its been pondering me for a while, but was just wondering how many of you audio tech's are ham operators?? i got my tech license when i was the age of 16 in 1997 im now 21. this year im gonna go for my generals license hopefully i can do 5wpm lol. i currently use 2m for most talking and some 7cm with my father. if some of you are ham ops if you will post your callsign and what band you use.

callsign: kc8hak

band: 2m/7cm

p.s. if this isnt considered audio related i dont mind if its deleted B)

The internet kinda killed ham radio, didn't it?

yes it did, but i still find it fun and informational. i mean anyone can just msg someone or email someone, but personally its fun for me to contact someone 5 states away on radio waves. like if propagation aint good you dont have a shot in hell of talking. i dunno , i grew up with radio so its just fun for me.

No, why?

Lots going on out there still.. interesting new digital modes are adding to the
wide bunch of things that have been there for years, like meteor scatter, tropo
(weather related) ducting, moonbounce, (want a challange? use the Moon as a
passive reflector!) sattelites (yes, privately funded and built) besides the usual
short wave worldwide communications..

Actually, audio signal processing with computers is used to help with various weak
signal modes.. and a very efficent compression of voice to small data streams would
be something to work on. Speex comes to mind.. and some experiments I saw on a
thread here with Ogg cranked way down slow.. Heck, last I looked, there already were
2-3 worldwide networks of ham repeaters linkable thru the Net.. sorta a voice gateway
over IP..

So, there is some convergence with what goes on in the
music compression world, and the Ham/communications world.

And it's not dead yet.. Though the internet did give a lot of folks who like to talk another
or different way to do it. And, yes, the challange of contacting a difficult station can be
satisfying.. so get the higher licence to get on the shortwave bands and work some contries!


Almost forgot.. KA6MOK