a collection of graphical images for each page.
It didn't take long to get acquainted with them as the company would send a complimentary catalog to new licensees and to those who upgraded their license class. At least that was the case years back.
It's a short form of "best regards". In message handling there was a table of numbers that could stand in for phrases to save time. That one made it to common ham lingo.
After decades of moving manufacturing to Asia we currently see a considerable countermovement in the US and Europe.
I have a hard time estimating how this will play out. Ten years from now, where do you believe will the majority of manufacturing happen?
Will it be more or less distributed compared to now?
My first HF rig was an MFJ 40m CW kit that I built with the Bergen Amateur Radio Association. What a mighty fine group that was. I got some excellent mentorship, in amateur and other matters.
Thank you M.F.J.! you’ve left a legacy of fond memories with this last generation of radio amateurs.
The first MFJ product I bought was a 941-C Versa Tuner circa 1984 or so. A few years later I tried to load my 80m dipole as a Marconi antenna with 100 Watts. With only about 35 feet of vertical feedline that didn't work so well. In the process the torroid transformers overheated and melted the PVC forms the transformers were housed in. A few years later I ordered replacements from MFJ and these had a larger torroid, Teflon insulated wire, and sandwiched between phenolic wafers for mounting. I sold it a few years later after procuring a second hand 949-D tuner.
I also had a 986 Differential Tee tuner for a number of years that I replaced with a Palstar AT1500DT differential tee tuner. I routinely had to pull the 986 out and clean and lubricate it. I've had the Palstar about 15 years and have yet to open it up. The Palstar was priced about 50% higher than the MFJ but the quality is an order of magnitude better. With the Palstar I only cried once, as the saying goes.
It seems as the decision of the owner. He's got old and wants to spend time with the family. Would not it be worth to try to transfer to the workers in exchange for some share of profits?
It’s ham radio. It’s very probable that they were already on the brink of failing considering what they made and where they made it. The manufacturing probably isn’t profitable and like most things ham, it was a labor of love.
Yeah, the letter didn't say whether they'd tried to sell the business, or find other management for it. That's definitely a question that comes to mind.
(There might not be buyers, the business might not be sustainable, the company space might be built into their home, they might have to sell commercial real estate for medical expenses or to get their estate in order, etc. Or maybe they're preoccupied with personal matters, and not up to investigating alternatives.)
He was trying to sell the company. The scuttlebutt is he declined an offer from DX Engineering, which is a shame because that would've been perhaps the best match.
I'd like to see DXE acquire the Hy-Gain and Ameritron lines if possible.
I've not followed this closely to know if Martin wanted to sell everything as a single unit or had entertained offers for the individual brands he's acquired over the years. Hopefully if it was the former he'll now consider the latter.
I have never heard of this company but after reading this letter and visiting their website, it is very clear they were the real deal. My sympathies to all involved & affected.
I'm not a Ham, but my grandfather (W8IGY) was, and I credit him for letting me know a larger, more technical community existed "out there" than what was apparent from the small rural town I grew up in the pre-internet days.
Ham radio's time has come and gone, but I still treasure the memories of listening to him talk to people all over the world.
MFJ shutting down is likely one of the final nails in the coffin, but I'll be sad to see it go.
> Ham radio's time has come and gone, but I still treasure the memories of listening to him talk to people all over the world.
Those people all over the world are still there. Every day. The airwaves are full. Yesterday I was handed off between a dozen Italians working contacts in the US.
I have to hand it to European hams. They don't leave anything on the table at all. Some of the gear they fabricate is world class stuff. I just bought this amazingly well made feedline choke from a French ham on Ebay. I've made these myself and know exactly how hard it is to make them that well. RigExpert out of Ukraine is something as well: they just took over the higher end portable analyzer market.
Is there something like Messier objects for radio?
I imagine some kind of numbered, curated list of radio achievements that would be a mini-lesson on gear needed, antennae, frequencies covered, theory and what the goal is.
Or maybe they're more like Scout badges.
Anyway, I have drifted in and out of a fascination with radio. When I drift toward it I often find I am quickly in over my head — or rudderless.
Countless things to go after. Some straightforward, some esoteric, some ridiculously challenging, like making contact with 100+ 1x2 degree grid squares via 1.2GHz Earth-Moon-Earth ("moonbounce") -- that will take some effort, I guarantee.
My thing is HF contesting. Scratch building antennas is also a kick.
If you are interested in radio, find a club. They will help you get oriented.
> I imagine some kind of numbered, curated list of radio achievements
Yes, this is widespread. The ARRL in the US tracks such achievements. A simple example that comes to mind is Worked All States[1]. But that's just one: there are contests, events, records, etc. If you want to put your callsign on a list somewhere there are lots of opportunities.
Just having a callsign in the first place is the start of it. Those are usually assigned by whatever national government you live under. And they typically have grades: Technician, General and Extra in the US, for example.
Some clubs have awards you can work toward, ARRL has a bunch [1]. SKCC [2] and NAQCC [3] have some for folks who like to work Morse code/CW. I'm sure that whatever aspect of ham radio folks are into, there is wallpaper you can earn while doing it.
There is a wide range. In the US, the ARRL (arrl.org) handles the majority. There are awards for “worked all states”, “worked all continents”, and so on. There are various contests every weekend. There is “Parks On The Air”. It’s called radiosport these days. You could join the ARRL and hook up with a local group for guidance - the addresses are on the website.
