Make your business official with Google in Squarespace. When you create a custom domain and a beautiful business website with Squarespace, you'll receive a free year of business email and professional tools from Google. It's the simplest way to look professional online. Visit squarespace dot com slash Google to start your free trial. Use offer code works for ten percent off your first purchase Google in Squarespace. Make it professional, Make it beautiful. Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. So it's stuff you should know. Go ahead, Josh Clark. This is Chuck in Oregon. Oh, well, seventy three, Chuck seventy three. I don't know what that means. It's probably your age if you're a hand radio operator. Seventy three is a term that means my compliments to you. M guards. Yeah, it is ham code. Well I wasn't joking. By the way. We're talking about ham radio, sometimes called um amateur radio, sometimes called shortwave radio, although it's not always short wave radio right like technically on the on the electromagnetic radio spectrum. Yeah, but um, I was I did make a joke about seventy three, but that is actually in some countries the average age is eighty and older. Is that right? Yeah? Which countries I don't know. I don't know about the US UM. The most recent stats I found, though, they're about eight hundred thousand HAM radio operators in the US of A. Is that right about? Yeah? Not bad. No, that's more than I saw. I saw. I think six seventy two was the number I saw, and then double that in Japan. Yeah, they're into it. Had no idea. UM in the millions, two to three million around the world, and in the United States. As of this month, there are more than seven hundred and forty thousand amateur radio station licenses, with California having the most. Well, California is big into ham radio. Everybody knows that, and I feel like it's obvious. But this is mostly men, about a fift rate of women or females, young ladies, whatever their ham radio enthusiasts. It just seems sort of like a it seems like a guy thing, not just a guy thing, but a ned Flanders guy thing. Yeah. I don't want to knock them because it's a neat thing. It is a neat thing. I was sitting there, I was I was researching this a little more and more. I was like, Okay, there is one corner of the world where you can go to escape like humanity as it stands, like on the internet totally, and it's it's that's that's an oversimplification. Like with Ham radio, they are very much known, very well known for being very polite, very professional, very um you know, uh eagle scoutish. I guess, yeah. They're rules and you have to get a license, right exactly, And because you do have to hold a license to operate a Ham radio. Um, they do think that that's kind of where this tradition of professionalism came out of a lot of jerks. At the very least, it does. There are jerks on on Ham radio, some really bad jerks, but they're they're very much the exception to the rule, whereas like on an internet chat room, the polite people are the exception of the rule. In Ham radio world, it's just the opposite. So it's very refreshing that there's this, you know out there, there's a place that's still like kept polite and nice and like, hey, how are you? I just wanted to see how are you? Oh you're in Korea. Huh it's pretty far away. Yeah, didn't. Is having a conversation like that just for it's just to do it. That's basically the point of Ham radio or one of them. There's a purity to it that really spoke to me there. Yeah, the same here. Um. I watched the little Vimeo documentary called Ham Radio Ancestors of the Internet. Yeah, great, little it's true. But and this got across to me. Ham radio, the the ethos or the persona of Ham Radio. There's a segment where they're talking about how one of the big foundations of ham radio is public service in times of I didn't either, but in times of like natural disaster where radio where other communications are knocked out, shortwave radios draw very little power so you can run them off battery, um, and they they can communicate outside of the disaster zone when cell phones and the Internet is gone, and they do do that. They do. It's like part it's one of the pillars of Ham Radio. Well, during this segment, the um director of the Vimeo documentary, he was playing the battle hymn of the Republic nice, and I was like, this is ham radio. I love it. Uh, they are called hams, so when we say that, we're not being derogatory, although some call them radio amateurs is one word. Oh really well, the word ham um comes from back in the day when there were ships and coastal stations and government stations and amateur operators increasingly all over the world vying for the same signals. Um. Sometimes these amateur radio operators would have powerful signals and they could jam um like government operations, and so they in a derogatory pejorative way, would call them hams, and that name stuck, although the meaning of it, the being pejorative, has fallen away, and they embrace it now like queer. Sure, it's the same thing, same principle. It was meant to be a put down, and that they adopted it with a sense of pride, and it's like we're gonna take this from you, right, like take the power from you. Yeah, it's a great way to handle things. I think, you know, I saw another origin story. Yeah, yeah, and I think with the one you're talking about. When they said that they were hams, they were saying they were ham fisted, like they didn't have the delicacy needed to UM to tune into a frequency correctly or no, they're very delicate hands. Actually it's part of the requirement by the FCC. UM I saw. Another origin story was that um in three Harvard men founded a radio club and they called it the Base on their last names the Hymen Almy Murray Radio Station or HAM for short. It's also a law firm, probably it is. Now Oh interesting? Is that? How verified is that? Or is that just something we're gonna throw out and say that could be interesting? This this one comes from r F Cafe, which is a legit site. Uh, yeah, I like yours more, Well, it's not mine. Oh you didn't just make it out now, So I found this great little piece that kind of helped explain to me a little bit about how radio works and how amateur radio works. So if I may, can we played Battle Him of the Republic? We totally should? Is it writes free? Oh it's gotta be sure. Um all right, So if you look at an AM radio dial, well you'll have to find an AM radio dial, right, go go find your dad's old malibub. Yeah, actually you don't have you know, you don't have to look at the physical dial. If you have a radio in your car, this digital you can just go to the bottom of it. It's about five thirty five. All the way to the top, it's about six five. Let's killer hurts? Is it killer hurts and Mega hurts killer hurts? Is it really for a M for AM radio? Um? And that is one band? When you hear about a radio band, that entire spectrum is one band. Yeah, and the band is just an arbitrary trunk, right, Yeah, it's a it's a group of frequencies right from one to the other, right, and the distance between those two from what you say for a M radio five five to six five, So that would be the band width between those two, correct, So you've got that as a band. The FCC dolls out on the spectrum available bands for the government, for the military, for all these different people to use as their own, and they have allocated twenty six bands for amateurs. That's from one point eight mega hurts in this case, which is just above that radio broadcasts frequencies to two seventy five giga hurts. That's a pretty significant swath of the spectrum, it is, and and so much so that you're using essentially different types of technology to transmit or receive on them. Yeah, well this is gonna be a good one. I was kinda worried. Oh man, don't worry. I feel like it's heating up. This is us. So the way this person put it is, if you think of the radio spectrum like a measuring tape um. Between a half an inch and about one point seven inches, is that a M radio band. If you go all the way up to like inches to eight inches, that's the FM radio band. And between a half inch and thirty inches is this very special place where the ionosphere It reflects off the ionosphere depending on what type of day, uh, and what time of day it is, right, And I can step in and explain that if you're online. So, the ionosphere is one part of the Earth's atmosphere. It's towards the top right, and cosmic rays and solar rays and all sorts of rays are constantly smacking into the ionosphere and they're knocking electrons off the atoms up there, ionizing them. These electrons don't just float away into our space, actually form this kind of blanket layer and it's a really great medium. This this blanket layer of electrons in the ionosphere UM for bouncing radio signals of a specific type of frequency back to Earth. Right. So, one of the benefits of a short wave radio is that you're using radio waves in a frequency that they bounce off the ionosphere really well, and so you can shoot it up into the ionosphere and reflect it back down. And because of this angle, you can you can transmit this radio over really long distances, hundreds of miles, thousands of miles, because you're bouncing it off of the ionosphere. During the day, the sun solar rays add this extra kind of dense layer on the bottom of the ionosphere, so they tend to get absorbed more than at night when the sun's raised aren't hitting that part of the ionosphere, so they bounce better, which is why you get better reception, or your signals travel longer at night than during the day. UM for shortwave radio, which really plays into hams right does the idea of these always have is two o'clock in the morning exactly, a dude in his attic talking to someone in Taiwan. Yeah, you know, which is great. We're talking to pinhead in Burma right before he opens that box and becomes Pinhead and hell Raiser or talking to Ronnie millsap. That's where this guy got me because he's a celebrity hymn. Celebrity hymn. Unfortunately he waited until like the last sentence of