I was just down in the basement letting the dog play, so I fired up my radios.

On one radio which is UHF and VHF, I heard a few locals chatting on one repeater, and a net on another. A net is a scheduled meeting of hams all on the same "channel" for the purpose of... whatever they want. Sometimes it's emergency communications practice, other times it's people talking about their latest surgery. UHF and VHF is basically what you get with a Technician license, which is pretty easy to get. For that, you can either use the handheld walkie talkie style radios, or your typical ham radio that looks like a CB in the car. Here's a few pics of my car install: http://chadamberg.com/drupal/MobileRadio

Then on my HF radio, I used digital modes to chat with folks in Michigan, Canada, and Idaho. A few weeks ago chatted with a young lady in Japan for a bit. The HF radios are usually bigger and more expensive, and you have to put thought into your antenna. Although for me, I picked up a box called a tuner, mounted it in a waterproof box, connected one end to a copper pipe for my sprinkler system for a ground, and hooked up the "hot" lead right to my downspout on my gutter. The tuner box makes whatever its connected to "look like" the right size antenna for what frequency you're on. This is good news for folks in HOA environments who can't put up a tower, or anything. I actually get really good performance out of it. For HF you need to upgrade to the General class license, which isn't that tough either.

The study guides make it easy, but finding someone local to give you a quick run through really puts things into perspective.