A lot of people will tell you to study for the technician exam, take the test, and buy a Baofeng handheld radio. The end result of that is usually that the new licensee keys up a local repeater a few times, doesn't find a community they want to be a part of, and the radio collects dust.
Instead, I suggest finding local ham clubs and seeking out experience with different parts of the hobby. Find people who chase DX (long distance contacts) on shortwave. Find the contesters, people who compete to see who can make the most contacts meeting some condition in a given period of time. Find the parks/summits on the air people, who go to parks and summits to set up portable stations and make contacts. Find the fox hunters, people who compete to find hidden radio beacons. Find the people with VHF/UHF rovers, vans with bit directional antennas mounted. Find people who communicate with satellites. Find people who bounce signals off the moon.
If your experience with any of that excites you for more, study for your license and dive in. I'd highly recommend getting your general class license instead of technician. It's not all that much harder to get and it opens up the shortwave bands.
As someone who listens but doesn't transmit, some of the most fun is actually chasing shortwave pirates around 6.950 MHz. There are a lot of fun radio shows that people put on, and I guess the FCC doesn't seem to care too much what happens below 40m. It might take some of the fun out of it, but it would be really cool to see some of that legalized as a form of amateur non-commercial music broadcast.
If you want to get licensed I found HamStudy's[1] learning method the most efficient use of my time and was able to breeze through Technician and General class. Their "Find a Session"[2] page makes it easy and inexpensive to take the test(s) remotely too.
It's different for everyone. For me, ten years ago, I got interested in quadcopters back when making them yourself was the norm. There is a lot of radio involved, especially at long range. That sent me down the rabbit hole.
There is a kindly person on YouTube you might watch: KB9VBR. He operates out of US parks. A lot. Vast numbers of contacts for that sort of operation. He sells antennas on EBay as well.
If you can find a HamFest in your area (they tend to pick up around the summer months) that's a great place to start and maybe meet a local Ham. If you know someone with a license you can operate at their station and under their call sign with their supervision and pick up a lot of the protocols and what the restrictions on popular bands are.
Picking up a Technical License or General License exam prep book is a good way to learn a lot of the radio and electronics technology too.
Go to arrl.org and join up. Read both their magazines every month. Locate your local ham group and start going to their meetings. They will help you to quickly get a license.
What happens next depends on your interests. The choices are vast and interesting.
Respectfully, this isn't true at all. We just do different stuff these days. We experiment with meshes, lora, digital modes (sometimes with internet backhaul, sometimes not), and other things like that. I just built a 5w 440 repeater small enough to mount in my VTOL and fly overhead for two hours.
Ham isn't dead, it just looks different than it did for our grandfathers.
100%
When I went to defcon in 2013, I saw all these kids covered in piercings and ink, studying for their exams.
They grew up in a wireless world, except it wasn't about DX, it was all local stuff, low power and multi protocol.
The tragedy of the ARRL was being too hardware oriented and not getting on board with open source, until it was too late.
Isn't the ARRL kind of outmoded these days though? Before the internet they were the US clearing house of all quality ham publishing and a great deal of organization. They had a big role to fill. Today, however, that communication flows independently on the internet.
I'm writing as an ARRL member that renews every three years. But I spend way more time learning from forums (groups.io, QRZ, blogs, etc.) and YouTube than anything the ARRL is doing.
There is a major world wide event called CQ WW dx contest in which on the order of 30,000 hams participate.
There are three morse code events each week, one on each of Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The Wednesday event has four separate one-hour sessions. If you tune in on one of these onto 20 meters, you will a whole mass of signals.
My local club, the North Shore Radio Club gives massive help to the Chicago Marathon, with on the order of 200 hams helping out with emergency traffic. Imagine a crowded event in a major city--the cell network becomes absolutely overloaded. Their help with traffic about medical events has doubtless saved lives.
The advent of the new digital modes invented by Joe Taylor (yes, that one, the Nobel Prize winner) embodied in the program WSJTX is massively active. This is a low-signal mode used on HF, LF and VHF/UHF. It significantly helps moonbounce communication.
Perhaps the most social of events is Field Day in which hams all over North America go to (generally) an outdoor location and set up stations to exercise emergency communications and use emergency power setup. You can check the ARRL web site in June to find one near you.
A recent activity is Parks On The Air where hams go to parks to set up temporary stations and pass out contacts to folks all over the world.
I communicated with someone 8,000 miles away from me (Midwest US to South Africa) by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere from an antenna I built myself using as much power as a light bulb.
The hobby is definitely dying, but it still provides some awesome moments. Tons of nerds here would find it time well spent.
I've done both. If you and your remote station have good antennas, a low local noise floor, and the right atmospheric conditions, a little power can take you to the other side of the planet.
Probably the former but possibly the latter. Sometimes "conditions" are such that a tiny amount of power will go a very long way. Right now, near the peak of the solar cycle, 4 watt CB radios are sometimes heard thousands of miles away.
I dunno about that. There are more licensed hams today in the US than there ever have been. And as a proportion of the US population, the number of hams is close to an all-time high.
