"ham radio" refers to amateur radio in general. Amateur radio is hobby that thousands of people involved around the globe. Amateur radio opertors enjoy international communication with the same operators via wireless devices called transceiver. Basically this is short wave communicational hobby. You probably had shortwave radio some time in your life and probably tried to surf radio waves with searching your favorite station, and if you did, quite often you could "catch" something weird out there, like a morse code sound or some voices repeating some meaningless numbers and names. Well, those letters are no as meaningless as you might think at first. Most likely you heard ham radio operator speaking out his call sign (radio identification) inviting others for conversation.
I decided to tell more about this since this is my long time hobby. I started to listen to those call sings somewhere in the middle of 1980-s and even had my operational call sign, but did use it often, because at that time I had not much money and couldnt afford to keep license and transceiver. Now-a-days I returned to that hobby but in a little different form - I'm Short Wave Listener (SWL) The difference between operator and listener is that listener can only listen to the speaking operators and doesnt have right to use transmitter. Operator has license for using certain frequencies to transmit his signal and thus actually communicate with others.
What is the interest in such hobby, you might ask? I can compare this hobby with sport fishing. You seat with the rod in your hands during fishing, and you seat with your radio trying to catch far away station (DX). You need certain skills in fishing to catch the fish you aim to. The same with radio, you need good receiver, antenna, weather condition, propagation. There are a lot of Internet resources with required information about above conditions, but you still need a lot of luck to get some calls in your log book. That is the thing: you not simply listen to someone speaking on the air, you also record his call sign, time, frequency, conditions, and then you send operator a card with this information and he replies with his confirmation card to you. You can see my card at the left side.
Ok, you get a card from somebody - what is next? if you collect number of cards you may apply for diploma in different areas. Example? I have heard and received cards from Trinidad and Tobago, from Turkmenistan, from Luxemburg, from South Africa, from Canada, from Argentina, from Tasmania, and now, I have right to apply for diploma called "Heard All Continents" Another example? I have collected cards from operators from 64 different countries of the world I can apply for 50 Countries award, but I will wait till I have 100 countries confirmed.
The thing is that when I hear somebody speaking on the air, say from Cambodia, I know that there is nothing between my radio and Cambodian transmitter, no other wires, no repeaters, NOTHING! Just a little box of transceiver and a few dozens of meters of antenna. Isnt it exciting?
Besides listening and getting cards, I also participate international Listener's club called SWARL and I'm taking care of the Awards for listeners issued by this club. I also do a lot of design work for the diplomas and awards for the club. My developer skills are also used in full here, I'm working on the logger software (software for recording listening results).
If you are interested to know more about this hobby try to google for "ham radio"you will get a lot of visual information on youtube.com as well as some articles on wikipedia.com or you can write to me and ask questions. My email is www[at]body-builders.org