the entire article, but he finally got me. Then, well we'll we'll get to that later. There are other celebrity hams out there that'll be there. Our last sense to uh So, like we said earlier, between if you're thinking of it as a measuring tape, between a half inches and thirty inches is where you get this great reflection off the ionosphere, which you described so well. Um, I like your measuring tape, well it's not mine. Above that thirty inches, they stop bouncing and it becomes what we call line of sight. So that's like FM and TV and stuff. Yeah, Like you know, when you drive out of town, you lose your reception because you have gone out of the line of sight over from that broadcast antenna, and there's trees and buildings and mountains in your way, all sorts of junk. But if you're shooting stuff off the ionosphere, nothing sea in heck, mountains. Uh So, between three inches and thirty inches that's called the high frequency spectrum, and then from thirty inches to about three inches and again these aren't inches measuring tape analogy. Uh. That is called the VHF spectrum, and we're gonna get into that later. But the VHS spectrum is really neat. You can operate hand radio via that and use things uh called repeaters where you basically share part of a broadcast tower in a city. And you say, well, if I can get my signal to you, you can repeat it back out further because you have way more wattage than I do. And I was looking to see, like what the um tip for tat equation is with wattage for distance, Not that I could find, no, but the rule of thumb is that the more watts you have, the more power you have, the further you can send your signal. But yeah, I mean, like, if you're buying a transceiver, which we'll get into later, it might have anywhere between five watts and like a hundred watts, maybe a little more if you're um, if you're running like a radio station like Georgia State here has very famously as a hundred thousand watt transmitter, So you want to shoot your signal to them and then they change the frequency a little bit and shoot it out on a slightly different frequency greatly um empowered. Yeah, you're like piggybacking off these antenna's basically like like Michelle Obama is talking to you directly, kind of empowered, you know what I mean. And that's just for the repeater UM that is not that's if you're going to VHS VHS the VHF route, UM you don't have like they're all kinds of different frequencies below that that. In fact, I think probably, well, I'm not gonna say that because I don't know. I was going to say that people mostly don't use the repeater method with VHF, but that I don't know the stats. I think it's specifically FM that they use the repeater for VHF FM. I think that's what you use the repeater for. No, it is, but I'm saying that as far as HAM radio operators, I get the feeling that the majority of people don't use that method. Yeah, yeah, but I might be wrong. No, I think you're right, you think, yeah, I don't. I don't know if you can, because everything I saw was anytime they were talking about repeater. They called it FM VHF. Yeah, but you can still operate ham radio that way, right, yeah, but in that specific band, right, correct. I guess yeah, I actually, I mean, I'm sure they're a handful of hands out there that listen to the show that are groaning in pain right now. I know. I do want to apologize, because anytime we do a show where there are rabid enthusiasts, we're bound to get some stuff not quite right. But hopefully there are some of the nice enthusiasts that we've had over the years, These guys, yeah, that say like, thanks for helping to spread the word. You got this and this wrong, Not like those chess players. Man, man, they were they were so mean. I think it's interesting what kinds of people are attracted to different. Of course, it's made up of the spectrum of people, but they seem to be grouped a lot of times, at least from the feedback that we get birds of a feather flock together. I guess that's the same, isn't it. Should we take a break, yes, all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about just what in the heck piece hands are doing? All right? What are these hams doing one thing you can do if you have just a receiver or radio scanner, and or even if you have a transceiver where you can actually broadcast out. A lot of times are just listening. They're just going up and down the frequencies seeing if they can hear any interesting conversation. They're going down the frequency like boring, you sound ugly, Uh, I don't like your voice. Something comic book guy right from the Simpsons. And then finally they're like South Korea. I've been looking for someone to talk to you from there. And actually there's a thing called the QSL cards where you get in touch with somebody and um, from what I can gather, they mail you a postcard saying this person got in touch with me, and you collect these postcards QUSL cards, UM, just to be like, look, I've spoken to people in a hundred different countries. I'm remember of the Century Club. It's like a little merit badge. I think pretty cool. So you can listen in UM. The difference between let's say radio DJ who just talks at the world or you know, or talks to their city is you're are generally having a two way conversation with someone or a little round table or a little network where people meet at a certain frequency at a certain time of the week to uh talk shop, I guess, or wrap or talk about whatever you want. Basically like hanging out in a general store, but on the airwaves, locker room talk, right, because all guys do that, so um, they can use all kinds of frequencies. Um. Like we said, they're above the A and broadcast band. Uh and apparently a good a good band. A good frequency range is from about one point six mega hurts to about twenty seven mega hurts. That's during the day. Fifteen seven is good for these long distance communic ase. So if you're trying to reach your friend in Taiwan, maybe log on. We'll not long on. So weird to try and use the internet terminology because these guys are the ancestor of the internet. Boy, what if you need a license to get on the Internet. Wouldn't be great? Oh yeah, you had to pass it, like a decency test or something. It would be I mean it definitely do away with that whole net neutrality thing. But yeah, a decency test or maybe just to be I don't know, on social media or something. Yeah, Facebook is like, yeah, that'd be great, let's limit our users. No. No, But at the same time, it's like, well, who decides what's decent and who creates that test and who administers it? And do you do it at the of a barrel of an M one or something? No? I do it no guns involved. But I mean I think of the questions. Yeah, I'm pretty even handed. Give me a good give me a good decency question on your test. Um if uh, just just be nice and don't be a question be hilarious if every single one of the questions start out with let's see, uh, just just be nice. Yeah, don't be a jerk, don't bait people. Yeah, well, let's just good rules to follow. Just be nice, just be nice, don't be a jerk. Right, Yes, it's true. And again, if you're looking for generally a place where most people are nice and nut jerks, you would be happy to get into ham Radio. If you're not already right, Another thing you might be doing is you might be if you are really into it and your old school, you might be chatting in morse code. Yeah, and they used to to to become a licensed operator. Um, you have to you have to take a test, and there used to be a Morse code test, and apparently that sort of people out pretty quick. I would spectacularly fail a Morse code tests, not if you studied, even if I studied, you do fine dots and dashes. My brain doesn't think like that. They're thinking like, um, like, yeah exactly, Although a pizza does look like a lot like a dot, and if you stretch a big mac out it could be a desk. Maybe I could take on this Morse code. I think you could. Well, it doesn't matter anyway now because they did away with that segment because they're like, Morse code is stupid and we all have voices, so we're just gonna go with voice instead. Yeah. I don't know if exactly that's how they put it, but that was pretty much the thinging behind it. But I also get the impression that the purists still dabble in morse code. They also write in perfect cursive. I can't do that anymore at all, hard Like I could never do a cue a capital queue. Couldn't do it. It's kind of like a week to remember. Yeah, it's one of these I don't know. It's kind of sad to me to be losing some of these things. Other people say it's roll with the changes, like you can't fight progress. But is it progress when you lose something? I don't know if it was an albatross. I guess it's progress, But I don't know if cursive writing is exactly holding us back as as a culture. I print weirdly now because I write so seldom to my handwriting is sometimes I can't even like read what I wrote. I can never read what You're right. It's terrible. Not even a doctor anymore. That's why we just type to one another or tattoo one another with what we want to say. Or so they've gotten rid of morse code purists are still into it. Um. I guess we should talk a little bit about Well, I'll tell you one cool thing you can do is talk to people in outer space. Yeah, this article dated itself by talking in the present tense about space shuttle missions. No more space shuttle missions. But astronauts are generally ham licensed ye, not ham fested. No, no, no. You gotta have tiny, delicate hands to be an astronaut. For sure, you just made lobster hands. But astronauts are generally ham radio people, and they will I think one of the little neat things they'll do is get up there and talk to people on Earth. Yeah, and you can talk to them because I think they're using a VHF FM handheld radio typically, although we may be dating ourselves too because from what this this article made mention of using um uh packets, which is an Internet term, which makes me think that this this um technology has advanced by leaps and bounds as far as like