Stuff You Should Know - Ham Radio and the Hams Who Use Them

Episode Date: November 1, 2016

If you thought that Ham Radio enthusiasts were (mostly) men and boys who sit alone late at night in order to scan frequencies searching for a human connection then you're absolutely correct. But it's much more than that. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

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I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there. So it's Stuff You Should Know. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Go ahead, Josh Clark. This is Chuck in Oregon. Oh, well, 73, Chuck, 73. Don't know what that means.

It's probably your age if you're a ham radio operator. 73 is a term that means my compliments to you. Oh, or best regards. Yeah, it is ham code. Well, I wasn't joking, by the way. We're talking about ham radio, sometimes called amateur radio, sometimes called shortwave radio,

although it's not always shortwave radio. Right. Like technically. On the electromagnetic radio spectrum. Yeah, but I did make a joke about 73, but that is actually, in some countries, the average age is 80 and older. Is that right?

Yeah. Which countries? I don't know, I don't know about the US. The most recent stats I found though, there are about 800,000 ham radio operators in the US of A. Is that right? About, yeah, not bad. No, that's more than I saw.

I saw, I think 672 was the number I saw. And then double that in Japan. Yeah, they're into it. Had no idea. In the millions, two to three million around the world, and in the United States as of this month, there are more than 740,000 amateur radio station licenses with California having the most.

Well, California's big into ham radio, everybody knows that. And I feel like it's obvious, but this is mostly men, about a 15% rate of women or females, young ladies, whatever, that are ham radio enthusiasts. Just seems sort of like a, seems like a guy thing. Not just a guy thing, but a Ned Flanders guy thing.

Yeah, I don't wanna knock them because I think it's a neat thing. It is a neat thing. I was sitting there, I was researching this a little more and more, I was like, okay, there is one corner of the world where you can go to escape like humanity as it stands on the internet.

Totally. And that's an oversimplification like with ham radio, they are very much known, very well known for being very polite, very professional, very eagle scoutish, I guess. Yeah, there are rules and you have to get a license. Right, exactly. And because you do have to hold a license to operate a ham radio,

they do think that that's kind of where this tradition of professionalism came out of. It weeds out a lot of jerks at the very least. It does. There are jerks on ham radio, some really bad jerks, but they're very much the exception to the rule. I would think so. Whereas like on an internet chat room,

the polite people are the exception to the rule. In ham radio world, it's just the opposite. So it's very refreshing that there's this out there, there's a place that's still like kept polite and nice and like, hey, how are you? I just wanted to see how are you? Oh, you're in Korea, huh? Well, that's pretty far away.

Yeah. And just having a conversation like that, just to do it, that's basically the point of ham radio or one of them. There's a purity to it that really spoke to me. Yeah. Same here. I watched a little Vimeo documentary called Ham Radio,

Ancestors of the Internet. Yeah, pretty much. Great little, it's true. But, and this got across to me, ham radio, the ethos or the persona of ham radio, there's a segment where they're talking about how one of the big foundations of ham radio is public service.

Sure. Which I did not know. I didn't either. But in times of like natural disaster where radio, where other communications are knocked out, shortwave radios draw very little power so you can run them off the battery. And they can communicate outside of the disaster zone

when cell phones and the internet is gone. And they do do that. They do. It's like part, it's one of the pillars of ham radio. Well, during this segment, the director of the Vimeo documentary was playing the battle hymn of the Republic. Nice.

And I was like, this is ham radio. I love it. They are called hams. So when we say that, we're not being derogatory. Although. Some call them radio amateurs is one word. Oh, really? Well, the word ham comes from back in the day

when there were ships and coastal stations and government stations and amateur operators increasingly all over the world vying for the same signals. Sometimes these amateur radio operators would have powerful signals and they could jam like government operations. Right. And so they, in a derogatory pejorative way

would call them hams. And that name stuck. Although the meaning of it, the being pejorative has fallen away and they embrace it now. Like queer. Sure. It's the same thing, same principle.

It was meant to be a put down and they adopted it with a sense of pride. Yeah, and it's like, we're gonna take this from you. Right. Like take the power from you. Yeah. It's a great way to handle things, I think. Sure.

