Thinking of becoming a HAM, so here's some first timer questions...

Becoming a HAM:
I went through the German system. Here the test is a multiple choice test of about 100 questions (depends what class of licence you are aiming at, the novice licence test is easier and shorter, but you´ll have a lot of restrictions when you are using it, so I went straight for the highest class). These exists a website run by the German equivalent of the ARRL over here, which allows you to run practice tests online. I´m sure that you can eventually pass the test by just learning the questions and answers by rote (in some topics, like legislation you won´t have a choice except to do exactly this), but for the technical stuff I wanterd to UNDERSTAND what it was about. It took me about one year of studying until I felt ready for the test.

Concerning hams:

Hams come in lots of flavours. Some like contesting (this means e.g. making as many contacts as possible within a certain time frame, which are then graded for difficulty, e.g. a contact in the next countys is less worth than one on the other side of the earth, and going for the respective awards issued by the organisers of these contests.
Some like to "ragchew", this means meeting friends on the air to have a chat, even if the friends are living across the ocean.
Some like to build stuff and to try it out (hams are the only people who are allowed to build and modify their own radio equipment and to operate it without government type approval, this is the reason why we have to pass that strict technical test, we are supposed to know enough of radio theory to prevent us from interfering with other radioservices). I´m one of these, e.g. I build my own antennas and couplers.
Some like to go QRP, this means to make contacts using as little power as possible (not for me, as can seen below I´m currently restricted to 100W with an inefficient antenna and its a bit frustrating to be able to hear all these overseas stationd from North America, Japan, South Africa etc. and not having enough power to get through). I know people, who went across the Atlantic Ocean on HF using 20 Watts or less.
Others like the big guns and like to experiment with high power amps, going to max legal power.
Then others like to experiment with digital modes or amateur TV.
Some like to do radio sports like direction finding contests, in which several low power radio transmitters are hidden in a remote area, transmitting for a few seconds every few minutes, and you are competing with other teams to find them as fast as possible using portable direction finders. This means a lot of cross country running.
Theoretically you can discuss all topics on the air, as long as they are within the limits of amateur radio (e.g. no broadcasts, no commercial interests, no messages for third parties), but etiquette says that you´ll refrain from controversial stuff like politics, religion and sexuality (makes sense, e.g. during cold war you could have talks with fellow hams in the Soviet Union, but you wouldn´t want to get them into trouble by starting to talk about their country´s politics). And, you are supposed to be polite on air and to use certain operational practices (which often were copied from the old telegraph and maritime radio services).

At the moment I´m still restricted in antennas and transmission power (I´m living for rent and my landlord only allowed me to set up a fairly basic and unefficient antenna), but I´m planning to buy a house and some land within the next few years and then I will set up a proper antenna farm with various antennas for each band and I will finally set up this old East German broadcasting station HF power amplifier (it weighs about 500 lbs and is the size of a fridge) to go up to max. legal power.


73, DL1JRK (Jan)

 

Good post on ham radio Hamster. People think Ham is another form of a bigger CB radio. When I hear CB compared to Ham IMO I think people are thinking Ham radio does the trash talk as well. Not the case at all, Ham is a hobby not somthing to trash talk around with your buddies. I am surprised this post is under the CB section.

 

At the moment I'm involved in some digital modes and having a lot of fun using them. I built the sound card modem my self. (less then $5.00) So I still have it bread boarded and getting ready to mount in a box soon. Most of us hams play with all kinds of stuff and try new stuff all the time. Come out and join us. At the moment I'm not running HF mobile. As soon as I get my changes made it will be back mobile.