Amateur radio is different things to different people as there are many aspects to amateur radio. The aspect that a lot of people think of, when they think of amateur radio at all, is Morse code. They think of people sitting in front of a radio with headphones on, clicking away at a Morse key.

While it is true that many amateurs can use Morse Code to communicate, this is only one small part of amateur radio. In the early days of radio there were many people who were experimenting with equipment to produce these radio waves in different ways. At that time, the only way to use them to communicate was by turning them on and off, so Morse Code was really the only practical way of using radio waves to communicate. This is where people get the impression that amateurs only use Morse Code.

When Marconi commercialised radio – he didn’t invent radio, he just commercialised it – he was still only using Morse Code, so even commercial radio had to use Morse, not just amateurs. Speech was not yet possible to send via radio. Even relatively recently, in the 1990’s, there were some commercial stations that used Morse to communicate with different branches. Thanks to the Internet, this has changed dramatically and no commercial enterprises use Morse these days – they just send email.

Although many radio amateurs still use Morse Code, this is not the only “mode” available to amateurs. They can use speech (using several different ways of modulating radio waves to do this – think of AM, FM, Digital etc.), digital data, slow-scan imaging (a way of sending pictures), video (as in television, both analogue and digital), and we even have some satellites in orbit around the earth to use, and also bounce radio waves off the moon.

Radio amateurs are unique in that their licenses allow them to experiment with different ways of producing radio waves and different ways of using radio to communicate, even to the extent of building their own transmitters and aerials. Most other users of radio are not allowed to experiment like this, they are only allowed to use type-approved equipment and not modify it etc.

It is thanks to the experiments that amateurs conduct, and still conduct, that much is known about radio propagation, different aerial designs, digital transmissions and so on. Amateurs have led to the development of most of the modern devices that use radio – your mobile phone, WiFi, Bluetooth, the radio stations that you listen to and so the list goes on. Of course, the commercial manufacturers have improved the equipment, miniaturising and simplifying it etc. but it is the radio amateurs that led to their development in the first place. Amateurs continue to do this today, developing new ways of communicating using radio.

Of course, a lot of amateurs just like to chat on the air…