I also serve as a Volunteer Examiner (ham who helps administer license exams), and the group with which I volunteer administers remote licensing exams to multiple people on a daily basis. So, anecdotally, I do think there are still plenty of folks out there getting into the hobby.
To me this is more a sign that western manufacturing's time has come and gone.
The ham world is buzzing as of late with how cheap, Chinese manufacturers are taking the market by storm from incumbent manufacturers on both sides (US and Japan) of the pacific. It's both grim and bittersweet because the hams admit their quality is good enough while being so much cheaper and easier to acquire.
Source: Dad is ham, overhear conversations of such from his comms and in radio shops; catalogs from HRO and the like are now half Chinese.
There's a lot of old Hams retiring out of the game in their 80s and 90s now.
I recently attended the funeral of the wife of an Australian Ham ~ 90 who relayed Space Shuttle communications to NASA for astronauts and their families including some sensitive "possible farewell" type calls.
This was the same person who lead me into fun projects reverse engineering the early Navstar GPS packets before they were public, and tapping into Cold War VLF transmissions out of Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt.
Someone who spent their early teens defusing live bombs in England during and post WWII, and present during the Mau Mau rebellion.
> reverse engineering the early Navstar GPS packets before they were public
Any write ups on this? GNSS reverse engineering seems interesting
Possible but unlikely on the net, I was very young at the time although happy to tackle the puzzle parts, the people doing the hardware and other projects of that time were a kind of post war loose knit quango of former commonwealth | european south east asian post z-forces collective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Wong_Sue * was in and out and round about, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Beadell dropped in and taught kids how to use a theodolite, other people of interest did stuff and we all generally submitted notes to archives.
* As you can see, lots of stories with fuzzed details <shrug>
When my dad was in Thule in the 1950s, the base engineers built a full double rhombic for HAM / MARS. It was glorious.
Nice to see that Bonnie and Lassie made the marker plate.
Cold War VLF transmissions
Damn that seems super interesting. I guess it's too sensitive to have a write up?
For anyone confused like I was, this isn't about mailchimp shutting down, but rather a company named MFJ, which apparently makes amateur radio gear.
TONS of it. Everything you could need. Need a key for Morse code? A Morse code trainer? An antenna tuner? Antenna? Power supply? Test equipment?
They had EVERYTHING.
https://mfjenterprises.com/
If you’re a ham this is sort of like CDW or NewEgg closing, but they’re #1 by a massive margin and well loved. No one else had the variety of stuff they did as I remember.
I'm a ham and I've used some of their products over the years. It is indeed a sad day. I am surprised that someone didn't want to buy them. It is a niche but a handful of small companies (and divisions of large ones) do quite well servicing the amateur radio market.
> I am surprised that someone didn't want to buy them.
I mean... how big is the market for ham radios? I've not really met an enthusiast that wasn't at least 10 years older than I am.
One thing to remember about ham radio is that there is a bit of natural bias in the demographic: a lot of the stuff involved requires a certain minimum amount of things that older people tend to have. Property being one of the keys. HF antennas, towers, etc. are essentially outlawed by HOAs and entirely infeasible for renters. Some of the equipment is pricey as well.
You can do a lot at low cost and without property, but some of the more compelling parts of ham radio are hard to reach.
> HF antennas, towers, etc. are essentially outlawed by HOAs and entirely infeasible for renters.
An "apartment antenna" that can be attached to balcony railing:
* https://mfjenterprises.com/products/mfj-1622
Portable antenna:
* https://www.buddipole.com/buddipole.html
This continued piece of disinformation is incredibly destructive to the hobby.
You don't need a tower or a huge piece of property to get involved with ham radio. I do most of my operation portable, sometimes operating out of a backpack and have plenty of fun with it.
If you want to put up an antenna as a renter you can easily do so on a small freestanding tripod.
I second this. You can get on HF with very little space. If you have 16ft of space, you can easily put up a temporary 10 meter dipole.
I have an HOA, so every time want to get on HF at home I put up the 10m dipole. I stick three 7ft wooden stakes in the ground, tie the dipole to them with paracord, and talk to people all over the world.
That dipole is just 2 pieces of 8 foot wire soldered to a SO-329 connector. It probably cost me $10 at most.
You can get a low powered portable HF digital rig for less than $100. With less than 20W and a homebrewed antenna you could be making contacts all over the world.
If you need more power, you can get a mobile 100W HF rig <https://www.dxengineering.com/search/part-type/mobile-transc...> for a little more than an XBOX. A 100W HF base station for the cost of a mid-range laptop <https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-015268> <https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=71-002065>
Admittedly, I'm currently making contacts all over the world right now on Hacker News. As children of the Internet, radio, at first, seems like a silly, antique hobby when the Internet has connected us together. Maybe it is just me, but there's something really fun and geeky about radio. I've been a maker for decades and I've grown a bit bored of making LED blink. HAM radio has given me a practical reason to get the solder iron out again. I really love building the crappiest equipment out of scraps and see if it'll work.
Parks on the Air is another really fun aspect of the hobby. Almost every weekend since I got my license, I go out to a nearby state or national park. I pack up my FT-991a base station in a cheap harbor freight hard case. I bring a battery, some coax, an EFHW antenna I built. I throw in antenna in a tree and sit in the park and play radio. I find it quite relaxing to get outside and see who I can talk to.
