Full disclosure: ham radio isn’t for everyone, and there are many different facets to it. What appeals to one person might bore another to death. One area of ham radio that has changed a lot in the last few years is more or less local and typically mobile operation on VHF or UHF. Not long ago, hams used HTs (walky-talkies or handi-talkies) or mobile radios via repeaters to talk to each other and — the golden prize back then — make phone calls from their cars. Cell phones have made that much less interesting, but there is still an active community of operators talking on repeaters. However, the traffic has gone digital, the Internet is involved, and people with inexpensive, low-powered radios can talk to each other across the globe. This is nothing new, of course. However, having digital services means that operators with special interests can congregate in what amounts to radio chat rooms organized by region or topic.
There’s a long history of people listening to ham radio conversations with shortwave radios, SDRs, and scanners. But with so much activity now carried on the Internet, you can listen in using nothing more than your web browser or a phone app. I’ll show you how. If you get interested enough, it is easy enough to get your license. You don’t need any Morse code anymore, and a simple Technician class license in the United States is all you need to get going.
A Quick DMR Primer
There are several digital ham networks around and like real networks, you can have different physical transport layers and then build on top of that. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on DMR (digital mobile radio) on the Brandmeister network which is very large and popular ham network. You won’t need a license nor will you need to sign up for anything as long as you are content to just listen.
Here’s how it works: Brandmeister operates a large number of servers worldwide that communicate with each other and provide calling services, including group calls. So, if we set up a Hackaday talk group (fictitious, by the way) on group 1337, interested people could connect to that talk group and have a conversation.
Since we are just going to listen, I’m going to skip some of the details, but the trick is how people get to talk to these networks. In general, there are three ways. The classic way is to use a digital radio to talk to a repeater that is connected to the network. The repeater may have one or more talk groups on all the time, or you might request access to one.
However, another way to connect your radio to a “hotspot” connected to the Internet. That is, more or less, a special form of repeater that is very low power, and you have complete control over it compared to a repeater on some faraway hill. However, if you don’t mind operating using just a computer, you don’t need a radio at all. You simply talk directly to the nearest server, and you are on the network. Some of your audio will go to other computers, and it may go over the airwaves via someone else’s hotspot or repeater.
Talk Groups
The Brandmeister website has a lot of info and you don’t need to be logged in to see it. Head over to their site and you’ll see a lot of info including a network map and statistics about repeaters and hotspots. You can get an idea of who has been talking lately by clicking Last Heard link. While this is interesting, it isn’t as interesting as you’d think, because you really want to focus on talk groups, not individual users.
To see a list of all the talk groups on the system, you can click Information and then Talkgroups. You can filter the list and you can also download the dataset in different formats if you want to browse it in a different format.
There are three buttons on each row of the database. The LH button shows you the last heard stations for that group. The Wiki button takes you to a Wiki page that, for some groups, has more information about it. But the really interesting button is the one marked Hoseline. You can also open the Hoseline directly which is what I usually do.
What’s the Hoseline? It shows activity across the network as a bunch of boxes indicating recently active talk groups. Boxes with red lines around them have people actively talking on them. The others have been recently active. It is visually interesting, yes, but that’s not the big selling point.
If you click on a box, you will hear the activity on that talk group. That’s all there is to it.
Overwhelming
There are a lot of talk groups. You can filter at the top left part of the page where it says “Everything.” You’ll have to drop the list down and unselect Everything. Then, you can select any countries or areas you want to follow. If you are brave, you can click RegEx mode and enter regular expressions to match talk group numbers (e.g. ^310.*).
The “Player” button at the top right gives you more control. You can add multiple groups from a list, see information about who is talking, and stop or start the audio.
If you prefer to do your listening mobile, you can also get the hoseline on your Android device. Just install the app, and you’ll find it works the same way.
Finding Something Interesting
Lord Nelson once said, “The greatest difficulty in war is not to win the battle, but to find the enemy.” That’s accurate here, too. Finding an interesting conversation out of all those talk groups is somewhat a needle in a haystack. A quick look around at the talk group lists might help.
