THE STATE OF SAUDI HAM RADIO
A brief comment
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Ham Radio was introduced in Saudi Arabia by American workers who 
worked in the California Standard which later became known as 
Aramco. Sadly, there was no system of skill sharing among the 
hobbyists with the Saudi natives, so it is safe to assume that 
the Saudi Ham community was split into two: first, an American 
one (an older community that survived till the early 2000s 
centered in Dhahran, which was composed mainly of Americans) and 
another was a native one. The native one kept operating without a 
sense of organization, and even though it started with Hejazi 
Saudis, it later became the basis for the current Saudi Ham Radio 
community. 

Today, the number of Saudi Hams is anywhere from 800 - 1200; 
however, the active number is probably in the 10s if not 100. 
There are two types of license for Ham Radio in Saudi Arabia: 
License 1 ( which allows you to operate on HF and VHF/UHF) and 
License 2 (which is restricted to the 2m Band and 70cm band). 
Surprisingly, most Saudi Amateur Radio operators obtain the first 
one, since the second is looked down upon even within the Saudi 
Amateur Radio society. The explanation is that most of the things 
in it are already there in the other "test-free" Radio services. 
But they are wrong. Most of the Digital excitement that the 
license 2 offers is, therefore, never learned or practiced. 

Most of these are concentrated in two modes: SSB and FT8. It is a 
growing community, but it is still focused on these two modes 
rather than testing other things such as satellite 
communications, SSTV, and FSTV. I recently was trying to push 
other hams to operate a kind of pre-web BBS through ham radio, 
only to discover that there is not enough technical 
understanding. But I am hopeful, since I see these modes as 
contributing to the resiliency of the local community. 



Khalid Alshaikh, 7Z1FP
https://ge97.com/.