In this podcast episode, Keith Parsons, Glenn Kate, and Lee Badman discuss the intersection of ham radio and Wi-Fi. Glenn and Lee share their personal experiences and involvement in both fields. They talk about how they got started in ham radio and Wi-Fi, the importance of joining amateur radio clubs, and the various activities and modes available in ham radio. They also discuss software-defined radio (SDR) and its capabilities. The speakers compare the frequencies used in ham radio and Wi-Fi and highlight the different goals of each technology. Show Links: American Radio Relay League (ARRL) @wirednot – Lee Badman on Twitter wirednot.wordpress.com – Lee’s blog QRZ.com: N4GRC is Glenn’s call sign QRZ.com KI2K is Lee’s call sign Transcript: Note: This transcript is provided as-is without human correction. Speaker 1 (00:00:00) – Hello again. This is Heavy Wireless, a podcast as part of the Packet Pushers Podcast Family. My name is Keith Parsons and today’s topic is ham radio and WiFi. And I have with me two people who are both friends and Wi-Fi people and ham radio people. I thought they’d be the great people to have on this topic, specifically on ham radio. Glenn, Kate, introduce yourself for a second. Speaker 2 (00:00:22) – Hey, thanks, Keith, for inviting me here to the podcast. Glenn Kate, I’m a Wi-Fi engineer with a large power utility here in the United States and also ham radio operator, My callsign is November for golf Romeo Charlie in for GRC and extra class. Speaker 1 (00:00:40) – Great thanks Lee. Speaker 3 (00:00:41) – Keith and Glen I’m Lee Badman get the call sign right out of the way took also extra class. I’ve been doing that for a while. I work very large private university on the wireless side and nice to be on this version of the podcast. I’ve had the pleasure of talking with the Heavy network guys in the past and it’s really nice to be able to do this side of it too. Speaker 1 (00:01:06) – Wonderful. Well, let’s just jump right in with the topic at hand. And Glenn, can you just tell us how you personally got involved in ham radio long time ago? Speaker 2 (00:01:17) – Sure. Wow. This is this will go back. So I’ll even list a date here. Keith, a 1975 graduate from high school. I know dinosaurs ruled the earth back then, but had a friend and my electronics class I took in high school. He said, Yeah, I was talking to Europe on my radio. Go. You were. What were you doing? He said, Oh, use Morse code. And I talked to Germany or Italy or whatever. I said, Well, how do you do that? So he started talking to me about it and invited me to a a boys club amateur radio class that was in Pinellas Park, Florida, just a little north of my home here in Saint Petersburg. I went there, saw an operator, looked at what they were doing, and the bug bit me. Keith I said, I love this stuff. Speaker 2 (00:02:04) – So study for the exam, bought my first radio and put up an antenna and sure enough, I was talking with Morse code around the world and that was just so much fun. Lots of other things involved as well. But that’s how it got started in in ham radio. Speaker 1 (00:02:20) – And before we go to delete, you want to then transition Glen from how did you get installed involved in Wi-Fi. Speaker 2 (00:02:27) – Okay. Well that’s, that’s another story as well. So I was working for the power utility was doing workstation support ac...