KB9VBR has a nice video what a POTA activation is like. If you're an outdoorsy type or want to be one, POTA is a fun excuse to get outside.
https://youtu.be/LL6R4U9ualI?si=KH4ZRssscpd7ooyb
> Admittedly, I'm currently making contacts all over the world right now on Hacker News.
It’s the difference between crossing the ocean in an airliner vs. in a sailboat. The end results are the same, but the methods and skills are wildly different.
I'll add that POTA and antenna building is just a small sliver of this hobby of hobbies.
Josh of Ham Radio Crash Course did a talk the various things you can do with a technician's license
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV3nzEdXhbw
Eh. It might be a part of it, but the hobby just lost its luster. It used to be this magical way to connect with friends and strangers. Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.
Other aspects of the hobby aged poorly too. The ham community (and the regulators) were slow to embrace use cases that might have been interesting to younger people in the 21th century - say, mesh networking. Instead, the kids were supposed to follow in the footsteps of the old-timers and get excited about slow-scan TV, RTTY, and collecting QSL postcards.
Frankly, I don't know of any other hobby with a comparable amount of gatekeeping. It sucks because the increasingly idle spectrum will eventually get auctioned off for commercial use.
I agree. Got into it during COVID - it was really fun learning about radios, RF, building antennas and stuff. But when it actually came to using it....there's not much to do unless you really get a kick out of making contact with random people who are far away and getting points for that to win contests. It is nice to know that I can communicate thousands of miles with no infrastructure but currently I don't have a need for that.
> Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.
I know people feel that way but IMO ham radio is still magical because you can communicate across continents without any dependency on anything or anyone else.
Sure the internet is faster and more convenient, but for that IP packet to reach its destination it depends on a cast of thousands of components across dozens of providers to all be working correctly.
With ham radio, you just need the radio and a generator and the laws of physics to communicate across the globe. That's pretty magical!
Maybe it’s just because I’m an EE, but I really got into the data modes too. Like did you know how stupid simple old school pagers are to create signals for? You have to make some slight modifications get them into the Ham Bands (or buy a new one, apparently a thing!) but after that it’s just 512 baud FSK.
Fascinating! Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment? What band do you use? Now I want to try this.
> Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment?
There are many cases of overlap. The "upper" pager band is 929-931 MHz. There is a lot of adaptable commercial 900 MHz equipment knocking around. There are also agile transceivers ICs like STM32WL than can tune 150-960 MHz continuous, for example. The lower pager bands are at the lower end of VHF. You can make transceivers at those frequencies from through-hole parts and cheap tools.
The great thing that has emerged recently is low cost RF tools. You can get cheap, hobbyist grade RF instruments for a song today. NanoVNC, TinySA, affordable antenna analyzers and more can do things that cost thousands of dollars only 10 years ago.
Last night I got a place to stay in Switzerland through a PSK-31 QSO. Didn’t even ask. Mentioned that we would like to visit the country in the next couple of years, and it just so happened the ham I was contacting lives on top of an Alp next to a monastery. When he found out Switzerland was on our list, he enthusiastically offered to make whatever arrangements necessary for us to stay at the monastery to visit. I’m definitely sending him a QSL card.
Sure, that interaction could have happened on the internet, but it is highly unlikely to have done so, given how I (and most people) use the internet. And no one is calling random foreign strangers on their phone.
Perhaps radio is no longer “magical,” but it is still serendipitous. When I sit down, I have no idea who or where will be receiving my RF. I have talked to a wider variety of people all over the world with my radio than I ever have with my laptop—at least in terms of real conversation and not just interacting on a reddit post or what have you. And, sure, plenty of QSOs are also just about your rig, your antenna, the weather, etc., but even being marginally curious about others’ lives usually garners some interesting conversation.
These are people with whom I would never have had the chance to converse without the happenstance of the ionosphere. So, I dunno, seems pretty magical to me. Maybe the broader issue is that folks generally aren’t interested in having random encounters and conversations with others.
As far as the gatekeeping aspect, that’s definitely a problem. The number of sad hams out there still bitching about how “FT8 isn’t real radio” is too damn high. But it’s a big hobby, and there are more licensed hams in the US now than there ever have been in terms of raw numbers, and it’s pretty close to an all-time high as a proportion of the population, too. So I think there’s room for optimism about it.
You can scoff at the price of second hand analog gear at a HAMfest or you can embrace SDR and OSHW.
As the hobby evolves, so does the hobbyist.
The FCC's door is as open as always.
It’s all what you make of it. I have built antennas to talk to Amateur Radio satellites, launched PicoBalloons (one went over Iran just as the attack was kicking off a couple weeks ago), NOAA APT and GOES LRIT capture, SDRs, Parks on the Air (which honestly has reinvigorated ham radio ALOT), WSPR, FT8/4, Shortwave Radiogram, etc
Then there is Ham Radio Crash Course, Long Island CW Club (Morse code has made a big comeback), and contesting which when that happens the bands are slammed
I have even sent memes over SSTV or captured imagery from the International Space Station. I have made QSOs with an Astronaut from my backyard with an HT.
Anyways there are lots of things to do. I am in a HOA and my end fed is installed in my attic. No one knows
There’s also flagpole antennas. Oh and I forgot about DMR and DSTAR or PiSpots. Raspberry Pi is big in ham radio
Pico ballons seem to be extremely interesting. Is it legal to release such?