You know. I saw another origin story. Oh yeah? Yeah. And I think with the one you're talking about when they said that they were hams, they were saying they were hamfisted. Like they didn't have the delicacy needed

to tune into a frequency correctly or broadcast on a frequency. Which is not true. No. They have very delicate hands, actually. Right. It's part of the requirement by the FCC. I saw another origin story was that in 1908,

three Harvard men founded a radio club and they called it the, based on their last names, the Hyman Almey Murray radio station or ham for short. It's also a law firm. Probably it is now. Yeah. Interesting. Is that, how verified is that?

Or is that just something we're gonna throw out and say, that could be interesting? This one comes from RF Cafe, which is a legit site. Yeah, I like yours more. Well, it's not mine. You didn't just make it up? No. So I found this great little piece

that kind of helped explain to me a little bit about how radio works and how amateur radio works. So if I may. Can we play Battle Hymn of the Republic? We totally should. Is it rights-free? Oh, it's gotta be. Sure, sure.

All right, so if you look at a AM radio dial, well, you'll have to find a AM radio dial. Right, go find your dad's old Malibu, 1978 Malibu. Yeah, actually, you don't have to look at the physical dial. If you have a radio in your car that's digital, you can just go to the bottom of it. Okay, all right. It's about 535 all the way to the top.

It's about 1605, and that's kilohertz. Is it kilohertz or megahertz? Kilohertz, is it really for AM? Okay. For AM radio. Okay. And that is one band. When you hear about a radio band,

that entire spectrum is one band. Yeah, and a band is just an arbitrary trance, right? Yeah, it's a group of frequencies. Right, from one to the other. Right. And the distance between those two from, what'd you say? For AM radio, 535 to 1605. Right, so that would be the band width between those two.

Correct, yeah. So you've got that as a band. The FCC doles out on the spectrum available bands for the government, for the military, for all these different people to use as their own. And they have allocated 26 bands for amateurs. Yeah. And that's from 1.8 megahertz in this case,

which is just above that radio broadcast frequency. Sure. To 275 gigahertz. That's a pretty significant swath of the spectrum. It is. And so much so that you're using essentially different types of technology to transmit or receive on them.

Yeah, boy, this is gonna be a good one. I was kinda worried. Oh man, don't worry. I feel like it's heating up. This is us. So the way this person put it is, if you think of the radio spectrum like a measuring tape, between a half an inch and about 1.7 inches

is that AM radio band. If you go all the way up to 88 inches to 108 inches, that's the FM radio band. And between a half inch and 30 inches is this very special place where the ionosphere, it reflects off the ionosphere, depending on what type of day and what time of day it is.

Right. And I can step in and explain that if you don't mind. Yeah, go ahead. So the ionosphere is one part of the Earth's atmosphere. It's toward the top, right? Yeah. And cosmic rays and solar rays and all sorts of rays are constantly smacking into the ionosphere.

And they're knocking electrons off the atoms up there, ionizing them. These electrons don't just float away into outer space. They actually form this kind of blanket layer. And it's a really great medium, this blanket layer of electrons in the ionosphere, for bouncing radio signals of a specific type of frequency back to Earth, right?

So one of the benefits of a shortwave radio is that you're using radio waves in a frequency that they bounce off the ionosphere really well. And so you can shoot it up into the ionosphere and reflect it back down. And because of this angle, you can transmit this radio over really long distances, hundreds of miles, thousands of miles,

because you're bouncing it off of the ionosphere. During the day, the sun's solar rays add this extra kind of dense layer on the bottom of the ionosphere. So they tend to get absorbed more than at night when the sun's rays aren't hitting that part of the ionosphere. So they bounce better,

which is why you get better reception or your signals travel longer at night than during the day for shortwave radio. Which really plays into hams. Right. Because the idea that you always have is two o'clock in the morning. Right, exactly.

That dude in his attic. Talking to someone in Taiwan, you know, which is great. Or talking to Pinhead in Burma right before he opens that box and becomes Pinhead in Hellraiser. Yeah, or talking to Ronnie Milsap. That's where this guy got me. Because he's a celebrity ham.

Celebrity ham. Unfortunately, he waited until the last sentence of the entire article, but he finally got me then. Well, we'll get to that later. There are other celebrity hams out there. That'll be our last sentence, too. So like we said earlier, between, if you're thinking of it as a measuring tape,

between a half inches and 30 inches is where you get this great reflection off the ionosphere, which you described so well. I like your measuring tape. Well, it's not mine. Above that 30 inches, they stop bouncing and it becomes what we call line of sight. So.