The 91 and 93 groups stay busy but generally with short exchanges since they cover a wide area. The USA bridge at 3100 sometimes has traffic, too.
If you look at the group’s listing on the Web, you can click the group number and see what stations are connected to it. Keep in mind, some of these may be repeaters or gateways that could have no one on the other side, or could have dozens of people on the other side. But it can give you an idea if the talkgroup has any users at all.
You can also search the Internet for DMR nets and repeaters. Sometimes, it is interesting to listen to local repeaters. Sometimes, it is fun to listen to repeaters in other places. Want to find out what’s going on at your next vacation spot? Practice your French?
You can find many DMR repeaters using the RepeaterBook search page. There are also man lists of DMR nets.
Next Steps
There are many other similar networks, but they may not have a way to listen that doesn’t require some software, registration, or licenses. There’s plenty on Brandmeister to keep you busy. If you worry about people listening in, that’s no different than regular radio has been since the beginning.
You can always get your ham license and join in. Even without a radio, there are ways to talk on the network. [Dan Maloney] has advice for getting your “ticket.” It is easier than you think, and you can do a lot more with a license, including talking through satellites, sending TV signals over the air, and bouncing signals of meteors or the moon. If you want to listen to more traditional ham radio in your browser, try a Web-based SDR.
I don’t know in other countries, but in France, if you have no HAM licence, you can also buy HAM tranceiver to listen all bands (HAM or other), or use scanner all frequency. This is a goof thing.
I don’t see anything wrong in that. The HAM license ensures the regulated use of a scarce resource, that is, the radio spectrum. If you don’t transmit you’re not using the spectrum.
Regarding government secret transmissions, well, they’re all encrypted today, and having a HAM license didn’t automatically allow people to intercept them.
Moreover, forbidding people to buy transmitters would only make things worse as building one is not that complicated, and we would end up with pirates using homemade stuff that either sweeps in frequency, or it’s overloaded, and without or with sub par output filters instead of properly tested gear.
In Spain telecom ministry doesn’t police HAM frequencies anymore since a few years ago, if you don’t fu** in commercial frequencies, they give no importance. The URE (biggest ham radio association and ham radio lobbying force) did an excellent job gatekeeping the hobby. They moved earth and sky to keep Citizen Band under license until 2008 or so. Because they feel having an official ECB-xxxx call sign was “necessary” and “cool”. Now the hobby is almost dead.
The elitism and dependence on government for R E G U L A T I O N is what’s going to kill HAM “community” eventually. They are aging rapidly and with better methods of communication all their precious ICOM or Yaesu transceivers will end up in e-waste bins once they die. Younger family members won’t care that it cost as much as new car. For them it’s some exotic tech and since it can’t be easily sold like computer or a playstation, then off to the bin it goes.
If you try using airwaves without a callsign either you will be ghosted, or even worse, stalked by some old creep, who finds nothing better to do during his retirement than to spend 16 hours a day “policing” the airwaves as if he’s still working for Stasi. What’s wrong with people using radios to communicate anonymously if they want to? Having to register yourself with some old men radio club for a “callsign” is exposing youself to leaking private information in case of data breach – which is not hard to achieve given most of them are computer-illiterate lemons.
It’s OFCOM or FCC or other state level regulatory body you register with, that’s to make sure you don’t do anything illegal/unlawful/damaging, you’re being ghosted for not having a licence because it is unlawful for them to talk to you.
Using a call sign and getting a licence is the price of being allowed to transmit legally, doubly so if you are using someone else’s infrastructure such as a repeater or server network as they have a legal responsibility to do their best to only allow licensed people to use their kit and not cause interference to others.
Realistically though, if you want to chat to your local friends with a HT on a simplex channel, I doubt anyone will bother trying to hard to find you for enforcement purposes, unless you’re causing interference to people who aren’t hams.
In defense of ‘But regulations-‘ Hams have a long LONG history of having to fight to keep the frequencies they have under fear of ‘you’re not using it well. We’re giving it to someone less unruly/actually making us money.’
