[South Florida DX Association] Computer World Article Concerning Ham Radio

[Irwin Wallace]

Interesting article.       Irwin, N4IEW

Want to bone up on wireless tech? Try ham radio
Abundant spectrum resources and an engaged research community are 
drawing wireless experimenters back into a hobby that many had forgotten.
By John Edwards
October 29, 2009 06:00 AM ET   

John D. Hays, an IT manager in Edmonds, Wash., devotes most of his spare 
time these days to helping develop a communications system that's 
designed to integrate portable two-way radios with the global telephone 
network. The project's goal is to create a failure-proof voice 
communications infrastructure that can immediately connect first 
responders with the outside world.

"Individuals with radios in the field could interconnect with the 
telephone system even when their cell phones are shut down by an 
emergency," he says. This would be useful in all manner of disasters, 
from natural to man-made.

Hays claims his research efforts wouldn't be possible if he wasn't a 
licensed amateur radio operator -- or "ham," the term he and his fellow 
hobbyists use to describe themselves. He says ham radio gives him "space 
and a choice of spectrum [in which] to experiment." He also values the 
hobby's largely self-policing regulatory structure and close-knit user 
community. "There are many others who would share your passion and 
provide [a] great opportunity for brainstorming and support," says Hays, 
whose ham call sign is K7VE.

For IT professionals, ham radio can foster skills that are translatable 
into real-world wireless and wired networking applications.

Hays says his hobby and profession have long been intertwined. His 
experimentation with TCP/IP over AX.25 (a ham-oriented data link layer 
protocol) on the radio in the late '70s and '80s "helped me understand 
the inner workings of networking protocols and the use of wireless 
transports," he says. "From this, I was able to write some widely read 
and popular internal papers on subjects such as TCP/IP over Ethernet 
verses token passing ring topology."
Ham radio at a glance

    * Number of U.S. amateur radio licensees: 650,000
    * Number first licensed in the past four years: 100,000
    * Number estimated to be licensed in 2009: 25,000 to 30,000


Source: American Radio Relay League, Newington, Conn.

More recently, Hays used his ham knowledge to implement several 
RF-networked warehouse management systems. "My knowledge of radio 
transmission, combined with networking [skills], optimized the placement 
of base stations and mobile units," he says.
Reviving innovation

Decades ago, amateur radio operators were on the forefront of scores of 
technological innovations, including television, digital communications, 
solid-state design and cellular networks. The hobby's roots trace back 
to radio pioneers such as Guglielmo Marconi and FM-inventor Edwin Armstrong.

But in recent years, as many potential new hams were attracted to 
computers, the Internet and other technologies that they could explore 
without passing a licensing exam, some veteran hams worried that ham 
radio was at risk of gradually sliding into stagnation and was perhaps 
even on the road toward technological irrelevance. Over time, many 
old-timers worried, experimenters would gradually be replaced by hams 
more focused on the hobby's operational aspects, such as restoring 
antique radios and providing communications services for community 
parades and other charity events.

Other hams, however, believed that the hobby was actually entering a new 
era of innovation, one driven by the same type of people lured away from 
ham radio by advancing digital technologies. They reasoned that a 
streamlined licensing system, capped by the FCC's elimination of Morse 
code testing two years ago, would, over time, revitalize the hobby. This 
would happen by attracting technically skilled innovators who were 
interested in more than merely tapping a telegraph key.