Welcome to Amateur Radio, the Wonderful Hobby Which Takes Your Voice Around the World!

 Welcome to the wonderful world of amateur radio, which also popularly known as ham radio. Ham radio operators have a valid license in their country for two way wireless communication using amateur radio equipment.

There are around 7,50,000 radio amateurs in the United States of America, and 3,50,000 each in Japan and European Union. Exact numbers may vary and this is only a rough estimate. All of these licensed radio amateurs may not be active either.

Most popular mode of short distance communication in amateur radio is using hand held radios like walkie talkies using either VHF (Very High Frequency) or UHF (Ultra High Frequency) two way radios. Distance covered by these small radios can be enhanced by availabalitiy of Repeaters in the region. Repeaters receive the signals from these radios and re-transmit them on another frequency. As the repeaters usually have higher power and are located at a height, they have range of even several hundred kilometers.

The popular mode of long distance communciation is using HF (High Frequency) radio waves. Popular HF amateur radio bands are 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m, though there are also other bands available to radio amateurs. Allocation of radio spectrum may vary slightly from region to region.

Another exciting mode of communication in amateur radio is using relay by satellites in space. There are LEO (Low Earth Orbit), MEO (Medium Earth Orbit) and GEO (Geostationary Orbit) amateur radio satellites out there. Each require a different technique of operation.

73 de Jon, VU2JO

Thanks KC0JH for correcting the number of Radio Amateurs in the US! You might wonder what KC0JH  means. It is the amateur radio callsign alloted to one of my contacts on X (Twitter), by FCC (Federal Communications Commission), similar to the callsign VU2JO alloted to me in India. If you click the link, it will take you to the page with biographical details of KC0JH!



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