What's going on with 2m?

[AK9R]

And, ham radio is a pay once thing.

As treasurer for a group that maintains four repeaters, let me interject something here.

One of the cool things about amateur radio is that you can talk across town, coast to coast, or around the world using absolutely no infrastructure except the stations at either end of the conversation. No cell phone towers, no Internet backbone, no satellites.

The one small exception is repeaters. There are all kinds of amateur radio repeater systems ranging from a standalone 2m repeater that barely covers a county all the way up to massive multi-state linked systems incorporating many individual repeaters on different bands with remote receive sites and backbone links. The one common thread running through all of these repeaters is that it costs money to keep them on the air.

So, when your local repeater group asks for a donation or sends you are reminder to pay your dues, don't neglect them. That $10-20 per year is helping to maintain a valuable communications resource.

 

[AgentCOPP1]

AgentCOPP1, my friends and I have over 30 years on you and your friends. You are my older son's age. I can say that if you push your friends too hard, you'll drive them away from the hobby, and they'll probably think you are crazy. But it's true, event after event, from the World Trade Center to Boston with Katrina in between, cellphones go away when something goes wrong. It doesn't even have to fail to go away. If 50,000 people competing for 1,000 available resources, a lot of people aren't going to get through. That's how it works. And, ham radio is a pay once thing. You get it, and no recurring bills, no phone cards (my guys don't get a subscription phone, I got them pay-as-you-go, I think cellphone "plans" are nothing more than slick-talker fraud and contract gotchas).

Yes, I agree with most of that. I certainly don't try extremely hard to get them to get their license, but a lot of them have many misunderstandings with my hobby. The idea to them is just so foreign that it's hard to get them to think like me. I'll tell my good friend that I have an amplifier in my truck for my radio and he just kind of laughs and says "Why would you need that?" Even going past that, I demonstrate to them working with satellites (which I love with a passion, although the last remaining FM satellite is very clogged with QSOs so I can't always get one in) which generally gets a very positive response, but that's where the novelty ends. I also like the versatility and the feeling of not relying on infrastructure.

As for the cell phones, I'm not as vehemently opposed to them as you are since my smart phone actually has LOTS of practical applications not only in my daily life, but I also have an entire folder full of useful ham radio apps that I can pull out wherever I am. Prime example. With the satellite ops that I do a lot, gone are the days when I have to print out an entire page full of the pass information and times. If I find a good pass on my computer program, I go to my phone and select that pass and then it will track the satellite in real time so I can just point my antenna to the part of the sky that the red dot (the satellite) is on. Pretty useful.

The other thing that cellphones suck at doing is one-to-many calls. Say you want to get together after school. Now you have to text each other with plans. That takes a while. Get on the radio and you have contact with everyone. If someone has a better idea or wants to do something different, that is communicated to the group more effectively.

Again, I agree with this. When I was going to the Oshkosh airshow last year with an entire group of cars, the guy leading us just wanted to rely on texting and calling for the coms. However I managed to convince him to use my GMRS radios I have (since I have like 7 of them) and in the end he just LOVED them. Coms were so much easier since every car had one, and getting a message across was instant. It made the trip smooth as silk.

One last thought: if you guys are like my kids, you text more than talk. Look at my message. Do you think I'd cut it texting? It takes a lot to express yourself fully. When you compress your message down (and each iteration of technology has resulted in compression of content), you lose meaning and a lot is left to interpretation. Have you gotten into a text-fight yet? From a one word text? One-to-many voice communication cuts much of the potential misunderstandings that go with this compression of content.

Don't sweat them. If they're genuinely interested, they'll come along at their own pace.

These are my exact thoughts. One of the many reasons that I hate Twitter with a passion is because you're limited to like 160 characters. That forces your messages to be extremely superficial, and it doesn't allow any room to effectively communicate an idea. There is literally nothing profound that you can communicate with 160 characters, it just doesn't work. Just look at my post here. Look at all of the ideas I've communicated. Not possible with Twitter or one-liners.

 

[Jimru]

Although I don't Tweet, the word count is 140 characters. If done correctly, one can convey thought and meaning well. Ask any ad copywriter. Btw; 134 characters!

 

[902]

I have to tell you that Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, was a scanner listener as he was growing up in St. Louis!
Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder of Square and Twitter : NPR

Jeff Pulver, the co-founder of Vonage and the founder of the 140Conference which supports Twitter is WA2BOT and has gone on the record as saying sending a Tweet is like calling CQ. So, ham radio and monitoring is well rooted in the founders of this technology! You can say that amateur radio is STILL a pioneering hobby. Nonetheless, I can't express myself in 140 characters, either.

My opposition to cellphones is more around my presbycusis/tinnitus and the compressed speech. I had the same problem with Nextels and suppose this will not get better with the drive to conserve bandwidth. I'm also messed up by latency. As people pause, by the time I start talking, they're already talking and I can't break in to get a word in edgewise. Part of that problem is that most people I know are all mouth and are clueless in the listening department. When they are listening, they like to hear themselves talking. So take away what you will. Between those two things, I find myself shouting, "Shut up and let me get a word in edgewise!" (I'm cranky like that in real life.)

