4 ms·

I have both a question and a comment. I got my license (Technician and General on the same day) about a year ago. I have not once pressed transmit on a radio. I

by Cerium 9y ago

I have both a question and a comment. I got my license (Technician and General on the same day) about a year ago. I have not once pressed transmit on a radio. I guess I don't know where to start. If you have any advice I would like to hear it. Anyone with an EE background should be able to study up on https://hamstudy.org/ https://hamstudy.org/ for a few hours a night for a week and pass without trouble.

slr555 9y ago
Older hams willing to teach new hams to do what your asking are referred Robert as Elmer’s. It’s hard to teach throwing tennis ball over a branch to string a dipole in a book. It’s hard to know with big project if you’ve screwed it up without help. The value of an Elmer. The other and perhaps more modern approach is that hams are prolific content producers. Almost any topic will have loads of good YouTube coverage. Since many hams build there stuff there are a lot of really good answers to questions out there. Finally, if you have an HT go online and look up local repeaters and program your radio accordingly. Commuting is a good time to hear vhf/uhf folks. When the time is right call CQ and try a contact. It gets easier the more you do it.
wepple 9y ago
+1 got my ticket, bought a baofeng, unboxed it and put it in a draw. I'm not sure how to get involved? Loraham.org does seem a cool use to tinker with.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  Do you have a license? Step one is getting your license. QRZ offers "practice" exams online which are literally the questions from the FCC license exam pool [0]. You can rote memorize these questions and answers if you need to. Technician and General are both fairly easy licenses to get. The FCC dropped the Morse (CW) requirement, but this can be a really fun way to get into certain ham bands which are CW-only. Very niche crowd. I suppose the sibling advice I gave is to find a local repeater and just start talking. If you're on the West Coast, I highly suggest checking out the WINS repeater system. It's an internet-connected set of repeaters, so when you hit your local WINS repeater, you're actually going out to most of the west coast and Hawaii. And a few other places. It's always growing. Always super friendly. Well, most of the time it's super friendly. [0] https://www.qrz.com/hamtest/ https://www.qrz.com/hamtest/
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    Getting one's "ticket" means getting licensed to hams.
    - fapjacks 9y ago
      Seems there was a ninja edit.
      - wepple 9y ago
        There was not. I appreciate your helpful attitude toward people on the fence about getting a license, but the parent to my comment was saying "I'm licensed, now what?" And I said ~"I'm in that exact same situation". But now that we're chatting and you obviously do know your stuff, any pointers for actually putting it to use?
        fapjacks 9y ago
        You must have stopped reading at the first couple of sentences, or did you just not see the whole thing about jumping on a local WINS repeater? That wasn't ninja edited in there.
- howard941 9y ago
  I love the fact that the Baofeng is cheap and I have one myself thinking I'd finally deflower myself on 220 and 70cm. But the rig sits in my trunk unused. I just don't want to use it. The UI is awful. Once programmed some of its users call it the Plastic Fantastic; I don't. No analog squelch knob is still a non-starter. Try to borrow someone's Icom or Kenwood or Yaesu, listen to the local action, and jump on . Hamming should be fun and it is with a friendlier rig. Try not to let the plastic fantastic turn you off from hamming.
fapjacks 9y ago
Just buy a Baofeng UV-5R, find a local repeater, and start yakking on the radio. You should have a local repeater which holds semi-regular "nets" (meetings). You can start checking in on those nets if you don't want to start talking right away socially.
- antihero 9y ago
  BF-F8+ is basically compatible with all the UV-5R accessories but has a newer chipset, so you may as well get one of those. £25 on eBay.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    Actually, don't believe that. There is some kind of distributor war happening, and you should not trust any claims about which Baofeng distributor model is "upgraded" or has "the latest" chipset, because it seems they all share the same guts, one of the distributors is shipping a marginally newer version of the chipset which makes no substantial difference, and one model which has an extra button or two. Since it's all the same guts, and pretty much the same chipset, the most inexpensive and basic model you can find will be the best choice. There is no point in spending an extra ten dollars for something which offers no actual improvement over another.
unoti 9y ago
Some ideas for getting going: 1. Find a local repeater and jump in! Before long you'll hear a topic you know about and can contribute to the discussion. I learned about #4 and #5 below like this. 2. Most areas have some kind of daily chat net organized at scheduled times, which is a great time to check in. 3. Keep your radio with you tuned to 146.520 and turned on when you're driving around. Many hams monitor this frequency. Listen in and periodically transmit your call sign and ask for another station to come back. It's exciting to make your first contact without a repeater. 4. Give yourself a reason to use the radio. Look for activities you might enjoy. I got into SOTA. It's an activity where you climb onto nearby mountains and make contacts to score points. If you tune into 146.520 on weekends in the mountains you're likely to hear and participate in some activity there. 5. Consider blending ham with other hobbies, such as radio controlled aircraft or modifying routers to do long range broadband communications. 6. Learn how to use your radio as a scanner. Then learn how to scan the repeater tone frequency so you can chat back when you do find an active repeater. This is a good emergency skill if you're traveling and don't know the repeater frequencies where you're at. (It's important to know the ham frequency ranges on 2m when you do this because there are active and forbidden frequencies right at the edges of what is legal for Hams.) [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summits_on_the_Air https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summits_on_the_Air [5] http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/ http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/

