If you want to listen to the airwaves without buying anything, there are some SDR (software defined radio - basically, it uses software to change listening frequencies, etc, instead of a physical dial) receivers that are available on the web here at http://www.websdr.org/ where you can listen and see the spectrum graphs.
There are a bunch of podcasts for amateur radio - I’ve heard the ‘solder smoke’ podcast is good but I haven’t listened. The training stuff from KN6BU linked elsewhere is good for learning. If you’ve got a local club, check them out.
What interests you about it? Being able to talk to people in far-off lands? Being able to build stuff and use it? The idea of hiking out into the woods and setting up a temporary communications center? Disaster preparedness? Something else? Hunting down radio transmitters and finding them (‘foxhunting’ is the radio equivalent of geocaching, sort of)
I want to build my own components (DIY kits) and then transmit and receive with other people around the world. I would love to be able to tune into The Buzzer station too, if possible.
If you want to transmit and communicate with other folks, you should get your amateur radio license in order to do so legally and to get a callsign assigned. The Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) has a bunch of links to resources for getting licensed, including practice exams, at http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed. The license exam is made up of a publicly available pool of questions that is periodically updated.
There used to be a livestream of UVB-76 (“The Buzzer”) at http://uvb-76.net/ but it doesn’t look like it’s streaming now and their blog hasn’t been updated since last year. :(
You can tune into the Buzzer with any shortwave radio provided you can get the signal, IIRC. I haven’t had much luck with shortwave reception in eastern Canada however.
If you want to listen to the airwaves without buying anything, there are some SDR (software defined radio - basically, it uses software to change listening frequencies, etc, instead of a physical dial) receivers that are available on the web here at http://www.websdr.org/ where you can listen and see the spectrum graphs.
There are a bunch of podcasts for amateur radio - I’ve heard the ‘solder smoke’ podcast is good but I haven’t listened. The training stuff from KN6BU linked elsewhere is good for learning. If you’ve got a local club, check them out.
What interests you about it? Being able to talk to people in far-off lands? Being able to build stuff and use it? The idea of hiking out into the woods and setting up a temporary communications center? Disaster preparedness? Something else? Hunting down radio transmitters and finding them (‘foxhunting’ is the radio equivalent of geocaching, sort of)
I want to build my own components (DIY kits) and then transmit and receive with other people around the world. I would love to be able to tune into The Buzzer station too, if possible.
If you want to transmit and communicate with other folks, you should get your amateur radio license in order to do so legally and to get a callsign assigned. The Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) has a bunch of links to resources for getting licensed, including practice exams, at http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed. The license exam is made up of a publicly available pool of questions that is periodically updated.
The folks at hackaday and the adafruit blog sometimes feature ham projects for DIY stuff (https://hackaday.com/tag/ham-radio/ and https://blog.adafruit.com/tag/ham-radio/). And there’s lots of folks doing cool QRP (low power, often homemade) transceivers - http://www.hfpack.com/ might be a place to poke around.
There used to be a livestream of UVB-76 (“The Buzzer”) at http://uvb-76.net/ but it doesn’t look like it’s streaming now and their blog hasn’t been updated since last year. :(
Good luck!
Thank you very much. :-)
You can tune into the Buzzer with any shortwave radio provided you can get the signal, IIRC. I haven’t had much luck with shortwave reception in eastern Canada however.