Russell wrote:So...... just out of curiosity... what exactly is a licensed radio operator, and what's the point of it?
Not trying to be disagreeable or anything, it's an honest question.
Before there was the internet, there were "hams."
Radio frequency spectrum is regulated for use at the international and national levels. Certain bands are set aside for citizen use, and you generally need a license to transmit on those bands. The FCC licenses radio operators in the US. Exceptions are the 'Citizens Band' (as in CB radios, good buddy), and maybe some a couple other freqs where the low-power radios you can buy at Home depot and Sportsman Warehouse operate, but I haven't kept up with that area.
As to why... this has a long history. Radios really were the internet of the 1920s/30s/40s/50s. Amateur hobbyists, instead of tinkering with computers and networks and iPods and such, spent their time on building radios and trying to contact each other, not only nationally but internationally. This paralleled the commercial development of radio with AM radios stations spring up across the country. Instead of reading bloggers and news websites on line, people listened to shows and commentators and news agencies.
On the amateur side, people ("hams") experimented with both radios sets (using crystals instead of transistor or computer chips
) and antennas --- and did most of it in Morse code. A lot of what has become known about radio propagation was learned by amateurs' experimentation. One amateur was a guy named Curtis E. Lemay, who you may recognize as a rather famous WWII Air Force general. When he was setting up the Strategic Air Command after WWII, he went on a round the world bomber flight with a ham radio set on board, and kept in communication with his HQ in the US as they flew around the world. He did this to demonstrate that the USAF could set up a world-wide, realtime, command and control system for (nuclear) bombers. So it was the amateur field that laid the groundwork for today's military command and control systems.
Besides talking to each other, hams organized into groups that could establish communications during disasters and other big events. Radios don't require copper or fiberoptic connections -- as long as you have the radio and a power supply (like a gas powered generator) you can communicate. Hams are still a part of many civil defense/emergency management systems around the country. There are many "repeaters" around the country that will transmit your radio signal for quite some distance. When I was driving from California to DC on one trip, I often chatted with people who were several states away as a way to pass the time -- and it was also nice to know I could contact someone if I needed to in a hurry. This was long before cell phones were ubiquitous.
Guess all those years of wideband and Satcom in the military stuck with me after all 
