Introduction to Ham Radio
Published on : 2025-12-01 13:45
Ham radio - formally known as amateur radio - is a hobby and
service that allows licensed operators to communicate over the air
using a wide range of frequencies, modes, and equipment. Unlike
commercial or broadcast radio, ham radio is intended for personal
experimentation, emergency communication, technical learning, and
worldwide friendship.
📻 Ham radio operators often enjoy:
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
* Building and modifying equipment
* Communicating locally or worldwide
* Participating in emergency and disaster response
* Exploring digital modes such as FT8, APRS, or packet radio
* Experimenting with antennas, propagation, and radio science
Right now, I really enjoy my 2 Baofeng radios:
DIR Baofeng UV-5R
DIR Baofeng UV-5RM Plus
To transmit on amateur bands, you generally need a
government-issued license. However, there are also unlicensed
radio services - such as PMR446 in Europe - that anyone can use
with appropriate equipment.
📡 PMR446 Frequencies
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Below is a table of the 16 PMR446 channels. These are licence-free
UHF FM frequencies commonly used for short-range communication
in Europe.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ PMR446 Frequencies ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Channel # ┃ Frequency (Mhz) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Channel 1 │ 446.00625 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 2 │ 446.01875 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 3 │ 446.03125 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 4 │ 446.04375 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 5 │ 446.05625 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 6 │ 446.06875 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 7 │ 446.08125 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 8 │ 446.09375 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 9 │ 446.10625 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 10 │ 446.11875 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 11 │ 446.13125 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 12 │ 446.14375 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 13 │ 446.15625 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 14 │ 446.16875 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 15 │ 446.18125 │
├───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Channel 16 │ 446.19375 │
└───────────────┴─────────────────┘
🧠 Closing Thoughts
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Ham radio offers an enormous world to explore, from local handheld
communication to long-distance ionospheric propagation experiments.
If you find PMR or general radio operation interesting, getting an
amateur radio license is a great next step.
Happy listening, and 73!
DIR Back to my phlog