Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

I would have no issue if the radio did only ham bands but now you can get on LMR,PS,FRS, and the only saving grace they won't do AM or people would be transmitting on aircraft bands. Every other manufacture has to block the TX on any thing other than ham bands but by the true letter of the law they are not compliant and get away with it and at some point they are going to cause big problems in the hands of the general public. Granted quality radio can be modified but one had better know what they are doing or their HT would become a nice brick but not so with the cheap Chinese radio buy a programming cable and live it up. Here is just one point FRS radios are 300 MW with a fixed antenna that can't be removed so now they have a 5 watt radio that can carry a gain antenna and TX a couple of miles and that kind of defeats the whole ideal behind the FRS. The same thing can happen in our ham bands and it will not be easy to police don't think any one that went to the effort to get a ticket will like that.

 

They're 500 MW.

I don't think they're going to cause a big problem. Most folks who buy them are probably Hams, or are buying them for commercial purposes. If someone buys them as toys they'll play with them, grow tired and put them away. In my county of 3M people, 99% public safety comms is digital-trunked on 800MHz.

 

I have a D72A too, love it. I only use about 20% of it's abilities, but one day, I will have time to play with it all.

 

Might be a stupid question but is most of the programmin software Mac compatible?

 

depends what radio and programing software

 

http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home

 

Yeah 1/2 watt. But you see my point a 5 watt radio in that band is illegal so now the people that wanted that freq. are being overrun by a radio with several times the range. Don't know if you have listened to CB recently but the last time I did it has not changed so now the same folks have a new toy that will allow them to get on any frequency and talk the same kind of trash on a band designed for family or public use. It's bad enough now on our 2 meter band with carryover from the CB bands from people that actually took the time to get a license. My complaint is the fact that these radios are in the hands of those that have no training or even the slightest understand of the ramifications of transmitting out of band. The FCC finally shut down a ham here in Maine (K1MAN) that was causing intentional interference and had for many years. I can just see how a radio that can be used all over the bands can cause a lot of problems. 5 watts is more than enough drive for most amps.

 

Chirps is good and works fine on a mac, but is very basic. So depending on the radio, you may want a more robust software. It did take me a bit to get the cable setup properly, but once that was done, it "just works".

I finally broke down and bought RT Systems and loaded it on parallels. This gave me the ability to setup hyper memories on my FT-8800.

The Kenwood software is just as good, if not better, than chirps but also had to be installed on parallels.

 

Just drove from Los Angeles to New Orleans, and all radio traffic ended when hitting Texas. Not many people use ham, huh?

 

What did you use to find all the repeaters along your route? I've heard mixed things about arrl's travel software. I tried using repeater book's travel option, but it didn't seem very good.

 

It depends.

I've driven hundreds of miles traveling in California while camped on 146.52 and never heard a thing. If I tune around the 2M band the repeaters are usually busy with local rag chew during commuting times or scheduled nets.

There is always the WIN system, and other networked repeaters if you like that.

I still use Repeater Book for my directory of repeaters while traveling.

 

What's your experience been like with Repeater Book as far as activity on the repeaters that pop up along your travel? I started searching the repeaters along the interstates, but came back with way too many results. Then I started searching only wide area coverage repeaters in the states I'll be traveling through and seemed to get a decent amount of repeaters along my travel route. Just worried they'll be old or low use repeaters. I'm traveling from VA-IN for Christmas.

 

It's a crap shoot. Hit or miss. Sometimes I'll try 6-8 machines before I make contact. I travel during daytime so most folks are probably working, etc.
Site is good and I have (4) hard copies in my truck. 2M and 440, both sorted by frequency and by location for the whole state. Super useful. The database receives updates so once a year I'll print new copies. Plus I have my phone as well.

 

When i travel i set 2m to 146.52, 70cm to APRS, and tool around HF

 

Thanks for the info! I plan on keeping one side of my dual band radio set to 52 and the other scanning local repeaters. We'll see how that goes.

 

Repeater traffic is spotty usually commuters it's unusual to find people during the day and it's hard to turn up any one on simplex. Many people even if they hear you won't come back your just not "one of them". It’s kind of bad form to call CQ on a repeater but you might get your point across! I leave my house unit on and try to acknowledge someone if I hear them on the repeater so I'm suggesting that all hams do the same it is a common courtesy gets kind of boring out on the road on a long drive. Look for some echolink stuff if nothing else you maybe be able to talk to another repeater in Bangladesh or Baltimore often the echolink codes are the default codes so you can link into a lot of things. When I’m on the road I mostly do HF no lack of traffic there.

 

We have a lot of linked repeaters covering a large part of Southern CA and most of Arizona around here. We even have a link all the way up to Montana. Some require you to initiate the link and others are linked all the time. Like every other repeater around the country they are busier during the drive time. There is almost always someone listening during the day. We have a few truckers and other that when passing through call out with "passing through" or "from..." it's a more acceptable version of calling CQ. Mainly because it lets people know why you are calling CQ.

 

While I have a repeater directory, the main app I use is called RFinder, and it's awesome! Mainly, though, I'd scan, and the airwaves were doa. :/

 

I use repeaterbook, just the same as Rfinder only free. Plus it's always constantly updated.

 

I'll look into that. I'm guessing you were getting people up and down the West coast on your trip, yeah?