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I would love to get involved with amateur radio, but I'm not sure how.
My community recreation center hosts a class to get a Technicians license for a reasonable price ($10), and I know a little bit of Morse Code.
My Questions:
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My advice would be to start as a HF listener. There are a lot of fun things you can do without even having a license. As a listener you need only an RTL-SDR v3. This version has a direct sampling functionality which allows you to listen HF bands (3.5-30MHz) without any additional equipment (an upconverter). The price of RTL-SDR v3 is about 30$. Please make sure you buy it in the official rtl-sdr.com shop. Otherwise you can get a fake device without direct sampling.
Here are a few things you can do with it:
The process of getting a license in USA was described not a long time ago on hackaday.com by Dan Maloney, KC1DJT. In the comments to this article you can find links to the similar articles for different countries. I happened to be an author of such an article for Russia.
A transceiver is more expensive device than RTL-SDR. A brand new 100W transceiver like Yaesu FT-891 costs 680$ on Amazon. It could be more price-efficient to buy a second hand transceiver, though in this case there is a risk of buying a defected device.
It's also worth noticing that there are a lot of channels on YouTube dedicated to ham radio. You might want to subscribe to some of them. Here is my current list of favorite channels:
73 and see you on the bands!
If you are willing to build equipment and don't specify what functionality you want, there is no lower or upper limit to cost. Low quality commercial hardware that can transmit can be found for as low as \$25. Low quality but broad band receivers can be found for as low as \$7. About double that for both will get a decent but minimum functionality commercial device.
The easiest way to find people to talk to on the radio (after you get your license) is to call on the radio. Also, there may be local clubs you can join, and very likely the technician class you already found is sponsored by such a club. If you are in the United States, you can use http://www.arrl.org/find-a-club to search for a local club.
I concur that a good place to begin is with a local radio club. Ham radio can be as simple or as involved as you want it to be, but getting started on the air can be made easier by working with an experienced operator. It might also be helpful to interest siblings, friends, parents, teachers or scout leaders. Group members can help each other, contributing to the fun of exploration and discovery.
Since your profile indicates your interest in coding, you might consider exploring software-defined radio (SDR). With SDR, much of the radio's functionality is implemented on a "computer," be it a PC/Mac, a single-board computer or a smartphone. Receive-only USB "dongles" are an inexpensive path into this field and relatively inexpensive open-source transceiver hardware, like Hermes-Lite, is becoming more available.
There are numerous open-source SDR programs that run under Windows, MacOS, Linux and Android on their respective hardware platforms. Here, again, you can focus on the part of the "radio" that interests you: the top-level programs are built on open-source libraries that implement lower-level (and, often, deeply technical) functions, like DSP, graphics, hardware interfaces, etc. The only limit is your imagination!
As you explore ham radio's many facets, you will also find lots of support in other areas of StackExchange. We look forward to hearing more from you!
I have no affiliation with the companies whose products are cited in this answer.
