Buy a cheapo handy-talky. Use radioreference to find your local repeaters. And get on the air!
You are required to announce your call sign. And you can find anyone by their call sign in the FCC's Universal License System.
As in what are the equipments one must have (as bare minimum), or should have, what are the daily uses (other than things like helping out during disaster etc)? What are the fun aspects of it - for someone who is setting into and not from an “old timer’s” pov?
I am mostly curious about what it would be mean to use it actually. Will one need to have huge antennas and consoles etc? Or something handheld works and if it’s handheld then how short the range is?
Whenever I try to read about it, almost everywhere it immediately becomes pedantic and jargon filled.
But these days, a lot of stuff can be done using cellular+internet that used to be the domain of hams. Voice comms can be fun (the local repeater nets kept me sane during pandemic isolation) but they're not exotic any more. The other corners of the hobby are kind of esoteric. It's hard to say what might interest you.
My father, who is a ham operator, likes saying "I can just Skype you on your phone." as a joking rebuke to most things ham radio.
* Minimum equipment necessary is as simple as a walkie talkie, though if you want to have an actual "radio station" per se you need an antenna and a transceiver and the wiring to hook it all up. Note that a ham license concerns transmitting radio signals, if all you want to do is just receive ham radio signals you don't need a license.
* Ham radio exists for anything that falls under communications. Communications during an emergency is an oft cited use case, but if you just want to talk shit with your ham friend across the continent or even the world one random Tuesday evening that's perfectly fine too.
* The fun aspects of ham radio lie in the electrical engineering aspect and the communication aspect. You need to have proper understanding of all things electricity to fully understand and appreciate what goes into transmitting radio waves, and that might be something you find fun. If you find the idea of talking to someone just because you can fun, that's also something ham radio can satisfy.
Many people get a basic license and use a handheld radio to talk to people in their area through a "repeater" (basically a big range extender) on VHF/UHF frequencies (~140MHz or ~440MHz) - that'll give you several miles of range to chat with locals.
You can go further and get a mobile or home base station with a fancy antenna to get more range, while still essentially doing the same thing.
A lot of people have fun with "DXing" (distance communications). There are a few different approaches to DXing. Most people set up a home or mobile base station with a big (but can be very cheap, just a wire) antenna for use on lower frequency bands ("HF"; from a couple MHz to a couple dozen), which can have much higher range than VHF/UHF. There are some people that use atmospheric conditions to get higher range on VHF/UHF though.
Some others connect their radio (handheld or base station) to their computer to set up long range computer networks.
There are endless other uses, but a common thread is that they're quite technical and it's very personality driven. If you're a computer enthusiast, you might enjoy mesh networks, AX.25 (networking protocol), or FT-8 (extremely durable protocol for low power long range DXing). If you like building things, building your own radios and antennae can be fun. And if you just like talking to similarly nerdy people, you can grab a handheld and get chatting.
I personally am looking to get into DXing with FT-8 soon - I want to put together a mobile setup that runs completely offline. FT-8 requires a synchronized clock (within 1s accuracy) so I want to get a laptop set up with GPS time. Then, I've gotta find a radio I can rig up to the laptop, probably at a hamfest flea market. The ultimate result of that is that I'll be able to communicate directly with other hams on the other side of the globe (ideally!) from a laptop in my car.
In the Internet age, ham radio isn't really all that practical. It's fun to tinker with though!
I'm using the FT8CN Android app and a truSDX radio. USB cable from the radio into my phone powers the radio as well as sends/receives the audio.
For antenna I'm just using a hamstick on the roof.
This only puts out about half a watt but I was getting out about 2500-3000km away. You could then have an alternative power source like a battery to get around 5 watts.
As far as activities, the sky isn't even the limit! Sort of a joke there as there are all sorts of radio astronomy / space-related RF, a few are: bouncing signals off meteor trails and aurora, communicating w/ satellites and the ISS, pulling weather imagery straight from NOAA satellites, conducting EME ("earth-moon-earth") communications, the list goes on.
You really don't need huge antennas or anything like that unless you start getting into something very specific and/or high power. Even using the lower frequency band (still called "HF" high frequency), you can use a very small diameter wire that you can temporarily toss up in a tree and talk to people around the world. The length of that wire grows the lower in frequency you are operating but it's still a small light wire you can wind up and toss in a pack.
You can buy a Baofeng UV5R handheld ("HT") for under $20 USD and start listening to people on local repeaters and listen in on weekly "nets" conducted on those repeaters straight away. A repeater is just a powerful station that is ideally somewhere high that rebroadcasts your communication to a wider area than a handheld could do. You'll see some criticism of that radio and other budget radios by some of the more grumpier types but they are a great way to get started for not a lot of money. You can also listen to NOAA radio weather reports with one, which is particularly useful if you are in an emergency situation, power outage, etc. If you get licensed (hamstudy.org is a great resource for this) then you can talk on those repeaters and direct ("simplex") to other local hams.
That Baofeng handheld operates on VHF and UHF bands, specifically the 2 meter band and 70 cm bands (you'll typically see bands listed in meters and millimeters, this is roughly how long the radio wave [wavelength] is for that band - e.g. 2 meter band is 144 MHz to 148 MHz, and a 148 MHz radio wave is 2.053373 meters long) These bands aren't really great for long distance communication. You can make/buy an antenna and make a contact with the astronauts on the ISS though!
