(Araucaria) World Amateur Radio Day 2011

[REP-Rede dos Emissores Portugueses]

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The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU <http://www.iaru.org/>) and its
more than 160 Member-Societies that represent countries around the world
will celebrate World Amateur Radio Day on April 18. The theme for this
year’s celebration is Amateur Radio: The First Technology-Based Social
Network.

[image: IARU_all3regions_2.JPG]

Long before the Internet and smart phones, Amateur Radio operators have been
talking, texting and sharing for decades. But unlike those commercial
services, Amateur Radio continues to attract people world-wide by providing
international communications for free. And because it does not need
pre-established supporting infrastructure, these radio-savvy “amateurs” can
reach out to friends in every corner of the world, as well as into space.

Amateur Radio operators have been the leaders in developing many of today’s
modern electronic and communications marvels. Today, the citizens of Earth
think of “wireless” as being the ubiquitous cellular phone. But this
technology is only made possible due to the pioneering work in radio
technologies first explored by these “amateurs.” Many of our leading
electrical engineers draw from their practical experiences as Amateur Radio
operators as they continue to develop applications blending computers and
radios. Ham radio operators may be “amateur” because they are unpaid
volunteers, but their skills and contributions to the world are of the
highest order.

“Of course, not just anyone [in the early days of wireless] could hook
themselves up to a commercial telegraph wire. While there were private
telegraph lines constructed and operated for the personal amusement of their
owners, they were not generally able to form networks covering more than a
neighborhood,” explained ARRL Chief Executive Officer David Sumner, K1ZZ, in
his editorial “Our Social Network” [QST, “It Seems to Us,” April 2011, page
9]. “Early telephone operators got to know their customers as well as one
another, but their technology-based social network did not extend much
beyond a town or city. It was not until the advent of wireless telegraphy
that it became possible for individuals to span significant distances and
communicate instantaneously with one another without a costly intermediary.
Thus was born the first open, technology-based social network -- the one we
now call Amateur Radio.”

Calling, texting or even using old Morse code on the amateur bands can
result in chatting with other radio amateurs across town -- or far across
the oceans. While hams have repeatedly been in the news for their
life-saving communications services in disasters, a large part of their
activities is the excitement and joy of contacting distant and remote areas
of the world, learning directly about each others’ regions and lives and
trying different ways to make radio contacts around the world.

“The social network created and maintained by hams continues to grow, even
as the landline telegraph operators who coined the epithet have
disappeared,” Sumner wrote. “Today there is so much going on in Amateur
Radio that it’s impossible for one person to take it all in. Just as it
isn’t possible to interact meaningfully with hundreds of ‘friends’ on
Facebook, even the most dedicated of us must choose among the dozens of
subgroups that are pursuing specific interests within Amateur Radio. There
isn’t even room here to list them all. Experience teaches us that the ones
that will flourish are those that actively welcome newcomers, whether they
are newly licensed or just new to this particular pursuit. One of the
beauties of our social network is that there are no internal barriers; one
can move from chasing low-band DX in the winter to microwave hilltopping in
the summer, from public service one weekend to a contest the next, from
trying out the latest digital mode in the morning to tapping a straight key
after dinner.”

Fonte Info : ARRL



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*Rede dos Emissores Portugueses*
Associação Nacional de Radioamadores
Fundada em 1926 - Membro da IARU desde 1931
Membro ARISS-Europa / REP-ARISS
Membro AMSAT / REP-AMSAT
Instituição de Utilidade Pública desde 1980
Página na Internet em http://www.rep.pt
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