/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Amateur (or “ham”) Radio operators have at their fingertips the ability to directly contact fascinating people they may never meet who live in distant places they’ll never visit. They do this without any external infrastructure, such as a cell phone network or the Internet, sometimes using simple, inexpensive — often homemade — equipment and antennas. Since the earliest years of wireless communication, these radio experimenters, largely self-taught, developed and refined the means to contact one another without wires connecting them. As a radio amateur, you can meet new friends, win awards, exchange “QSLs” (the ham’s business card), challenge yourself and others in on-the-air competitions, educate yourself about radio technology, contribute to your community, travel, promote international goodwill, and continue the century-old wireless communication tradition. Your station is yours and yours alone, and it’s independent of any other communication network.
Let’s take a closer look