How do I into radio?

As someone who knows very little about radio, how do I get into it?

Does anyone have a graphic breaking down the categories and frequencies with their names and examples of a good piece of hardware?

For example, I'm under the impression pic related is a good entry level CB radio. Am I wrong?

What is the difference between CB, UHF CB, and Shortwave?

Which one should I get for emergencies?

I will be researching on my own. I just wondered if anybody already had an easily digestible breakdown in an image.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Get your feet wet with a SDR

If you're a nerd, look into getting a ham license. it's getting popular with young females

yeah who the fuck is going to say "SSTV me your tits or sign off"?

Small secret about radios; my mothers boyfriend runs a handheld radio company manufacturing kits for farmers and truckies (I don't know the particulars) and chatting to him revealed that there is next to no one who studies radio engineering anymore....

So much so that they (Australian) need to import talent from overseas, usually starting at $230-250k AUD including flights, accommodation, car and visa payments.

Apparently it's also butt-fucking hard to learn and implement and there's fuck-all help out there so you're constantly on the forefront of working knowledge.... So you gotta be good.

That's not a CB radio for starters. Go to arrl.org or eham.net and lurk.

Here's how I started a year ago:
Bought a baofeng UV-5R without knowing anything about radio. Read the entire instructions book. Started searching for repeaters and stations in my area (I live in france), connect tp them. Broadcasted and got reprimanded for talking without a license. Mfw it costs 200€. I then learned about radio linguo, military alphabet and APRS. Got interested in recieving ISS frequency, learned about packet radio and SSTV. That's pretty much it. Just lurk more and try to recieve ISS, transmissions, it's so fascinating!
I'd do this if I were you:
>buy baofeng uv-5r
>go to websdr website, listen to radio amateur conversations and train to identify callsigns.
>scan frequencies with your baofeng and try to find some funny frequencies like firetrucks or maybe even ATC!
>remember to HAVE FUN, fuck license, nobody uses these (well i know that it's different in the US, but in france there's only one place in my whole country where you can acquire a license so fuck it. There's like 5 operators in my area anyway.)

RF in general sits in a location where it's too complicated to learn the specifics in undergrad, and most grad students stay on or get gobbled up quick because of their work. I can imagine it's a pretty good field to get in right now.
As other people have stated, take a look at software defined radio. There are lots of small kits (bladerf, tncs, etc) that are relatively cheap and good places to start. I would recommend getting an amateur radio license (check your local ham radio club for test times/schedules, literally just Google city + ham radio club) to start your way into the world of radio. Listening is free, but you should get a license if you want to transmit in the us.

Get your ticket you lazy faggot. Just grow up and act like a civilized member of society.

I'm honestly suprised someone hasn't come after you yet. The amateur radio community are all autists here in the us. Report you for transmitting without license, report you for innaprropriate use/language over radio, etc. They are the biggest fcc bootlickers with a major stick up their collective asses. I've heard of fines in the 10k+ range for big fuckups, plus they confiscate all your shit.

They are just keeping the airwaves free of trash. Just think of it as a private club. If members of the public keep coming in and clogging up the toilet with shit, you restrict the club to members only.

Is the inappropriate language thing for real? That is so fucking retarded if true.

Digital rf is fun as fuck but most hams stick to analogue.
I suggest you stay away from hams,because they have toxic personalities and will kill your passion very quickly.
There is a lot of space on license-free bands,so I suggest you stick to those.

Can't talk about politics either. Keeps the airwaves civilized. HAM radio is all about scientific experimentation.

Scientific what? I thought they didn't even let you use your own digital encoding on an amateur licence (this kinda kills science...) and the whole thing seemed squarely like a talking / listening to other people hobby affair, at least from the outside.

Radio theory. It's public space, you can't just transmit anything you want. Same as broadcast radio.

Don't even bother arguing with hams.
They are delusional cowards.

It's the same as a national park or highway. You have no inherent right to use public resources in whatever manner you see fit.

One wonders how much constructive experimentation anyone can do in a national park or highway. Investigation, sure, but anything novel? Those examples shine the light quite precisely on the delusions.

What delusion, precisely, are you referring to?

In particular, the claim that amateur radio is for scientific experimentation in anything more than stated missions or slogans. In general, the views that HAMs hold about their hobby on the whole.

It's not the only purpose, nor the only justification for civilian use of the airwaves. You take personal opinion as fact, which is disingenuous at best, delusional at worst. HAM was super high tech when it was first implemented. No reliable long distance communication was available to civilians at the time. Digital wasn't a thing yet.

