From my past blog posts, you can probably tell I love Jeeps, camping and the outdoors. Well another one of my hobbies that I enjoy is playing with ham radios. I have a new Xiegu X6100 ordered that should be here in a couple of days.

I’ve always been interest in ham radio and communication in general. I remember being in shop class in high school and my teacher had a station set up in the room and would occasionally get on the radio while we were in class. Then as a teenage / young adult, interest kinda faded as cell phone became more popular.

Just forward. 20+ years and as the geopolitical atmosphere became increasingly more turbulent and as I went down the rabbit hole of becoming more self sufficient, ham radio creeped back into the radar. I think ham radio will be crucial when SHTF. So in 2021 I attended the Elkhart Ham Fest and took the technician license and passed

Once you pass the first test, then you can learn by doing. I purchased a cheap Baofeng UV5R. These are cheap little Chinese radios. With this I learned about programing and started to learn about antennas. I joined the local ham radio club and got involved with ARES. I’ve learned about 2m and 70cm which is where I spend most of my time. I’ve learned about using hotspots and getting on DMR talk groups. There are so many different aspects of amateur radio, there really is something for everyone.

As a tech level there is a limited amount of high frequency bands that are available for a tech level to operate on. I will soon be testing for my general license. What I want to do is activate “Parks on the Air”. I love camping and while sitting around the fire I think it would be a enjoyable time to make contacts around the world.

KD9TFY