Talk Around Town
Use mountaintop repeaters to turn a handheld radio into a surprisingly large local conversation.
Explore →OPERATION HAM CURIOUS // UNOFFICIAL FIELD GUIDE
Radio is weirder than you think.
Talk across town. Talk across the world. Bounce a signal off a meteor. Send text messages without a phone or internet. Build things that sound impossible. Amateur Radio isn't a hobby. It's a lifestyle that will take you places you never thought you could go.
EXPLORE
What amateur radio does
Start with the thing that sounds fun. We'll introduce the jargon after you care what it means.
Talk Around the World
A wire, a radio, the ionosphere, and occasionally somebody on another continent.
Explore →Go to Outer Space
Talk to the space station and bounce messages off of a satellite.
Explore →Send a Text Message
Position reports, messages, telemetry, weather, digipeaters—and a map full of radio nerds moving around.
Explore →Hold My Beer…
Antennas, kits, filters, controllers, radios and the occasional lesson about why the smoke should stay inside.
Explore →Take a Hike
Put a station in a backpack, head for a park or summit, and discover why battery weight suddenly matters.
Explore →MEET
The people doing it
Amateur radio is a technical hobby with a social network hiding inside it. Find the people before you buy the gear.
Future Friends
Clubs, maker spaces, field events, POTA groups, public demos and the locals who know where the good repeaters are.
Meet them →Listen to a Net
Hear how operators actually talk, what local groups care about, and whether the room sounds like somewhere you'd hang out.
Listen in →Women in Ham Radio
Operators, builders, contesters, activators, emergency communicators and creators who make the hobby broader than its stereotype.
Meet them →Radio After Dark
The conversation doesn't end with the sunspot cycle . . . Find the Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and YouTube communities where radio keeps going.
Find communities →DO
Some radio right now
No callsign required for these starting points. Stop researching long enough to actually touch the hobby.
NO HAM LICENSE REQUIRED
No Bars? No Problem.
Meshtastic / MeshCore / LoRa
Tiny radios. Tiny antennas. Sounds like we're building kids' toys, right? Tell that to people using LoRa mesh networks when cellular service and Wi-Fi aren't dependable.
Start: today
Cost: low
Difficulty: beginner-friendly
Do this →
Radio Without a Radio
Plug a cheap software-defined receiver into a computer and watch the radio spectrum come alive.
Do this →Channel Surf
Use someone else's receiver on the internet and start tuning signals from around the globe before buying anything.
Do this →Listen to the Space Station
Receive amateur satellites, weather transmissions and other signals passing overhead with receive-only gear.
Do this →No radio? No license? Excellent.
You're in the right place.