The world of radio and TV amateurs

If there is a sub-field of electronics which is never boring or totally foreign to the man in the street, it is radio. Radio will continue to be important because it is inevitably tied up with the basic human need to communicate. Radio amateurs, for instance, communicated by satellite long before you could even watch satellite TV programmes. Similarly, their packet radio networks were in existence ten years before the breakthrough of Internet, and they pioneered microwave communication decades before you could walk in the street talking into your mobile phone. This article aims at giving the radio bug to those of you with just a general interest in electronics. In addition, so me of the recent developments in this ever so lively pastime are discussed.