What to talk about: If I recall correctly from the exam (its been 30 years), you can talk about anything as long as its not conducting business, profanity, playing music or singing, and politics is frowned upon.. so that leaves a lot that you can talk about.
From: gshockxcc <gshock...@pm.me> Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2024 10:50 AM To: BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB <bvarc@bvarc.org> Cc: Chris Medlin <ctmed...@outlook.com>; Dan Donalson <fu...@swbell.net> Subject: Re: [BVARC] How to HAM? Okay, I'm going to take some advice I was given this morning and jump in with both feet. LOTS of stupid questions. * Do I need to connect to a repeater to use my hand held? * If so, how do I even do that? I know there are repeaters out there. How do you find them? * I would love to learn CW, but don't know where to start with that, either. * When listening to experienced operators, what are they talking about? What do you discuss on HAM radio? Don't we need to keep our conversations limited to talking about HAM radio, or remarks of a personal nature? Or did I take that too literally? -Kristan KI5VVT Sent with Proton Mail<https://proton.me/> secure email. On Tuesday, March 19th, 2024 at 10:21 AM, Chris Medlin via BVARC <bvarc@bvarc.org<mailto:bvarc@bvarc.org>> wrote: I will also add… Http://websdr.org<http://websdr.org/> No radio required to listen. Anytime you are in a place where you have some downtime but not at home or not where you can turn on an HF radio. Maybe there is torrential thunderstorms in your area and your equipment is all disconnected but you want to hear some ham radio goodness, you can go to that website and access a radio in any part of the world. And based on propagation, you can hear all sorts of interesting QSOs. Pick a site that has the bands you want to listen on. When you select a site, enter your callsign into the box where it asks. Its just for the station owner. You can put anything in there but callsign is preferred if you have one. Just so the owner knows who is using the site. Then pick the band you want that is offered on that site. Be sure to select LSB (lower side band) for 40m (7MHz), 80m (3.5MHz), or 160m (1.8MHz) or USB (upper side band) for 20m (14MHz), 17m (18MHz), 15m (21MHz), 12m (24MHz), or 10m (28MHz). If you find some CW (morse code) you want to listen to, you can change the mode to CW to narrow the bandwidth to make the signal much clearer. And dont be discouraged if you dont know the code. You can find slow people on all the bands if you are interested in learning. And then find the button to play the audio. Its going to vary based on what browser you are using. It will either be an obvious button to click or there might be something about html audio. It will be somewhere above the radio display interface. This will expand your listening ability any time you are near a computer (or tablet). Sometimes I go to a coffee shop to get some work done and I’ll find a websdr site and I’ll put on earphones and use a good ragchewing qso as background noise while I work. Hope this helps to give you some more options for listening to whats out there. Listening to good operators is an excellent way to learn how to be an excellent operator. 73 and welcome to the hobby. Chris AC5CM Ex-KB5UMS Typos brought to you by iPhone On Mar 19, 2024, at 09:59, Dan Donalson via BVARC <bvarc@bvarc.org<mailto:bvarc@bvarc.org>> wrote: I am in exactly the same situation. We went to the POTA at Brazos Bend state park and learned a bit. I'll try to make it to the 4/20 event as well. I need to find an Elmer with a high tolerance for frustration to tutor me[Emoji] Dan Donalson KI5YXK On Tuesday, March 19, 2024 at 08:13:15 AM CDT, gshockxcc via BVARC <bvarc@bvarc.org<mailto:bvarc@bvarc.org>> wrote: First, let me preface my request for help by saying that I am a Mechanical Engineer and I still have no idea what is going on. I collect lots of data on rotating and fixed equipment, and I understand Control systems just enough to be dangerous. That said, I have had my General license for almost a year, and I still have no idea how to operate a ham radio, how to communicate with anyone or find channels to communicate on. I freely admit that the amount of time that I spend trying to learn is minimal, because of other priorities at the moment. I don’t have any friends who are into ham, and I am rarely able to make BVARC functions like the POTA. How in the world do you get started if you don’t know where to begin? Sorry, I am just lost. -Kristan Sent from Proton Mail<https://proton.me/mail/home> for iOS ________________________________________________ Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club BVARC mailing list BVARC@bvarc.org<mailto:BVARC@bvarc.org> http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org Publicly available archives are available here: https://www.mail-archive.com/bvarc@bvarc.org/ ________________________________________________ Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club BVARC mailing list BVARC@bvarc.org<mailto:BVARC@bvarc.org> http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org Publicly available archives are available here: https://www.mail-archive.com/bvarc@bvarc.org/
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