Who are Hams ?!?

Okay,  while waiting for some prints to get approved by our field techs (who did catch a few mistakes on my part) I had an opportunity to think a bit about "What is Ham Radio".

The ARRL has a lot of materials available to anyone, (yet targeted mainly at club PIOs) but I needed a goal in mind to help me make sense of it all.

In a diverse group of people, I've learned it's good to not discuss technology for technology's sake right off the bat.  So if I was going to homebrew a small deck of slides they would go something like this:

TITLE : A (QUICK) INTRODUCTION TO HAM RADIO
Slide  1: Who is a ham ?
Slide  2: What do they do ?
Slide  3: How do they do it.
Slide  4: Why bother ?
Slide  5: That License Thing.
Slide  6: Internet Links
Slide  7: Someone to call

Most anyone can make it through 7 slides without falling asleep.  More than 10 requires complimentary cokes and cookies.

Now, another thing I learned (at the phone company) is even if the boss is paid enough to cause you to  assume he is smart or important or doing something right (because he runs around town in a Porsche) he can't handle more than 3 bullet points in a slide.  No matter what.  So, I now assume none of the rest of us can either (if we could, we'd have Porsches, yeah ?)  So I take a stab at the above.

Slide  1: Who is a ham ?
* Hams come from all walks of life with all sorts of interests.  The common thread between them is that they all have assembled the components of an amateur radio station and use it to communicate with other hams without (necessarily) the commercially available telephone, television or Internet services.
*
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Slide  2: What do they do ?
* This is a loaded question the answer is very broad and the sky's the limit.  Hams can operate equipment to send and receive voice conversations, image and data messages around town and around the world. 

Slide  3: How do they do it.
* Amateur equipment (power supplies, radios and antenna systems) range from pocket models with whip antennas ranging to desktop sets with backyard antennas.  Typically, pocket sized equipment is used to communicate with local folks with the larger installations capable (depending on weather and physics) of global communications. 

Slide  4: Why bother ?
*  Amateur radio has a proven track record for operating "when all else fails".  Other seemingly similar technologies (wireless data, cellular telephones, long distance phone networks, etc.) are dependent to varying extents on the commercial power grid, backup batteries, buried fiber optic and copper cables, so on and so forth.

* While seemingly antique in it's pure form, that simplicity is what makes ham radio work.  Voice and CW are 'lowest common denominators' that are (almost) universally understood.

* For the electronically or technically inclined, amateurs have a long heritage of experimentation.  Amateur radio operators have banded together at times to build and finance satellites, established wide-area data networks pre-Internet, bounce messages off the moon, etc.  Present work is in wi-fi networks and Internet-based methods to provide communication methods when traditional HF radio is not available.

Slide  5: That License Thing.
* In the USA, the FCC and ARRL work together to administrate a licensing scheme.  As a rule, the more tests passed and licenses obtained, the greater you're able to communicate.

Slide  6: Internet Links

Slide  7: Someone to call






Then, comes a rest break with cookies and sodas.  And if anyone comes back, we run through the deck again with added facts and terms like "VHF and HF and no-code tech, and verticals vs. dipoles vs Yagis, etc.) 

I know I painted with a broad brush to "keep it simple". 

Suggestions, comments, thoughts on elementary explanations of Ham Radio ?

73
Scott
KD5NJR