Discussion Topic |
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Gunkie
Trad climber
Valles Marineris
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Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 23, 2016 - 03:41pm PT
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Any ham radio folks out there? 20m is lit tonight.
W3GHZ
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 23, 2016 - 04:46pm PT
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Skip conditions or tropospheric ducting?
KF6ATK but I only do data 5 ghz....
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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Oct 23, 2016 - 04:54pm PT
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KI6KZA. Juan de Fuca gave me his mobile rig years ago and am still using it.
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Spiny Norman
Social climber
Boring, Oregon
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Oct 23, 2016 - 05:08pm PT
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My dad was into it. I really have to get off my tail and get my license and a rig.
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Oct 23, 2016 - 05:41pm PT
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WN6SDL novice licence 1963.
limited to 75 watts continuous wave (morse code)
frequency control by crystal oscillator, expired in 12 months.
just a phase i went through as a junior high kid in what wasn't yet called the silicon valley.
i was busy skateboarding on steel wheels (later clay) past bill shockley's house ... the year he arrived at stanford.
i did recently pick up a nice world band receiver at a pawn shop and have identified a couple treetops to adorn with a long dipole cuz the night is long.
my dad K6TV went ALL the way into ham world and to his grave bitter about my comm failure. every time i came home for a visit
he had his most recently superseded rig packaged up ready for takeaway. he'd follow me to the curb with study materials.
hell, i don't have so much as a cell phone acc't let alone a mailbox.
my sister has a message # for me and i told her my ST handle
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Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
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Oct 23, 2016 - 06:59pm PT
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Nope, not a HAM. Tested too high for social skills, and I hate rainbow suspenders.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Oct 23, 2016 - 07:23pm PT
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N6HXA-
Add the MM3 for Marine Mobile South Pacific. N6HXA MM3
My YL and we used is extensively for many many years on the boat. Era of phone patches and weather related Nets were a godsend. Thousands of hours listening to world wide news stations and a whole list of relevant and fantastic stations with a different pulse on the news dribbled out from the US.
Loved BBC Radio Africa.
Sat phone and shortwave modems killed most of this as they are more reliable and quicker if you are trying to download weather Grib files and all while at sea.
Me, I don't have the dicipline to learn Morse Code but I believe that is not a requirement any longer for a General license?
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Oct 23, 2016 - 08:35pm PT
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hey there say, ... my friends' dad used to, or still does, :)
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nature
climber
Boulder, CO
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Oct 23, 2016 - 08:41pm PT
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KE0EOR
It is no longer a requirement to learn Morse Code.
Never in my lift did I think I'd ever use it. Until I was required to ident a VOR
I got my HAM to be able to operate VHF radios for drones. Lots and lots of range LOS.
It's also nice to tune the walkabouts to a GMS frequency for spotters, etc.
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Ferretlegger
Trad climber
san Jose, CA
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Oct 24, 2016 - 07:34am PT
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Presently WD6EHQ. Was first licensed in around 1965 as WD6SOR. I mostly do Maritime Mobile stuff, both digital with SCS Pactor III modem and also SSB with an ICOM IC7000 while on long offshore trips. For those with an interest, the Pacific Seafarers net on 14.300 MHz at 0330 UTC is a fun thing to listen to, as a dedicated group of hams spread across the entire Pacific region check in boats making passages.
Michael
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Chugach
Trad climber
Vermont
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Oct 25, 2016 - 05:31am PT
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Non-Ham operator here. Serious question; it seems to me that Ham was attractive when the world was so small and you could talk to people around the world - but now with the internet ... what's the advantage or the continuing attraction of Ham?
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Gunkie
Trad climber
Valles Marineris
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 25, 2016 - 03:07pm PT
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Non-Ham operator here. Serious question; it seems to me that Ham was attractive when the world was so small and you could talk to people around the world - but now with the internet ... what's the advantage or the continuing attraction of Ham?
Well, for me, it tickles my electrical engineering background with antenna design, propagation and low power (QPR) operations. I'm fascinated with atmospheric anomalies that allow relatively low power (<10W) to communicate with some of the most remote areas in the world. Plus I like to participate in Summits On The Air (SOTA, http://na-sota.org/);. There is also National Parks On The Air (NPOTA, https://npota.arrl.org/);.
And WHY don't those idiots on "The Walking Dead" ever use a ham rig to see if there are other people out there? You can listen around the world on all bands with a rudimentary receiver and a random length of wire.
So it's good to have knowledge of ham radio operations when zombies have taken over the world. Ya know, just in case.
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Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
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Oct 25, 2016 - 03:18pm PT
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And WHY don't those idiots on "The Walking Dead" ever use a ham rig to see if there are other people out there? You can listen around the world on all bands with a rudimentary receiver and a random length of wire.
Rule #1: Cardio.
