HAM Radio Discussion

[gnihcraes]

I can be on the air to test about any evening. Just let me know via pm and which repeater, I have most programmed on multiple radios.

[rbeau30]

Sounds like your To work commute time is twice as long as your From work commute time. Similar to mine.

Well. My commute is really only 15 minutes, but I go to work on a as needed basis. If I want to get anything done before folks show up I leave early. I have a P-8 school just to the north of me and an elementary school just southwest of me. Mornings can be very dangerous dodging the minivans full of soccer mom's who have more concern over texting/cellphone conversations and dropping kids off at the school than actual traffic laws.

[rbeau30]

Perhaps we should start by polling the folks who live in harder to reach areas, what repeaters they can get to. Then we know what repeater would work best for most of us.

Then we can informally meet there at certain times, and get a feel for when the most of us might be free.

Then we can ask the repeater owner/radio club to allow us to conduct a short formal net at set times.

We could also perhaps get a frequency plan set up for folks here. (If emergency arises, go to: ____ repeater, _____ freq simplex, ___ Channel GMRS (cobra/motorola/etc radios), or ___channel CB)

If we have a lot of folks in a certain area, we will probably have to break up the regions of colorado in separate groups. (Eastern/Western Colorado, etc)

Just a thought. This would be a valuable skill to practice for the folks who have recently gotten their ticket and have not actually talked much.

[bogie]

Perhaps we should start by polling the folks who live in harder to reach areas, what repeaters they can get to. Then we know what repeater would work best for most of us.

Then we can informally meet there at certain times, and get a feel for when the most of us might be free.

Then we can ask the repeater owner/radio club to allow us to conduct a short formal net at set times.

We could also perhaps get a frequency plan set up for folks here. (If emergency arises, go to: ____ repeater, _____ freq simplex, ___ Channel GMRS (cobra/motorola/etc radios), or ___channel CB)

If we have a lot of folks in a certain area, we will probably have to break up the regions of colorado in separate groups. (Eastern/Western Colorado, etc)

Just a thought. This would be a valuable skill to practice for the folks who have recently gotten their ticket and have not actually talked much.

I fall in that category of being new and not talking much. I listen a lot and most of the radio talk is out of my league and beyond my current scope of interest. I'll chime in if general talk is interesting but I would do so more if I knew some like minded folks from this forum were on a net. I would also join a repeater club if we found one that would host us. I'm up for simplex too but my transmit range is not so hot unless I'm hitting one of those high up repeaters. I'm thinking about buying a 50 watt radio for my loading bench and an outdoor antenna. Need to do a lot more research before I get that far.

[rbeau30]

I suppose we could pencil in a time where we just show up on a repeater that seems central to most of us and just chat.

I would however like to keep mention of "COAR15" away as much as possible... perhaps refer to here as just "the board" or something like that. Our Callsigns are publishe and so is our addresses. Last think we need is for someone listening with a scanner to put together our addresses with "ohh they are into expensive hobbies".

What I have heard that works well with three or more people is one person talks and names the next person to talk and so on. round-robin through the attendees.

[bogie]

Agreed.

[Tim K]

Does anyone know if the repeater in Breckenridge is operational? I drove through there today and couldn't key it up. I've never tried to access it before, so I may have my radio programmed incorrectly.

[rbeau30]

Does anyone know if the repeater in Breckenridge is operational? I drove through there today and couldn't key it up. I've never tried to access it before, so I may have my radio programmed incorrectly.

These ones? I'll try them on my way home from work in about an hour I think I have them programmed. Although I might not be able to either not sure they can see the metro area.
http://www.repeaterbook.com/repeater....THP3WEUd.dpbs

one of them has a split tone... fyi

[rbeau30]

I was able to get to the 146.700 repeater and got a good signal report. That was from I225 and 6th avenue. The other two I couldn't even get a repeater CW Identification reply.

[HoneyBadger]

I bought a FT-60R a few weeks ago. Also bought an extra battery pack, a 12VDC car charger, a programming cable, and a Diamond SRH320A antenna for it. I'm about to start reading this thread from the beginning and start studying. I took a practice technician's test without knowing anything about Ham and scored a 28/35. A few of them were lucky guesses, and quite a few were caught up in the cobwebs from several years ago. I didn't think there would be so many questions on simple electronics diagrams and principles. I definitely don't know any of the Ham protocol. I looked up some local repeaters and was able to listen in easy enough, but that's not very useful for me yet.