MELBOURNE, VIC. — Whether you’re working a rare DX station from across the world or checking into a local net from your back garden, Amateur radio remains a timeless blend of technical skill and global community.
The multinational corporations tried to tell the world that the telephone would replace it. Then it was CB radio, before it was the internet, mobile phones, and now AI would kill amateur ‘ham’ radio, despite all of these technologies being invented by amateur ‘ham’ radio operators.
Amateur radio operators have heard this before. America’s ‘most trusted journalist’ the late Walter Cronkite, KB2GSD, didn’t keep a working amateur radio station in America’s CBS newsroom just for fun and giggles.
While the world built faster, shinier, more complex systems — we kept stringing wire, tuning antennas, and making contacts across thousands of miles on nothing but skill and RF.
“As an equipment manufacturer for over 60 years, Icom has served the hobby throughout its evolution, always taking great care to craft radios that match the drive and ambition of its operators,” an Icom spokesperson said.
Ham radio operators have heard this before.
But with amateur radio, there’s no monthly bills, no server farms, no algorithm deciding if your signal gets through.
There’s no satellite service or cell tower subscription needed.
Just you, an amateur radio, and the ionosphere.
And when the grid fails — when the satellites go dark, when the cell towers go silent, when the internet disappears — there will be a licensed operator sitting at a rig exactly like this one, headphones on, still making contact.
Ham radio doesn’t chase technology. It doesn’t compete with it. It invents it, from satellite communications, mobile phones, the internet (packet radio on a phone line) and ham radio outlives it all.
100 years in and we’re still on the air. We’ll be here 100 years from now, too.
Are you licensed? Drop your callsign in the comments.
If you’re not licensed yet — what’s stopping you?
Visit the Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA), the world’s oldest and first radio society, founded in 1910 and Amateur Radio Victoria for further information and to find a local amateur ‘ham’ radio club where you can study for, and sit, your amateur radio exams.
Disclosure: The author of this article and owner of VicNews, Ashley Geelan, is a licensed amateur radio operator. His callsign is VK3HAG.