I fell for the HAM radio meme. Spent dozens of hours prepping for the exam, got my amateur extra license, etc. only to find out that my neighborhood lies about 100m under the mean elevation.

I'd have to put an antenna on a 100m tower just to be able to hit my local repeaters and talk to a bunch of old fucks in their 80s.

>It's not the only purpose
That's a backpedal. No one argued or refuted that it was the only purpose, merely whether it is one at all. I take personal opinion in that regard as a tragic delusion.

As for the past, I used present tense for the latter part of my reply. I should change my assessment about the present because HAMs root their opinions in the past? Talk about disingenuous.

Yes, you based your entire justification of hams being delusional around my personal assertion. So again: why, precisely, are hams delusional?

>baofeng
>good

lol

>I fell for the HAM radio meme
I'm glad I didn't. Before getting into it I tried some free online HAM service where you could listen in. Quickly realized HAM radio is the bulletin board system of broadcasting. Literally broadcasted shitposting

>you based your entire justification of hams being delusional around my personal assertion
No I didn't. I've thought that for a long while. All your assertion did in that regard was set a context for me to type it.

It's sad if you count this as a "win" or something but I'm not going to prolong this conversation. It's too much work to keep pointing out the holes in your replies.

AE is all HF privileges. Why did you get that class when all you wanted was tech? If you had a decent antenna, you could hit them. You can throw a wire in a tree and reliably talk around the world with 5 watts.

Because even the shittiest HF phone station costs at least $300.

Not spending that kind of cash to listen to people shitpost in the aether.

Your just a troll playing games with semantics. You have no justification for your beliefs, all you have done is attack personal opinions.

All you had to say was you were too poor to enjoy ham

$300 on a piece of 100 year old technology, or $300 on computer parts.

Yeah tough choice.

>100 year old tech

>broadcasted shitposting
wouldn't most people here be interested in it hten?
desu I considered getting a ham license so I could get a new york plate that wasn't a fuckugly orange and blue mess. looking into it, a 35 question test doesn't sound bad at all.

It's not good but it's not THAT shit. It works ok if you're on a budget. I'm not that into radios but I still use my grandpas old handheld alinco for shits and giggles (it also helps with the police in some counties that still use analog RFs) and

>literally $12,000 worth of electronics to do the exact same thing, at the exact same quality, that 50 year old radios do.

Icom is the Alienware of radios.

It's still a ripoff.

You need expensive antenna, tuner, radio, power supply and for what.

20 years ago it was great hobby when everything was still running on analog if you played out of HAM radio sandbox but these days it's waste of time.

>wouldn't most people here be interested in it hten?
Imagine if you had to have a username to post on Sup Forums, and your full name and address was just a google search of your username away

>you can look up anyone from the FCC site by registration number
whelp, fuck that noise.

>get on ham radio
>its just a bunch of old guys talking about their latest fucking home project or woodwork shit
>and thats literally it 24/7
dont wanna be a part of that shit community man, even listening to those geeks made me want to drown myself

All the good shit happens on digital modes.

Phone modes are literally just old guys whining about their medical problems and how their kids never come to visit them anymore.

Specs and capabilities are massively improved from 50 years ago. Transistors are about 100 years old also, but still do the same thing essentially. Weak argument.

Analog sucks ass. Why buy a $20k bass boat when a 1k John boat does the same thing?

I'd only get a license so that I could play with meshnet stuff legally while learning how to make it work well. If the time came to use it I'd realistically have to violate the rules anyway. Also for emergencies any handheld shortwave radio is fine. It's fully legal to use them even without a license for the preservation of life during an emergency. You'd just need to get the attention of local emergency services.

>Weak argument.

Why did you sign your post?

rtl-sdr

I dont understand the point of getting radios if you dont have a reason to be using radios. They're the best at what they do if you need to stay in contact with someone, but I cant see them as anything other than tools.

Its like saying I want to get into screwdrivers. Sure screwdrivers are great to have around, but at the end of the day their function ends at doing something to accomplish a greater goal

Compare imd between the two, massive difference

All the cool peeps are on satellite. Are you trying to talk to old farts or somethin or do you have some kind of thing you're trying to test or set up?

Normies--->out
> (OP)
>I dont understand the point of getting computers if you dont have a reason to be using computers. They're the best at what they do if you need to stay in contact with someone, but I cant see them as anything other than tools.
>Its like saying I want to get into screwdrivers. Sure screwdrivers are great to have around, but at the end of the day their function ends at doing something to accomplish a greater goal

How come AM radio is nothing but politics and religion then+

It's commercial broadcast. They have strict rules also.

