I’m have a Ham Radio License. (KC0PED) I’m not an active Ham, nor do I yet have access to the Highe Frequency bands that lets you talk to people all over the world. I do however, follow several Ham websites and try to keep abrest of what is going on.
Probably the biggest thing Ham operators do is run DX contests where they try to contact people in a wide range of geographic areas. The amateur radio community has some very strict definitions of what a geographic area is. For example, the United States is not one area. The continental US is one, Alaska is one, Hawaii is one, then all the little islands and dependencies we own are seperate. In total there are 335 areas used in DXing contests.
Some of these areas have no people who live there. Hence, they are very hard contacts to get. Every few years, ham operators set up DXpeditions to visit these places and contact hams throughout the world. In fact, they have a “most wanted” list of the top DXCC locations. #6 of 335 on the list is Peter I Island off Antartica. (Suprisingly, Yemen is above St Peter I island, which is a populated country that, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t ban ham radio)
There is currently a DXpedition to Peter I Island (3Y0X) and they have a blog updating their experiences. They are using an Iridium phone to do the updates from their ship. It’s not a cheap thing to do either. There aren’t ships that go to Peter I island, there is no place to dock. You have to take a helicopter from the ship to the island. The weather is also horrible as well as its in the worst seas on earth. The entire expidition cost about $500k. Quite a bit so some ham radio operators can check off another box on a list.