using satellites and stuff like that. So I'm not sure if this is the case anymore, but ten years ago, when you were communicating with an astronaut, they had to be directly overhead, but you could talk to him over Ham radio, which is pretty awesome. Yeah, And a lot of times when the when the astronauts having a conversation, they're talking from like one school to the next as they pass over, like elementary schools, and yeah, yeah, because I mean, everybody likes talking to an astronaut, but elementary school could really love that kind of stuff totally, at least they did back in our day. Surely they still do, right, I hope. So I would like to think space will always and throw all the young I hope. Do you get a little older and you're like, what's out there? I like it still I do too. I'm kidding, what's out there? That's a good question, Chuck. All right, so I guess we should talk a little bit more about licensing. Um. First of all, I don't understand this whole license thing, Like, can you be a rogue ham? Yes, there was a guy who was sued by the government for fine, so you can do it and set yourself up and they you're just not doing it legally. Yeah. So do you remember the person who rode in with their pirate radio station. They were basically, from what I gathered, they were operating a shortwave transceiver, but they were like talking and broadcasting. Well, there's a couple of problems with that. Obviously, they didn't have a license, which makes it a pirate radio station. But number two, one of the hallmarks of shortwave communications is a two way conversation. You're not supposed to broadcast. So there's this dude who was transmitting on UM one of fourteen point to seven five mega hurts frequency and I think it was a Michigan or something, and he basically was running like a RANTI radio station, and UM, anytime somebody was like, hey, get off the get off the line, leave this open for somebody else. He would go berserk and he yes, man, everyone hated this guy, like curse people out and stuff. And then he did not fit in the community. He didn't, but he was like, I belong here just as much as you do. I'm licensed and I can be here too. So he countersued the government for like fifty million dollars and it got thrown out or whatever. I'm not sure it became of him. The last article I saw was from like two thousand and ten. But um, he's a good example of you know, there's there's places where you know, you you would not want your kids to sit around listening to what they're talking about on the ham spectrum. He's a hamtroll. Yeah, he was a hamtroll for sure, And there are plenty of others out there. But for the most part, again it's mostly the opposite of that. Apparently, CB is known to be the opposite where like anything goes, they use like crude and vulgar language, and um, so everybody's like, that's CB, hams different. But these guys were CBS from what I can gather. All right, well, let's take a little break and we'll talk a little bit more about him. I'm hungry for ham. I know delicious hamlet talk of ham like I wish I had ham fist like a honey spiral ham. I've never been in the into the sweet ones. I like smoked. I like smoked ham too, but like a honey baked ham. You don't discriminate. Man. Have you had honey baked turkey? That's pretty good too. I think it's better than their ham. Oh yeah, Oh you mean from the actual honey baked ham corporation? But yeah, I like a good smoked ham. No, sweetness doesn't need to be sweet. It stands on its own. The problem is most hams are really really processed, like just by definition. Yeah, like you, it's tough to find ham that's not super processed. And you know me, I'm trying to eat better, so I want healthy ham. I don't want to give up ham. I don't blame me, man, I love him. We said ham a lot so far. All right, So if you want to get licensed, um, which you should, well you have to. Well that's what I'm saying. I liked not run afoul of the law. Um. There is no aid restriction. UM, even though the average age in some countries is eighty. I also get the feeling that there are plenty of twelve year olds out there that have kind of like you know, you get a chemistry set. You read an article or hear this podcast, and you say, I think I might like to try my hand at Ham. Maybe there was a g whiz in there, Golly, g whiz, mom, Dad, Can I have a Ham radio? Well, if you're if you're thinking that right now, there's actually something called Kids Day. It's like an International Ham Radio Day to like kind of get kids who might be interested in Ham radio into it. Basically, dying lower, the lower the barriers to entry. I don't think he's dying. Man. Those numbers that you gave are significantly higher than the ones I saw. Are the ones that are in this article. Seems like it is growing well, and maybe there will be some sort of a luddite backlash. I think that's part of it. I think some people are saying, like, yes, I have to go work on the internet for work, but I I'm so tired of like jerks. I want to go somewhere where there's not jerks, you know, I want to feel like I'm giving something back to my community. Yeah, when a natural disaster strikes, I want them to be able to turn to me so I can say, yes, this guy is dying at this address. Too bad you can't get through to get him out of there. We just thought you should know he's gonna die. I like the notion of the just the general public do good or like um my dad, when I was a kid, we had a jeep and back I mean, jeeps are all over the place now for people that have never been like off of pavement. But back in the seventies, jeep if you saw a jeep on the road and not well know, you waved. They all waved at each other, but there was about a ninety five percent chance that that person was an off rotor as well. And about half of the jeep said those little winches on the front of him. And I remember it didn't snow that much in Georgia, but uh, every time it snowed, my dad would get on the horn with his jeep buddies and they would get out and pull people out of ditches and like tow cars, you know, onto the road and stuff like that, just for no other reason than to like, you know, it's probably fun for them to come in and save the day, you know, yeah, and to help to get that sense of satisfaction. Same. I mean, this is a it's the same thing except a little less rugged. Yeah, they were. It was also the CB crowd, which kind of ties it all together. They're the they're the rough ones though that the jeep dudes all had to CBS and we talk to each other and right, all right, so there's no age restriction. Every country is going to have their own licensing deal, but here in the US you have to pass the test. Now. I think it's what multiple choice questions. I'm curious what they are. I I looked and I didn't really see any. Um, just be nice, just be nice. How much do you love America? A lot? Super a lot more than my head can take sometimes? And then Toby Keith levels right, Um, But there's three different types of licenses in there, graduated in difficulty the tests are, but each one gives you more access to more bands on the spectrum. I think the highest class is the extra class. And um, you don't need to know more for any of these now, but I'll bet, I'll bet if you're a level three HAM license holder, you probably no more code pretty well too. I'm sure it's not across the board, but I'll bet it's pretty high percentage because I imagine you might have a little egg on your face if you're an extra class uh license holder and everybody's just speaking to one another making yeah, and you're like, could you say that please out loud? I feel a little left out, Like, no, son, didn't it beeps? Or is it clicks? Is it both? Okay? Both? I think it depends on the receiver. There is something called the American Radio Relay League the a r r L, and they've got a great website if you go UM. They're all manner of articles about your entree into Ham operating and UM statistics and tips and pointers. It's their their way into it UM. In Atlanta, we have a club I can't remember the name of it UM, but it was formed in nineteen eleven and apparently is the oldest continuously running club in Georgia. Wow, that actually predates Ham Radio according to this. Oh no, it predates the American Radio Relay League. Yeah, they were that's really impressive. It's pretty neat. Go Atlanta. I kind of want to go to a meeting now and just say hi, I'm chucking. No, I'll be like, uh, should we talk about the equipment a bit? I guess yeah. I was like, basically I had to do a crash course in radio theory. I didn't know a lot of this, you know, like I know the wavelength is the distance between two crests. I knew that frequency is how many waves pass like any given point in one second. Um, But I didn't understand how radio waves are like propagated, or how antennas receive them. And apparently you are running an electromagnetic field through your antenna and the end yeah, pretty much. And your antenna UM basically is to put it in a layman's terms, shooting out radio waves that are being created by an oscillator in your in your transceiver, your transmitter, or these radio waves which once you shoot it out, if you were in outer space shooting off a radio wave, and it was guaranteed to never run into a planet or a star or anything like that, it would just keep going forever. Right, That's what a radio wave wants to do. It just wants to keep going. It's not going to get messed up or diminished, degrade or anything like that. It's when it runs into stuff that it starts to or when it when it's hit by m cosmic rays that it starts to diminish, degrade or something like that. Right, So UM, the if it hits UH antenna and the antenna is cut to the right length, and the length that you're looking for is half the length half the sense of the wavelength. So if you have a very low frequency wave that's um, you know, a hundred feet between waves, you would want a fifty ft antenna to to pick it up UM ideally. And that's basically the rule of thumb, as you want half the distance of the wavelength you're receiving to UM pick up a wavelength or a radio