HAM's mostly failed rule #1, and were eaten in the first wave. Old, out of shape people were the easiest pickings. The few that remained drove adopted band of survivors nuts, and were kicked out pretty quickly.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Aug 20, 2018 - 04:56pm PT
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you guys ever get into handheld HAM rigs for backcountry coms/SAR stuff?
I am looking at the Baofeng UV-5f as supplement to other sat-PLB stuff....any thoughts?
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ShawnInPaso
climber
Paso Robles, CA
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Aug 21, 2018 - 01:18am PT
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I used to carry one in the back country, mostly just to discover what I could hear. Once above 10k, usually there's a repeater or two to be heard.
With the advent of SOTA stations, I routinely hear people on 2 meters from Sierra summits from my humble abode in Paso Robles.
There is some long lost protocol about emergency comms when one goes missing and a search is anticipated. For example, listen and/or transmit on a specified frequency at the top of the hour for 15 minutes (in order to save batteries, etc.). I suppose this kind of thing could be added to an itinerary; any CHP helicopter and probably most military birds could dial in ham freqs as needed.
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Klimmer2.0
Mountain climber
San Diego, CA
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Aug 21, 2018 - 01:28am PT
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KF6AH*
2m mostly on a handitalky. I’m a paraglider pilot within the free-flight world. Best way to communicate with one another while flying and also communicating with your chase vehicle. Important for landing out remotely too where cellular coverage doesn’t really work for emergency purposes.
Seems to me plenty of climbing and BC skiing applications and better than a cell phone.
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Gunkie
Trad climber
Valles Marineris
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 21, 2018 - 06:12am PT
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I am looking at the Baofeng UV-5f as supplement to other sat-PLB stuff....any thoughts?
Nice radio. I use a Yaesu FT-60 with a Diamond Antenna, SRH77CA. However, with my purchase of a Garmin Explorer+ SAT communicator, I'm not really taking the handheld out anymore.
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Tom Patterson
Trad climber
Seattle
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Aug 21, 2018 - 07:10am PT
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My dad did ham radio for decades. He was WB6VIE, but hasn't picked up his mic for a few years now. His best friend, a fellow ham in Roswell, NM (W5MDG) died several years back, and he's never had quite the same level of passion since.
But I grew up listening to him keying: _ . _ . / _ _ . _ every night down the hall, till he got his general license. I took after him till I could send 13 words a minute, and receive 6. Never got my novice license, but I was pretty enamored with it for a long time.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:08am PT
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I took after him till I could send 13 words a minute
In English or German? 😉 (curious what defines a ‘word’)
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Tom Patterson
Trad climber
Seattle
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:37am PT
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In English or German? 😉 (curious what defines a ‘word’)
In Welsh. The words are longer, vowels are optional, and no one knows if you're making a mistake, or not.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:39am PT
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HaHaHa! Even better than German!
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Aug 21, 2018 - 10:57am PT
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The closest I came was a project to build a passive radio with an antenna wire stretched between buildings, a "cat whisker" crystal as a primitive diode rectifier, and a bunch of wires wrapped in shellac around a toilet paper tube, sanded down to expose the wires on one side, with a little metal pivot arm to move along the coils and tap at different spots to change the inductance and shift the frequencies dialed in, and a little ear-bud speaker. I picked up some stations, can't remember if it was AM or short-wave, and it was a passing fancy in high school.
I harbor a mild amount of shame for not having learned morse code, and tried a bit to get my kids into it.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 21, 2018 - 12:10pm PT
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DMT -- "I built my own 750w tube-driven citizens band amp at 15."
No sh!t? LOL
Way over the legal power output for 5 watts on CB band LOL ......
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Aug 21, 2018 - 02:07pm PT
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Hey Dingus,
Great stories.
Back in the 70's I worked in marine electronics in San Diego. Installed many SSB radios on sailboats heading to the South Pacific...including copper foil for a ground plane and insulated backstay...and that was before auto-tuning couplers...you had to step the PA output over the coupler coils with needle nose...many RF burns out of that process.
Although never a ham (the cobblers son has no shoes syndrome), I often recomended they get a ham radio instead of a commercial SSB. The reason was that nobody really was listening to SSB, but there was always a ham operator listening. I remember many stories of some ham, in North Dakota or Australia, coordinating over the phone a CG rescue with a boat in trouble.
I used to cut dipole antennas for SSB to be used in remote Alaska villages before the first comm satellites went up around 1980 or so. That's how the villages communicated in those days. Don't remember the formula for the antenna length off top of my head.
It was in the 5 MHZ and 3 MHZ bands and was called Alaska Public Fixed.
