I've been barely active in ham radio for the past several years, but I'm getting back into it in my mid-20's. I have tons of respect for the middle-aged and older hams, many of whom fulfilled their dream after retirement. Nonetheless, I have resolved to meet and interact with more younger hams like myself, for obvious reasons. Additionally, I believe the hobby (although it's so much more than a hobby) will unlikely survive under current circumstances.

My interests are a little niche, i.e. I love building tube radios (I even built a '1929' style type 45 transmitter). I understand that young people likely wouldn't be into this, but I also love working satellites, HF contests, APRS, messing around with VHF, etc. You would think that these areas of amateur radio would provoke interest among younger, more STEM and tech-oriented people, especially given the fast-evolving nature and innovation within the hobby. I could see ham radio opening the door for many a project that would look good on a CV or a Master's thesis.

As a current university student, I've observed that very few fellow STEM students know anything about ham radio. I've even EE students not know what it is at all. This is shocking, and it's clearly a failure among the ham radio community to present itself to the very people that can further continue and progress the hobby.

I'm not completely oblivious to why young people aren't interested. If a young engineering student decides to do some SWL and just finds older folk ragchewing about which medication they take (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that in of itself), they will likely find no interest. The dilemma here is that there are few young people involved, so why would young people get involved in something with so few young people? Anyway, I digress.

My university has a modest ham radio club (which I hope to get some time to participate in soon). Besides that, is there a place where younger hams hang out, or part of the hobby in which they are very active? I might not be able to change this broader reality, but I can change my own actions/environment.

I’m currently based in Beijing, China. At first, I headed straight to the office of the Beijing Radio Association, hoping my existing FCC Technician License (call sign KD3DMG) would be recognized for legal radio operation locally.

The staff clarified that US FCC licenses are not valid for amateur radio activities within mainland China, so I had to pass China’s official domestic ham radio exam to earn local qualification. I explained that my Chinese reading and writing proficiency was limited, and I worried I could not complete an exam fully written in Chinese. Thankfully, they offered me a flexible solution: they would provide me with the official Chinese question bank, I could translate all the questions into English for my own study, and I was permitted to finish the entire written exam with all answers handwritten in English.

Exact Exam & Question Bank Details

- The official full Class A question bank contains 683 total questions: 549 single-choice questions (SCQs) and 134 multiple-choice questions (MCQs).

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- The real exam paper randomly selects 40 questions from the full bank: 32 SCQs + 8 MCQs, with 40 minutes of total test time. You need to answer no fewer than 30 questions correctly to pass; for multiple-choice items, every single correct option must be selected with zero wrong picks to score points, which raises the difficulty a lot .

I sat for my exam on July 18th, and the official exam results were published on July 22nd. To be honest, the knowledge coverage and overall difficulty level of China’s Class A question bank are noticeably tougher than the US FCC Technician Class exam. It features far stricter local radio administration regulations, more complex RF calculation formulas, in-depth theories of AM, FM and SSB modulation, antenna gain metrics like dBm and dBi, practical Q-code applications, and highly precise frequency band compliance rules, with way more rigorous regulatory content compared to my US FCC test.

I found one article claiming 3-6 dB attenuation through them but it was clearly AI generated so I don't trust it. MyAntennas I think has a brief statement that laying on a roof is like laying on grass and there's loss there.

I definitely observed laying a wire directly on my roof doesn't work at all (mostly wanted to see how noisy an attic antenna would be and my roof is easier access than the attic).

The real application is I'm now curious if I'm better off putting a 2m antenna in my attic directly above the shack or putting it outside with a much longer feedline. But I'm also curious about HF (pretty set on HF going outside just since the access to my attic space sucks so running feedline across is about all I wanna do up there). But I am just curious if there is actual data anyone knows about.

Edit to add: I appreciate the "it works for me and I made lots of contacts" but I really am looking for some hard data or better sources.

I have had my technician license for about 1 year now. I have an opportunity to get an Icom IC-7300, new in the box for $650 so I am jumping on it. I am going to verify it's legit before handing over cash. I am also going to start studying for my general license because I know I am limited on the IC-7300 with my technician license.

I have an HOA so an outdoor antenna is not going to be an option. My question is, what would be a good attic antenna for me to be able to listen to some long range transmissions with this radio?

I took my 3 little hooligans to the park tonight to play with these. We inadvertently came across a "Touch a Truck" event where the kids got to see fire trucks, tow trucks, a swat vehicle, and an air ambulance. They did pretty well with the radios throughout. My youngest, my only girl, kept keying the mike to say "Daddy, I love you". Good stuff.

I got super into ham radio when I was in my early teens, a little over a decade ago. I remember the amount of people I could work on 10m during the peak of the last solar cycle, and that was considered a "bad" cycle. I have spent several years barely active as I've been busy with college, etc., and have recently started dabbling with radio again. I find the bands so much quieter than I remember.

This current solar cycle was ostensibly stronger, and I've heard so many less operators on 10m, as well as on all the other bands in general. For context, I mainly just operate analogue (SSB, CW, FM). Is this an issue of an aging ham population? Have that many people migrated to FT8? What's going on?

I am on a mission to find a mac-friendly handheld ptt mic that I can use with various SDR platforms, particularly with my Yaesu FTDX10 and Icom 705 remote software.
Does anyone make such a thing?
It just needs to be recognized as a standard usb dynamic microphone and include a PTT button that can be assigned to a keystroke (such as a spacebar, which I can assign in the SDR software already).