wave UM most efficiently. UM. But anyway, when a radio wave encounters this electric field, this electromagnetic field that you have running up and down your antenna, it basically excites the electrons in a way that it shoots down into your receiver and magically is transformed into a voice. It's really, really really difficult to understand all this, Like people go and get like masters and PhDs in this kind of thing. It's really tough. Guys, give me a break. Wow, do you already since the higher. Yeah, even from amateurs, I think are probably like that was terrible. I can sense that was terrible. No, I think I feel confident in it. Uh. You probably have a transceiver. Um. Like I said, you could have just a receiver if you just want to listen, but you might want to talk to UH if you go to buy a new transceiver. I mean they run the gamut in price. Um. I saw like these fancy ones with all kinds of uh really gadgets and spon divots on it that was like a thousand dollars and up I saw a pretty good one for a thousand dollars too. But you don't have to go that route. UM, if you want to go a little more old school, was something that's a little easier to master, UM quicker, then you could get an old used one. Yeah. Analog ones are the ones with the tuners that you have to like physically, you know, adjust your dial, which they're not quite as precise as these digital ones, which um you know you can us the frequency uh to like a hundreds of a past the decimal. Yeah, they're really really precise, but there are a lot more complicated and they're more expensive. You don't need that to start for sure. Well, and that's one of the things they point out this article too, right, Like if you think about millions of people, um, and only a certain amount of bandwidth, apparently, I think that's where you can be on the same frequency and just dial it back by a couple of little points and create a new I don't know if that count as a new frequency or just part a subset of the same frequency. I don't know where that begins, where the cutoff is. Yeah, but that's to keep from overlapping and you know, jamming someone else's frequency, yeah, which can be a problem, especially if people in the same town are using the same frequency for a different conversation, which is why most of the time when you're in the same town, you probably know the other HAM operators. And so if you're having like a net network where you're like sitting around hanging out talking to other people in the same area, um, you were going to have a receiver receiving and transmitting frequency pair that everybody's using that you're you know, is different from something someone else in town or in that same area is going to be using as well. Yeah, And if you need to move it, you just text each other and say to just get on the internet, and then you go, oh, wait a minute, what are we doing? Uh? Antennas are obviously a big, big part of this. And I get the feeling that um Hams really enjoy um hacking objects as antenna's. Uh kind of like when you may even remember this, but when when I was a kid, did you have like antenna TVs when your kid? You remember that or was it always cable for you? Um? I never had an antenna, but like neighbors did. Yeah, I know, yeah, I remember when you when I was a kid, Like you know, you would put the tinfoil sometimes attached to the antenna. Oh real, like rabbit ears on a TV. Yeah, I thought you meant the ones on the roof. Oh well those two, I guess, but I mean rabbit ears. Sure. Yeah, we had this so like if you're not getting the picture, you would you would put like foil aluminum foil at the end and it stuck to have to stand and be the one to stand there and hold it. Yeah. And sometimes you yourself could act as an antenna if you had metal in your hand or in your teeth. Yeah, And I get the feeling him enthusiasts really get into that because some of the different things that they will use uh include windows, screens on the floor of upper floor of a hotel, UH, an extension ladder, an aluminum ladder, rain gutters, and down spouts, slinkys. Slinky made sense to me. Yeah, but that's a heck of a antenna. Put a slinky on a pole. Basically anything that that's metal that you can get a current going through and transmit and receive on. Yeah, they're talking abou wires like you cast with a fishing pole between dormitories. This is old school stuff. It's very cool. Do you know what burglar tape is? No, I saw that. I'd never heard of that. Apparently the Internet hasn't either, because I cannot find any other reference to burglar tape aside from this article. Yeah, I don't know everything the Internet. It's probably like burglars caught on tape or some burglar died after being taped to a tree when he was caught. Yeah. Yeah, ham radio to me, that kind of falls in that bucket of things that I was talking about, like old I can't remember which podcast it was, but old technologies that you can still use, Like I think it's a cool skill to have. Like, if it all goes south and everything the internet crumbles and people turn on one another ham radio, the Hams are gonna be ahead of the game. You know, they're gonna be able to communicate with one another. Yeah, kind of a neat skill to have. Yeah, they'll be like, yeah, the purge looks like it has come to pass. The city's on fire. You can go to a ham fest if you want to meet people, and you can buy cheap used equipment, sure, and get tips and tricks from the people you're buying from. Like, yeah, if you if you're at all into this, find a ham fest. Oh yeah, and if it turns out to be the food, then enjoy that as well. Lucked out. It's called a happy accident. Uh. And then they say the best thing to do, like you said, is to talk to a HIM enthusiast. And apparently the teachers are called Elmer's and uh, I imagine they delight in teaching any young kid that comes their way about ham radio. I think there's very very few that are like, out of my face, kid, I don't want to pass on my knowledge. I bet they really enjoy that. Yeah, I'll there's there's genuinely zero of them who are like, forget you. I don't have time for this. I don't like talking all right, celebrity hams, are we there? Yeah? Number one Ronnie Mills out Apparently Joe Walsh of the Eagles and the James Gang is a Ham. Gary Shandling was I did not know pass And that's the neat thing you can talk with Joe Walsh maybe right, Like the community is they encouraged that he's not like I'm Joe Walsh. I'm I'm looking for Ronnie millsap only right, I just want privacy on my Ham radio. For Scilla Pressley what probably spreading a scientology via Ham right now? She was a scientologist, oh yeah, or a King Hussain of Jordan's. There were a lot of surprised to see a lot of dignitaries and like presidents and uh like leaders of the free world. It's crazy. I am enthusiasts. Barry Goldwater was chet Atkins, and Brando apparently was Oh man, could you imagine that conversation. You would be able to pick him out immediately, like I think that's Marlon Brando talking lies descending on my face. The darkness like, Uh, that's not Joe Walsh right. Uh, and apparently when you die it's very sad. It's called an s K, a silent key. And uh that means you're no longer operating, not in this realm, at least not using these antenna I like that thought. Nice a positive note. Uh, you got anything else? Nothing else? I'm gonna go out and get a Ham radio. I knew you've got. You bought a slinky, you got exploding head syndrome. Now you're gonna become a Ham operator. If you want to know more about Ham radio, you can start by typing those words into our search part. But again, just start asking around. Find somebody who is a hammer a radio operator. Yeah, find an Elmer and they will teach you everything you need to know. And since I said Olmer, it's time for listener mail. Hey guys, A huge fan of the show, Great entertainment, interesting stuff that as a normal lazy person I would never look up myself. I really wanted to thank you for keeping me company while training for my first ever marathon. I believe it's a New York marathon. Yes, training is brutal, long hours running alone with nothing to do, but obsess on how much it sucks and why on earth am I doing this? I don't even like to drive twenty six miles. I can't imagine running that. You know, a bit of background. I'm thirty nine years old, first time ever running a marathon. Uh, and it's going to be the New York City Marathon in early November. Well, that's a heck of a one to start on. Yeah, listen to your show makes me makes training so much better. I've tried everything from music, audiobooks, regular radio, other podcasts. Nothing keeps my mind distracted from the pain better than your show. Everything's disgusting. It makes me cute. I truly love it. I'm not sure if you guys have on it, but Babe, a marathon episode would be great. Why do we put ourselves through such hell? And the high that one gets from running and completing a race runners higher, that'd be interesting. I would do a marathon one. I would not not a marathon. I would do a marathon episode. It would be really short. We just do that to be funny, or we make it exactly twenty six minutes long. Anyway, Thanks again, guys, and congrats for an excellent show that is uh. Marco, Marco, good luck, Yeah, buddy, good luck In November. Um, this will be coming out sort of around that time. Yeah, so you can listen to it as you crossed the finish line. Yeah, that'd you go, Marco? Come on, man, you can do it. Hang on there, get up, Get up, Marco, come on. Oh you should probably seek medical attention for that. Just just stay there, man, stay down. I love it. Thanks Marco. Best of luck to you for reals though, UH and all of you who are running in the New York City Marathon or any marathon, or doing anything that you use us to motivate you with, you can do it. Just keep it up. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with me on Twitter at josh um Clark and uh s y s K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and UH stuff you Should Know on Facebook. You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com.

