One problem with ham radio these days is that most hams live where you can’t put a big old antenna up due to city laws and homeowner covenants. If you’re just working local stations on VHF or UHF, ...

It is popular to blame new technology for killing things. The Internet killed newspapers. Video killed the radio star. Is FT8, a new digital technology, poised to kill off ham radio? The community ...

MILWAUKEE—Long ago, before Facebook, Twitter and email, ham radio operators were the original social media geeks. And they’re still out there, in greater numbers than ever, chatting and messaging each ...

Only a few years ago, blogs listed ham radio alongside 35 mm film and VHS tape as technologies slated to disappear. They were wrong. Nearly 700,000 Americans have ham radio licenses — up 60 percent ...

Two years ago, in my home state of Kentucky, we had a devastating tornado that traveled nearly 200 miles, leveled towns, killed scores of people, and left widespread devastation. When emergency ...

In this day and age, there are countless methods of communication, but let's not leave radios in the past. Although smartphones offer similar functions, radios are still a trusted form of ...

Tom Beckett gestures toward a window on the third floor of the Durham County Main Library. “We’re in the middle of a geomagnetic storm,” he announces. The room chuckles. There are no swirling vortexes ...

ATLANTA – Seeking reliable backup communication in a crisis, emergency managers are finding new solutions in an old technology: ham radio. “It’s just another avenue, another opportunity for us to be ...

It’s a hobby with a responsibility. That’s how the 80 members of the Steel City Amateur Radio Club in Collier view the skill, science and enjoyment of participating in ham radio. “It’s a fun place to ...

What are ham radios? In short, ham radio operators are amateur radio enthusiasts who communicate with one another via radio frequencies assigned specifically to this community by the Federal ...

The International Space Station cost more than $100 billion. A ham radio set can be had for a few hundred bucks. Perhaps that explains, in part, the appeal of having one of humankind’s greatest ...

A prior version of this story stated incorrectly that “the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and the farther signals can travel.” It has been corrected as follows: “Such shortwave ...