Quest: Find hams in your area
About
The Federal Communications Commmission (FCC) keeps a amateur radio license database is public. That’s why some hams prefer to use a post office (P.O.) box as their permanent surface mailing address for their license. However, the fact that the database is public makes it easy to find hams in your geographic area.
Open the Amateur Radio License Map application
Visit https://haminfo.tetranz.com/map
Search for hams in your current Zip code
I live in 16801. Here is a zoomed-out view of all the hams whose home addresses in the FCC database list 16801.
If you check the “Show grid labels” checkbox you will see that the map shows the 6-character [grid square] designator. Some hams “collect” QSOs from different grid squares. Many hams operating FT8 or FT4 exchange grid squares, as do those who operate amateur satellites, see the satellite quest.
Search for a specific callsign
If you know a ham’s callsign, enter it in the Callsign box.
Here is the map of licensed hams near to the mailing address for K3CR, the Penn State Amateur Radio Club’s callsign.
Note
You must maintain a valid address with the FCC and that address is public. Some hams who prefer not to have their physical address publicly available rent a post office (PO) box and use that for their address in the FCC database. This is perfectly acceptable.