Make your business official with Google in Squarespace. When you create a custom domain and a beautiful business website with Squarespace, you'll receive a free year of business email and professional tools from Google. It's the simplest way to look professional online. Visit squarespace dot com slash Google to start your free trial. Use offer code works for ten percent off your first purchase Google in Squarespace. Make it professional, Make it beautiful. Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. So it's stuff you should know. Go ahead, Josh Clark. This is Chuck in Oregon. Oh, well, seventy three, Chuck seventy three. I don't know what that means. It's probably your age if you're a hand radio operator. Seventy three is a term that means my compliments to you. M guards. Yeah, it is ham code. Well I wasn't joking. By the way. We're talking about ham radio, sometimes called um amateur radio, sometimes called shortwave radio, although it's not always short wave radio right like technically on the on the electromagnetic radio spectrum. Yeah, but um, I was I did make a joke about seventy three, but that is actually in some countries the average age is eighty and older. Is that right? Yeah? Which countries I don't know. I don't know about the US UM. The most recent stats I found, though, they're about eight hundred thousand HAM radio operators in the US of A. Is that right about? Yeah? Not bad. No, that's more than I saw. I saw. I think six seventy two was the number I saw, and then double that in Japan. Yeah, they're into it. Had no idea. UM in the millions, two to three million around the world, and in the United States. As of this month, there are more than seven hundred and forty thousand amateur radio station licenses, with California having the most. Well, California is big into ham radio. Everybody knows that, and I feel like it's obvious. But this is mostly men, about a fift rate of women or females, young ladies, whatever their ham radio enthusiasts. It just seems sort of like a it seems like a guy thing, not just a guy thing, but a ned Flanders guy thing. Yeah. I don't want to knock them because it's a neat thing. It is a neat thing. I was sitting there, I was I was researching this a little more and more. I was like, Okay, there is one corner of the world where you can go to escape like humanity as it stands, like on the internet totally, and it's it's that's that's an oversimplification. Like with Ham radio, they are very much known, very well known for being very polite, very professional, very um you know, uh eagle scoutish. I guess, yeah. They're rules and you have to get a license, right exactly, And because you do have to hold a license to operate a Ham radio. Um, they do think that that's kind of where this tradition of professionalism came out of a lot of jerks. At the very least, it does. There are jerks on on Ham radio, some really bad jerks, but they're they're very much the exception to the rule, whereas like on an internet chat room, the polite people are the exception of the rule. In Ham radio world, it's just the opposite. So it's very refreshing that there's this, you know out there, there's a place that's still like kept polite and nice and like, hey, how are you? I just wanted to see how are you? Oh you're in Korea. Huh it's pretty far away. Yeah, didn't. Is having a conversation like that just for it's just to do it. That's basically the point of Ham radio or one of them. There's a purity to it that really spoke to me there. Yeah, the same here. Um. I watched the little Vimeo documentary called Ham Radio Ancestors of the Internet. Yeah, great, little it's true. But and this got across to me. Ham radio, the the ethos or the persona of Ham Radio. There's a segment where they're talking about how one of the big foundations of ham radio is public service in times of I didn't either, but in times of like natural disaster where radio where other communications are knocked out, shortwave radios draw very little power so you can run them off battery, um, and they they can communicate outside of the disaster zone when cell phones and the Internet is gone, and they do do that. They do. It's like part it's one of the pillars of Ham Radio. Well, during this segment, the um director of the Vimeo documentary, he was playing the battle hymn of the Republic nice, and I was like, this is ham radio. I love it. Uh, they are called hams, so when we say that, we're not being derogatory, although some call them radio amateurs is one word. Oh really well, the word ham um comes from back in the day when there were ships and coastal stations and government stations and amateur operators increasingly all over the world vying for the same signals. Um. Sometimes these amateur radio operators would have powerful signals and they could jam um like government operations, and so they in a derogatory pejorative way, would call them hams, and that name stuck, although the meaning of it, the being pejorative, has fallen away, and they embrace it now like queer. Sure, it's the same thing, same principle. It was meant to be a put down, and that they adopted it with a sense of pride, and it's like we're gonna take this from you, right, like take the power from you. Yeah, it's a great way to handle things. I think, you know, I saw another origin story. Yeah, yeah, and I think with the one you're talking about. When they said that they were hams, they were saying they were ham fisted, like they didn't have the delicacy needed to UM to tune into a frequency correctly or no, they're very delicate hands. Actually it's part of the requirement by the FCC. UM I saw. Another origin story was that um in three Harvard men founded a radio club and they called it the Base on their last names the Hymen Almy Murray Radio Station or HAM for short. It's also a law firm, probably it is. Now Oh interesting? Is that? How verified is that? Or is that just something we're gonna throw out and say that could be interesting? This this one comes from r F Cafe, which is a legit site. Uh, yeah, I like yours more, Well, it's not mine. Oh you didn't just make it out now, So I found this great little piece that kind of helped explain to me a little bit about how radio works and how amateur radio works. So if I may, can we played Battle Him of the Republic? We totally should? Is it writes free? Oh it's gotta be sure. Um all right, So if you look at an AM radio dial, well you'll have to find an AM radio dial, right, go go find your dad's old malibub. Yeah, actually you don't have you know, you don't have to look at the physical dial. If you have a radio in your car, this digital you can just go to the bottom of it. It's about five thirty five. All the way to the top, it's about six five. Let's killer hurts? Is it killer hurts and Mega hurts killer hurts? Is it really for a M for AM radio? Um? And that is one band? When you hear about a radio band, that entire spectrum is one band. Yeah, and the band is just an arbitrary trunk, right, Yeah, it's a it's a group of frequencies right from one to the other, right, and the distance between those two from what you say for a M radio five five to six five, So that would be the band width between those two, correct, So you've got that as a band. The FCC dolls out on the spectrum available bands for the government, for the military, for all these different people to use as their own, and they have allocated twenty six bands for amateurs. That's from one point eight mega hurts in this case, which is just above that radio broadcasts frequencies to two seventy five giga hurts. That's a pretty significant swath of the spectrum, it is, and and so much so that you're using essentially different types of technology to transmit or receive on them. Yeah, well this is gonna be a good one. I was kinda worried. Oh man, don't worry. I feel like it's heating up. This is us. So the way this person put it is, if you think of the radio spectrum like a measuring tape um. Between a half an inch and about one point seven inches, is that a M radio band. If you go all the way up to like inches to eight inches, that's the FM radio band. And between a half inch and thirty inches is this very special place where the ionosphere It reflects off the ionosphere depending on what type of day, uh, and what time of day it is, right, And I can step in and explain that if you're online. So, the ionosphere is one part of the Earth's atmosphere. It's towards the top right, and cosmic rays and solar rays and all sorts of rays are constantly smacking into the ionosphere and they're knocking electrons off the atoms up there, ionizing them. These electrons don't just float away into our space, actually form this kind of blanket layer and it's a really great medium. This this blanket layer of electrons in the ionosphere UM for bouncing radio signals of a specific type of frequency back to Earth. Right. So, one of the benefits of a short wave radio is that you're using radio waves in a frequency that they bounce off the ionosphere really well, and so you can shoot it up into the ionosphere and reflect it back down. And because of this angle, you can you can transmit this radio over really long distances, hundreds of miles, thousands of miles, because you're bouncing it off of the ionosphere. During the day, the sun solar rays add this extra kind of dense layer on the bottom of the ionosphere, so they tend to get absorbed more than at night when the sun's raised aren't hitting that part of the ionosphere, so they bounce better, which is why you get better reception, or your signals travel longer at night than during the day. UM for shortwave radio, which really plays into hams right does the idea of these always have is two o'clock in the morning exactly, a dude in his attic talking to someone in Taiwan. Yeah, you know, which is great. We're talking to pinhead in Burma right before he opens that box and becomes Pinhead and hell Raiser or talking to Ronnie millsap. That's where this guy got me because he's a celebrity hymn. Celebrity hymn. Unfortunately he waited until like the last sentence of