Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

This 75 ft tower was up at my house for over 20 years with a repeater attached to it in a residential neighborhood. My dad was a ham guy. It had been hit by lightning once. When my dad passed away almost 10 years ago, all the repeater stuff went away. Mom got remarried and moved to Utah. We decided to sell it last summer and took the tower down. It was a bitter sweet goodbye to the tower. When the tower was up, it was in a 6'x6'x6' thick cement.

 

Who is that in the pic?

 

Family friend hooking the crane up to the tower.

 

We had to cancel a bike race one year up the mountain there was ice at the summit down to 5200' nothing unusual except that it was mid-August. We also do communications for the Climb to the Clouds auto race in early June and usually there is still snow in the ravines. They closed the auto road a week or so ago too much snow. It really is a neat place so if anyone is vacationing in the area it’s worth a drive up the auto road. The Feds have a lot of radio gear up there all in a restricted area.

 

The rime ice is on the ray domes the antennas are inside the building it's pretty funny looking the frame work to mount the antennas is all inside and the antennas stick up into the ray domes. An out side antenna's life expediency is very short.

 

I was passing through Lakeside (Hick town) in San Diego County and there it was. a C.H.P. vehicle with a CB fiberglass antenna mounted on the side. I've never seen that before. Seeing CB radio antennas on vehicles is quite rare in San Diego. You can go a months without seeing one. However they are more common in the rural areas.

 

A some of the highway cars up here have CB radios in the cruisers. A couple of our detectives had CB's too bad guys usually were dumb enough to tell the cops what they were up too or where they were unknowingly.

 

Finally starting to "build" my '07 Access Cab TRD-S. Figured communications should be my first order of business. I started by installing my old Kenwood TM-D700A

Here's my small "around town" Comet

$72 SBB-2 146/446 MHz Dual Band Mobile Antenna 18" PL-259

SBB-2 Antenna on a Comet "hatch back" mount I had laying around in the parts box. I've got a few larger antennas, but while around town this makes pulling into the parking garages easier.


I attached the body of the radio to the bottom of the drivers seat by wedging the mount between the steel springs and the foam. Then I applied four velcro straps to keep it in place. The power and coax are tucked in the wiring loom holders under the kick panels.


I ran the cable for the control unit under the center console. Then under/behind the coin tray on the right side of the steering wheel. Currently the mic is just pulled up from next to the seat. I intend to extend the RJ-45 and mount the mic from the back of that change tray as well.


I'll work on grabbing some daytime photos tomorrow. I am also looking to build a dedicated APRS unit for the truck. I enjoy having both sides of the Kenwood available too much to dedicate the left side to APRS.

 

I did some basic legal research which has caused me to change my opinion on what is constitutionally protected speech and how that is expressed on amateur radio. Over a year ago we discussed the questionable activities and behaviors of the notorious internationally known 435 repeater in Los Angeles. Commonly known as the "Animal House" repeater.

When most people here the conversations on 435, they are shocked. Then most state something like: Why doesn't the FCC intervene and put a stop to it? Now bear in mind that this has been going on for over 30 years...

My opinion is that, the FCC can't. It can't intervene for the sake of profanity or even indecency alone. Profanity is 100% constitutionally protected speech.

http://www.w5yi.org/ama_news_article.php?id=483

I have a love for the law, history, and constitutional rights.

So all that being said, if you happen to drop some F-bombs or other bad words on the air, the worst is you'll offend some folks who may be listening, but you should have zero fear from the FCC.

Also, even though I'm 112 miles south of the Animal House repeater, it turns out I can make it in with my mobile! Haha

 

Interesting.

Although, honestly I've just about outgrown 2M.. Seriously. From Washington down to Moab I'd call out on 146.520 - just for shits and giggles; a couple of times requesting weather/traffic. Nada. That was about 2000 miles of road.

A couple guys really were helpful down in Moab, when I had to get weather/relay a message.

The majority of all the conversations I have on the repeaters around me are clinically boring, or non-existent. Similar to the Win System, there's about 100 dudes that'll just say "KG7DVI monitoring, Bellingham, WA". Then that's it. What the hell is the point to announce you're monitoring if that's all you do..?

Had some great discussions on a repeater just over the border in Canada. We have up filtering language or topics long ago.

My Yaesu 897 is waiting for a better antenna and a license upgrade..

 

I usually come back with "Why monitor, when you can talk?" and then they dont respond. I scan the local machines, but i pay them no attention. Now when i first became a ham in 2011, 146.52 was the only freq we talked on. I wont talk on a machines unless its a emergency. Too much local machine DRAMA ala CB mindset. HF on the other hand, is a total different MONSTER. If im out of town ill use a local machine

 

I'm not a repeater guy myself. A year ago I used them to understand the properties of RF propagation. I enjoy the scientific aspect of amateur radio. The average repeater conversions however are indeed clinically boring here too. "How much did your grass grow last night?", talk of medical ailments, what you ate for breakfast, etc. Jeeze... I'm licensed for HF, but no HF radio. I wonder though, are there meaningful conversations on HF? I mean, collecting contacts for the sake of numbers alone does not seem very fun to me.

 

I mostly listen for people talking about antenna tech, on 160, 80/75 and 40. Most of the time its the same old hams talking about the latest pain meds. I was big into HF digital, but my MBP was supporting the window software so that endeavor was abandoned. I mostly monitor and look for interesting conversations, then i TX when i need to put in my 2 cents. Id try and find a local ham group thats not into the V/Uhf, luckily a local group found me. The are mostly the DX bunch, but ive slowly breaking them down to just chew the fat at times.

 

HF has it groups that do the same things i left the local machine drama. But there are alot more frequencies to listen to. And alot more people to listen to also. If you dont have $ to get a HF radio, find some one that has a SW receiver, or SDR dongle that you can hack to use as receiver... and thats just a lil of the stuff ive looked into...

 

If you get on HF you will find most people in other countries behave them self's. If you have a club (ARC) in your area, join and change from within. We have a very active club over in NH and the difference is obvious the club does things together and will not put up with foolishness on their repeater. Over the years I have turned off the repeaters remotely for misuse that is allowable despite their "free speech". I agree the 2 meter repeaters are full of wingnuts mostly ex CBers that thought bad behavior was part of the operation manual. You do have the option of finding another repeater they are not all bad if you sit there and listen you become part of the problem it is an audience they are looking for.

 

Anybody playing with DMR?

 

Not i, but handful of the repeater junkies are.

 

I've been tinkering with it. It's neat, but it's cutting edge technology held back by 25 year old linking thought processes.

 

Ditto in San Diego ham community. They spend a ton of money on digital radios to do EXACTLY the same thing they were doing on analog. And I've listened long enough to hear at least one complain that C4FM doesn't quiet sound as good as analog, for regular rag chewing. Also amusing, but kind of sad, is to watch the DSTAR zealots argue with the C4FM adopters. It's like scorched earth with them. Haha

There was a brief time where I wanted to pick up some Alinco 220 radios and use their proprietary digital add-on board. It would have been fun. As best I could tell, the communications, while not encrypted, would not be monitored unless someone had the same radio with the same encoding chip as the Alinco, which is probably rare at this point.

Analog 4 Life!

 

One thing I realized when I started to install my 897d, is that the freaking Tacoma is very tight and does not offer lots of room! Luckily, the control unit is small enough to tolerate in tight quarters.