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No Ham License? Listen Anyway In Your Browser
(hackaday.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Do you need a license to buy a receiver to listen in?
Edit: the following is for the US
You do not need a license to listen to ham radio with a traditional transceiver. You only need a license to transmit.
There are no licensing requirements for equipment purchases.
I have a handheld ham. The baofeng ones with no license. Come to get me FCC
When I use them to communicate, I use FRS frequencies, which are still not legal technically, but no one will even know.
Don't fuck around with the FCC, it stands for Fucking Consequences, Cunt!
Tbh, I can't condone that as a ham myself. And yes, you can be caught. It happens all the time and fines are hefty.
The basic ham license (called "Technician") is very easy and cheap. Just get one.
It happens all the time?
Relative to the prevalence of ham as a hobby
Yes. It is not uncommon.
Also, the license gives one some knowledge about what one is actually doing with the transceiver. Without that it isn't really a hobby anyway. It just becomes an illegal walkie talkie.
No
No, only the British are dumb enough to require a license for a receiver.
You can go buy whatever radio you want and listen to hams tell each other where they're from and lie about how well they're hearing each other. Which is most of what they do on shortwave. 1. Ham radio is a game to most of them, the game is "exchange callsigns with people from as many places as you can." 2. There is a law (CFR 97.113(5)) that prohibits "Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services." I read that as it's illegal to have a weekly Wednesday at 5 PM EDT chat with your buddy in Tuscon on 20 meters because the cell phone network can also accomplish that. So are scheduled ragchew nets legal?
If you're going to play around with an HF receiver, ignore the hams and listen out for numbers stations, they're way fucking cooler than us licensed radio dorks.
Don't transmit without a license. If we can hear you, we can find you. Radio isn't like the internet, radio travels in straight (ish) lines. You're literally shining a light into the sky, we can tell where it's coming from. Hams won't do anything to you. No, that's what the FCC is for.