I remember a time when I was forced to live in a condo for a year.

The problem is obvious: no viewable antennas. The solution was ever so NOT obvious: I had my antennas totally BELOW GROUND in the basement of the condo. Did it work? Of course. Was it fun? You BET it was!

The method that made it work so well was that I chose my frequencies and modes specifically to allow for the huge signal deficit that comes with such a ridiculous notion. In short, I used Morse Code (and occasionally voice, which I hate) pumped to/from a VHF beam and a UHF beam, sitting on a tripod on the floor.

I’m betting that some of the readers here are ready to spit out a few “nah, can’t be done”s. But it can, and I did. Here’s how: See, we have launched a pretty fair number of satellites that carry amateur radio transponders on them. In my case, I utilized the LEOs (low earth orbiting) satellites which are set to receive my puny signals and then transmit them back to anybody listening to the downstream frequencies.

All of which is not intended for the newbie, necessarily. EXCEPT to point out a couple of things that ARE appropriate:

1. You have choices. Many many many choices. We have instituted regulations that allow for literally millions of frequencies for YOUR use, across an extremely wide variety of bands.

2. By making clever choices, you can render moot the notion that the Technician frequencies are mostly for local use only. In my case in the above example, I used freqs that were for the Technicians. Local only? Nah, I worked three countries. Well, four actually. The USA of course, as well as Canada, Mexico, and Cuba.

Part of the choices that we should be talking about — especially for the newcomer — involves the large number of modes. Digital modes, video modes, error-correcting modes, you name it. But that’s for another additional topic.

73 de Luck, WA4STO
Wilber, Nebraska

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