Marc Heusser
alid wrote in
:

Can you point me to a good overview list of such services in
the ham
community (for beginners).
I never came around to do the licence, but am starting boating
again.
As an MSEE it is quite easy to get the ham licence - so as I do
not have
any plans on building tranceivers myself, I should get started
quite
easily. And with a Macintosh computer running OS X I do
understand that
quite a few services can run on it when connected to a ham
radio. (If
you have pointers for such sofware too :-)

TIA

Marc


Sure, Marc. Start at www.qrz.com where there is lots of free
information. I've no idea what the Swiss testing and licensing
is, however. Your national prefix is HB9 and I have many Swiss
friends because of a Swiss friend, Werner AA4IX who lives here.
He's 83, from Steffisburg/Thun on the Thunersee in Berner
Oberland.

I'm sure you can find a local Swiss ham radio club to help you
get into the hobby. On your boat, I highly recommend the Icom
M802 marine SSB because you simply hold down a couple of buttons
and turn it on to open it up for all frequencies, including ham
radio use. Many boaters use ham equipment they're not supposed
to for marine HF, here, because ham rigs are much cheaper. Who's
going to arrest you in the middle of the Atlantic?...(c;

I found this website with MAC software for ham radio:
http://machamradio.com/HamsAndX.html

Swiss ham radio goes way back:
http://www.oneillselectronicmuseum.c...histsec_1.html

Here's some more websites:
http://www.eham.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._organizations

I think the Swiss national ham radio organisation can help you:
http://www.uska.ch/

http://www.w4mnr.com/w4mnrlinks.htm
http://www.hb9drv.ch/
http://forums.ham-radio.ch/index.php?
s=cf25a2958ac3f9529f331160d60dadf0
http://forums.ham-radio.ch/member.php?u=3

Best of luck to you! Ham radio means you're not alone out there.

Larry
--
73 DE W4CSC
Charleston, South Carolina USA
http://www.qrz.com/callsign
put w4csc into the callsign box...(c;