That's like FM and TV and stuff. Yeah, like, you know, when you drive out of town, you lose your reception because you have gone out of the line of sight from that broadcast antenna. And there's trees and buildings and mountains in your way. All sorts of junk. But if you're shooting stuff off the ionosphere.

Nothing. See and heck, mountains. So between three inches and 30 inches, that's called the high frequency spectrum. And then from 30 inches to about 300 inches. And again, these aren't inches measuring tape analogy. That is called the VHF spectrum. And we're gonna get into that later,

but the VHS spectrum is really neat. You can operate ham radio via that and use things called repeaters where you basically share part of a broadcast tower in a city. And you say, well, if I can get my signal to you, you can repeat it back out further because you have way more wattage and power than I do.

And I was looking to see like what the tip for tat equation is with wattage for distance. Is there one? Not that I could find, no, but the rule of thumb is that the more watts you have, the more power you have, the further you can send your signal. Right.

But yeah, I mean, like if you're buying a transceiver, which we'll get into later, it might have anywhere between five watts and like a hundred watts, maybe a little more. If you're running like a radio station, like Georgia State here has very famously as a hundred thousand watt transmitter. So you wanna shoot your signal to them

and then they change the frequency a little bit and shoot it out on a slightly different frequency, greatly empowered. Yeah, you're like piggybacking off these antennas basically. Like Michelle Obama is talking to you directly kind of empowered, you know what I mean? And that's just for the repeater. That is not, that's if you're going to VHS, VHS,

the VHF route, you don't have like, there are all kinds of different frequencies below that. But in fact, I think probably, well, I'm not gonna say that because I don't know. I was gonna say that people mostly don't use the repeater method with VHF, but I don't know the stats. I think it's specifically FM that they use the repeater for VHF FM.

I think that's what you use the repeater for. No, it is, but I'm saying that as far as ham radio operators, I get the feeling that the majority of people don't use that method. Yeah, but I might be wrong. No, I think you're right. You think? Yeah, I don't know if you can.

Because everything I saw was anytime they were talking about repeater, they called it FMVHF. Yeah, but you can still operate ham radio that way. Right, yeah. But in that specific band, right? Correct. Okay, I got you. I actually, I mean, I'm sure there are a handful

of hams out there that listen to this show. That are groaning in pain right now. I know, I do want to apologize, because anytime we do a show where there are rabid enthusiasts, we're bound to get some stuff not quite right, but hopefully there are some of the nice enthusiasts that we've had over the years. These guys, yeah.

That say like, thanks for helping to spread the word. You got this and this wrong. Not like those chess players. Man, man, they were so mean. I think it's interesting what kinds of people are attracted to different, and of course, it's made up of the spectrum of people, but they seem to be grouped a lot of times.

Sure. At least from the feedback that we get. Birds of a feather flock together. I guess that's the saying, isn't it? Should we take a break? Yes. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk about just what in the heck these hams are doing.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. ["Story Show"] All right, what are these hams doing? One thing you can do, if you have just a receiver

or a radio scanner, or even if you have a transceiver where you can actually broadcast out, a lot of times they're just listening. They're just going up and down the frequencies, seeing if they can hear any interesting conversations. They're going down the frequency like boring, they're going down the frequency like boring, you sound ugly, I don't like your voice.

You sound like comic book guy from The Simpsons. And then finally they're like, South Korea, I've been looking for someone to talk to you from there. Maybe so. And actually there's a thing called QSL Cards where you get in touch with somebody, and from what I can gather, they mail you a postcard saying this person got in touch with me

and you collect these postcards, QSL Cards, just to be like, look, I've spoken to people in a hundred different countries, I'm a member of the Century Club. It's like a little merit badge, I think. Right, pretty cool. So you can listen in. The difference between, let's say a radio DJ

who just talks at the world, or talks to their city, is you are generally having a two-way conversation with someone, or a little round table, or a little network where people meet at a certain frequency, at a certain time of the week, to talk shop, I guess, or rap, or talk about whatever you want. Basically like hanging out in a general store but on the airwaves.