I'm wondering how feasible it is for individuals to crack encrypted communication, and hack radios, preferably secured ones but I don't know where to buy one. Those encrypted radios in the 70s and 80s must be obsolete, right?
I'm not into communicating with other people. Hacking computers and radios seem to be a lot more interesting.
>spectrum will eventually get auctioned off for commercial use
Which is a tax on anyone who ends up using it. Selling the airwaves was a huge mistake.
>Frankly, I don't know of any other hobby with a comparable amount of gatekeeping.
Personal computing, and particularly FOSS.
>the hobby just lost its luster. It used to be this magical way to connect with friends and strangers. Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.
I surmise personal computing tomorrow will be the ham radio of today. We're already seeing the disillusionment among the masses and particularly the young.
Pretty sure federal law says HOAs can't do anything to prevent HAM radio antenna installations
This is not the case. Federal laws preclude HOA bylaws, municipal and state law from blocking antennas for satellite TV and radio service and antennas for terrestrial fixed internet service. It says nothing about antennas for amateur radio service. As such, almost all HOAs ban antennas for amateur, CB or any other purpose not protected by federal law.
The ARRL tried for years to obtain the same protected status for amateur radio antennas and failed. They've since ceased lobbying for this as it is costly. Occasionally one legislator or another tries to get the language passed and it is always shot down.
My neighbor, around 1984 or so had what appears to be the LP-1009A antennae right by my bedroom. No one believed me when I told my family and friends that I could hear a person speaking French from my record player.
Where were you?
Next-door to a radio station.
They offer a huge catalog of low cost equipment. Some of it is very popular and much of it is pretty niche. Quality is occasionally an issue: you buy their stuff with expectations commensurate to the price or you risk being disappointed. That is a feasible business model with hams, however. Then again, maybe not?
I can't think of any one thing they make that isn't available elsewhere. Some of their bread and butter tools, like their classic antenna analyzers, are completely out classed by newer alternatives today. For a long time, however, MFJ was the only affordable source for things like that.
One of the niche MFJ products I bought is a 20 meter telescoping vertical antenna element. That's like an old fashioned car radio antenna but 5.2 meters long. Even that is made by competitors today.
That's a good point. I'm sure the NanoVNA and similar gadgets have utterly demolished the market for dedicated antenna analyzers, and those really were MFJ's bread-and-butter products.
Actually, comparing the price to the quality/functionality, MFJ stuff is usually priced at a premium versus the kit or one-man-shop devices that they copied. Pricing also seldom changed in response to lower demand (thinking of the venerable MFJ-1270 TNC as interest in packet radio fell off in the late '90s and early '00s). Then there is the case where MFJ bought the rights to Coastal Chip works TNC-X and TNC-Pi and the prices went up significantly. MFJ has been a one-stop-shop for a lot of ham radio gadgets and accessories but were seldom the best value on the market as the pricing reflected their "No Matter What" warranty.
Other than an older Ameritron amplifier, which may predate the MFJ acquisition, I see nothing with the MFJ logo looking around my "shack". I moved on from MFJ many years ago and sought better alternatives. Some years ago I bought a Rig Expert AA230-ZOOM analyzer that is far more capable, stable, and compact than any of the MFJ analyzers I had used prior. I also have a NanoVNA that I use for 70cm that is beyond the range of the AA230-ZOOM. Other items in the shack are better built and better performing than their MFJ counterparts such as a West Mountain Radio DC power strip and Palstar and LDG tuners.
I am concerned about the fate of Ameritron and Hy-Gain. These two product lines have a strong history that pre-dates their acquisition by MFJ and it would be a shame to see them disappear from the ham radio marketplace.
> Quality is occasionally an issue
Understatement of the century. Mighty Fine Junk -- it's been a looooong time since I've wasted any money on MFJ rubbish. Life is too short.
I also heard "Mississippi's Finest Junk" as well. To be fair, I found the MFJ items I had to be able to the job. It was never best of breed but was always serviceable.
I have a ton of MFJ in my shack, and some MFJ hooked up to the radios I'm using on a daily basis; MFJ's loss will be felt in the amateur and public safety industries.
Edit to add:
Whenever I've had issues with one of their products, they literally walked me through disassembling and testing their products on the phone together -- and the staff there working the phones was knowledgeable, kind, and the type of folks you'd hear in the background at their tables/booths at hamvention and other radio-focused events. This isn't just a loss for everyone who uses MFJ, this is going to be felt amongst retailers as well as folks who are in that community. Their products were built well, tested to work, and rock solid: truly generational gear.
It's a bit sad to make such a decision when you're almost 80. Realizing the importance of time with your family so late gives you so little time.
A few years ago, I read about the regrets of dying people, and many of them related to spending more time with their families... That was one of the reasons I decided to close my company last year (after 20 years; I'm 45 now) and start over, working with just a few customers, making less money but having more time. Now, I only work part-time to have the chance to spend more time with my loved ones.
You have to be in a position of extreme privilege to even make a decision like that. I'm barely getting by and yet work more than I should. I don't have the option of just working less.
> You have to be in a position of extreme privilege to even make a decision like that. I
Absolutely. But MFJ was definitely in that position.
