Microwave Amateur Radio

Microwaves101 has a lot of visits from radio enthusiasts. So, we welcomed them with their own page on amateur radio! If any Ham has content that they'd like us to post, drop us a line!

Microwave Amateur Radio

Here's the Wikipedia story of how the word "ham" came to refer to amateur radio.

Here's a link to web site of the American Radio Relay League, a.k.a. the National Association for Amateur Radio.

Go to our book section and order a copy of the ARRL Handbook from Amazon. You can get used copy for just a few bucks, we did and we like it!

History of amateur radio

Radio, when you think about it, was invented by amateurs. It took years before big companies such as General Electric, RCA and AT&T screwed it all up by commercializing it. You can learn about some of the pioneers of radio in our Microwave Hall of Fame.

Check it out, John D. Kraus (W8JK) is also in the Hall of Fame!

Here's a public domain image of Hiram Percy Maxim, who founded ARRL in 1914. ARRL now boasts about 105,000 members.

Microwave Amateur Radio

If anyone wants to collaborate on an ARRL project, maybe we can help facilitate that. Example: how about a printed circuit board for a 24 GHz radio?

Bookmarks

We strive to be the web site that provides real content, not just links to other sites. But while we're waiting for our own material, we'll post some links. 

New for July 2025.  Do you want to explore software designed radio on the cheap?  This site will set you up.  Cribbing from radiosystemdesign.com:

Essentially your web connection allows you to listen in and control an SRD remotely and the guide show you:

  • Examples of web SDRs and where you can find others

  • How to control kiwiSDR, which is one of the most common

  • How to record IQ data for further processing

  • Examples of processing recorded signals using GNU Radio

  • Some of the dedicated decoders available via web SDRs

Learn more about this resource here.  Use at your own risk, we did not actually try it!

https://radiosystemdesign.com/GettingStarted/

Update June 2025: the links below accumulated over the years from contributions from readers. Many of these resources are (or were) personal websites of people involved in Ham radio.  In many cases, the content has moved, or has been removed, and the links don't go anywhere.  We went through every link, and if it was a dead end, we tried to find where the material went to, but in most cases it's just plain gone.  For now, we will leave all the dead links with the hyperlinks removed.  If anyone wants to play internet detective and finds some missing content, drop us an email and we will bring some links back to life.

Miscellaneous links

New for May 2025... Brian Beezley is a well-known amateur radio enthusiast, with some unusual skills in antenna design, particularly in Yagi antennas.  His website includes a variety of articles on antennas and other RF topics, mostly at FM, broadcast TV and Ham frequencies, and some downloadable tools which are executables (but be aware that your employer may not want "unknown" executable files on their laptop...)

https://k6sti.neocities.org/

All About Circuits (an extremely active electrical engineering online community that provides both interesting content and useful resources for electrical engineers, including various engineering calculators as well as a free electrical engineering textbook.) Suggested by Kent!

https://admin.qsl.net hosts thousands amateur radio operators and organizations, at no cost (but they take donations)

AA9PW.com FAA and FCC Exam Practice

Elecraft Innovative Electronic Kits

electronics tutorials

HobbySpace - Space Radio

K8CU Home Page

Morse Runner

QRZ.COM - Practice Exams

UHF-Satcom.com - the online place for VHF to EHF satcom reception and monitoring

Carsten Groen, OZ9AAR

Down East Microwave Inc. Supplier of amateur radio equipment for 50MHz and above

G3SEK's Amateur Radio Technical Notebook

GO-Mars with AMSAT-DL's P5A-Mission (updated to AMSAT home page)

Links from here down no longer work...

23cm PA with GI-7

DF5AI.NET - Amateur Radio Propagation Studies (NICE Website!)

Douglas T. Smith Editorial Service Homepage - VERY GOOD

DSP-10 2-meter Home Built DSP Amateur Radio Transceiver by W7PUA

EA6VQ - Moon-Net discussions

EME ACTIVITY LOGGER!

EME Primer

EME, Earth-Moon-Communication. (W6-PA0ZN )

Find a ham in your area using zip code

K2 Rework Eliminators

KK7P.COM Your Resource for DSP Products and Services

N1BUG Web Polarization of EME Signals How to Succeed More Often

PE1ITR - 144 and 432Mhz EME EXPERIMENTS

PSKMeter Page

Solar Terrestrial Activity Report

Technician and General Class Training - MicroHAMS.com

WC8VOA - West Chester Amateur Radio Association

DSP-10 2-meter Home Built DSP Amateur Radio Transceiver by W7PUA

SSB Electronic Amateur Radio Products Index

EME, Earth-Moon-Communication. (W6/PA0ZN )

Welcome to Earth-Moon-Earth Home Pages.

Antennae

HFpack (Horizontal) Pedestrian Antenna Shootout 2002 Horizontal HFpack (Vertical) Pedestrian

W1GHZ Microwave Antenna Book ONLINE (an entire book!)

QRP (low power)

Four state QRP Group QRP Homebuilder QRPp International Radio Club ( QRPp, QRP, CW, SSB, PSK31, Tiny-Tornado, Pixie, Micro-80 )

The American QRP Club Rock-Mite (40m Transceiver)

EME (moon bounce)

Moonbounce Weak Signal and Astrophotography by Mike Cook AF9Y

GLEAP - The W7GJ 6m EME Array

DL4YHF's Audio Spectrum Analyser

OK1DFC EME Site - Very good stuff here

W7GJ 2m EME Tips

MoonSked Moon Tracking EME software for Macintosh, Windows and Linux

The GM4JJJ Modified W1SL 144MHz Power Amplifier

These pages have moved or no longer exist

N2UO Home Page (one of many dead pages on QSL.net)

 Microwaves and MillimeterWaves - L. Cupido

EME VHF-UHF-SHF by F2TU

EME Operating Primer

Weak Signal Source

The Home Pages of Michael Fletcher - OH2AUE

Radio Astronomy

Deep Space Network Home Page

Radio-Sky Publishing - including Radio Eyes software

NASA Radio JOVE Project Home Page

Basics of Radio Astronomy

Dish Projects

4.5 Meter Dish Project

Dishes for Amateurs

1420 Mhz Radio Astronomy Antenna

Amplifier Projects

VHF Amplifier Projects (updated to QSL.net search tool)

These pages have moved or no longer exist

QRO via Russia

23cm PA with GI-7

23cm cavity amplifier.html

High performance 144-MHz PA

Hombrew Power amplifiers of HA1YA (By HA8ET)

Lazy Builders PA

Description of 144 MHz high power amplifier, 4CX250B

This link came from Kristi: (sorry, it no longer works)

I noticed you missed a great page on ham radios: http://www.answerconnect.com/articles/the-ham-radio-resource-guide. It looks like a very nice overview on hams, it provides a nice overview, along with providing links to very resourceful pages including technical specs, call signs, terminology, licensing, and equipment.

These links came from Wayne:

Owens Valley Radio Observatory and Ham Radio

San Bernardino Microwave Society (SBMS), one of the oldest ham radio clubs specializing in microwave technology.

Thanks to everybody!

 

Author : Unknown Editor