Yeah, locker room talk. Right, because all guys do that. So they can use all kinds of frequencies, like we said, they're above the AM broadcast band, and apparently a good band, a good frequency range, is from about 1.6 megahertz to about 27 megahertz. That's during the day, 15 to 27 is good for these long-distance communiques.

So if you're trying to reach your friend in Taiwan, maybe log on, well, not log on. So weird to try and use that internet terminology. Because these guys are the ancestor of the internet. Well, what if you needed a license to get on the internet wouldn't that be great? Oh, yeah. If you had to pass it like a decency test or something.

It would be, I mean, it'd definitely do away with that whole net neutrality thing, but. Yeah, true. A decency test, or maybe just to be, I don't know, on social media or something. Yeah, Facebook's like, yeah, that'd be great, let's limit our users. No, no, but at the same time, it's like,

well, who decides what's decent, and who creates that test, and who administers it, and do you do it at the end of a barrel of an M1 or something? No, I'd do it, no guns involved. But I mean, I think of the questions. Yeah. I'm pretty even-handed.

Okay. Just don't be a jerk. Give me a good decency question on your test. If, just be nice, and don't be a jerk. It's not a question, it'd be hilarious if every single one of the questions started out with, let's see, just be nice, just be a jerk. Don't be a jerk, don't bait people.

Yeah, well, that's just good rules to follow. Just be nice. Just be nice, don't be a jerk, right? Yes. It's true. And again, if you're looking for generally a place where most people are nice and not jerks, you would be happy to get into ham radio,

if you're not already. Right. Another thing you might be doing is you might be, if you are really into it in your old school, you might be chatting in Morse code. Yeah, and they used to become a licensed operator. You have to take a test, and there used to be a Morse code test,

and apparently that sorted people out pretty quick. Sure. I would spectacularly fail a Morse code test. Not if you studied. Even if I studied. Now you do fine. Dots and dashes, my brain doesn't think like that. Really?

I think in like, like, Big Macs and pizzas. Yeah, exactly. Although a pizza does look like a lot, like a dot, and if you stretch a big Mac out, it could be a dash. Maybe I could take on this Morse code test. I think you could. It doesn't matter anyway now,

because they did away with that segment, because they're like, Morse code is stupid, and we all have voices, so we're just gonna go with voice instead. Yeah. I don't know if exactly that's how they put it, but that was pretty much the thing behind it. But I also get the impression

that the purists still dabble in Morse code. They also write in perfect cursive. I can't do that anymore at all, hardly can you? I could never do a Q, a capital Q. Couldn't do it. Kind of like a weird Q, remember? Yeah, it's one of these, I don't know, it's kind of sad to me

to be losing some of these things. Other people say it's, roll with the changes, like you can't fight progress, but is it progress? When you lose something, I don't know if it was an albatross, I guess it's progress, but I don't know if cursive writing

is exactly holding us back as a culture. I print weirdly now, because I write so seldom. Dude, my handwriting is, sometimes I can't even read what I wrote. I can never read what you write. It's terrible. Not even a doctor anymore. That's why we just type to one another,

or tattoo one another with what we want to say. Or use Morse code. So they've gotten rid of Morse code, purists are still into it. I guess we should talk a little bit about, well, I'll tell you one cool thing you can do is talk to people in outer space. Yeah, this article dated itself by talking

in the present tense about space shuttle missions. True, no more space shuttle missions, but astronauts are generally ham licensed. Yep. Not ham-fisted. No, no. No, you gotta have tiny, delicate hands to be an astronaut for sure.

You just made lobster hands when you did that. But astronauts are generally ham radio people, and they will, I think one of the neat things they'll do is get up there and talk to people on earth. Yeah, and you can talk to them because I think they're using a VHF FM handheld radio typically. Right.

Although we may be dating ourselves too, because from what this article made mention of using packets, which is an internet term, which makes me think that this technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. Oh, really? As far as using satellites and stuff like that. So I'm not sure if this is the case anymore,

but 10 years ago, when you were communicating with an astronaut, they had to be directly overhead for you to talk to them. But you could talk to them over ham radio, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. And a lot of times when the astronauts having a conversation, they're talking from one school

to the next as they pass over. Oh, like elementary schools and stuff? Yeah, sure. Because I mean, everybody likes talking to an astronaut, but elementary school kids really love that kind of stuff. Totally. At least they did back in our day. Surely they still do, right?