the entire article, but he finally got me. Then, well we'll we'll get to that later. There are other celebrity hams out there that'll be there. Our last sense to uh So, like we said earlier, between if you're thinking of it as a measuring tape, between a half inches and thirty inches is where you get this great reflection off the ionosphere, which you described so well. Um, I like your measuring tape, well it's not mine. Above that thirty inches, they stop bouncing and it becomes what we call line of sight. So that's like FM and TV and stuff. Yeah, Like you know, when you drive out of town, you lose your reception because you have gone out of the line of sight over from that broadcast antenna, and there's trees and buildings and mountains in your way, all sorts of junk. But if you're shooting stuff off the ionosphere, nothing sea in heck, mountains. Uh So, between three inches and thirty inches that's called the high frequency spectrum, and then from thirty inches to about three inches and again these aren't inches measuring tape analogy. Uh. That is called the VHF spectrum, and we're gonna get into that later. But the VHS spectrum is really neat. You can operate hand radio via that and use things uh called repeaters where you basically share part of a broadcast tower in a city. And you say, well, if I can get my signal to you, you can repeat it back out further because you have way more wattage than I do. And I was looking to see, like what the um tip for tat equation is with wattage for distance, Not that I could find, no, but the rule of thumb is that the more watts you have, the more power you have, the further you can send your signal. But yeah, I mean, like, if you're buying a transceiver, which we'll get into later, it might have anywhere between five watts and like a hundred watts, maybe a little more if you're um, if you're running like a radio station like Georgia State here has very famously as a hundred thousand watt transmitter, So you want to shoot your signal to them and then they change the frequency a little bit and shoot it out on a slightly different frequency greatly um empowered. Yeah, you're like piggybacking off these antenna's basically like like Michelle Obama is talking to you directly, kind of empowered, you know what I mean. And that's just for the repeater UM that is not that's if you're going to VHS VHS the VHF route, UM you don't have like they're all kinds of different frequencies below that that. In fact, I think probably, well, I'm not gonna say that because I don't know. I was going to say that people mostly don't use the repeater method with VHF, but that I don't know the stats. I think it's specifically FM that they use the repeater for VHF FM. I think that's what you use the repeater for. No, it is, but I'm saying that as far as HAM radio operators, I get the feeling that the majority of people don't use that method. Yeah, yeah, but I might be wrong. No, I think you're right, you think, yeah, I don't. I don't know if you can, because everything I saw was anytime they were talking about repeater. They called it FM VHF. Yeah, but you can still operate ham radio that way, right, yeah, but in that specific band, right, correct. I guess yeah, I actually, I mean, I'm sure they're a handful of hands out there that listen to the show that are groaning in pain right now. I know. I do want to apologize, because anytime we do a show where there are rabid enthusiasts, we're bound to get some stuff not quite right. But hopefully there are some of the nice enthusiasts that we've had over the years, These guys, yeah, that say like, thanks for helping to spread the word. You got this and this wrong, Not like those chess players. Man, man, they were they were so mean. I think it's interesting what kinds of people are attracted to different. Of course, it's made up of the spectrum of people, but they seem to be grouped a lot of times, at least from the feedback that we get birds of a feather flock together. I guess that's the same, isn't it. Should we take a break, yes, all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about just what in the heck piece hands are doing? All right? What are these hams doing one thing you can do if you have just a receiver or radio scanner, and or even if you have a transceiver where you can actually broadcast out. A lot of times are just listening. They're just going up and down the frequencies seeing if they can hear any interesting conversation. They're going down the frequency like boring, you sound ugly, Uh, I don't like your voice. Something comic book guy right from the Simpsons. And then finally they're like South Korea. I've been looking for someone to talk to you from there. And actually there's a thing called the QSL cards where you get in touch with somebody and um, from what I can gather, they mail you a postcard saying this person got in touch with me, and you collect these postcards QUSL cards, UM, just to be like, look, I've spoken to people in a hundred different countries. I'm remember of the Century Club. It's like a little merit badge. I think pretty cool. So you can listen in UM. The difference between let's say radio DJ who just talks at the world or you know, or talks to their city is you're are generally having a two way conversation with someone or a little round table or a little network where people meet at a certain frequency at a certain time of the week to uh talk shop, I guess, or wrap or talk about whatever you want. Basically like hanging out in a general store, but on the airwaves, locker room talk, right, because all guys do that, so um, they can use all kinds of frequencies. Um. Like we said, they're above the A and broadcast band. Uh and apparently a good a good band. A good frequency range is from about one point six mega hurts to about twenty seven mega hurts. That's during the day. Fifteen seven is good for these long distance communic ase. So if you're trying to reach your friend in Taiwan, maybe log on. We'll not long on. So weird to try and use the internet terminology because these guys are the ancestor of the internet. Boy, what if you need a license to get on the Internet. Wouldn't be great? Oh yeah, you had to pass it, like a decency test or something. It would be I mean it definitely do away with that whole net neutrality thing. But yeah, a decency test or maybe just to be I don't know, on social media or something. Yeah, Facebook is like, yeah, that'd be great, let's limit our users. No. No, But at the same time, it's like, well, who decides what's decent and who creates that test and who administers it? And do you do it at the of a barrel of an M one or something? No? I do it no guns involved. But I mean I think of the questions. Yeah, I'm pretty even handed. Give me a good give me a good decency question on your test. Um if uh, just just be nice and don't be a question be hilarious if every single one of the questions start out with let's see, uh, just just be nice. Yeah, don't be a jerk, don't bait people. Yeah, well, let's just good rules to follow. Just be nice, just be nice, don't be a jerk. Right, Yes, it's true. And again, if you're looking for generally a place where most people are nice and nut jerks, you would be happy to get into ham Radio. If you're not already right, Another thing you might be doing is you might be if you are really into it and your old school, you might be chatting in morse code. Yeah, and they used to to to become a licensed operator. Um, you have to you have to take a test, and there used to be a Morse code test, and apparently that sort of people out pretty quick. I would spectacularly fail a Morse code tests, not if you studied, even if I studied, you do fine dots and dashes. My brain doesn't think like that. They're thinking like, um, like, yeah exactly, Although a pizza does look like a lot like a dot, and if you stretch a big mac out it could be a desk. Maybe I could take on this Morse code. I think you could. Well, it doesn't matter anyway now because they did away with that segment because they're like, Morse code is stupid and we all have voices, so we're just gonna go with voice instead. Yeah. I don't know if exactly that's how they put it, but that was pretty much the thinging behind it. But I also get the impression that the purists still dabble in morse code. They also write in perfect cursive. I can't do that anymore at all, hard Like I could never do a cue a capital queue. Couldn't do it. It's kind of like a week to remember. Yeah, it's one of these I don't know. It's kind of sad to me to be losing some of these things. Other people say it's roll with the changes, like you can't fight progress. But is it progress when you lose something? I don't know if it was an albatross. I guess it's progress, But I don't know if cursive writing is exactly holding us back as as a culture. I print weirdly now because I write so seldom to my handwriting is sometimes I can't even like read what I wrote. I can never read what You're right. It's terrible. Not even a doctor anymore. That's why we just type to one another or tattoo one another with what we want to say. Or so they've gotten rid of morse code purists are still into it. Um. I guess we should talk a little bit about Well, I'll tell you one cool thing you can do is talk to people in outer space. Yeah, this article dated itself by talking in the present tense about space shuttle missions. No more space shuttle missions. But astronauts are generally ham licensed ye, not ham fested. No, no, no. You gotta have tiny, delicate hands to be an astronaut. For sure, you just made lobster hands. But astronauts are generally ham radio people, and they will I think one of the little neat things they'll do is get up there and talk to people on Earth. Yeah, and you can talk to them because I think they're using a VHF FM handheld radio typically, although we may be dating ourselves too because from what this this article made mention of using um uh packets, which is an Internet term, which makes me think that this this um technology has advanced by leaps and bounds as far as like