Back in the 90's I was on an island in the Gulf of Alaska installing a cross band repeater that was linked back to Homer by multi-pathing through the Kenai Mts. We had a transmitter audio problem and fortunately the guy I was with was a ham operator. He keyed the mike in Morse code, knowing the guy on the other end was a ham also. The guy in Anchorage came back saying: "read you loud and clear on your audio problem". Didn't fix the problem, but the unique communication did speed up the process.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 21, 2018 - 02:22pm PT
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Hams are most of the evidence in the Amelia Earhart story that she/they survived the crash landing and were able to transmit for days. The goofiest part is that neither her or her supposed radio/navigator knew Morse which would have enabled them to broadcast longer and farther when their batts ran low.
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Aug 21, 2018 - 02:47pm PT
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since there is a trail running/ultra marathon thread currently on the front page, here's a twofer
from the ac100.com site:
A majority of the race is conducted in the back country, far away from any Internet, WiFi, or cellular coverage. When it comes to providing voice or data communication in remote locations, amateur radio operators are a great resource for making this happen. Amateur radio operators can be found supporting many ultra marathons across the country and around the world.
Runner data is collected in different ways at different checkpoints. No matter how it's collected, each checkpoint funnels that data to their respective amateur radio communications team (hams). Using Windows software, developed specifically by an amateur radio operator for the AC100, hams enter this data into a laptop computer. The data is transmitted by digital packet radio and is relayed through one or more digital data relays (repeaters) that are pre-deployed in the Angeles National Forest several days before the race. The data flows to a central database that is located outside and away from the mountains. This database uses another Windows program, also developed specifically for the AC100, to manage simultaneous data flow from all checkpoints. This software identifies inconsistencies and looks for problems so that it can notify the database operator long before real trouble might occur (such as a lost runner).
The checkpoint software is known as RunnerTrack. When a checkpoint enters departure information for a runner, that information is sent to the database which, in turn, automatically updates the next checkpoints display with that "inbound" information so they know a runner is coming and a timer continually shows the elapsed time for that runner. If the time exceeds certain pre-defined limits, alarms are sounded to notify the operator that the runner may be running a bit slow, or may even be overdue. This is the primary purpose of the software - runner safety and to automatically track runners and keep the operator notified of possible problems.
The database, and the checkpoint software, perform many other functions such as data entry validity checks, a messaging system for checkpoint-to-checkpoint (or network-wide) chatting, multiple queries, the ability for any checkpoint to monitor traffic at any other checkpoint(s), and many other features. The database also updates all the live runner data on this website. It does so every 5 to 10 minutes (depending on network bandwidth) to keep YOU as informed as much as we possibly can.
as a member of a support crew for our runner in the '93 angeles crest 100, you can bet we appreciated the hams who had the data situation under control. the info must flow!
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Aug 21, 2018 - 04:23pm PT
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thebravecowboy posted
you guys ever get into handheld HAM rigs for backcountry coms/SAR stuff?
Cowboy,
I worked on some backcountry comms for the Alaska Mountain Rescue. Their setup is using commercial UHF HH radios and repeaters.
We would build the repeaters using 2 each HH radios and a device (transpeater) for interfacing the transmitter of one with the receiver of the other, also wiring in the PTT function and the squelch function. We would put these into a pelican case and power with lantern batteries. Lightweight and functional, they could be plopped down on any strategic hill top. We'd use telescoping fibreglass poles to extend antenna height if needed.
Dingus,
Your funny stories make me think that you have "The Knack".
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Aug 21, 2018 - 05:08pm PT
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I did read a bit about it when investigating an idea from an acquaintance. He wanted to install networking over powerline equipment in some spots with poor cell coverage. My reading is that that equipment uses the same frequencies as Ham/shortwave and the interference could ruin that unique band. It turns powerlines into transmitters. aka Powerline Telecomms - PLT, Broadband over PL - BPL, PL networking - PLN
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BBA
Social climber
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Aug 21, 2018 - 05:25pm PT
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Mom and Dad were extra-class Hams in the 20's which meant they could transmit and receive 30 words per minute in Morse. On dates they would tap messages on their ears to each other to communicate unobserved. They could communicate around the globe if the skip was right using a 5 watt rig built at home. With voice becoming possible with higher power, code has gone away pretty much. Like pitons.
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Sula
Trad climber
Pennsylvania
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Aug 22, 2018 - 08:16am PT
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^ This is what tourons say when they overhear climbers' conversations.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Aug 22, 2018 - 08:31am PT
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Fond memories of Hamming it in the past!
Radio "Shack" on board the boat.
Daughter Kali learning the basics or looking for dad's carte de credit to order her first rig?
Kali, 15 years later, mid Pacific on route to Tahiti setting up a connection for downloading weather data.
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Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
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Aug 22, 2018 - 01:51pm PT
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this pursuit would be far more interesting were it at all understandable... Easy, it is civil war re-enactment with antennas and suspenders instead of muskets and wool pants. You cannot explain the extremely slow death of Morse code in any other way.
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