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Do You Still Find Amateur Radio Interesting?
Marcos Eliziario asks: "Soon, I'll be taking the exams for a Brazilian, Class-D, Ham Radio license (Equivalent to an American Technician License) and, as I was reading about the subject, I wondered what today's geek thinks about amateur radio. In the past, Ham Radio was very popular among nerds, however with the Internet boom it seems that interest on radio, among the younger generations, is becoming dimmer each day. A lot of cool things can be done with radio, like building your own equipment, digital modes (btw, few people know that Packet Radio was born on the amateur's rank), and long distance contacts. The gear is cool, there's a lot of things to be learned about propagation, and today's Hams even use satellites to talk. Do you think that we could see a renaissance of Ham Radio among 21st century techies?"
My friends and I use ham radio because our cell phones drop all the time. As long as we're a hundred miles or so from our local repeater we're good. The entry price wasn't too much for me. $180 for a 2-meter mobile and $170 for a dual-band ht.
It's neither hard nor expensive to get started. Just get your license and go on the air with a handy-talky. I bought my first one for less than $200. No big antennas or investmens are necessary.
This assumes you live close enough to a population center with folks to talk to, but that isn't a big deal in most areas. From there you can decide if you want to branch out into longer-distance communications.