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Topic: HAM Radio  (Read 30602 times)

Offline volksnick

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HAM Radio

« on: June 02, 2013, 07:18:05 PM »
CQ CQ CQ-

Is anyone a HAM radio operator? Matthew and I have been talking about amateur radio a lot lately and we were curious if anyone in the club is a radio junkie!

73

Offline Ret.Bugtech

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2013, 10:36:14 PM »
CQ CQ CQ-

Is anyone a HAM radio operator? Matthew and I have been talking about amateur radio a lot lately and we were curious if anyone in the club is a radio junkie!

73
Go for it . Its a lot of fun and no I'm not a Ham radio operator but My Dad and brother were. My dad and I would talk to my brother in the Philippines and later Germany while he was in the Air force. This was back in the '40-'50's. Radio's were huge and took up a lot of room.Now you just pick up a cellphone. Amazing isn't it . :o :o

Offline volksnick

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Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2013, 12:33:49 AM »
CQ CQ CQ-

Is anyone a HAM radio operator? Matthew and I have been talking about amateur radio a lot lately and we were curious if anyone in the club is a radio junkie!

73
Go for it . Its a lot of fun and no I'm not a Ham radio operator but My Dad and brother were. My dad and I would talk to my brother in the Philippines and later Germany while he was in the Air force. This was back in the '40-'50's. Radio's were huge and took up a lot of room.Now you just pick up a cellphone. Amazing isn't it . :o :o

Been one for years, just curious if I was alone. Matthew got his last year sometime.

Offline volksnick

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Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2013, 11:39:48 PM »
Matthew and I went to the local amateur radio club meeting the other night. It was very interesting and they have about as many events as VW clubs. They are planning a "special event station" at Point Park for the 150th anniversary of the battle of chattanooga later on in July. The 22nd-3rd of June they have a "Field Day" which is an FCC sanctioned event where groups run stations for 24 hours and make as many contacts as they can and log them. There are awards for the most confirmed contacts.

Matthew and I just picked up some Baofeng radios for cheap. They are chinese made radios that have a lot of open channels, which allows you to monitor or transmit on a lot of frequencies that a standard HAM radios won't allow. I have been able to crack into the motorola talkabout frequencies (and privacy codes). These things are pretty sweet and they are only about $35! We checked in on a "net" the other night which is when a bunch of other HAMs all get on a certain frequency at the same time- kind of a radio meeting. It was fun and we were able to check in to a repeater on Signal Mountain from East Brainerd. We heard people as far away as Rome and Georgetown on these little radios!!!

We plan to have them at Stevenson to communicate. Feel free to ask questions if anyone is interested!

Offline Ret.Bugtech

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2013, 04:26:02 PM »
  WOW ! Its really hard to think that you can do all of that with a "Hand Held" unit when in the past it took a transmitter/receiver as big as Bug to do the job. Very interesting. Like I stated  before, My Brother and Dad were ham guys.  My brother had a 2-meter outfit in his car also. That was fun.

Offline Russ

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #5 on: July 01, 2013, 02:14:21 PM »
Yay!

Offline volksnick

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Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2013, 04:31:42 PM »
Awesome! I hope you got the sync cable. If not, you can borrow mine or Matthews. Download CHIRP and it allows you to fill out a spreadsheet with all of the freq, tones, offsets, a Name, etc... It really makes programming a breeze!

Are you studying for the test at all?


Monitor 146.790, which is the local HAM repeater. That one gets the most action, especially when they have the "nets."




For anyone interested in learning more, there is an event coming up the weekend after next that will allow people to work/observe a special event radio station set up at Point Park on Lookout. It will be for the 150th anniversary of the battle of Chattanooga

Offline Russ

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2013, 04:51:44 PM »
I started taking a practice test online. So far it isn't too hard.

Offline volksnick

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Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #8 on: July 01, 2013, 05:09:38 PM »
I started taking a practice test online. So far it isn't too hard.

Excellent....   ;D ;D ;D

Offline Russ

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #9 on: July 01, 2013, 07:00:23 PM »
No sync cable, looks like that's a separate purchase. I can get the software on my laptop if you wanna look at it Friday.

Offline Russ

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #10 on: July 01, 2013, 07:03:58 PM »
Without the software how can I tune it to 146.790?

Offline Russ

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #11 on: July 01, 2013, 07:18:31 PM »
Ah, the step was set to 25! I set it to 5 so I could step a little better and I got directly to it now. I hear people talking!

Offline volksnick

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Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #12 on: July 01, 2013, 07:23:08 PM »
You can type it in when you are in frequency mode(orange button goes between frequency mode and preprogrammed channel mode). The blue button toggles between the top frequency and the bottom frequency. Menu option 7 let's you turn on dual receive so you can monitor both the top and bottom frequencies.

Offline Russ

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #13 on: July 01, 2013, 07:26:06 PM »
I tried manually keying in the number but apparently with the step set to 25 it still won't let you go straight to it. So far they've talked about the weather a lot and some guy described what his wife ate at a Mexican restaurant. I'm currently watching some YouTube videos.

Offline Russ

Re: HAM Radio

« Reply #14 on: July 01, 2013, 07:58:10 PM »
Is it possible to program them to use the same frequency as FRS radios?

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