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Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

I live in Massachusetts. What’s the best way to get started with amateur radio?

What interests you? Talking around the world? Communicating more in your immediate area? Socially, or for emergencies? Voice, Morse code or some digital modes?

There is a huge spectrum of things you can do and the amount of money you can spend. You can get into it for $50, but the sky is the limit.

I'd look online for a local club and contact them. Around me, they will bend over backwards to get someone into it.

Here's my problem: it's all interesting. Ideally I'd like to hack around with packet radio. I've got a small cabin in the rural northeastern US, and would ideally like to hack on something with practical benefits in that setting. I'm pretty open to suggestions :)

>I'd look online for a local club and contact them. Around me, they will bend over backwards to get someone into it.

This is very good to know. Do you know of any in the Boston area?

The first thing is to get your Techician license. Pandemic means that there are now online tests. That allows you to transmit on VHF/UHF. Get a handheld radio. You can also try out packet data.

If you want to do HF and long distances, then get your General license and HF radio.

If I'm reading the US rules correctly, a Technician can also do the HF 10M band? The propagation on that band is great right now during the day.

How far away (as the crow flies) is the cabin? Check out APRS. I use it to message me wife when I'm backpacking. I regularly see messages from 200 miles away on my hand held, without Internet. I'm in Montana, so mountain top repeaters help. I don't know how is without them.

There is someone near me that uses APRS to beacon out the state of their solar/batteries at a remote cabin.

The cabin is about 200 miles away from home. I took a cursory glance at ARPS, and it seems like an very cool place to start, so thank you!

Any links/videos/books you may be able to suggest would be of great interest as well.

Get an RTL-SDR kit with filters and antennas and start listening. No license needed. Gqrx (and I'm assuming other software) has labels on the frequencies so you can look around the amateur radio bands.

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