Depending on your interests, it's a lot of fun building radios from kits or completely doing it yourself. There's a whole subset of "QRP" (reduced power) communications where people use tiny low power radios and still make contacts around the world. There's an activity called POTA (Parks On The Air) and SOTA (Summits On The Air) where people will set up in a park or on a mountaintop and try and make as many contacts as they can in a period. You'll often see them using small QRP low-power radios.
You can send images and video (SSTV - Slow Scan TV and ATV - Amateur Fast Scan TV) over the air, there are lots of digital modes / packet radio where you can send emails, messages, and a plethora of other activities.
SDR (Software Defined Radio) is fun as well, they are basically USB sticks you can hook up to a computer and receive a wide range of signals. I run one that monitors for ADS-B beacons on nearby aircraft and I feed that to some of the flight tracking sites. You can listen to shortwave broadcasts from other countries and pretty much everything mentioned above (and more!) You can check out some online at http://websdr.org/
"In ancient Etruscan they actually had a word ending for differentiating between a <grammar jargon> and <a grammar jargon> but it was only used on Holy days in one province and..."
"ok but who cares? where's the fun in that?"
"That is the fun in that!"
"What daily use is it?"
"..."
The job of programming is to build what your employer pays you for, but the hobby of programming is "can I build a trie in my favourite weirdo language so I can understand how tries work?" and "can I get this Arduino to run my code if I'm only willing to power it with this small spare solar panel?" and "can I get JavaScript and WebGL to draw the Julia Fractal with GPU acceleration just to see if I can do it?" and "can I make a playable game in a pure functional language and how will I manage game state to do that?" and there's no daily use for these things, they are wildly different. Yes you can use (language, data structure, algorithm, technology) in your day job, but that's not really the point. In that case it's job training not hobby. The point of them as a hobby isn't to achieve things it's to spend your time doing thing you find interesting. (Yes, some people like achieving things as a hobby and work on OSS tools as if it were their job).
Looking for a daily use of a hobby is looking for the wrong thing, and looking for other people's fun to copy is also looking for the wrong thing. You can't ape other people's fun, because you aren't other people.
My dad volunteers for amateur radio as a method of comms at rural events, but they all bring cellphones because they are better for comms. The radio is an excuse to get out to the event, and the event is an excuse to play with radio. He also takes part in a friendly competition to take portable radio gear up hills and make contact from the top. The radio is a reason to get outside and climb a hill, the competition is a reason to take some radio gear and play with radio. And it's run from the internet and smart phones because they're better for organizing and reliable fast comms.
> "I am mostly curious about what it would be mean to use it actually."
Some people buy a radio and sit in a shed and talk, some people limit themselves to Morse code and try to communicate over noisy channels, some people try to connect to people as far away as possible using limited radio power, some people track the atmosphere conditions and try to bounce radio waves off the upper atmosphere to make long range communications, some people pack portable equipment and climb hills and make radio contact from the top to get points in friendly competitions, some people find old equipment from junk sales and challenge themselves to make it work and connect it up to whatever else they have, some people like to argue about which manufacturer is better and which technology is needed.
The hobby originally (a century ago) was "wtf is radio??" and the bare minimum isn't any specific product or technology, it's an interest in wireless electricity and a thread that interests you to pull on.
Summits on the Air - take your gear to a mountain summit and attempt to make at least 4 contacts.
Parks on the Air - take your gear to a state/federal/provincial/national park and attempt to make at least 10 contacts.
Check out Ham Radio Crash Course on YouTube. He has a bunch of great stuff for people interested. From there hopefully one of the areas will pique your interest and you can go down the rabbit hole from there.
In the US there are two major distinctions between licenses. The basic Technician class license mainly lets you access VHF and up - these radio waves propagate based on line of sight. The general focus in this area of the spectrum comes from the sheer utility of radio.
Then, the General and Extra class licenses let you operate more fully on shortwave. These are lower frequencies that interact with the ionosphere, giving them the curious property of reaching around the planet. (Extra opens up a little more spectrum, and is recognized by some international treaties allowing you to operate while abroad).
The basic starter equipment for a technician is a handheld or mobile radio. The line-of-sight limitation on VHF is overcome by the use of repeaters. A no-stakes way to sample the activity in your vicinity is to get an RTL-SDR dongle and tune in to the 2 meter and 70 cm amateur bands.
The classic starter kit for a general is an HF radio and homemade dipole. The radio will realistically cost a couple hundred dollars, but the antenna can be just scrap wire and modest coax cable. The size of the antenna is determined by the wavelength at which it operates. The two most common beginner bands are 20M and 40M. A dipole for those wavelengths is about 33' and 66' of wire respectively, but the wire does not have to run in a straight line. You can use a WebSDR to peek in on the activity for free.
My personal interest in all of this is SOTA -- Summits On The Air. It is a radio sport that involves taking portable shortwave transmitters up to mountain peaks. It is equal parts exploration, since many of the peaks in my region lack even trail access; and invention, as the physical realities of mountain climbing necessitate radios and antennas made for the purpose. The actual radio exchange from the peak is simple - who is calling, how well they can hear you, and where they are located, and maybe a pleasantry or two. There is a great deal of camaraderie from the other operators, and you never know whether your next contact will come from San Francisco or coastal France.