New Radio Science, Amateur Radio, SDRs, and Cool Technology

In this book we’ll provide some of the elementary science of high-technology communication, describe some of the exciting things that are happening, and show you how you can be a part of it, for your own hobby, career, or personal interests. Some of the topics covered are equipment, shortwave listening, citizen’s band radio, weather satellites, amateur radio, amateur television, computer techniques, digital radio, and software defined radios. There is truly something for everyone in this field, whether your interests lie in contacting stations worldwide, linking up to satellites, experimentation as a hobbyist in electronics, or preparing for a career in electronics or engineering.
One of the things covered in the book is amateur radio, or what is popularly called “ham” radio. Amateur radio has been static at certain times, but it is now more than ever an exciting hobby. Although you don’t need an amateur radio license to participate in many different areas of radio science, you do need one for transmitting most radio signals. However, you don’t need to be an electronics engineer to get a license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). You don’t need to know Morse code. You can get a basic license by taking a very short, multiple-choice test. Many of the questions relate to testing your knowledge of what frequency bands can be used and operating practices. There are some easy technical questions as well. The study time in preparation for the test may be as short as a dozen hours or so. Although I would advise truly learning the basics before the test, many people memorize the answers from the pool of questions that are used (and in doing so, get some knowledge). We’ll describe the test and show you how to proceed in this book.
The book provides some background material in general topics – a short history, the radio spectrum, how signals are propagated abound the earth and to space, and radio modes. The book then provides some details on the different areas of interest in radio technology and describes the techniques. Special emphasis is given on the new aspects of radio, and there are many. One of the most exciting new technologies is SDR, or software defined radios. This technology promises to provide extremely low-cost coverage of the radio spectrum.