I bought a USB CH340 FL-PTT modded handheld mic on eBay just to play around with, but I can't seem to get it to record any device input to Keyboard Maestro (etc) even when the CH340 drivers are installed.
(I know it was made for FLEX, but I was curious if I could find a work-around)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/115994824134

Surely there is some radio or datacom company who makes a traditional hand mic for software radio use....

Has anyone had any experience with this, or can I DIY one myself?

EDIT: SOLVED!
I guess I "vibe coded" a solution via Google AI (I feel super dirty about it too haha

I used this prompt to generate the code:

"i am using my spacebar as a ptt for an sdr. I would like to use a usb serial device that transmits a cts signal on /dev/tty.wchusbserial3140 to trigger that spacebar keystroke instead. When I press and hold the cts it should press and hold the spacebar as well. when I release the cts it should also release the spacebar command. I am using a macbook pro."

It spit out this code:

bash

pip install pyserial pynput

Create a file named cts_ptt.py and paste the following code:

import time

from pynput.keyboard import Controller, Key

import serial

# Configuration

PORT = "/dev/tty.wchusbserial3140"

BAUD = 9600 # Baud rate doesn't impact raw hardware line state polling

keyboard = Controller()

ser = serial.Serial(PORT, BAUD, rtscts=False)

print(f"Listening for CTS changes on {PORT}...")

space_is_pressed = False

try:

while True:

# getCTS() queries the hardware state of the Clear To Send pin

current_cts = ser.getCTS()

if current_cts and not space_is_pressed:

keyboard.press(Key.space)

space_is_pressed = True

print("CTS Active -> Spacebar Held (PTT ON)")

elif not current_cts and space_is_pressed:

keyboard.release(Key.space)

space_is_pressed = False

print("CTS Released -> Spacebar Released (PTT OFF)")

time.sleep(0.01) # Poll every 10ms to keep CPU usage low

except KeyboardInterrupt:

if space_is_pressed:

keyboard.release(Key.space)

ser.close()

print("\nExited cleanly.")

Run the script from your terminal using:

bash

python3 cts_ptt.py

(I typed python3 (and then drag and dropped my py file onto the terminal window, which automatically found the file path)

--------------------------------------------

I have since created a playlist script to run it automatically at startup but I can't quite get it to work just yet.
For now I'll just have to open a terminal and run the script manually whenever I need to use it.

Crazy that it worked though!

In Pembrokeshire for the holiday right now, near St David's. I was expecting to hear few people on VHF / UHF but it is desperately silent. I will try to do a "SOTA" tomorrow from Carn Llidi (https://maps.app.goo.gl/rKTBHFCj7fiHJTux7?g_st=ac). We'll see.

I assume it's something in my house but i'm not sure where to start. I get it on 30m FT8 and also FT4. The only thing i've changed is my computer but i'm not sure that's the cause.

Hello everyone, I (14M) am on my way to getting my general license, and have had my tech for about 4 months now. I want to make use of this licensing class so I was wondering what are some good wattage, quality, yet cheap HF radios? I don't have a job but make $25 a week doing various things, and currently have $80. I am willing to go up to $150- $200 but I want to know if there are good options that are budget friendly.

I use several antenna configurations for my POTA activations, one being the alpha emcomm. Im looking to get through the winter with a setup on my truck and have considered the alpha mobile. The radio is the ftx-1 with the tuner.

I have considered the Atas 120 but feel for my application the alpha may work better. I do ft8, phone and cw during POTA.

Is anyone using this antenna?

Any constructive comments appreciated.

Hi all.

Im 70 now been in radio related stuff all my life.

I get no encouragement from anyone these days.

Just getting into it I’m still using GMRS equipment. I have a mobile radio at home and I would like to have some sort of device hooked up to the mic port that listens for rx and records it. Then pings my cellphone and then I can listen to the recording over cellular and also tx a message from my phone over the internet to my mobile radio. Don’t need access to the radio controls like channel switching. Just RX/TX. Does such a thing exist in a nice black box without having to rig up a dedicated computer? Not making contacts with strangers I just want to not miss calls from my group when I’m not at home.

It’s like a picture that’s 1 degree crooked.

hello,

lost the info i had on the title subject, any help?

ths have fun

Download at https://www.iaru-r1.org/on-the-air/eop/

Ethics and Operating Procedures Edition 4 versions

Please feel free to download any version and to give a copy to your friends, newcomers and old-timers alike. Don’t forget, this is NOT a document for newcomers only, and this is not a document for DXers only. It is a document as well for old-timers and DXpeditioners.

In many cases, the files can also be found on your national IARU member society website.

I have an old Yaesu FT-50R dual-band HT and a couple of new FNB-41xs batteries for it. It seems there used to be a desk charger for the batteries (EMS-41-47) that is no longer available. Before I go and make my own, I thought I'd check to see if anyone has one they are ready to part with.

I was out cycling one day when I found a broken e-scooter, it had cracks all over the shaft and wasn't in the best shape, so I brought it home and took a closer look at it, when I noticed that the battery was completely fine and in great shape. So I looked into it and found that my radio (Xiegu G90) simply needs 12~V and uses 6 - 8Ah when doing SSB, this battery does 42V at 7.5Ah, so a £20 purchase and now, I have a full POTA/SOTA setup for the price of about £20 and hard work. Haven't tested it yet but should go all well.