From Zoom Calls to HF Bands: Why Your Audio Obsession is a Ham Radio Shortcut

I’ve finally gone and done it. After years of optimizing my mobile office to survive the acoustic nightmares of roadside rest stops and windy canyons, I decided I needed a new kind of “achievement.” I randomly decided I wanted a license or certification in something purely for the challenge of it—something that required actually hitting the books and passing a formal proctored exam.

The practical catalyst was my family’s penchant for driving our motorhome into cellular “dead zones.” We have a habit of venturing deep into rocky, dangerous terrain—the kind of places where hills and cliffs get in the way, cell signals are non-existent, and a flat tire quickly turns from a nuisance into a survival situation. I realized that while my high-end VSTs make me sound great on a Teams meeting, they won’t do squat if I need to call for help from the bottom of a ravine. Horror stories from friends needing to walk for miles with severe injuries, just for a single bar of reception to call for help, kept me awake at night. I needed a way to talk to the world that didn’t rely on a nearby tower.

Either way, I’m now officially a licensed ham radio operator (in both Technician and General classes! I shot through the tech material so quickly that I figured I might as well go for general, too). Here’s the truth bomb: if you’ve spent any time obsessing over your WFH audio signal chain, you are already about halfway to being a radio nerd. I shot through the study material in about a week because, as it turns out, radio is just audio with a much longer commute.

In fact, I enjoyed the process so much that I’m already eyeing the Amateur Extra class license. It grants more frequency privileges, but let’s be honest: the real appeal is the ability to apply for a shorter “vanity” call sign. In the radio world, a shorter ID is like having a premium one-word handle on X or a three-letter domain name.

Full Disclosure: I am a total greenhorn in the amateur radio world! I understand this stuff well enough to pass the exams and hold a conversation, but I’m a newcomer here. This post is a look at where two fun hobbies collide, not a definitive technical manual. If I’ve botched a nuance, feel free to school me.

The Lingo Barrier (Or, Why Everyone is a Number)

Even with a technical background, the biggest hurdle wasn’t the electronics theory. It was the lingo. The language of radio has been built on over a century of maritime tradition, wartime necessity, and old-school efficiency. You have to learn an entire dialect of Q-codes, abbreviations, and conventions just to say hello without sounding like a total “lid” (that’s ham-speak for a bad operator—don’t be a lid).

It’s a bit like stepping into a high-end recording studio for the first time and hearing someone talk about “side-chaining the kick to the buss.” It sounds like gibberish until you realize they’re just describing a workflow.

Q-Codes: These are three-letter codes used to speed up communication. QTH? means “what is your location,” and QSL means “I received your message.” It’s basically the 1920s version of “k” or “lol,” but with more legal weight. These are absolutely maddening to memorize (fortunately, you only need to learn a few for the exams).

The Phonetic Alphabet: Forget “A as in Apple.” In radio, it’s Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. If you try to give your call sign using “Cute Zebra Xylophone,” the guy on the other end is going to have a stroke. But truth be told, I learned the phonetic alphabet years ago when I worked at a help desk, so this one was a gimme.

Signal Reports: We don’t say “you sound good.” We use the RST system (Readability, Strength, Tone). You might be a “59,” which is the radio equivalent of “4K Ultra HD audio.”

Other Gibberish: There are plenty of other pieces of jargon you need to pick up on, or you’ll be lost in the dust. CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX DE AB7WKC AB7WKC UP K. Believe it or not, this actually means something! (“I want to talk to somebody far away, this is AB7WKC calling, respond at a higher frequency so we don’t flood this one. Go ahead.”)

Fortunately, I haven’t had to learn Morse code (the FCC dropped the requirement years ago). But honestly? Now that I’ve seen how well it cuts through noise when voice signals are failing, I kind of want to learn it. It’s the ultimate low-bitrate audio codec.

Same Logic, Different Dictionary

Once you get past the alphabet soup, you’ll realize radio operators love to act like they discovered these concepts, but we’ve been using them in the DAW for decades. (To be fair, radio has a hundred-year head start, so I guess we’re the ones borrowing their homework.)

Squelch is just a Noise Gate: In a meeting, you use a gate so people don’t hear your fridge humming. In ham radio, you use squelch so you don’t have to listen to the constant “static” (white noise) of the atmosphere when no one is talking.

ALC (Automatic Level Control) is a Limiter: Your radio’s ALC is there to make sure you don’t “flat-top” your signal and sound like a distorted mess. It’s the same reason we put a limiter on our master bus.

Speech Processing is a Channel Strip: Most modern HF rigs have a “processor” button. That’s just a compressor and EQ combo designed to squeeze your voice into a tight little package that can punch through atmospheric noise.

The Decibel Dissonance

Here is where your “audio brain” might start to smoke. In the audio world, we are usually dealing with voltage or sound pressure levels. When we talk about doubling the level, we’re looking for a 6 dB increase.

However, in the radio world, everything is about power (watts). Because of the way the math scales for power versus voltage, doubling your power is only a 3 dB increase. It takes a second to recalibrate your internal meters when a radio guy tells you he “gained 3 dB” and he’s acting like he just won the lottery. In our world, 3 dB is a subtle nudge; in his world, he just doubled his output strength.