People over a certain retirement age get a thing called a "pension". I don't know if I'd consider it extreme privilege, but it's supposed to enable them to live without working.
Oh like the pension that United airlines pilots had?
I’d debate that Martin likely went to work every day of his life enjoying what he did… for -decades- he got to invent, market and see an entire global ham radio market use his products… he’s one of the good guys, taking a corner of Mississippi and bringing in electronics manufacturing jobs from a niche hobby.
Are they the most reliable? Eh no.. but that’s also half the fun of ham radio… fix it yourself. Now, if I had just purchased a DOA 2kw amplifier maybe not but ;)
Yeah but you can only do that if you have money
Martin personally gave me a tour of the factories back in 2002. I got to see first hand things being made from parts. I overheard him pitching an idea to an engineer, and then a year later seeing the product reviewed in QST. I still use the clock he gave me.
I wonder what the ARRL is going to do for advertising. Half their ads were from MFJ and Ameritron.
And sad for all the people in the Starkville area who have had jobs there for so many decades.
> I wonder what the ARRL is going to do for advertising. Half their ads were from MFJ and Ameritron.
They just stopped printing their monthly QST magazine at the start of 2024. It's digital only now.
Mostly digital. For an extra $25 per anum one can still get the print QST mailed as it always was but for the regular membership dues QST is digital only. However, the membership dues also include digital access to National Contest Journal, QEX, and On The Air. Perhaps it was at my suggestion along with others but ARRL has enabled PDF downloads of all content via the digital provider. These PDFs are fully text searchable and much smaller than a "print to PDF" version that was a collection of graphical images for each page.
Could we update the title to something like...
A Heavy Sad Heart - MFJ Enterprises to cease amateur radio product production
The correct title is:
MFJ: A Heavy Sad Heart
It seems like that might help?
(I know nothing about ham radio but insiders seem to recognize MFJ.)
It didn't take long to get acquainted with them as the company would send a complimentary catalog to new licensees and to those who upgraded their license class. At least that was the case years back.
All good (was updated from "A Heavy Sad Heart" shortly after posting)
#HamRadio Live! 80 Minutes Live With Martin F Jue Who is Now Celebrating His 50th Year At MFJ! (2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C9RBz41Q8o
Despite being a ham for a number of years (no longer) I never needed anything MFJ sold. I’ve heard this from a couple of people.
I wonder if their market just dried up.
73
I saw that he signed off with that in the letter. What does it mean? Founding year? Callsign? Channel?
It means "best regards". In Morse code transmissions, a lot of words and phrases are shortened to commonly understood abbreviations and pro-signs. You can see an example here: http://lidscw.org/resources/cq-qso-template and a list of such abbreviations here: https://cwops.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/CW-Abbreviation...
It's a short form of "best regards". In message handling there was a table of numbers that could stand in for phrases to save time. That one made it to common ham lingo.
"Best regards"
As I understand it, '73' comes from the landline Morse/news wire reporting tradition.
Thanks all!
After decades of moving manufacturing to Asia we currently see a considerable countermovement in the US and Europe.
I have a hard time estimating how this will play out. Ten years from now, where do you believe will the majority of manufacturing happen? Will it be more or less distributed compared to now?
My first HF rig was an MFJ 40m CW kit that I built with the Bergen Amateur Radio Association. What a mighty fine group that was. I got some excellent mentorship, in amateur and other matters.
Thank you M.F.J.! you’ve left a legacy of fond memories with this last generation of radio amateurs.
The first MFJ product I bought was a 941-C Versa Tuner circa 1984 or so. A few years later I tried to load my 80m dipole as a Marconi antenna with 100 Watts. With only about 35 feet of vertical feedline that didn't work so well. In the process the torroid transformers overheated and melted the PVC forms the transformers were housed in. A few years later I ordered replacements from MFJ and these had a larger torroid, Teflon insulated wire, and sandwiched between phenolic wafers for mounting. I sold it a few years later after procuring a second hand 949-D tuner.
I also had a 986 Differential Tee tuner for a number of years that I replaced with a Palstar AT1500DT differential tee tuner. I routinely had to pull the 986 out and clean and lubricate it. I've had the Palstar about 15 years and have yet to open it up. The Palstar was priced about 50% higher than the MFJ but the quality is an order of magnitude better. With the Palstar I only cried once, as the saying goes.
MFJ had the coolest iambic keyer:
https://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/morse/0804.html
It seems as the decision of the owner. He's got old and wants to spend time with the family. Would not it be worth to try to transfer to the workers in exchange for some share of profits?
It’s ham radio. It’s very probable that they were already on the brink of failing considering what they made and where they made it. The manufacturing probably isn’t profitable and like most things ham, it was a labor of love.
They’re shutting down their factories, so they’d have to setup new ones elsewhere. That would have costs too.
Clearly it wasn’t profitable enough anymore, and maybe wouldn’t be after moving overseas or something.
Yeah, the letter didn't say whether they'd tried to sell the business, or find other management for it. That's definitely a question that comes to mind.
(There might not be buyers, the business might not be sustainable, the company space might be built into their home, they might have to sell commercial real estate for medical expenses or to get their estate in order, etc. Or maybe they're preoccupied with personal matters, and not up to investigating alternatives.)
