can a ham radio replace a cell phone?

[markwebster]

I got an email from a guy who was interested in this old discussion. I did find a way to get off the Verizon bandwagon...but not with ham radios. Here is my reply to the guy who was interested:

 

I was not able to talk my wife into taking the ham test, even though it is dead easy. I did buy a $100 handheld ham radio, and it works awesome. It reaches 50 miles without a repeater (Gig Harbor to Tiger Mountain) and all the way to Spokane via the repeater on Tiger.

 

I also got a Yaesu ft-857D car ham radio, and I talked to Moscow, Russia with that, plus all around the US. I quickly got bored with Ham as a hobby...just a bunch of old out of shape guys talking about the size of their antennas. Didn't matter if they were in Russia, Minnesota or Alaska: "Dude, what kind of antenna do you have?"

 

I thought it would be cool conversation with strangers about the meaning of life, or lifes styles in foreign lands...nope.

 

But as far as replacing my cell phone with a ham radio...it depends. Do the people you want to talk to all have ham radios, and licenses? Then yes, it could work easily. The other hams could hear your calls, but if that doesn't matter, then it would work fine. My wife and I just arrange car pools in Tacoma, so it would have worked perfectly.

 

What I ended up doing was getting a wifi phone, and an $8 a month dumbphone from AT&T, no contract. My wifi phone works everywhere there is wifi, and the dumbphone covers me when I am driving, and or out of wifi range. I talk about it here:

 

http://websterart.com/html/dumbphone-wifi-phone-case.html

 

 

[JBo6]

I just bought a small handheld HAM with the theory of figuring out how it works and then bringing it along on bc ski trips in the North Cascades. It's cool to hear that people have had a fair amount of success with them.