Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the more perplexing things is the nature of radio regulation. If you're a licensed radio amateur, you'll be familiar with this idea, but if you're not it's bewildering and apparently absurd. To explain, let me start with a light bulb that your neighbour put on their back porch. It's bright. It's pointing at your house. Like the apparent radiation from a gazillion suns it lights up the bedroom and sleep is hard to come by. Pretty annoying right? As it happens, radio is a lot like that. If you know physics, it's exactly like that, but I'll ignore that for today. In our modern world we have many different radios that each rely on a specific, let's call it colour, of light. In radio terms this is known as frequencies or radio bands and the entire collection is known as the radio spectrum. You've likely seen this without knowing. Your 2.4 GHz WiFi has an in-built frequency, 2.4 GHz, as does your 5 GHz WiFi. Your FM radio in the car has frequencies as well, 97.7 on the dial i