He was trying to sell the company. The scuttlebutt is he declined an offer from DX Engineering, which is a shame because that would've been perhaps the best match.
There probably was an offer but I bet if you look at the books the price that was wanted was not what it was actually worth.
Indeed. DX Engineering is exactly what I would have thought as well. Half their catalog is MFJ.
As is half of any of the retailers' catalogs.
I'd like to see DXE acquire the Hy-Gain and Ameritron lines if possible.
I've not followed this closely to know if Martin wanted to sell everything as a single unit or had entertained offers for the individual brands he's acquired over the years. Hopefully if it was the former he'll now consider the latter.
The other aspect is that the core value of the company might be the intangible goodwill value that the owner-operator himself brought to the table.
Apparently not.
Make an offer.
I have never heard of this company but after reading this letter and visiting their website, it is very clear they were the real deal. My sympathies to all involved & affected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFJ_Enterprises
Wow. I was reading MFJ ads in ham radio magazines since the early 80's. Didn't even know that they were still around.
I'm not a Ham, but my grandfather (W8IGY) was, and I credit him for letting me know a larger, more technical community existed "out there" than what was apparent from the small rural town I grew up in the pre-internet days.
Ham radio's time has come and gone, but I still treasure the memories of listening to him talk to people all over the world.
MFJ shutting down is likely one of the final nails in the coffin, but I'll be sad to see it go.
> Ham radio's time has come and gone, but I still treasure the memories of listening to him talk to people all over the world.
Those people all over the world are still there. Every day. The airwaves are full. Yesterday I was handed off between a dozen Italians working contacts in the US.
I have to hand it to European hams. They don't leave anything on the table at all. Some of the gear they fabricate is world class stuff. I just bought this amazingly well made feedline choke from a French ham on Ebay. I've made these myself and know exactly how hard it is to make them that well. RigExpert out of Ukraine is something as well: they just took over the higher end portable analyzer market.
Is there something like Messier objects for radio?
I imagine some kind of numbered, curated list of radio achievements that would be a mini-lesson on gear needed, antennae, frequencies covered, theory and what the goal is.
Or maybe they're more like Scout badges.
Anyway, I have drifted in and out of a fascination with radio. When I drift toward it I often find I am quickly in over my head — or rudderless.
Countless things to go after. Some straightforward, some esoteric, some ridiculously challenging, like making contact with 100+ 1x2 degree grid squares via 1.2GHz Earth-Moon-Earth ("moonbounce") -- that will take some effort, I guarantee.
My thing is HF contesting. Scratch building antennas is also a kick.
If you are interested in radio, find a club. They will help you get oriented.
> I imagine some kind of numbered, curated list of radio achievements
Yes, this is widespread. The ARRL in the US tracks such achievements. A simple example that comes to mind is Worked All States[1]. But that's just one: there are contests, events, records, etc. If you want to put your callsign on a list somewhere there are lots of opportunities.
Just having a callsign in the first place is the start of it. Those are usually assigned by whatever national government you live under. And they typically have grades: Technician, General and Extra in the US, for example.
[1] http://www.arrl.org/was
Some clubs have awards you can work toward, ARRL has a bunch [1]. SKCC [2] and NAQCC [3] have some for folks who like to work Morse code/CW. I'm sure that whatever aspect of ham radio folks are into, there is wallpaper you can earn while doing it.
[1] https://www.arrl.org/AWARDS [2]https://skccgroup.com/ [3] http://naqcc.info/challenges_rules.html
There is a wide range. In the US, the ARRL (arrl.org) handles the majority. There are awards for “worked all states”, “worked all continents”, and so on. There are various contests every weekend. There is “Parks On The Air”. It’s called radiosport these days. You could join the ARRL and hook up with a local group for guidance - the addresses are on the website.
How does one get started?
A lot of people will tell you to study for the technician exam, take the test, and buy a Baofeng handheld radio. The end result of that is usually that the new licensee keys up a local repeater a few times, doesn't find a community they want to be a part of, and the radio collects dust.
Instead, I suggest finding local ham clubs and seeking out experience with different parts of the hobby. Find people who chase DX (long distance contacts) on shortwave. Find the contesters, people who compete to see who can make the most contacts meeting some condition in a given period of time. Find the parks/summits on the air people, who go to parks and summits to set up portable stations and make contacts. Find the fox hunters, people who compete to find hidden radio beacons. Find the people with VHF/UHF rovers, vans with bit directional antennas mounted. Find people who communicate with satellites. Find people who bounce signals off the moon.
If your experience with any of that excites you for more, study for your license and dive in. I'd highly recommend getting your general class license instead of technician. It's not all that much harder to get and it opens up the shortwave bands.
As someone who listens but doesn't transmit, some of the most fun is actually chasing shortwave pirates around 6.950 MHz. There are a lot of fun radio shows that people put on, and I guess the FCC doesn't seem to care too much what happens below 40m. It might take some of the fun out of it, but it would be really cool to see some of that legalized as a form of amateur non-commercial music broadcast.
If you want to get licensed I found HamStudy's[1] learning method the most efficient use of my time and was able to breeze through Technician and General class. Their "Find a Session"[2] page makes it easy and inexpensive to take the test(s) remotely too.
[1]: https://hamstudy.org
[2]: https://hamstudy.org/sessions
Check out software defined radio. If you find it interesting, being a ham might appeal to you.
