The iPhone apps can go with you anywhere, which is important while studying for the exams - trust me, you'll want to study in every free minute you have. Frankly, I think the iPhone apps are priced just right, since the Mac app can be replicated for free by any number of online test sites. You can take practice exams for the Technician, General, and Extra licenses as many time as you want before taking the actual exam from a local volunteer examiner.Įlmer also comes in three separate apps for iPhone, each priced at US$2.99. Elmer is a ham term to refer to the old guy down the block who took you under his tutelage and taught you everything he knew so you could pass the exams.Įlmer (US$24.99) is a Mac application for providing practice examinations from the common pool of test questions provided by the Federal Communications Commission. The examinations cover a plethora of information, including operations, safety, international regulations, and general theory. In hamspeak, DX is the art of "making two way radio contact with distant stations in amateur radio." MacLogger DX (US$95.00), from Dog Park Software, is a sophisticated application to help Mac-totin' hams not only make those long distance connections on just a handful of watts, but also log the information for the purpose of sending QSL (acknowledgement) cards.Īmateur radio operators must be licensed by their country to operate a station. However, thanks in part to virtual machines and the general growing popularity of Macs (and iPhones) in general, there is getting to be a sizable population of Mac-driving amateur radio fans.įollow along as I show a random sampling of ham radio apps for the Mac.
Many hams are hard-core electronics buffs who like to "roll their own," so it's not surprising that a lot of ham radio operators build their own PCs from parts and run Linux or Windows. Sure, you can use a wireless phone to call anyone on earth, send 'em SMS/MMS/email messages, tweet, blog, etc., but there's something rather fun about trying to pluck a faint signal from someone on the other side of planet and coax it into recognizable speech or code.
Although my work keeps me from spending a lot of time conversing with the world via ham radio (I'm KCØEZH, by the way), it's a fascinating techie hobby.
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