Don't just buy a handheld radio. The frequency range is limited and you won't legally be able to transmit on 99% of them.

I suggest getting an SDR. It's a little usb dongle that plugs into your computer. You can't transmit but you can receive pretty much the entire frequency band. I recommend NooElec products for around $20. Great tool for learning about radio

>decide to try listening to shortwave
>literally everything is either Brother Stair or in Spanish

AM radio can go significantly farther than FM so because quality isn't the biggest importance, it's fine for talk shows or religious services.

What times are SSTV frequencies normally in use? That's by far my favorite mode, but I never seem to be listening in at the right time.

FM has plenty of talk radio. Range is not the issue

>AM radio can go significantly farther than FM so because quality isn't the biggest importance

>being this fucking ignorant about the difference between AM and FM propagation

>pretending you know what the fuck you're talking about anyway in a radio thread

There are talk shows and news on FM spectrum, but most are on AM. Despite interference possibilities with AM, you can reach areas miles away with very poor FM connections.

brainlet pls go

How am I wrong if you're such a genius. I never hear christian conservative talk shows on FM radio.

I can't be assed to read your conversation with user to tell if you're being sarcastic, but I'm jumping in to say I have a regional FM Christian station with talk shows. US mid-Atlantic coast. I've also stumbled across one in SoCal.

AM goes further because it can bounce off the ionosphere due to being lower energy. FM signals just punch right through it without being reflected, so it's limited to line of sight.

Talk radio is more prevalent on AM because it's cheaper to maintain a wide coverage area than FM.

Learn what the fuck you're talking about or get out of this thread.

What I've been trying to say is that radio that doesn't need excellent quality will probably prefer AM because of how much farther it can go. That's why there isn't a lot of music on AM stations, just talk shows, religion, and news.

That's what I've been trying to say.

Fair enough. I know that AM reception in a wide area around me is awful, probably because of geography and urban development. The use of FM may not have been preferable but simply unavoidable for the station I'm talking about. They do exist, though.

No it isn't, you backpeddling retard. You said AM goes further than FM because it's lower quality, and that non-music stations stick with it because of that.

Again, it goes further because it can bounce off of the ionosphere. Quality levels have nothing to do with that.

Non-music stations prefer AM because it's cheaper, and they don't exactly bring in shitloads of money.

I wasn't trying to say that, sorry if I came off as saying that.

I'm not really interested in transmitting, but I'd like to pick up some weather satellite downlinks and ISS SSTV broadcasts.

Anybody know a good resource to get started with that?

rtl-sdr.com

is baofeng good enough to listen in to police and other transmissions?
asking for a friend

Depends on if they use a trunk system. Get an SDR or scanner

probably not since pretty much every police department is using encryption.

Don't they encrypt their channels? Wow that is sub-nigger tier police.

cool, will look into it.
what about security guards (they're not armed and their companies are not big businesses like in the US)?

>uhf cb
If you're Strayan, look wia.org.au

They have info about licencing and such along with a map & list of clubs in each state.

>As someone who knows very little about radio, how do I get into it?
Watch videos on youtube, get the ARRL books/study guides. Find a local repeater group/organization

>Does anyone have a graphic breaking down the categories and frequencies with their names and examples of a good piece of hardware?
Basically there are 2 categories. HF, and VHF/UHF. HF is what I would consider classic HAM, using AM, CW (Morse code) or phone, 10meters and above (below approx 30MHz). These are long range radios, you'll see Kenwood, Yaesu, etc. Big money radios, big antennas, etc.
The other type are your short range radios, like your Baofengs which are UHF/VHF (70cm/2m).
There are also 900MHz and above, but those are less common. These are your cheaper radios.

>For example, I'm under the impression pic related is a good entry level CB radio. Am I wrong?
>CB
Well, that's not a CB radio. It's a Baofeng UV-5R, which is a good, inexpensive dual band 2m/70cm radio. Great for making contact with your local repeater system. Cheap radios as cheap as $5 each on eBay.

>What is the difference between CB, UHF CB, and Shortwave?
CB is an unlicensed set of frequencies in the 11meter range. Similar to HAM 10meter, except with a 4w max power.
UHF, are higher frequencies - 300MHz to about 1GHz. They have high bandwidth, and are usually line-of-sight in terms of transmission.
VHF is below UHF, less bandwidth, better penetration of matter.
Short wave are just frequencies usually below about 10meters, but there is no exact definition.

>Which one should I get for emergencies?
I'd recommend getting your HAM license and get a cheap Baofeng. Even better if there are some repeaters in the area. Baofengs can also communicate with GMRS/FRS radios (your walmart walkie talkies) but it's probably not legal except in an emergency.