It's different for everyone. For me, ten years ago, I got interested in quadcopters back when making them yourself was the norm. There is a lot of radio involved, especially at long range. That sent me down the rabbit hole.
There is a kindly person on YouTube you might watch: KB9VBR. He operates out of US parks. A lot. Vast numbers of contacts for that sort of operation. He sells antennas on EBay as well.
If you can find a HamFest in your area (they tend to pick up around the summer months) that's a great place to start and maybe meet a local Ham. If you know someone with a license you can operate at their station and under their call sign with their supervision and pick up a lot of the protocols and what the restrictions on popular bands are.
Picking up a Technical License or General License exam prep book is a good way to learn a lot of the radio and electronics technology too.
Go to arrl.org and join up. Read both their magazines every month. Locate your local ham group and start going to their meetings. They will help you to quickly get a license.
What happens next depends on your interests. The choices are vast and interesting.
Respectfully, this isn't true at all. We just do different stuff these days. We experiment with meshes, lora, digital modes (sometimes with internet backhaul, sometimes not), and other things like that. I just built a 5w 440 repeater small enough to mount in my VTOL and fly overhead for two hours.
Ham isn't dead, it just looks different than it did for our grandfathers.
100% When I went to defcon in 2013, I saw all these kids covered in piercings and ink, studying for their exams. They grew up in a wireless world, except it wasn't about DX, it was all local stuff, low power and multi protocol. The tragedy of the ARRL was being too hardware oriented and not getting on board with open source, until it was too late.
Isn't the ARRL kind of outmoded these days though? Before the internet they were the US clearing house of all quality ham publishing and a great deal of organization. They had a big role to fill. Today, however, that communication flows independently on the internet.
I'm writing as an ARRL member that renews every three years. But I spend way more time learning from forums (groups.io, QRZ, blogs, etc.) and YouTube than anything the ARRL is doing.
> Ham radio's time has come and gone,
It is still very much alive.
There is a major world wide event called CQ WW dx contest in which on the order of 30,000 hams participate.
There are three morse code events each week, one on each of Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The Wednesday event has four separate one-hour sessions. If you tune in on one of these onto 20 meters, you will a whole mass of signals.
My local club, the North Shore Radio Club gives massive help to the Chicago Marathon, with on the order of 200 hams helping out with emergency traffic. Imagine a crowded event in a major city--the cell network becomes absolutely overloaded. Their help with traffic about medical events has doubtless saved lives.
The advent of the new digital modes invented by Joe Taylor (yes, that one, the Nobel Prize winner) embodied in the program WSJTX is massively active. This is a low-signal mode used on HF, LF and VHF/UHF. It significantly helps moonbounce communication.
Perhaps the most social of events is Field Day in which hams all over North America go to (generally) an outdoor location and set up stations to exercise emergency communications and use emergency power setup. You can check the ARRL web site in June to find one near you.
A recent activity is Parks On The Air where hams go to parks to set up temporary stations and pass out contacts to folks all over the world.
So Ham Radio is far from dead.
I'm a ham.
I communicated with someone 8,000 miles away from me (Midwest US to South Africa) by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere from an antenna I built myself using as much power as a light bulb.
The hobby is definitely dying, but it still provides some awesome moments. Tons of nerds here would find it time well spent.
My WSPR beacon is routinely heard at a research base in Antarctica.
Every time I see DP0GVN in my list of received WSPR transmissions on WSPRnet.org, I smile about bothering the penguins.
Incandescent or LED?
Incandescent :)
It was FT8, which is a weak signal data mode. Very often you can make contacts hundreds of miles away using less than 20 watts.
However, I was probably using between 40-100 watts for that contact - you can't get much further apart on earth than we were!
I've done both. If you and your remote station have good antennas, a low local noise floor, and the right atmospheric conditions, a little power can take you to the other side of the planet.
Probably the former but possibly the latter. Sometimes "conditions" are such that a tiny amount of power will go a very long way. Right now, near the peak of the solar cycle, 4 watt CB radios are sometimes heard thousands of miles away.
It might be possible those CBs heard that far away are actually 4 watts - but it's much more likely they're illegally boosting their output.
Still, you're totally right that in ideal conditions propagation can be astounding.
I regularly contact Europe from the Chicago area with a very modest antenna using five watts
>Ham radio’s time has come and gone
I dunno about that. There are more licensed hams today in the US than there ever have been. And as a proportion of the US population, the number of hams is close to an all-time high.
https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/stats/index.html
I also serve as a Volunteer Examiner (ham who helps administer license exams), and the group with which I volunteer administers remote licensing exams to multiple people on a daily basis. So, anecdotally, I do think there are still plenty of folks out there getting into the hobby.
>Ham radio's time has come and gone,
To me this is more a sign that western manufacturing's time has come and gone.
The ham world is buzzing as of late with how cheap, Chinese manufacturers are taking the market by storm from incumbent manufacturers on both sides (US and Japan) of the pacific. It's both grim and bittersweet because the hams admit their quality is good enough while being so much cheaper and easier to acquire.
Source: Dad is ham, overhear conversations of such from his comms and in radio shops; catalogs from HRO and the like are now half Chinese.
This company will be missed by many hams. When I buy stuff I go to dx engineering. Top quality.