Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) Operators on this forum?

OH, which two?

 

There are several threads you can read that will give an idea of the Hams out here. as you thumb throught the forum topics you will find them. Welcome, have you mounted a rig in the car yet? That's a serious commitment on a new car!

 

Haven't been active since around the early 1990's but still keep my license current. I was mostly CW. Do they even operate CW any more now with all the digital modes available?

 

Hi Folks! I was granted a technician class license a couple of years ago. I currently EDC an Icom IC-P7A that is pretty much with me 24/7. My wife gives me a hard time about it but whatever.

For far away camping/hiking trips I like carrying with me a Yaesu VX-8DR that comes with some APRS goodness. I'm currently saving up $ for a nice rig that is not dependent on repeaters, and once I have it, I'll go after my general license.

73,
Oly

 

V.E.'s like your friend, hadn't even been invented yet, back in the 1960's. In order to get licensed/tested, we had to take a drive up to the nearest FCC office. For us, that was up in Los Angeles ... about 45 miles away. I think the Fed's only required me to do 13wpm for the code test, even if you were cranking out 20, which I was doing at the time. Also in the 60's they dreamed up incentive licensing. They actually took away part of our HF privileges if we didn't go back and take another code test! I refused on principal, even though I was easily DX'ing 20+
If that wasn't exasperating enough, they restructured licensing again maybe a decade ago, to drop the 13wpm General test down to only 5wpm. After that, the FCC dumped the code test all together ... even for the extra class (shaking head ) ... too funny.
I moved back & forth between CA, Montana and Florida over the years during the 1980's & 90's. The FCC required you to relinquish your amateur license I.D. in favor for a new one in your new state. So for a while my FCC license was from "4" land. But? ... Still more rule changes! Enter the vanity license scheme during the 1990's. I thought, "hey, now I can have my original license re-assigned! ... cool!" But during the 1980's my old license had been re-assigned to another :Cry: - But all was not lost.
Eventually that dude kicked the bucket. Death freed up my old FCC I.D. ... which allowed me to abandon my Florida amateur license, and get my original California "Six land" call sign - re-assigned to me - as a vanity.
Enter, the dumbness of the California motor vehicle department. I went back to the CA DMV to register my original amateur license plates onto our hybrid. The DMV said my plates had remained dormant too long. So even though I had my plates "in hand" ... the DMV would have to manufacture them all over again (budget crisis be damned!) simply because they had no records from the 1960's and 70's ... and after the duplicates arrived, I could install which ever set I want on the hybrid ... and throw the others away. Loving bureaucracy. After not hearing from the DMV for over 4 months I called to ask, "where's the plates that you're supposedly re-making". They'd lost all records ... again. Loving bureaucracy. But ... 2nd time was the charm ... and in only 3 more months the duplicate FCC/DMV license plates arrived (with corresponding registration) - just like my originals (but the new ones were the new CA color) ... and so I threw 'em away. People sometimes ask why the old plates on a newer car:


I say, "please don't ask" ... it's a long DMV and FCC bureaucratic nightmare. Maybe I can direct 'em to Prius Chat.


Anyway - here's a shot below, of our emergency radio group (maybe 18 years ago) monkey'ing with our hf beam back when we'd do field day and stuff like that.

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Hi Mike,

I just started getting into the whole APRS scene and It's all new to me. I'm really enjoying all the data reads, tracking local operators and checking out local weather stations all for free. There is also a sort of cool retro feel I get out of doing it, sort of like when I carried my old Motorola pager that provided me with the latest news feeds.

I did look at a few portable rigs a while back and many of them look really nice. How do you like your FT-817?

My call sign is K6ORM

Cheers,
Oly

 

I lived out in the country and had dipoles up on a big pole, plus a vertical in the yard and a 2-meter antenna on the roof. When I moved I sold everything. My license is posted on my computer desk, and the small version is in my wallet, but I have nothing else. I really only kept the license current so nobody else can have my call sign.