I hope so. I would like to think space will always enthrall the young. I hope so. So you get a little older and you're like, what's out there? I like it still. I do too.

I'm kidding. What's out there? That's a good question, Chuck. All right, so I guess we should talk a little bit more about licensing. First of all, I don't understand this whole license thing. Like, can you be a rogue ham? Yes, there was a guy who was sued by the government

for a $21,000 fine. So you can do it and set yourself up and you're just not doing it legally. Yeah, so do you remember the person who rode in with their pirate radio station? Yes. They were basically, from what I gather, they were operating a shortwave transceiver,

but they were like talking and broadcasting. Well, there's a couple of problems with that. Obviously, they didn't have a license, which makes it a pirate radio station. But number two, one of the hallmarks of shortwave communications is a two-way conversation. You're not supposed to broadcast. So there's this dude who is transmitting

on 14.275 megahertz frequency. And I think it was a Michigan or something and he basically was running like a ranty radio station. And anytime somebody was like, hey, get off the line, leave this open for somebody else, he would go berserk. And he, yes, man, everyone hated this guy. What, like curse people out and stuff?

Oh yeah. And then- He does not fit in the community. He didn't, but he was like, I belong here just as much as you do. I'm licensed and I can be here too. So he's countersued the government for like $50 million and it got thrown out or whatever.

I'm not sure what became of him. The last article I saw was from like 2010. But he's a good example of, there's places where you would not want your kids to sit around listening to what they're talking about on the ham spectrum. He's a ham troll. Yeah, he was a ham troll for sure.

And there are plenty of others out there. But for the most part, again, it's mostly the opposite of that. Apparently, CD is known to be the opposite. Where like anything goes, they use like crude and vulgar language. And so everybody's like, that's CB, ham's different. But these guys were CBSK from what I can gather.

All right, well, let's take a little break and we'll talk a little bit more about ham. I'm hungry for ham. I know. Delicious ham. All this talk of ham. Like I wish I had ham fists. Like a honey spiral ham.

I've never been into the sweet ones. I like smoked ham. I like smoked ham too, but like a honey baked ham. You don't discriminate? Man, have you had a honey baked turkey? That's pretty good too. Sure. I think it's better than their ham.

Oh yeah? Mm-hmm. Oh, you mean from the actual honey baked ham corporation? Yeah. But yeah, I like a good smoked ham. No sweetness, doesn't need to be sweet. It stands on its own.

The problem is most hams are really, really processed. Like just by definition. Yeah. Like it's tough to find ham that's not super processed. And you know me, I'm trying to eat better. So I want healthy ham. I don't want to give up ham. I don't blame you, man.

I love ham. We've said ham a lot so far. Ham. All right, so if you want to get licensed, which you should. Well, you have to. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like the.

Not run afoul of the law. Right. There is no age restriction, even though the average age in some countries is 80, I also get the feeling that there are plenty of 12 year olds out there. Right. That have kind of like, you know, you get a chemistry set, you read an article or hear this podcast.

Yeah. And you say, I think I might like to try my hand at ham. Right. Maybe there was a G whiz in there. Yeah. And golly G whiz, mom, dad, can I have a ham radio? Well, if you're, if you're thinking that right now, there's actually something called kids day.

It's like an international ham radio day to like kind of get kids who might be interested in ham radio into it. Yeah. It's a dying thing. Lower the barriers to entry. I don't think it's dying, man. Those numbers that you gave are significantly higher

than the ones I saw are the ones that are in this article. Well, maybe it's growing. Seems like it is growing. Well, and maybe there will be some sort of a ludite backlash. I think that's part of it. Yeah. I think some people are saying like, yes, I have to go work on the internet for work,

but I, I'm so tired of like jerks. Yeah. I want to go somewhere where there's not jerks. Yeah. You know, I want to feel like I'm giving something back to my community. Yeah. When a natural disaster strikes,

I want them to be able to turn to me so I can say, yes, this guy is dying at this address. Too bad you can't get through to get him out of there. Yeah. We just thought you should know he's going to die. I like the notion of the, just the general public do-gooder. Like my dad, when I was a kid, we had a Jeep.

