Not going to dox myself here putting my callsign in a post.
My callsign is a 2x1 call.
Please explain. Surely one simply opts out of having ones address published in your countries call book?
https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp
I know American data protection law is pretty poor, but that really is shocking; such data should not be made public without the users explicit opt-in consent.
In fact, several of the questions on the ham test involve the fact that you can look up operator info online.
https://www.dx-world.net/the-ham-radio-operation-that-made-h...
I don't know if there are others like me.
EDIT: Glad to see that there are others around. Happy to meet you. Async acks are great. So is the joy of engaging with something intellectually challenging.
I like building kits, QRP, CW, and building my own antennas. I only make contact with other people to be able to improve my skills and validate my gear.
My father has been licensed for nearly 50 years, he loves the technical side of the hobby, I've made more contacts over the last 2 years than he has in 15 years. There are others like you.
Oliver, M7OCL
edit: I know there are ragchews all the time, but it's still mostly about equipment.
That's one reason I love New York so much.
However my pace is much slower. I take my time.
On the technical side, the added attraction is to do some homebrewed amateur radio astronomy.
(Also, HF antennas - just didn’t anticipate how difficult they were to set up properly)
It's taken nearly 30 years, from buying the study guide in high school to finally sitting the test in my 40s. But glad I finally got it done.
The LMR license is more useful to me than my amateur license - I can just hand my friends my pile of cache radios and get yapping at an event. As a plus, we can run encryption and other fun things on the LMR license (within the bounds of our emissions) like APCO P25 (Project25) data transmissions.
Experience of Canadian ham scene though is it's almost all just buying/selling equipment, to the point some channels were occupied by automated announcements of what people were buying and selling. APRS is fairly well used though, and by far the best way to find what is in the local area.
For better or worse the more dynamic and technically interesting stuff now seems to be with SDR and Meshtastic/Meshcore. Even the people with envy inspiring antenna arrays are mainly on the mesh stuff.
I have mostly worked HF phone, but in latter years I've (finally!) become reasonably proficient in CW, too.
I enjoy the technical aspects of the hobby, being a radio frequency engineer - but also enjoy chatting to others, particularly to improve my language skills - Portuguese and Brazilian hams are an absolute delight and quite patient as I try to make myself understood in Portuguese!
Oh, and chasing the occasional award - but I am not very good at sending in the paperwork, so I guess I had better do that soon and get some paperwork for my shack. I have a particular soft spot for the RSGB IOTA program, as I live on one - EU-079 - myself.
I hope to be QRV from home again before long, though - I live on a farm, have lots of room, and I have a small mast and an almost finished wire beam in the barn, so with any luck I'll be able to put it all together and have a working station again sometime this spring!
—73
5 and 5, 73.
Sold Yaesu portable unit at the height of COVID after some fun with it. Still mess with the HTs sometimes but looking for an opportunity (time wise) to get back into it.
I'm part of a code club at the local school, and would love to show them radio too, spark that curiosity and imagination. I think it'll be out of scope for this year though.
For people who don't use radio for communication (chat), what do you do? I guess it's useful as an emergency measure, but I could simply purchase an ordianry radio or use my car's, not a ham radio.
I did it online thru the New York Radio Club (?).
I did Novice then General in about 30 minutes. I studied for maybe 6 hours immediately prior.
I grew up from age 5 in my Dads ham shack in NZ - every single thing he had made, transmitters, receivers, antennas, the feed wire, oscilloscope, signal gens, grid dip oscillator etc with many parts salvaged. In NZ in those days that is how most people did it, at least partially.
I also have an Electrical Engineering degree.
So sort of had a bit of background working knowledge, which meant I wasn't starting from scratch.
KK7RBX
Stupid question, do search and rescue services even have equipment that can tune into HAM frequencies, are they even listening on those frequencies, and do they regularly train on communicating with the HAM community?
I'm sure there are more established ways of radioing for help in the maritime world(Aviation has the guard frequency)
Poll would be better for that :p
PaulHoule•3d ago