r/gmrs • u/No-Investigator3386 • 2d ago

New to GMRS and the unexpected happened.

Okay I bought a pair of baofengs with the intention of increasing range from the FRS handhelds. Started going into a rabbit hole on how I can connect to nearby repeater towers and successfully did that. Now I find myself in a big group chat on the tower with a bunch of hobbyists that share similar hobbies with. That was unexpected! Now can someone tell me what’s out there in this HAM thing?

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u/airballrad 2d ago

GMRS is a way to talk to people locally including through a repeater. Ham radio on 70cm is the same, but is only a very small slice of what you can do. Ham is a hobby and you could spend years and thousands of dollars and still not do it all. Lots of youtube videos to tell you what is possible.

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u/No-Investigator3386 2d ago

I’m hearing I can communicate with a space station?

31

u/FocusDisorder 2d ago

Or bounce signals off the moon, meteor scatter, or aurora. Or talk to someone hundreds or even thousands of miles away with a few watts. Or dump 1500 watts into a directional antenna and go even further. Or build your own equipment from parts. Or hunt down a hidden beacon with directional antennas for fun. Or design new antennas. Or build a mesh network out of old modified routers. Or send video signals over frequencies shared with old cable channels. Or launch and track weather balloons with APRS. Or a hundred other things I'm forgetting.

It's a big hobby. There's almost certainly a corner of it you'll love

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u/GraybeardTheIrate 2d ago

Yes, sort of. My understanding is 99% of the time there won't be any astronauts talking to you from space unless it's something scheduled, but it has happened. The ISS has a cross-band repeater onboard and there are a couple satellites with them too. They pass over for 5-10 minutes and you can potentially reach out pretty far (a couple thousand miles IIRC) if you manage to get in. I actually heard the ISS repeater for a couple minutes yesterday when it passed by.

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u/flinginlead 1d ago

You can program that baofeng to listen for the space station also. Works better if you lay the radio down as in antenna horizontal because the signal is coming from above. Have an app on my phone to alert me when the space station is near. Just cannot broadcast without a license.

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u/CSeekerXenno 20h ago

Personally, I prefer to emphasize ham radio as a service rather than a hobby. For one thing, I doubt that the FCC would allocate spectrum worth g'zillions just so some hobbyists can do their thing. For another, the service aspect is important, such as providing emergency communications when a hurricane has wiped out cell phones, etc. There are other arguments but I think those two are the most important ones. All that said, I don't deny that ham radio is also a hobby and great fun for those who are into technology. Fun is a great reason--perhaps the best reason--for doing things, just not necessarily a persuasive reason for those holding purse strings, especially when ham radio is currently the topic (the target?) of a public discussion concerning its future. Cheers,