And back, I mean, Jeeps are all over the place now for people that have never been like off of pavement. But back in the seventies Jeep, if you saw a Jeep on the road. You saluted. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the nineties called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey Dude, the nineties called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. Oh, my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I will know you waved. They all waved at each other.

Yeah, yeah. But there was about a 95% chance that that person was an off-roader as well. And about half of the Jeep said those little winches on the front of them. And I remember, and it didn't snow that much in Georgia, but every time it snowed, my dad would get on the horn with his Jeep buddies and they would get out

and pull people out of ditches and like tow cars. That's awesome. You know, onto the road and stuff like that. That was very cool. Just for no other reason than to like, you know, it's probably fun for them to come in and save the day, you know? Yeah, and to help to get that sense of satisfaction.

Same, I mean, this is, it's the same thing, except a little less rugged. Yeah. Same thing though. There was also the CB crowd, which kind of ties it all together. They're the rough ones though. The Jeep dudes all had CBs and would talk to each other.

Right. All right, so there's no age restriction. Right. Every country is going to have their own licensing deal, but here in the US, you have to pass a test now. I think it's, what, multiple choice? 35 questions. I'm curious what they are.

I looked and I didn't really see any. Just be nice. Yeah, just be nice. How much do you love America? A lot, super lot, more than my head can take sometimes. And then Toby Keith levels. Right, right. But there's three different types of licenses

and they're graduated in difficulty, the tests are. Yeah. But each one gives you more access to more bands on the spectrum. Yeah, I think the highest class is the extra class. And you don't need to know more for any of these now. No. But I'll bet, I'll bet if you're a level three ham

license holder, you probably know Morse code pretty well too. Yeah. Well, I'm sure it's not a hundred percent across the board, but I'll bet it's pretty high percentage. Cause I imagine you might have a little egg on your face if you're an extra class, a license holder. And everybody's just speaking to one another, making more sounds to their tongues.

Yeah. And you're like, could you say that please out loud? I feel a little left out. I'm like, no, son. Everybody goes like. Isn't it beeps or is it clicks? Is it? Both.

Oh, okay. Both. I think it depends on the receiver. Oh, gotcha. There is something called the American Radio Relay League, the ARRL, and they got a great website. If you go, they're all manner of articles about your entree and to ham operating

and statistics and tips and pointers. They're way into it. In Atlanta, we have a club. I can't remember the name of it, but it was formed in 1911. And apparently is the oldest continuously running club in Georgia. Wow.

That actually predates ham radio according to this. Oh no, it predates the American Radio Relay League. Yeah, they were 1914. That's really impressive. It's pretty neat. Go Atlanta. I kind of want to go to a meeting now and just say hi, I'm Chuck and.

No, I'll be like. Yeah. Should we talk about the equipment a bit, I guess? Yeah, I was like, basically I had to do a crash course in radio theory. Yeah. I didn't know a lot of this. I didn't either.

Like I know the wavelength is the distance between two crests, knew that. Frequency is how many waves pass like any given point in one second. Okay. But I didn't understand how radio waves are like propagated or how antennas receive them. And apparently you are running an electromagnetic field

through your antenna and. The end. Yeah, pretty much. And your antenna basically is to put it in a layman's terms, shooting out radio waves. Okay. That are being created by an oscillator in your transceiver, your transmitter,

or these radio waves, which once you shoot it out, if you were in outer space shooting off a radio wave, and it was guaranteed to never run into a planet or a star or anything like that. That chance. It would just keep going forever, right? That's what a radio wave wants to do. It just wants to keep going.

It's not going to get messed up or diminish or degrade or anything like that. It's when it runs into stuff that it starts to, or when it's hit by cosmic rays that it starts to diminish or degrade or something like that, right? So, if it hits an antenna, and the antenna is cut to the right length,

and the length that you're looking for is half the length, half the distance of the wavelength. So if you have a very low frequency wave that's 100 feet between waves, you would want a 50 foot antenna to pick it up ideally. And that's basically the rule of thumb, is you want half the distance of the wavelength

you're receiving to pick up a radio wave most efficiently. But anyway, when a radio wave encounters this electric field, this electromagnetic field that you have running up and down your antenna, it basically excites the electrons in a way that it shoots down into your receiver and magically is transformed into a voice. Or clicks and beeps.

