Anyone else Mic Shy?

[ka9wrz]

One suggestion I'd give to the new folks getting ready to throw their call out there shortly after getting their license is to make a list of things to discuss. Having been licensed for many years, there's nothing more frustrating than to hear a new ham put out his call, go back to him, and his total vocabulary consists of,

"Yep"
"No"
"OK"

As one of my SK friends used to say, "It's called a dialogue cuz both people are supposed to talk". Lot of truth in that. If nothing more than throwing out there, "I've been thinking about making my own ladder-line J-Pole for portable operations. Do you have any experience in that?" or, "What part of the hobby do you find the most enjoyable?" It breaks the ice and gets the other guy talking. The only thing you have to worry about once that happens is to get him to come up for air long enough for the repeater to reset before it times out!

Good luck!

 

[Jimru]

One suggestion I'd give to the new folks getting ready to throw their call out there shortly after getting their license is to make a list of things to discuss. Having been licensed for many years, there's nothing more frustrating than to hear a new ham put out his call, go back to him, and his total vocabulary consists of,

"Yep"
"No"
"OK"

As one of my SK friends used to say, "It's called a dialogue cuz both people are supposed to talk". Lot of truth in that. If nothing more than throwing out there, "I've been thinking about making my own ladder-line J-Pole for portable operations. Do you have any experience in that?" or, "What part of the hobby do you find the most enjoyable?" It breaks the ice and gets the other guy talking. The only thing you have to worry about once that happens is to get him to come up for air long enough for the repeater to reset before it times out!

Good luck!

Good advice!

 

[AC2OY]

Congratulations man and welcome!!!! That's great you found a club and met some ham friends and the guy with the tower wow very sweet!!! I have to do echolink some more so I can chat with a few members here so please throw out those nodes and maybe oneday or night we ALL can have a nice go round!!!!

 

[K7MEM]

I don't remember being mic shy or key shy when I first started in ham radio. It was a long time ago (49 years). I was a little shaky on CW but I didn't have any real trouble on voice. Maybe it was because I read a lot of electronic/radio magazines and, at the time, was attending a Vocational/Technical high school for electronics. One of my class mates was already a ham, so I gleaned a lot of information from him.

But not everyone has that kind of background and basically "hits the ground running", without any idea of how to establish a contact. An example of this happened about 15-20 years ago. I was tuning around in the, then, 40 meter Novice band and heard a odd sounding signal. I was hearing a operator sending "hello is there anyone out there, can anyone hear me? This is KXXXX". And then he would go silent for a minute or two and try again. Mind you, he was sending this in Morse code. His CW was slow but very readable. He just had no clue what a CQ was. So I zero beat his signal and gave him a call. He came right back and was elated that someone heard him. It turns out, it was his first contact. We chatted for a few minutes but he was so exhausted, he had to go QRT and recover.

So some times you just have to jump in feet first and see what happens. It gets easier as you get more air time.

Martin - K7MEM

 

[Cressida81]

I've had a couple QSOs on 2m repeaters on the drive home now. I think the times I've got a radio available are also times I'm not terribly talkative... the drive to work (barely awake, coffee hasn't kicked in yet) and the drive home (stressed, fighting traffic, probably the time when I most need a distraction though). Sometimes on good days coming home from work I'll probably be more talkative. Right now I do like to just listen though

Another thing is that I put in for a vanity call sign. I don't want to be making a bunch of local contacts and having them work hard to try and remember my name and call sign only to change it on them next week (well, actually on the 18th it should be processed). The new callsign should be easier to say over the air, and phonetically, and remember. So I'm kind of holding back because of that... I really don't like saying my callsign outloud, it does not flow well the last 3 are ERZ which is hard to enunciate, sounds more like (ear-zee), the new one will be BIT which is much better IMO.

 

[Cressida81]

To clarify, the only times I've really got a radio available right now is in the car because I don't have a base station yet. Working on getting the coax into the house from the roof antenna though. Also have a 9 month old and almost 3 year old so things don't settle down until 8:30-9 which is the only time the wife and I've got to connect, then its time to sleep... so is the life with little ones. Except for wednesdays when I get to take part in the net.