The scars from the US Navy trying to strangle Amateur Radio in its crib runs deep.
Begging for rights is lame. Grant them to yourself with your own power.
Amateur radio is about self-policing, always has been.
And it has nothing to do about elitism or obedyence.
It’s about the willingness to co-exist in a friendly and helpful manner, by playing fair by rules.
In sports, rules do matter, too and cheaters are being punished.
The “ham spirit” in the form as defined by Paul M. Segal in 1928 gives a good understanding, I think.
It’s not about the license so much, but about being a ham by heart.
https://www.arrl.org/amateur-code
In early days and in times of war, some hams also operated unlicensed as radio pirates.
But they never abused the frequency spectrum and got a legit license once being able to.
Still, there had been hams who had humor and were “sassy”.
Young radio amateurs in say, the 70s/80s, did occasional play fun on others.
Like having a transmitter w/ linear in the back of the car and another ham standing by the car holding a bare fluorescent tube that did light up for no apparent reason to the pedestrians walking by.
In this respect, they were not much different to CBers who played some harmless tricks on society.
Secondly, radio amateurs have the right to track down intruders of their band in order to defend it.
They can tri-angulate an intruder by directional finding, for example.
Back in the good old days (70s, 80s), the whole club set out to catch an illegal transmitter (sometimes a CBer or ham).
Like a pack of wolves, if ypu will. However, they respected law and usually acted diplomatic.
They were friendly to the intruder and tried to make him understand that he’s violating law.
If he didn’t comply, they had the right to inform the authorities, of course.
That’s how it used to be my country, at least.
Anyway, that’s not strictly exclusive to amateur radio.
Try invading other services, such as police radio, ambulance radio, air radio or military radio and see what happens.
These guys are not as nice as hams are when knocking on the door, maybe.
Absolutely agree. Ham radio will fade out of existence if it fails to provide something the internet can’t: anonymous point-to-point communication. Let me talk without doxxing myself. Let me play music over the radio. Let me say offensive words. Let me encrypt my messages. Regulations are keeping ham radio in the dark ages.
“But what about bad people using the radio for bad things?”
I don’t care? Literally not my problem. Not worth losing my freedom for, in any case.
Well no government it going to let anyone use it for that, but if you’re going to operate illegally anyway, what do you care what the government thinks?
Dude, that stuff is nothing that I would associate with amateur radio in first place.
That’s consumer stuff, anti-social behavior.
CB radio and GMRS (or how this US thing is being called) is better suited for this, I’m afraid.
Amateur radio is about science, fascination about radio technology and is history,
tinkering with electronics, independent infrastructure (Packet-Radio, APRS, HamNet etc) and international friendship.
Amateur radio is what can be used in space, to eventually communicate with colonies on moon or mars.
It’s much more mature than just being a playing field for the paranoid,
those preppers hiding in their atomic shelters
and the ones which watched one or two episodes of The X-Files too much. ;)
Heck, the first hams were real gentlemen in suits with ties!
And now there are you folks who demand that amateur radio should be turned
in a post-apocalyptic something were anarchy rules,
were people send warez, pr0ns and propaganda messages via encrypted transmissions. On the ham bands. Great! 😮💨
Who’s problem is it when you can’t use your radio because a bunch of other people with your priorities stomp all over your Comms and,because of your lobbying, nobody polices it?
You’ve rolled a bunch of stuff into a ball here, so let me take it a piece at a time…
“Ham radio will fade out of existence…”
This remains to be seen (I am a VE, by the way, so I’m actively involved in adding new brothers/sisters to the fold. I am pleasantly surprised at how many people attend our test sessions. Youngest, so far, was a 9-year-old-boy. The oldest? an 85 year old lady. Both passed their Tech.)
“…if it fails to provide something the internet can’t…”
Ham radio already provides something the internet can’t–communications without infrastructure.
I wonder how good cell service is in the middle of those California fires. How about internet connectivity there? When the twin towers went down during “9/11,” the loss of the antennas on those structures (not to mention the underground infrastructure damage that occurred when the towers fell) knocked out a LOT of comms. The point is, comm infrastructure can disappear in a moment.