It's really, really, really difficult to understand all this. Like people go and get like masters and PhDs in this kind of thing. Agreed. It's really tough, guys. Give me a break. Wow, do you already sense the ire?

Yeah. Even from amateurs, I think are probably like, that was terrible. I can sense that was terrible. No, I think feel confident in it. You probably have a transceiver. Like I said, you could have just a receiver if you just want to listen,

which you might want to talk to. If you go to buy a new transceiver, I mean, they run the gamut in price. I saw like these fancy ones with all kinds of really gadgets and spawn divots on it that was like $1,000 and up. I saw a pretty good one for $1,000 too. But you don't have to go that route.

If you want to go a little more old school who's something that's a little easier to master quicker, then you could get an old used one. Yeah, analog ones are the ones with the tuners that you have to like physically adjust your dial. They're not quite as precise as these digital ones, which you can adjust the frequency to like a hundredth of a past the decimal.

Oh, really? Yeah, they're really, really precise, but they're a lot more complicated and they're more expensive. You don't need that to start for sure. Well, and that's one of the things they point out in this article too, right? Like if you think about millions of people

and only a certain amount of bandwidth, apparently I think that's where you can be on the same frequency and just dial it back by a couple of little points and create a new, I don't know if that counts as a new frequency or just part a subset of the same frequency. I don't know where that begins, where the cutoff is.

Yeah, but that's to keep from overlapping and jamming someone else's frequency. Yeah, which can be a problem, especially if people in the same town are using the same frequency for a different conversation, which is why most of the time when you're in the same town, you probably know the other ham operators.

And so if you're having like a network where you're like sitting around hanging out, talking to other people in the same area, you are going to have a receiver, receiving and transmitting frequency pair that everybody's using that you know is different from something someone else in town or in that same area is gonna be using as well.

Yeah, and if you need to move it, you just text each other and say to them. You just get on the internet. Then you go, oh, wait a minute, what are we doing? Antennas are obviously a big, big part of this. And I get the feeling that hams really enjoy hacking objects as antennas. Kind of like when you made him remember this,

but when I was a kid, did you have like antenna TVs when you were a kid? Do you remember that? Or was it always cable for you? I never had an antenna, but I like neighbors did. Yeah, I know old fashioned neighbors. I know it's me, yeah. I remember when I was a kid,

like, you know, you would put the tin foil sometimes attached to the antenna. Oh, we're like rabbit ears on a TV. Yeah. I thought you meant the ones on the roof. Oh, well, those two, I guess, but I mean rabbit ears. Sure, yeah, we had those. So like if you're not getting the picture, you would put like foil, aluminum foil at the end.

And it sucked to have to stand, be the one to stand there and hold it. Yeah, and sometimes you yourself could act as an antenna if you had metal in your hand. Or in your teeth. Yeah, and I get the feeling that I have enthusiasm to really get into that because some of the different things that they will use

include window screens on the upper floor of a hotel. Yeah. An extension ladder, an aluminum ladder. Rain gutters and downspouts. Yeah. Slinkies. Slinky made sense to me. Yeah, but that's a heck of a antenna.

Put a slinky on a pole. Right. Basically anything that's metal that you can get a current going through and transmit and receive on. Yeah, they're talking about wires like you cast with a fishing pole between dormitories. This is old school stuff.

It's very cool. Do you know what burglar tape is? No, I saw that. I'd never heard of that. Apparently the internet hasn't either because I cannot find any other reference to burglar tape aside from this article. Yeah, I don't know.

Everything on the internet is probably like, burglar's caught on tape. Or some burglar died after being taped to a tree when he was caught. Yeah. Yeah. Ham radio to me though kind of falls in that bucket of things that I was talking about like old,

I can't remember which podcast it was, but old technologies that you can still use. Like I think it's a cool skill to have. Like if it all goes south and everything, the internet crumbles and people turn on one another. Ham radio, the hams are going to be ahead of the game. Yeah.

You know, they're going to be able to communicate with one another. So kind of a neat skill to have. Yep. So it'll be like, yeah, the purge looks like it has come to pass. The city's on fire. You can go to a ham fest if you want to meet people.