I took my novice exam from a volunteer examiner, and then spent 8 months studying. When I went in for my exams, I was afraid of flunking the 13 wpm code test, so I asked the examiner if I could copy the 20 wpm test for practice. He said no. So I asked, if I take the 20 wpm test and flunk it, can I still take the 13 wpm test, and he said yes. So I took the 20 wpm test just as practice, and I passed it. After I passed the written test for Technician (which gave me General, since I'd passed the code test) I took the Advanced test, just to see what it was like, and to my great surprise I passed it also.

I never understood the first thing about electronics, even after 8 months of study, and I never succeeded in designing the simplest circuit to do anything. An op-amp was a total mystery to me. But I could solder and I could follow a schematic and I could built a Heathkit. I even modified my HW8 from a schematic published in a magazine. But the electronics questions on the tests were pure guess.

So here's the really funny and stupid part: In those days (I don't know if it's changed) they made the Amateur Extra test "harder" than the Advanced test by having FEWER electronics theory questions, and MORE resonant circuit problems. I was good at math. I knew the rules & regs, so I got all those questions. And with my trusty slide rule I solved all the resonant circuit problems. And I just plain guessed at the electronics questions, though often there was one choice that was obviously wrong, so that helped with the guessing. And I walked out with my Extra class license.

I went straight home and got on the Extra class band and had to ask my first contact to slow down, to which he replied that this was the Extra band, to which I replied that I'd passed the exam that same day and it's much easier to copy code in a quiet room with no fading or interference or static than it is over the air, and he congratulated me and we had a nice chat. Eventually I earned a reputation as a good CW operator. I even won a QLF contest once at a hamfest. (For non-hams reading this, that's sending Morse code with your left foot on an oversized code key.)

But as I said, I eventually became disillusioned. The traffic nets, which were so much fun at first, began to seem kind of silly; and having people with illegal power levels jumping on a frequency was using, or even calling someone I was working, became frustrating; and the local 80-meter morning crowd began to seem intolerably boorish, and I found myself getting on the air less and less, and by the time I moved to a place I was not going to be able to operate, I didn't care, and I sold all my gear.

It was a fun hobby for about a decade. Computer programming replaced it, and lasted until Windows came along and programming was not fun any more.

I had a friend back in the day who had a Remington Noiseless typewriter and could copy 50 wpm pretty much flawlessly. He was the one who invited me to join the CFO.

I became a ham so I could talk to people in other parts of the world. That's a lot easier to do nowadays by email. The funny thing is that I've forgotten pretty much everything I knew about radio, and I don't know if I remember the code well enough to operate CW anymore, but I could legally set up a station and operate today without ever demonstrating any sort of competence in anything. Not that it really matters with today's rigs. The Amateur Radio service was originally established to promote innovation in radio technology. I doubt there's much of that any more.

But it was a lot of fun for a decade or so. That's probably the longest I've stuck with any passionate interest. I've been hiking every summer for 6 or 7 years, and scuba diving for only about 3 years. I probably stayed with computer programming for 4 or 5 years. I had a big garden for over 20 years, so that's an exception.

 

You probably had the non-alpha traditional pager that the rest of the world had at the time. I had, and still miss using my Motorola Advisor Elite Flex, mostly for weather, stocks, sports and local news.

I really enjoyed your post, good stuff! Thanks for the tips, recommendations, and review. I'll keep the 817ND on my radar.

Btw, I heard on the airwaves of a guy who had a portable rig installed in his car. He would leave it on as a mobile repeater and use a portable HT to access it as he walked around in the field. Does the 817ND have this capability?

 

I hear ya!

I had this idea that since our Prius can act as a nice power generator, the crossband repeat ability would make a nice little setup during my camping and hiking expeditions. If i did get a long HF antenna I would make sure it has a detachable mount. Also if the antenna were fixed, my wife would never be caught in it and she'd opt to take a separate car, so it's not really an option.

That reminds me, I took the wife with me to an HRO one day and she just rolled her eyes at me when she saw a van parked in the front that had 20+ antennas mounted all around it.

 

That sounds like a great idea and a fun project!! Definitely something I will consider when planning our next outdoor family trip. Thanks!