using satellites and stuff like that. So I'm not sure if this is the case anymore, but ten years ago, when you were communicating with an astronaut, they had to be directly overhead, but you could talk to him over Ham radio, which is pretty awesome. Yeah, And a lot of times when the when the astronauts having a conversation, they're talking from like one school to the next as they pass over, like elementary schools, and yeah, yeah, because I mean, everybody likes talking to an astronaut, but elementary school could really love that kind of stuff totally, at least they did back in our day. Surely they still do, right, I hope. So I would like to think space will always and throw all the young I hope. Do you get a little older and you're like, what's out there? I like it still I do too. I'm kidding, what's out there? That's a good question, Chuck. All right, so I guess we should talk a little bit more about licensing. Um. First of all, I don't understand this whole license thing, Like, can you be a rogue ham? Yes, there was a guy who was sued by the government for fine, so you can do it and set yourself up and they you're just not doing it legally. Yeah. So do you remember the person who rode in with their pirate radio station. They were basically, from what I gathered, they were operating a shortwave transceiver, but they were like talking and broadcasting. Well, there's a couple of problems with that. Obviously, they didn't have a license, which makes it a pirate radio station. But number two, one of the hallmarks of shortwave communications is a two way conversation. You're not supposed to broadcast. So there's this dude who was transmitting on UM one of fourteen point to seven five mega hurts frequency and I think it was a Michigan or something, and he basically was running like a RANTI radio station, and UM, anytime somebody was like, hey, get off the get off the line, leave this open for somebody else. He would go berserk and he yes, man, everyone hated this guy, like curse people out and stuff. And then he did not fit in the community. He didn't, but he was like, I belong here just as much as you do. I'm licensed and I can be here too. So he countersued the government for like fifty million dollars and it got thrown out or whatever. I'm not sure it became of him. The last article I saw was from like two thousand and ten. But um, he's a good example of you know, there's there's places where you know, you you would not want your kids to sit around listening to what they're talking about on the ham spectrum. He's a hamtroll. Yeah, he was a hamtroll for sure, And there are plenty of others out there. But for the most part, again it's mostly the opposite of that. Apparently, CB is known to be the opposite where like anything goes, they use like crude and vulgar language, and um, so everybody's like, that's CB, hams different. But these guys were CBS from what I can gather. All right, well, let's take a little break and we'll talk a little bit more about him. I'm hungry for ham. I know delicious hamlet talk of ham like I wish I had ham fist like a honey spiral ham. I've never been in the into the sweet ones. I like smoked. I like smoked ham too, but like a honey baked ham. You don't discriminate. Man. Have you had honey baked turkey? That's pretty good too. I think it's better than their ham. Oh yeah, Oh you mean from the actual honey baked ham corporation? But yeah, I like a good smoked ham. No, sweetness doesn't need to be sweet. It stands on its own. The problem is most hams are really really processed, like just by definition. Yeah, like you, it's tough to find ham that's not super processed. And you know me, I'm trying to eat better, so I want healthy ham. I don't want to give up ham. I don't blame me, man, I love him. We said ham a lot so far. All right, So if you want to get licensed, um, which you should, well you have to. Well that's what I'm saying. I liked not run afoul of the law. Um. There is no aid restriction. UM, even though the average age in some countries is eighty. I also get the feeling that there are plenty of twelve year olds out there that have kind of like you know, you get a chemistry set. You read an article or hear this podcast, and you say, I think I might like to try my hand at Ham. Maybe there was a g whiz in there, Golly, g whiz, mom, Dad, Can I have a Ham radio? Well, if you're if you're thinking that right now, there's actually something called Kids Day. It's like an International Ham Radio Day to like kind of get kids who might be interested in Ham radio into it. Basically, dying lower, the lower the barriers to entry. I don't think he's dying. Man. Those numbers that you gave are significantly higher than the ones I saw. Are the ones that are in this article. Seems like it is growing well, and maybe there will be some sort of a luddite backlash. I think that's part of it. I think some people are saying, like, yes, I have to go work on the internet for work, but I I'm so tired of like jerks. I want to go somewhere where there's not jerks, you know, I want to feel like I'm giving something back to my community. Yeah, when a natural disaster strikes, I want them to be able to turn to me so I can say, yes, this guy is dying at this address. Too bad you can't get through to get him out of there. We just thought you should know he's gonna die. I like the notion of the just the general public do good or like um my dad, when I was a kid, we had a jeep and back I mean, jeeps are all over the place now for people that have never been like off of pavement. But back in the seventies, jeep if you saw a jeep on the road and not well know, you waved. They all waved at each other, but there was about a ninety five percent chance that that person was an off rotor as well. And about half of the jeep said those little winches on the front of him. And I remember it didn't snow that much in Georgia, but uh, every time it snowed, my dad would get on the horn with his jeep buddies and they would get out and pull people out of ditches and like tow cars, you know, onto the road and stuff like that, just for no other reason than to like, you know, it's probably fun for them to come in and save the day, you know, yeah, and to help to get that sense of satisfaction. Same. I mean, this is a it's the same thing except a little less rugged. Yeah, they were. It was also the CB crowd, which kind of ties it all together. They're the they're the rough ones though that the jeep dudes all had to CBS and we talk to each other and right, all right, so there's no age restriction. Every country is going to have their own licensing deal, but here in the US you have to pass the test. Now. I think it's what multiple choice questions. I'm curious what they are. I I looked and I didn't really see any. Um, just be nice, just be nice. How much do you love America? A lot? Super a lot more than my head can take sometimes? And then Toby Keith levels right, Um, But there's three different types of licenses in there, graduated in difficulty the tests are, but each one gives you more access to more bands on the spectrum. I think the highest class is the extra class. And um, you don't need to know more for any of these now, but I'll bet, I'll bet if you're a level three HAM license holder, you probably no more code pretty well too. I'm sure it's not across the board, but I'll bet it's pretty high percentage because I imagine you might have a little egg on your face if you're an extra class uh license holder and everybody's just speaking to one another making yeah, and you're like, could you say that please out loud? I feel a little left out, Like, no, son, didn't it beeps? Or is it clicks? Is it both? Okay? Both? I think it depends on the receiver. There is something called the American Radio Relay League the a r r L, and they've got a great website if you go UM. They're all manner of articles about your entree into Ham operating and UM statistics and tips and pointers. It's their their way into it UM. In Atlanta, we have a club I can't remember the name of it UM, but it was formed in nineteen eleven and apparently is the oldest continuously running club in Georgia. Wow, that actually predates Ham Radio according to this. Oh no, it predates the American Radio Relay League. Yeah, they were that's really impressive. It's pretty neat. Go Atlanta. I kind of want to go to a meeting now and just say hi, I'm chucking. No, I'll be like, uh, should we talk about the equipment a bit? I guess yeah. I was like, basically I had to do a crash course in radio theory. I didn't know a lot of this, you know, like I know the wavelength is the distance between two crests. I knew that frequency is how many waves pass like any given point in one second. Um, But I didn't understand how radio waves are like propagated, or how antennas receive them. And apparently you are running an electromagnetic field through your antenna and the end yeah, pretty much. And your antenna UM basically is to put it in a layman's terms, shooting out radio waves that are being created by an oscillator in your in your transceiver, your transmitter, or these radio waves which once you shoot it out, if you were in outer space shooting off a radio wave, and it was guaranteed to never run into a planet or a star or anything like that, it would just keep going forever. Right, That's what a radio wave wants to do. It just wants to keep going. It's not going to get messed up or diminished, degrade or anything like that. It's when it runs into stuff that it starts to or when it when it's hit by m cosmic rays that it starts to diminish, degrade or something like that. Right, So UM, the if it hits UH antenna and the antenna is cut to the right length, and the length that you're looking for is half the length half the sense of the wavelength. So if you have a very low frequency wave that's um, you know, a hundred feet between waves, you would want a fifty ft antenna to to pick it up UM ideally. And that's basically the rule of thumb, as you want half the distance of the wavelength you're receiving to UM pick up a wavelength or a radio