And get gathers. You can buy cheap used equipment. Sure. And get tips and tricks from the people you're buying from. Like, yeah, if you're at all into this, find a ham fest. Oh yeah. And if it turns out to be the food, then enjoy that as well.

You lucked out. It's called a happy accident. And then they say the best thing to do, like you said, is to talk to a ham enthusiast. And apparently the teachers are called Elmers. And I imagine they delight in teaching any young kid that comes their way about ham radio. I think there's very, very few that are like,

out of my face kid, I don't want to pass on my knowledge. Yeah. I bet they really enjoy that. Yeah. I'll bet there's genuinely zero of them who like, forget you. I don't have time for this. Right.

I don't like talking. All right. Celebrity hams, are we there? Yeah. Number one, Ronnie Mills out. Apparently Joe Walsh of the Eagles and the James gang is a ham. Gary Shambling was.

I did not know. Before he passed. And that's the neat thing. You can talk with Joe Walsh maybe, right? Like the community is, they encourage that. He's not like, oh, I'm Joe Walsh. I'm looking for Ronnie Mills up only. Right.

I just want privacy on my ham radio. Priscilla Presley. What? Probably spreading a Scientology via ham. I didn't know she was Scientologist. Oh yeah. Or a ham. King Hussein of Jordan.

There were a lot of, I was surprised to see a lot of dignitaries and like presidents and like leaders of the free world. It's crazy. Yeah, I didn't know that. Ham enthusiast. Barry Goldwater was, Chet Atkins. Marlon Brando apparently was.

Oh man. Could you imagine that conversation? You would be able to pick him out immediately. You're like, I think that's Marlon Brando talking. Flies descending on my face. The darkness. People like, that's not Joe Walsh, right? And apparently when you die,

it's very sad. It's called an SK, a silent key. And that means you're no longer operating. Not in this realm at least. Not using these antennae. I like that thought. Nice positive note. You got anything else?

Nothing else. I'm gonna go out and get a ham radio. I knew you bought a slinky. You got a floating head syndrome. Now you're gonna become a ham operator. If you want to know more about ham radio, you can start by typing those words into our search part. But again, go start asking around.

Find somebody who is a ham radio operator. Find an Elmer. Yeah, find an Elmer and they will teach you everything you need to know. And since I said Elmer, it's time for Listener Mail. Hey guys, huge fan of the show. Great entertainment, interesting stuff. That as a normal lazy person, I'd never look up myself.

Really wanted to thank you for keeping me company while training for my first ever marathon. I believe it's a New York marathon. Yes, training is brutal. Long hours running alone with nothing to do but obsess on how much it sucks. And why on earth am I doing this? Sounds awful.

I don't even like to drive 26 miles. I can't imagine running that, you know? A bit of background. I'm 39 years old, first time ever running a marathon. And it's gonna be the New York City Marathon in early November. Wow, that's a heck of a long to start on. Yeah, listen to your show makes me,

makes training so much better. I've tried everything from music, audio books, regular radio, other podcasts. Nothing keeps my mind distracted from the pain better than your show. Everything's disgusting, it makes me wanna puke. I truly love it. Not sure if you guys have done it

but made me a marathon episode would be great. Why do we put ourselves through such hell? And the high that one gets from running and completing a race. Runner's high, that'd be interesting. I would do a marathon one. I would, not a marathon, I would do a marathon episode. It would be really short.

We'd just do that to be funny. Or make it exactly 26 minutes long. Anyway, thanks again guys and congrats for an excellent show. That is Marco. Marco, good luck. Yeah, buddy, good luck in November. This'll be coming out sort of around that time.

Yeah, you can listen to it as you cross the finish line. Yeah, that'd be great. Go Marco, come on man, you can do it. You're almost there, you can do it. You can do it, hang on there. Oh, get up, get up. Marco, come on. Oh, you should probably seek medical attention for that.

Just stay there, man, stay down. I love it. Thanks, Marco. Best of luck to you for reels though. And to all of you who are running in the New York City Marathon or any marathon or doing anything that you use us to motivate you with, you can do it, just keep it up.

If you wanna get in touch with us, you can hang out with me on Twitter at JoshumClark and S-Y-S-K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and Stuff You Should Know on Facebook. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web,

stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, head on over to our website at www.thedude.com. Listen to Hey Dude The 90s Called on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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