I like GMRS, too. That, and a business band channel, were what we used before we all got ham licenses. In fact, my oldest spoke with some of the girls in the neighborhood by handing out a few GMRS radios. You could follow along and tell who wasn't talking to whom else. (Just like some 2 meter guys!) I'd like to make it to the fly-in someday.

Bottom line: I am in awe of you because you chose this hobby. Your shadow is the same one great men and women had (and a few mediocre ones, like me). You take it anywhere you want. You are its future.

 

[902]

The one common thread running through all of these repeaters is that it costs money to keep them on the air.

So, when your local repeater group asks for a donation or sends you are reminder to pay your dues, don't neglect them. That $10-20 per year is helping to maintain a valuable communications resource.

You're right Bob. I was thinking of simplex when I wrote that.

We support the local amateur radio association by being members (all 6 of us), and by chipping into the kitty when things are needed. We don't use the repeater much because we have our own (and because they use a talking controller), but if a hurricane comes through, their club repeater will be much more important than mine.

As the owner of a privately-owned (open) repeater, I chose that path because my early years in a club saw more politics than I liked. If I owned the repeater, I don't want anyone making me put a courtesy tone beep on it. So, I chose not to ask any of the users for dues. Still, I watch the electric meter spin while the repeater is transmitting. Even if it's not, the stand-by power consumption between the MSF5000, MASTR-II, and the IC-910H that runs the APRS IGATE I host mean I have a base power consumption, even if nothing else kicks on. And it is expensive. I can watch the meter spin faster while people are talking.

 

[k3cfc]

I have to tell you that Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, was a scanner listener as he was growing up in St. Louis!
Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder of Square and Twitter : NPR

Jeff Pulver, the co-founder of Vonage and the founder of the 140Conference which supports Twitter is WA2BOT and has gone on the record as saying sending a Tweet is like calling CQ. So, ham radio and monitoring is well rooted in the founders of this technology! You can say that amateur radio is STILL a pioneering hobby. Nonetheless, I can't express myself in 140 characters, either.

My opposition to cellphones is more around my presbycusis/tinnitus and the compressed speech. I had the same problem with Nextels and suppose this will not get better with the drive to conserve bandwidth. I'm also messed up by latency. As people pause, by the time I start talking, they're already talking and I can't break in to get a word in edgewise. Part of that problem is that most people I know are all mouth and are clueless in the listening department. When they are listening, they like to hear themselves talking. So take away what you will. Between those two things, I find myself shouting, "Shut up and let me get a word in edgewise!" (I'm cranky like that in real life.)

I like GMRS, too. That, and a business band channel, were what we used before we all got ham licenses. In fact, my oldest spoke with some of the girls in the neighborhood by handing out a few GMRS radios. You could follow along and tell who wasn't talking to whom else. (Just like some 2 meter guys!) I'd like to make it to the fly-in someday.

Bottom line: I am in awe of you because you chose this hobby. Your shadow is the same one great men and women had (and a few mediocre ones, like me). You take it anywhere you want. You are its future.

Hello 902

what fly in are you referring to. i was at Lock haven pa last year for the piper cub anniversary fly in.
.

 

[kd8rap]

I am in southwest ohio as well... I usually moniter the 147.345+ 146.670- (pl123) and 146.880- (pl123) repeaters. 146.670 repeater has a net on wednesday nights as well as traffic nets daily, and the 147.345 repeater has nets sunday nights and is active daily during morning and afternoon work commutes. The 146.880 repeater is the skywarn repeater so it is fun to listen to during storms. Hope to hear you on the air!

 

[902]

Hello 902

what fly in are you referring to. i was at Lock haven pa last year for the piper cub anniversary fly in.
.

Oshkosh.

 

[msa]

Well said!

On the local repeater I hang out on we have a lot of new hams (and probably some old ones too) that just love to kerchunk the repeater. I guess hearing the ID and courtesy tone is somehow reassuring to them? Instead of doing what I want to do and yelling "stop kerchunking the repeater! ID your station!" I instead key up and say "Sounds like someone was trying to get in, you were keying the repeater up. Try it again and I'll give you a signal report." Sometimes the kerchunker goes away for a while, and sometimes they come back and start a conversation. I'll recommend a better way, instead of kerchunking how about saying "This is call sign testing." Boom! They just got Elmered and didn't even know it.

I was always big on giving proper testing calls, and still do. And good on you for Elmering them, but -- I understand the kerchunkers position better now.

A couple of years ago I was on a mountaintop, testing two repeaters we were working on. The first time I gave a testing call, a retired ham would call me, and try to start a conversation. I explained I couldn't chat much, as we were working on the repeater.

Now, we had two sites on this particular mountain, and the work party was split across them. A few minutes later, I made a call on another repeater (also ours, different site, that we'd selected for coordinating work) to a ham on the other side... and here he comes again.

That fellow must have been really desperate to talk to someone that morning, as this went on, when any of us would test or make a call.

I guess the lesson is that sometimes properly IDing a test has negative consequences. I should have just started kerchunking the repeater. *laughing*

 

[902]

I guess the lesson is that sometimes properly IDing a test has negative consequences. I should have just started kerchunking the repeater. :laughing

You could always borrow a line from the Air Force and say, "DO NOT ANSWER!" But that would crank up something else entirely. I never thought kerchunking was such a big deal, really, unless it was making the repeater sound like a cuckoo clock.