Ham radio is a technical hobby enjoyed by over 3 million people worldwide that spans all ages, genders, and borders. While it is not required to be tied to a desk, ham radio involves various activities like competitions, education, building equipment, helping the community, and more. One of the most popular ham radio activities is contesting, where participants use their radios to exchange as many contacts as possible within a set period of time according to the specific contest rules, providing interesting challenges from operating equipment to dealing with changing radio conditions and signal quality.

1. Evaluation Essay
Kevin Laybourn
Western Governors University
WGU Student ID 528728

2. Evaluation Essay
Ham Radio is not dead! Amateur or “Ham” Radio is a Technical hobby with over 3 Million
people involved with it. (Wikipedia, Amateur radio operator, 2016) Amateur Radio is a hobby that
spans age, gender, and borders. It has a plethora of reasons to get involved, and not all of them required
you to be tied to desk. It is a hobby that that can appeal to many people. Various different areas
including but not limited to, competition, education, building things, helping out the community, and
many others.
Although there is no official numbers; arguably one of the most popular activities of Amateur
radio is Contests. Contesting in its most basic form is essentially using a radio to exchange as many
contacts as possible in a pre-determined amount of time with in the limitations of the contest. The rules
can vary from contest to contest, making certain contests more technically challenging. Radio
conditions can vary depending on the frequency people are using for the contest, and also the weather.
Contesting provides interesting challenges, via operating the radio and various equipment, or radio
conditions and intelligibility of the signal.