Radio options for non-hams

I'm going to write a few articles here over the next few weeks about how to get on the air without a ham license. The most obvious options are marine, MURS, CB, and GMRS. These services will let you get on the air if you are intrigued by radio, and avoid the tantrums and surliness of the amateur radio service.

Some of these options can involve minor infractions of the "radio laws". I'm saying that up front right now, so don't squeal about how I'm encouraging or misleading people when I write these articles. If someone isn't doing something that will interfere with other services or create a hazard, then I won't rule it out simply because "it's illegal". If the only 'problem' created is that the activity in question irritates some anal-retentive blowhard for abstract reasons, then I'm okay with that. The same anal-retentive blowhard probably cheats on their taxes, exceeds the speed limit, and violates their local building codes without remorse because those cases are "unnecessary regulation". Yet, a MURS station having an antenna 65 feet above the ground is an affront to civilisation because "It's against the LAW!!!". Idiots. What're gonna do, right?

These options also exclude the impressive infrastructure of amateur radio. It's kind of sad that hams have taken this "dog in the manger" view of the hobby, but it's part of the prolonged generational tantrum that afflicts our culture and society right now. It's more pronounced on ham radio because so many of the people actually on the air regularly are "of a certain age". By the time The Great Generational Tantrum recedes into The Great Generational Sulk, amateur radio as we have known it will be dead and the infrastructure will slowly crumble. A water tower needs to be replaced, and nobody puts the repeater back on it afterwards. The antenna for a repeater blows down, and nobody replaces it. It just goes off-line and is eventually sold or gets wrecked being stored in somebody's garage. Radio clubs are dying, as are the trustees for repeaters, and nobody is picking up the responsibility. The point is that that whole infrastructure took a long time and a fair chunk of change to build and nothing is propping it up any more. It's not going to to be there in the future, so we have to look at other options.