Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

If you are allowed to, simply get a real one, they are properly tuned for those bands. A modified 2m radio isnt and will not be transmitting effectively.

 

Members of NYC-ARECS were activated during the 9/11 attack. At the time, Charles Hargrove (N2NOV), the NYC-ARECS co-founder and current President, was the New York City ARRL District Emergency Coordinator and Citywide RACES Radio Officer on 9/11. Over 500 amateur radio operators helped provide assistance during the emergency.

Within hours, New York City District Emergency Coordinator Charles Hargrove, N2NOV, said that RACES members would be used in the search-and-rescue efforts at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan and elsewhere. Plans called for hams to be on duty 24 hours a day. Not only were cell sites, police and fire communications, and most television antennas lost when the World Trade Center collapsed, the New York City Office of Emergency Management bunker was lost when 7 World Trade Center collapsed later in the day (it had already been evacuated). Besides emergency traffic, amateurs shadowed some New York City officials and medical officials, handled medical traffic, and assisted the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. (Read more: Remembering 911)
•BBC Radio program "Unsung Heros" about the NYC Amateur Radio Operators on 9/11 (Open)
with Charles Hargrove, President of NYC-ARECS
•"Embedded Technicians: A New Approach to Emergency Communications" (Open)
by Alan Dove N3IMU, Member of the NYC-ARECS
•State of New York Legislative Resolution recognizing hams that worked in NY on 9/11 (Open)
•"After nearly 2 weeks, the Amateur Radio volunteer effort in New York City is winding down" (Open)
•Listen to the Fire Department dispatch from the attacks of 9/11 - a very powerful and sad broadcast (Open)

 

This would be a absolute nightmare to the command structure of any emergency operation
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Don't
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I'm involved with ARES for this reason. This is not a valid reason to modify equipment to transmit out of band. The value that hams bring to the table is the Part 97 frequency allocation. During a catastrophic emergency, public safety frequencies are going to be busied out. Especially as they adopt trunking systems that have even more users and less available talk paths.

Hams bring an entire frequency allocation to the table to expand communication capabilities. They bring repeaters, portables, and mobiles. Hams bring additional established and effective communication networks. Hams bring long range HF capability as well as digital (FLdigi, APRS) and the skills to utilize all of the above. All of this is inside the Part 97 frequency allocations.

There is a reason that FCC licenses for public safety frequencies indicate the number of mobile and portable units that are valid on the license. It's also a number that is commonly ignored by public safety. Which adds to their busied out problem.

If there is a legit reason for any ham (or any person) to talk on public safety frequencies, they'll be handed a radio programmed to talk on those frequencies.

Listening to public safety with a scanner is fine. Or even listening with an unmodifed ham radio is fine. There is little to no reason to have transmit capability. Transmit capability is far more likely to cause problems then it is to provide any solutions.

 

I have ICS training and have worked on emergency responses as part of my day job. That said, I've always been of the opinion that the ARES/RACES thing is just hype. As a ham, you can provide more benefit in emergencies by being a proficient operator than by bringing a bunch of complicated APRS junk, chinese HTs, and drama to an emergency scene. I've seen some ARRS RACES horror shows during disasters: I.E. non working porta-peters, unnecessarily complicated APRS and digital crap that nobody used correctly, and out of shape old guys having heart attacks in the heat..... The most effective ham em com ops that I've seen were just regular old good operators with well engineered stations passing info efficiently while staying the hell out of the way. Generally, if I see someone with 10 VHF antennas, ARES/Skywarn stickers and a flashing yellow light on his car, I try to stay clear of them.

 

Ding! Ding! Ding! Or if we want to push it further, pulling a gun from a downed police officer to take down some character on a killing spree. Bottomline is that when an REAL emergency happens, let's get 'er done!

The other point being made is a good one too. Being legal is a good thing.

An interesting statistic that I came across recently regarding following the laws of our land: CCW holders are 6 times less likely to be convicted of a crime. So in other words, CCW holders probably wouldn't transmit in an emergency.

 

Ok, as the one who grabbed the remote in the first place, back to the original program.

Any help with APRSPro or is everyone ising APRSdroid? Want to set it up as a backup help call option if stranded...

 

From my original research the biggest issue I believe is getting the tnc from the radio to speak with the Apple iOS. The most popular one mobilink is unable to communicate with Apple as there blue tooth isn't "open"

From my experience so far... ham radio isn't very mac friendly

 

Actually, it's pretty Mac friendly. Many Linux programs can be made to run on a Mac. Even RT systems started porting to MacOS.

Ham radio is definitely not iOS friendly. While there are a plethora of apps, there are far more (and better) apps available for Android.

 

Yeah- maybe I should switch for that. APRSPro is what Ive been trying with an old iPhone. Wanted to just use it as a beacon and text, and emergencies.

 

A quick antenna question. How far apart should a 2 meter vertical be from a 10 meter vertical?

 

There's not really a single quick answer here since it depends. Being two fairly unrelated frequencies you can get away with more than if you're trying to use antennas on the same or close multiples of the same band.

In this case our 2m allocation covers 144 to 148 MHz, which is 82 to 80 inches. Our 10m allocation covers 28 to 29.7 MHz, which is 422 to 398 inches. They are very close to 5th harmonics (146 / 28.85 = 5.06).

Rule of thumb is 10 wavelengths of the lower of the two frequencies provides about 40 dB of isolation, which is usually enough unless both are on the same band or have exceptionally poor out of band filtering. Of course with 10m and on a truck this distance is impossible. Finding 333 feet of distance may not even be possible at home.

So I would recommend:

• As much physical distance as you can
• Definitely enough so the whips themselves can't touch
• Use as low of power as possible
• Offset the whips vertically if you can

Realize, though, that people get away with much less even on the same band, so YMMV. I would at least keep them on separate sides of the truck and ideally one in front and the other at the back.

 

Whats up folks! I just passed my technician exam, received my call sign, KC1JXG, and ordered a handheld transceiver.

Looking forward to meeting you guys and actually figuring out how to use this

 

Congrats

 

Awesome!!

 

Is there a roll call list on here of members, call signs and area? That'd be neat.

 

Congratulations on your Tech license. Start studying now for your General so you can do awesome HF. I used Hamwhisperer.com. You Tube has a section with videos on the Tech and General license. Yes the General guide is a few years older but the same questions are still there on the test.

 

Thanks everyone

Yes! General class looks easily attainable and very powerful.

Maybe I’ll try to plan getting that and a mobile unit for the truck after I play with the handheld at camp and on the trails this year.

 

I gotta get back on the repeaters... haven't been on an since I left Cali... and starting to get a little more interested in hf for it longer range and possible hf aprs