wave UM most efficiently. UM. But anyway, when a radio wave encounters this electric field, this electromagnetic field that you have running up and down your antenna, it basically excites the electrons in a way that it shoots down into your receiver and magically is transformed into a voice. It's really, really really difficult to understand all this, Like people go and get like masters and PhDs in this kind of thing. It's really tough. Guys, give me a break. Wow, do you already since the higher. Yeah, even from amateurs, I think are probably like that was terrible. I can sense that was terrible. No, I think I feel confident in it. Uh. You probably have a transceiver. Um. Like I said, you could have just a receiver if you just want to listen, but you might want to talk to UH if you go to buy a new transceiver. I mean they run the gamut in price. Um. I saw like these fancy ones with all kinds of uh really gadgets and spon divots on it that was like a thousand dollars and up I saw a pretty good one for a thousand dollars too. But you don't have to go that route. UM, if you want to go a little more old school, was something that's a little easier to master, UM quicker, then you could get an old used one. Yeah. Analog ones are the ones with the tuners that you have to like physically, you know, adjust your dial, which they're not quite as precise as these digital ones, which um you know you can us the frequency uh to like a hundreds of a past the decimal. Yeah, they're really really precise, but there are a lot more complicated and they're more expensive. You don't need that to start for sure. Well, and that's one of the things they point out this article too, right, Like if you think about millions of people, um, and only a certain amount of bandwidth, apparently, I think that's where you can be on the same frequency and just dial it back by a couple of little points and create a new I don't know if that count as a new frequency or just part a subset of the same frequency. I don't know where that begins, where the cutoff is. Yeah, but that's to keep from overlapping and you know, jamming someone else's frequency, yeah, which can be a problem, especially if people in the same town are using the same frequency for a different conversation, which is why most of the time when you're in the same town, you probably know the other HAM operators. And so if you're having like a net network where you're like sitting around hanging out talking to other people in the same area, um, you were going to have a receiver receiving and transmitting frequency pair that everybody's using that you're you know, is different from something someone else in town or in that same area is going to be using as well. Yeah, And if you need to move it, you just text each other and say to just get on the internet, and then you go, oh, wait a minute, what are we doing? Uh? Antennas are obviously a big, big part of this. And I get the feeling that um Hams really enjoy um hacking objects as antenna's. Uh kind of like when you may even remember this, but when when I was a kid, did you have like antenna TVs when your kid? You remember that or was it always cable for you? Um? I never had an antenna, but like neighbors did. Yeah, I know, yeah, I remember when you when I was a kid, Like you know, you would put the tinfoil sometimes attached to the antenna. Oh real, like rabbit ears on a TV. Yeah, I thought you meant the ones on the roof. Oh well those two, I guess, but I mean rabbit ears. Sure. Yeah, we had this so like if you're not getting the picture, you would you would put like foil aluminum foil at the end and it stuck to have to stand and be the one to stand there and hold it. Yeah. And sometimes you yourself could act as an antenna if you had metal in your hand or in your teeth. Yeah, And I get the feeling him enthusiasts really get into that because some of the different things that they will use uh include windows, screens on the floor of upper floor of a hotel, UH, an extension ladder, an aluminum ladder, rain gutters, and down spouts, slinkys. Slinky made sense to me. Yeah, but that's a heck of a antenna. Put a slinky on a pole. Basically anything that that's metal that you can get a current going through and transmit and receive on. Yeah, they're talking abou wires like you cast with a fishing pole between dormitories. This is old school stuff. It's very cool. Do you know what burglar tape is? No, I saw that. I'd never heard of that. Apparently the Internet hasn't either, because I cannot find any other reference to burglar tape aside from this article. Yeah, I don't know everything the Internet. It's probably like burglars caught on tape or some burglar died after being taped to a tree when he was caught. Yeah. Yeah, ham radio to me, that kind of falls in that bucket of things that I was talking about, like old I can't remember which podcast it was, but old technologies that you can still use, Like I think it's a cool skill to have. Like, if it all goes south and everything the internet crumbles and people turn on one another ham radio, the Hams are gonna be ahead of the game. You know, they're gonna be able to communicate with one another. Yeah, kind of a neat skill to have. Yeah, they'll be like, yeah, the purge looks like it has come to pass. The city's on fire. You can go to a ham fest if you want to meet people, and you can buy cheap used equipment, sure, and get tips and tricks from the people you're buying from. Like, yeah, if you if you're at all into this, find a ham fest. Oh yeah, and if it turns out to be the food, then enjoy that as well. Lucked out. It's called a happy accident. Uh. And then they say the best thing to do, like you said, is to talk to a HIM enthusiast. And apparently the teachers are called Elmer's and uh, I imagine they delight in teaching any young kid that comes their way about ham radio. I think there's very very few that are like, out of my face, kid, I don't want to pass on my knowledge. I bet they really enjoy that. Yeah, I'll there's there's genuinely zero of them who are like, forget you. I don't have time for this. I don't like talking all right, celebrity hams, are we there? Yeah? Number one Ronnie Mills out Apparently Joe Walsh of the Eagles and the James Gang is a Ham. Gary Shandling was I did not know pass And that's the neat thing you can talk with Joe Walsh maybe right, Like the community is they encouraged that he's not like I'm Joe Walsh. I'm I'm looking for Ronnie millsap only right, I just want privacy on my Ham radio. For Scilla Pressley what probably spreading a scientology via Ham right now? She was a scientologist, oh yeah, or a King Hussain of Jordan's. There were a lot of surprised to see a lot of dignitaries and like presidents and uh like leaders of the free world. It's crazy. I am enthusiasts. Barry Goldwater was chet Atkins, and Brando apparently was Oh man, could you imagine that conversation. You would be able to pick him out immediately, like I think that's Marlon Brando talking lies descending on my face. The darkness like, Uh, that's not Joe Walsh right. Uh, and apparently when you die it's very sad. It's called an s K, a silent key. And uh that means you're no longer operating, not in this realm, at least not using these antenna I like that thought. Nice a positive note. Uh, you got anything else? Nothing else? I'm gonna go out and get a Ham radio. I knew you've got. You bought a slinky, you got exploding head syndrome. Now you're gonna become a Ham operator. If you want to know more about Ham radio, you can start by typing those words into our search part. But again, just start asking around. Find somebody who is a hammer a radio operator. Yeah, find an Elmer and they will teach you everything you need to know. And since I said Olmer, it's time for listener mail. Hey guys, A huge fan of the show, Great entertainment, interesting stuff that as a normal lazy person I would never look up myself. I really wanted to thank you for keeping me company while training for my first ever marathon. I believe it's a New York marathon. Yes, training is brutal, long hours running alone with nothing to do, but obsess on how much it sucks and why on earth am I doing this? I don't even like to drive twenty six miles. I can't imagine running that. You know, a bit of background. I'm thirty nine years old, first time ever running a marathon. Uh, and it's going to be the New York City Marathon in early November. Well, that's a heck of a one to start on. Yeah, listen to your show makes me makes training so much better. I've tried everything from music, audiobooks, regular radio, other podcasts. Nothing keeps my mind distracted from the pain better than your show. Everything's disgusting. It makes me cute. I truly love it. I'm not sure if you guys have on it, but Babe, a marathon episode would be great. Why do we put ourselves through such hell? And the high that one gets from running and completing a race runners higher, that'd be interesting. I would do a marathon one. I would not not a marathon. I would do a marathon episode. It would be really short. We just do that to be funny, or we make it exactly twenty six minutes long. Anyway, Thanks again, guys, and congrats for an excellent show that is uh. Marco, Marco, good luck, Yeah, buddy, good luck In November. Um, this will be coming out sort of around that time. Yeah, so you can listen to it as you crossed the finish line. Yeah, that'd you go, Marco? Come on, man, you can do it. Hang on there, get up, Get up, Marco, come on. Oh you should probably seek medical attention for that. Just just stay there, man, stay down. I love it. Thanks Marco. Best of luck to you for reals though, UH and all of you who are running in the New York City Marathon or any marathon, or doing anything that you use us to motivate you with, you can do it. Just keep it up. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with me on Twitter at josh um Clark and uh s y s K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and UH stuff you Should Know on Facebook. You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com.