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Any ham radio can be used. 2m hf 6m . All you have to do is contact the message handeling net and they will relay the message. You have to provide address and telephone to insure delivery
Joe
Yes, definitely get your license, if you haven’t gotten one already.
What you are talking about doing is primarily done on the High Frequencies, as 20 meters was mentioned, that’s a good all round “DX” (morse code shorthand for distance) band. 15 meters and 10 meters will both make the distance as well, though these last two are more suited for daylight only operations, 20 is also primarily a daylight band, but there is more of a residual effect after local sunset.
You should be able to manage effective communications on the higher bands (10, 12, 15, 17, and 20) during daylight hours on 100 watts with a good antenna.
As to the antenna, “they can’t talk to ya if they can’t hear ya”. A basic antenna is a half wave dipole, which would be about 32-33 feet long (guesstimate, i added the formula later) at 20 meters. A dipole is most effective from the sides. That is, if you are in Illinois, and trying to work Japan, your antenna should have one end north and the other end south, so your strongest signals would be to your west and to your east.
The formula for a half-wave dipole is
468/ frequency in Megahertz. or for 20 meters 468/14.175 = 33.01 feet
To improve your chances of reaching JA land on 100 watts, you can go with a more directional antenna. A yagi, incidentally an antenna invented by a Japanese engineer back in the 20s, is a directional antenna. It’s often called a beam. The basic beam has an element that is fed from the transciever, and that element is a half wavelength, again about 32-33 feet long, behind it is a slightly longer element that reflects the signal away from it (thus putting it behind the driven element, relative to the signal). Directivity can be increased by shorter elements placed in front of the driven element.
As you can guess, space and expense are the primary obstacles to the ham using the more directional antennas. Another obstacle is the otherwise friendly neighbor asking “is that gonna mess up my TV?” because having a beam on your roof is pretty obvious.
I recommend the arrl homepage for this, or surf around and find pages with plans for antennas that may help you accomplish your goal.
BTW, I’m an old CW op, so I am pleased that you include morse code as one of your choices. Obviously one of your other respondents agrees, though I’m more inclined to encourage people who don’t want to learn code, since there are many who don’t. I’ve been a ham since 1968, and I’m inclined to leave the code or no code argument alone. The more people we get into our hobby, the more people we have to talk to.
Your location, antenna system, and license class will be more important than the radio will be, here I was on 20 meters last week end and was talking into Russia, and as the day went on, just before I shut down the rig I herd call sign’s from Hawaii very strong but was tired and went into the other room..
You will have to have a license first, and be for the bands you want to operate on, then a radio and antenna, get a keyer and get good at the code, it’s easy after you get used to it..
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