On the other hand, I have alligator-clipped a QRP ham transmitter to a metal flag pole and worked operators several states away. No flagpole? A wire tossed in a tree will do.
“Regulations are keeping ham radio in the dark ages.”
There is some truth to that, particularly when new ways of encoding signals are introduced.
“Let me say offensive words.”
This, I don’t understand. What value does that capability add? You can’t get enough of that garbage in virtually EVERY other electronic medium? Seriously, how hard is it to be civil during a conversation with a stranger? This isn’t a first-amendment issue, by the way… there is no fact, opinion, or political discontent you can’t articulate without having to resort to gutter-speak.
“Let me encrypt my messages. ”
That’s an idea I could support, provided that your transmission was either prefaced or suffixed with an unencrypted call sign.
“Let me talk without doxxing myself.”
Fundamentally, I don’t oppose the idea of anonymous point-to-point communication. But why do you insist that ham regulation embrace this when anonymity is really not a feature of any other comm option? If you have a street address, a cell number, or an IP and a MAC address, you aren’t anonymous… not really.
While I think the desire for anonymity (I read this as “privacy”) is legitimate, my concern is that anonymity in the ham bands would gut the notion of self-regulation. I CARE about my reputation on the air and in the ham community, and most other hams do, too. Unfortunately, a certain portion of any group are happy to turd in the punch bowl so long as nobody sees them do it. I think anonymity in the ham bands would quickly reduce them to CB channels.
“Let me play music over the radio. ”
Why do you need to do that on the ham bands? That’s not point-to-point communication. That’s broadcasting.
That said, I would like to see the law regulating FM broadcast stations changed to allow for the easy/cheap licensing of small, low-power, FM transmitters… think of it as a “public access” channels on the airwaves.
This is why the Wouff Hong exists.
If you feel this way, you may be interested in the anarchist radio relay league.
WebSDR also allows you to do things like decode NOAA APT (just about with manual Doppler adjustment to get more than a thin slice), WEFAX, NAVTEX.
CB radio is still unlicensed in some places so no tests required. And most of the people on HaD could probably pass the foundation level exam for a license in the UK without revision.
What also could be mentioned here is EchoLink, maybe.
It allows connecting to distant FM repeaters over internet.
Yes, it looks a bit unsporting at first because it involves internet but it sometimes makes sense.
For example, it allows a traveling ham to make contact to his/her hometown FM repeater and participate with his/her community.
Another application is to visit a distant FM repeater through EchoLink and being able to talk to the hams living there.
That’s useful for inviting a guest ham from a far away land, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EchoLink
Thing is, I think I might enjoy HAM radio ,,, but I have to many hobbies already. Between programming, electronic projects, R/C aircraft building/flying, and firearm shooting/reloading… and living :) . Doesn’t leave much room for anything else. I’ll let someone else enjoy the hobby and I’ll just enjoy reading about it :) .
The cool thing about ham radio is that it involves many of those hobbies you listed. You can practice and apply those skills with ham projects. It is considered the king of all hobbies for a reason. No one is capable of doing everything ham radio has to offer in one lifetime.
It’s also a great way to meet people interested in your other hobbies too.
Come on, join us! One of us. One of us. :)
What’s the best radio service for emergency use while traveling in areas without cell coverage? CB because it’s users are more likely to pass by and relay your message at some point or ham where users are less likely to pass by. Also assume that there are no ham repeaters within range.
Starlink – assuming you’re in a car. It’s trivial to get on Facebook or Skype and ask your relatives to call for help. Or Iridium phone if you’re going on foot.
Q-100 satellite is always within range depending were you live.
As a famous example, The Von Neumeyer Station III in the antartic has an QO-100 station, too, among other radio equipment.
https://www.awi.de/en/fleet-stations/stations/neumayer-station-iii.html
https://marsonearthproject.org/neumayer-station-iii-interview/
To reach Q-100, a portable 50cm sat dish and a transceiver (+ converter) is all it needs at the minimum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Es%27hail_2