The “Mixer” Trap

In our world, a mixer is a glorious desk with faders which linearly adds signals together. In ham radio, a “mixer” is a circuit component that takes two different signals and mashes them together to create a new one through a process called heterodyning.

It’s a bit like frequency modulation (FM) synthesis—shifting your voice from a few kilohertz up to 14 million hertz so it can bounce off the ionosphere. It allows you to work on a signal in the audible frequency range (less than 20 kHz), then combine it with a much higher frequency carrier wave to “move” it up by millions of hertz.

Transducers: Antennas vs. Speakers

One of my favorite analogies I stumbled upon is the role of the antenna. In audio, a speaker is a transducer: it turns electrical energy into moving air (sound waves). An antenna does the exact same thing, just with different physics, turning electrical energy into electromagnetic waves.

Size Matters: Just like you need a massive subwoofer to move long, low-frequency sound waves, you need a massive wire (antenna) to move long, low-frequency radio waves (HF).

Placement is King: You wouldn’t put your studio monitors face-down on a shag carpet. Similarly, you don’t put your antenna under a metal roof. Physics always wins. Software can’t fix a bad antenna any more than it can fix a mic hidden inside a sock.

Where the Worlds Diverge

1. Hardware First, Software Later?

In the WFH audio world, we almost all start in software. You download a DAW and some plugins, and you might stay “in the box” for your entire career. Radio is the exact opposite.

Technician Class (VHF/UHF): Mostly analog-feeling. You’re on FM using simple hardware to hit local repeaters. You can use digital modes, but at the frequency bands you’re allowed to transmit on, you’re mostly living in an analog world.

General Class (HF Bands): This is where you graduate to long-distance communication where software is much more involved. This is where Software-Defined Radios (SDR) come in, offloading the signal processing to your computer. It’s essentially the “VST” of the radio world.

2. Propagation & Fidelity

In a WFH setup, if your internet is up, your signal gets there. In ham radio, you are at the mercy of the sun. Solar flares determine if you’re talking to the next town over or to Antarctica. Furthermore, fidelity is the enemy of efficiency. You want to roll off everything below 300 Hz and above 3 kHz so your power isn’t wasted on “bass” that the other guy can’t hear through the static anyway.

3. The Latency Villain

In WFH, anything over 50 ms makes you look like a badly dubbed movie. In ham radio, latency is still a massive pain. If your digital processing adds too much delay, you’ll find yourself constantly “stepping” on other people because you didn’t hear them start talking in time.

Show and Tell: The “Starter Pack”

Since I can’t help myself, I’ve already started assembling a small fleet of hardware. Think of this as the “USB mic and cheap interface” stage of the journey; they are far from the best, and arguably aren’t even good; they are usable:

Baofeng UV-5R: The legendary (and slightly controversial) $25 radio. It’s tiny, portable, and basically the “SM58” of the radio world—everyone has one, and it’s perfect to keep in the glovebox. It’s also great for testing; it’s a lot easier to tell if you’re hitting a repeater when you can talk and listen at the same time.

Baofeng BF-F8HP PRO: A step up from the base model with a bit more power. This is my “experimentation” rig while I learn to navigate the local airwaves.

The GMRS Pivot: This rabbit hole also led me to pick up a pair of cheap GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) walkie-talkies for the family. There’s no exam—you just pay a fee and get a family call sign. As our daughter grows, it’s the perfect way to let her explore the campground while staying connected.

For the future, I may upgrade to a better handheld, but I also really want an HF tranceiver like a Xiegu G90 or X6100 (I’m split between the low price and solid reviews of the Q90 vs the portability and features but mediocre reviews of the X6100). Since I’m a software guy, an SDR is pretty tempting. It’s essentially a radio that lets you “code” your way through the spectrum. Both offer SDR capabilities and would expose me to a whole world of HF options, with enough room for expansion to stay interesting for a long time.

The Verdict: Why Bother?

If you’re a nomadic worker, getting your license is the ultimate “Bailout Bag” move. When the cell towers go down or you’re parked in a literal hole in the ground, having the ability to bounce a signal off the sky or a nearby repeater to call for help is a superpower. Plus, the gear is rugged—it can definitely handle being bounced around in the back of your van.

(And yes, Gear Acquisition Syndrome is lurking here too. My credit card is already sweating looking at portable HF rigs, but we’ll save that for another day.)

The Good

Built-in foundation: If you understand gain staging and routing, you’re halfway there.

Emergency prep: Reliable off-grid communication when cell phones fail.

Family friendly: GMRS connects the whole crew without making everyone take an exam.

Budget entry: You can get licensed and on the air for less than $100.

The Bad

Steep Lingo Curve: You’ll spend the first month googling what ‘73’ means (‘best regards’).

Analog Limitations: You’ll be stuck in hardware-land for a bit unless you jump into SDR.

Potential for GAS: Like audio plugins, radio gear can get expensive fast if you aren’t careful.

If you’re looking to level up your technical chops while adding a layer of safety to your nomadic life, check out HamStudy and HamBook .

Would you like me to look into some low-cost “entry-level” radios that fit in a backpack for your next off-grid work stint? Hit me up on Facebook or Instagram!