Ham Radio
The most common hobby name given to amateur radio is ham radio, which is a big part of the international communications as a complex system. Public service and recreation are the elements that stimulate the activity of the service participants, but it is also true that it is on their skills that emergency and disaster communications often rely if necessary. Estimations indicate that some six million people around the world are regularly part of ham radio, and although they are not broadcasting to make money, their reward is the ability to get on air. It is the non-commercial feature the one to distinguish ham radio from other radio stations, and not the lack of skills as one may believe.
Ham radio is believed to go back to the end of the 19th century particularly since at the beginning of the 20th there were around ninety amateur stations registered only in the United States and Canada. The appearance of ham radio has very much to do with hobby practices and experiments, and one cannot deny that very often, amateur radio founders have given significant contributions to science, services and industry. Moreover, lots of people owe their lives to ham radio operators who saved them in emergency cases.
Ham radio covers several types of transmissions and besides the quality FM (frequency modulation) that we are all familiar with, ham radio operators also work on single sideband with a higher transmission reliability or on the Morse code even if technology has come a long way since the days of the radio-telegraph. Presently, computers have changed the evolution of ham radio for ever, with the introduction of the digital modes and the development of the packet radio. Therefore, ham radio operators manage to use the low power communications on shortwave bands while staying in real-time mode.
Moreover, ham radio now has access to OSCARs (orbiting satellites carrying amateur radio) by means of a basic device such as a hand-held transceiver. What it is very interesting is that many ham radio operators use the moon and the aurora borealis to get a good reflection of the radio waves. Some ham radio stations have even got into contact with the International Space Station as some of the astronauts on board are also licensed as amateur radio operators. Discussions are in fact common practice among the individual hams who get on-air just to join one meeting or another.
