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.
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.
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.
Which is a tax on anyone who ends up using it. Selling the airwaves was a huge mistake.
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!
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.
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
As the hobby evolves, so does the hobbyist.
The FCC's door is as open as always.
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.
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.
I'm not into communicating with other people. Hacking computers and radios seem to be a lot more interesting.
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 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.
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.
Josh of Ham Radio Crash Course did a talk the various things you can do with a technician's license
An "apartment antenna" that can be attached to balcony railing:
* https://mfjenterprises.com/products/mfj-1622
Portable antenna:
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.