by Cerium 9y ago

slr555 9y ago

Older hams willing to teach new hams to do what your asking are referred Robert as Elmer’s. It’s hard to teach throwing tennis ball over a branch to string a dipole in a book. It’s hard to know with big project if you’ve screwed it up without help. The value of an Elmer. The other and perhaps more modern approach is that hams are prolific content producers. Almost any topic will have loads of good YouTube coverage. Since many hams build there stuff there are a lot of really good answers to questions out there. Finally, if you have an HT go online and look up local repeaters and program your radio accordingly. Commuting is a good time to hear vhf/uhf folks. When the time is right call CQ and try a contact. It gets easier the more you do it.

wepple 9y ago

+1 got my ticket, bought a baofeng, unboxed it and put it in a draw. I'm not sure how to get involved? Loraham.org does seem a cool use to tinker with.

fapjacks 9y ago
Do you have a license? Step one is getting your license. QRZ offers "practice" exams online which are literally the questions from the FCC license exam pool [0]. You can rote memorize these questions and answers if you need to. Technician and General are both fairly easy licenses to get. The FCC dropped the Morse (CW) requirement, but this can be a really fun way to get into certain ham bands which are CW-only. Very niche crowd. I suppose the sibling advice I gave is to find a local repeater and just start talking. If you're on the West Coast, I highly suggest checking out the WINS repeater system. It's an internet-connected set of repeaters, so when you hit your local WINS repeater, you're actually going out to most of the west coast and Hawaii. And a few other places. It's always growing. Always super friendly. Well, most of the time it's super friendly. [0] https://www.qrz.com/hamtest/ https://www.qrz.com/hamtest/
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  Getting one's "ticket" means getting licensed to hams.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    Seems there was a ninja edit.
    - wepple 9y ago
      There was not. I appreciate your helpful attitude toward people on the fence about getting a license, but the parent to my comment was saying "I'm licensed, now what?" And I said ~"I'm in that exact same situation". But now that we're chatting and you obviously do know your stuff, any pointers for actually putting it to use?
      - fapjacks 9y ago
        You must have stopped reading at the first couple of sentences, or did you just not see the whole thing about jumping on a local WINS repeater? That wasn't ninja edited in there.
howard941 9y ago
I love the fact that the Baofeng is cheap and I have one myself thinking I'd finally deflower myself on 220 and 70cm. But the rig sits in my trunk unused. I just don't want to use it. The UI is awful. Once programmed some of its users call it the Plastic Fantastic; I don't. No analog squelch knob is still a non-starter. Try to borrow someone's Icom or Kenwood or Yaesu, listen to the local action, and jump on . Hamming should be fun and it is with a friendlier rig. Try not to let the plastic fantastic turn you off from hamming.

fapjacks 9y ago

Just buy a Baofeng UV-5R, find a local repeater, and start yakking on the radio. You should have a local repeater which holds semi-regular "nets" (meetings). You can start checking in on those nets if you don't want to start talking right away socially.

antihero 9y ago
BF-F8+ is basically compatible with all the UV-5R accessories but has a newer chipset, so you may as well get one of those. £25 on eBay.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  Actually, don't believe that. There is some kind of distributor war happening, and you should not trust any claims about which Baofeng distributor model is "upgraded" or has "the latest" chipset, because it seems they all share the same guts, one of the distributors is shipping a marginally newer version of the chipset which makes no substantial difference, and one model which has an extra button or two. Since it's all the same guts, and pretty much the same chipset, the most inexpensive and basic model you can find will be the best choice. There is no point in spending an extra ten dollars for something which offers no actual improvement over another.

unoti 9y ago

Some ideas for getting going: 1. Find a local repeater and jump in! Before long you'll hear a topic you know about and can contribute to the discussion. I learned about #4 and #5 below like this. 2. Most areas have some kind of daily chat net organized at scheduled times, which is a great time to check in. 3. Keep your radio with you tuned to 146.520 and turned on when you're driving around. Many hams monitor this frequency. Listen in and periodically transmit your call sign and ask for another station to come back. It's exciting to make your first contact without a repeater. 4. Give yourself a reason to use the radio. Look for activities you might enjoy. I got into SOTA. It's an activity where you climb onto nearby mountains and make contacts to score points. If you tune into 146.520 on weekends in the mountains you're likely to hear and participate in some activity there. 5. Consider blending ham with other hobbies, such as radio controlled aircraft or modifying routers to do long range broadband communications. 6. Learn how to use your radio as a scanner. Then learn how to scan the repeater tone frequency so you can chat back when you do find an active repeater. This is a good emergency skill if you're traveling and don't know the repeater frequencies where you're at. (It's important to know the ham frequency ranges on 2m when you do this because there are active and forbidden frequencies right at the edges of what is legal for Hams.) [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summits_on_the_Air https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summits_on_the_Air [5] http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/ http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/