This week, we visit a Web site where you can learn how to do ham radio without a radio.

By way of the Internet, you can make Amateur Radio contacts without a radio. If your computer is equipped with a microphone and a soundcard, all you need is the right software and you can talk to hams on the other side of the planet via their local repeater or simplex channel.

Discover how to make ham radio contacts via the Internet at GJ7JHF's Amateur Radio Voice-Links via the Internet Web page.

Gateways provide the link between the Internet and radio worlds and the gateways are two-way streets. That means that if you are within radio-shot of a gateway, you can use your transceiver to communicate through that local gateway to talk with the hams that are connected to the gateway via the Internet. If your radio has DTMF capabilities, you can use its tones to command the gateway to connect with other gateways located throughout the world. Thus, you can contact another ham who is on the air within radio-shot of the remote gateway via this RF-to-gateway-to-Internet-to-gateway-to-RF link.

You can learn all about the Internet-ham radio connection at the "Amateur Radio Voice-Links via the Internet" Web page built by Andy, GJ7JHF. Andy's page describes how all this works and lists some of the software that makes it work. His software description concentrates on iLink and eQSO and briefly mentions Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP), I-Phone, TeamSound, and PalTalk. GJ7JHF also addresses the question, "Is it really ham radio?" According to GJ7JHF, if RF is involved (and it is), then it really is ham radio!

Until next time, keep on surfin'.

Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, of downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, is an ARRL Life Member and an incessant contributor to QST and QEX (586 pieces in 25 years), not to mention the author of five ARRL books, contributor to a bevy of other ARRL titles, and the new editor of Packet Status Register, the quarterly newsletter of Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR). First licensed in 1969 as WN1LOU, he upgraded to WA1LOU in 1971. Stan began using computers with Amateur Radio in 1978 when he bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computer and wrote BASIC programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna bearings. A virtual beach boy, Stan has been surfing the radio dials as long as he can remember. Instead of surfing all over Manhattan and down Doheny way, however, he now surfs the Internet searching for that perfect page. To contact Stan, send e-mail to wa1lou@arrl.net.

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