I took my HAM test a litle over a year ago and passed on the first try. A local guy charges $5 per test to take them. He also offers classes.

>CB is an unlicensed set of frequencies in the 11meter range. Similar to HAM 10meter, except with a 4w max power.
UHF CB is a thing in Straya and NZ, 477mhz, 5w max power, 80 channels of narrow FM over a 1mhz band. We've got 11m here too but nobody really uses it anymore since UHF is so much easier to install and live with (especially when it comes to handhelds)

For emergencies you really want a Motorola or Vertex not a piece of Chink shit that is beofang.

I say piece of shit because I work with Motorola radios and mobiles that are over 7 grand a piece.

To bad this is Sup Forums I've got a good deal on some Vertex EVX-534s (I sell the old and unsold Radios on the internet). Vertex are very easy to program and will last a long time.

Oh you ignorant fool, it has nothing to do with power and everything to do with wavelength.
You never listen. It's always around 88-90mhz

>2017
>still no cheap and secure encrypted radios
Why?

>encrypted radios
Are you regularly broadcasting sensitive information, user?

>I say piece of shit because I work with Motorola radios and mobiles that are over 7 grand a piece.

Oh look... another radio snob. This time shilling on the books. At least you are getting paid to shill.

Fact is that a cheap as fuck Baofeng does the job. All a radio has to do is make intelligible output.

Nobody here is buying your overpriced Motorola shit. Go away.

Very funny. Garbage that makes the company I work for MILLIONS and Motorola above me BILLIONS.

CP200XLS or even CT450-LS which blows your pleb radio outta the water and these radios are old as the hills and cheaper.

>Paid Shill
For this the payment I get is seeing uneducated radio wannabees get pissed at me. Send your rage and hate my way while I sit back and play with radios and encrypted DEA ATF CIA channels and all the latest and greatest Mission Critical equipment plus getting paid to do it.

>Very funny. Garbage that makes the company I work for MILLIONS and Motorola above me BILLIONS.
Makes billions on cheezy government no-bid contracts by way lobbyist bribes. What a great ecosystem for a competitor to spring up under.

>CP200XLS or even CT450-LS which blows your pleb radio outta the water and these radios are old as the hills and cheaper.
>cheaper
cheaper than a $5 baofeng? Better, at what?

>seeing uneducated radio wannabees get pissed at me
not even mad bro. just someone who wants a radio without having to pay for the Motorola name, and their asinine and expensive dealer network. Thanks, but no. Enjoy your government subsidized radios; have fun on your business bands.

Butthurt hamster detected

Which country? Although in most cases: probably not. Lots of digital modes, lots of encryption types. The Baofeng doesn't do digital modes, so you only hear something if they broadcast analog unencrypted/non scrambled.

Because in a lot of countries it's forbidden to broadcast encrypted stuff as a civilian. So no real market for it.

In a sense he is right. It goes further because its broadcast on frequencies in the kHz range and the signal is encoded via amplitude modulation, which typically has much shittier bandwith than freq modulation

Most of handheld radios are used illegally anyway.

Actually you can send encrypted voice and data on ism bands in most countries.
While it's still technically illegal,the market is so flooded with cheap wireless headsets and keyboard,telemetry transmitters etc. that authorities don't even bother enforcing related laws.
You could use a relatively cheap microcontroller to make the core which would contain the vocoder and all the interfaces,and use pic related as the modem.
I tested it in my workshop with a LPC1769 and a lora modem and it seems to work surprising well.I can't switch channels without a pc though.

i literally cannot imagine any use for pic related other than snooping on some police radio

Cops have gone digital years ago

Can confirm, pretty sure I just failed my mid sem coms exam. Each year the maths is so much worse than the last.

so it has no use? you just talk to other radio operators by ending sentences in 'over'? I guess that would make you feel cool for a while.
i can understand the use in emergency situations but a band aid is not a hobby. If i like voice talking to people so much i would just pick up the phone.

My dad's worked for a radio tech company for 30 years. He bathes about once a month and he's been in the loony bin four times,but even his coworkers are amazed by his autist-level dedication,knowledge and ability to calculate very complex shit in his head.

Most experts in the field are fucking weirdos.

It's still handy for camping,airsoft,hunting etc

>has nothing to do with power and everything to do with wavelength.

Yess... yess indeed :^)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant

i.e: power increases with wavelength

i'm tired; ment to say frequency, not wavelength,
So power DECREASES as wavelength increases

Head on over to /k/ and the radios pastebin in /Gearqueer General/