monday nights @ 21:00

[Uncle Ben]

Cool, thanks. I will have to check into this on Sunday some time, which is the next time I'll be at a computer w/o a firewall..

but hopefully I can find an N callsign that I can live with. No one steal n0kmn, ok?

Sorry nak.....

<<This is public license data from the FCC database.
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SXXXXXXD, LORI D, N0KMN (Tech Plus)
XXXXX xxST
XXXXXXX, ND XXXXX
Issue Date: Jan 11, 1999
Expire Date: Jan 11, 2009
Date of last Change: Jan 11, 1999 >>

 

[Groucho]

The number is necessary.

So it looks like I'd have to try for KRCH when the time comes. K0RCH is some guy in Minnesocold.

Bill,

You need the number designator.

These aren't taken:
KB0RCH
KD0RCH


Information regarding Call Signs--
Every licensed Radio Amateur is given a call sign that is used to identify you and your location of license. Each country that has Amateur Radio status is allocated a range of call signs by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Prefix and Suffix--
Call signs consist of a prefix and a suffix. The prefix is usually composed of one or two letters and a number such as VE4 in Canada for the province of Manitoba or K9 in the U.S. for the states Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Some countries have prefixes that are composed of a number and a letter such as 4X for Israel or 9K for Kuwait. If this sounds confusing, for the first timer it is. After doing it a while, they rattle off like Dr. Seuss.

While the prefix uniquely identifies a country the suffix is unique for the individual. In Canada a call sign such as VE3ABC has VE3 (Ontario) as the prefix and ABC as the suffix. In the U.S the call sign N2MG has a prefix of N2 and suffix of MG. U.S. hams may also have a two letter prefix thus AB2Z is a valid call. Suffixes may also be less than three letters so you have call signs such as VE7AB in British Columbia and KH6Y in Hawaii.

Call Areas--
In North America the number in the call sign generally refers to an area of the country. The 3 in VE3 refers to Ontario and the 6 in K6 refers to California. The number may be shared between states in the U.S. so that 1 as in K1 or W1 can refer to the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. Usually in Canada the number refers to a single province although VE1 can refer to the Maritime provinces New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.
Other countries follow a similar practice so you can have states in Brazil and Prefectures in Japan.

U.S. Prefixes--
Prefixes used by Amateurs in the United States are shown in the following table. U.S. Radio Amateurs may have either a single letter or two letters in the prefix. See the two letter allocations at the bottom of the table. The single letter prefixes K, and N are also in use by U.S. Amateurs. To further complicate matters Amateurs that have moved to a different area of the country may retain their existing call sign so when you hear W8ABC you may be receiving a signal from other than the W8 states.

Call Sign Prefix--State
W0-- Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota
W1-- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont
W2-- New Jersey, New York
W3-- Delaware, D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania
W4-- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia
W5-- Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas
W6-- California
W7-- Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Wyoming
W8-- Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia
W9-- Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin
AL0-7, KL0-7, NL0-7, WL0-7-- Alaska
AH6-7, KH6-7, NH6-7, WH6-7-- Hawaii

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional U.S. prefixes

A, AA - AK K, KA - KK
KM - KW
KX - KZ
N, NA - NK
NM - NW
NX - NZ
WA - WK
WM - WO
WQ - WW
WX - WZ

 

[nakman]

Ok I'm going to grab a and head out to the garage, in case anyone else is around.

 

[Hulk]

Good ragchew tonight. Great talking to Heather! Also, Chris, Brian, Nathaniel and Ricardo.

 

[Romer]

Should be a few more folks tonight.

You going to chime in Ige?

 

[Shark Bait]

I am in DC this week, otherwise I would join you guys.

 

[nakman]

Did anyone else jump over to simplex last night and monitor Nathaniel & I? I sure didn't hear anyone.. other than W0IIN who was coming in nice and clear. Want to try this again for sure, it really worked well from up on the hill though I bet I could hit most of you guys now.

 

[Uncle Ben]

Did anyone else jump over to simplex last night and monitor Nathaniel & I? I sure didn't hear anyone.. other than W0IIN who was coming in nice and clear. Want to try this again for sure, it really worked well from up on the hill though I bet I could hit most of you guys now.

I clicked on the HT around 21:30 ish. Listened for a while while I mildly tinkered in the garage and the air was quiet on the 145. Went in about 22:30. My mobile is down for a short time as I'm redoing the rear area.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Did anyone else jump over to simplex last night and monitor Nathaniel & I? I sure didn't hear anyone.. other than W0IIN who was coming in nice and clear. Want to try this again for sure, it really worked well from up on the hill though I bet I could hit most of you guys now.

I did, but not so much as a peep from W0IIN. I heard you pretty good, S6-S7. I had the HT with the SRH77CA on it, which is a pretty decent antenna. I didn't want to interfere with W0IIN since I could not hear anything, didn't even break the squelch with noise, and so I didn't try TX'ing to see if you could hear me.

I should say that 145.145 was pretty clustered last night. Frank and someone else were having a QSO when Rising Sun hams started showing up. We do not have a set net time on 145.145 since we are not paying members of the CRA and so we do not have any rights to the repeater and have to be careful about listening for a while before starting to talk. I had a bit of a feeling that we ran off the guys already using the repeater. Need to make sure to practice good operating techniques! Listen for a while, wait for a break and ask if you can use the repeater. If they are nice and say sure, all is good. Otherwise ask if you can make an announcement to move your group to a different frequency. Last night both 146.805 and 147.225 were quiet at 2100 and we could have moved our ragchew there as a courtesy.

 

[nakman]

Frank and that other guy were bouncing around just about everywhere all night. I heard them at about 7:45 when I started monitoring 145.. all was quiet until about 8:30 so I announced my call sign then then Convert piped up and he & I talked for about 20 minutes uninterrupted. So if they jumped back in just before 9 they were probably making their rounds again, but I don't feel like we were interrupting their QSO.

Agreed, though, that best practice is to listen first. But if I'm going to learn any etiquette it's going to be from folks like you, Nathaniel, and Ricardo, not these guys..

edit: And Dave, as you know we typically leave long breaks so next time by all means jump in. Nathaniel maybe you should have turned up the power a bit, and maybe I should have turned down? I'll have to go see what I'm at, was probably all the way up on 50 watts though since I needed that to reach Matt before the last RS meeting.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Definitely, I never thought the fellas using the repeater really seemed to be in the middle of anything. They were on simplex, back to the repeater, down on HF, off the air taking care of a cat. I don't feel bad for trying to use the repeater. Just pointing out that the Rising Sun Radio Hour is not an officially recognized net on the CRA and so we can't monopolize their repeater if two members are ragchewing. They have every right to say no and keep using it if they want and we just should ask and be courteous.

Sitting inside with an HT all the way across town, kind of unlikely that I was gonna hear Nathaniel and I was just too lazy to go outside and try in the truck. I could hear your half of the conversation and thought about timing it and seeing if you could hear me, but I just went to bed instead.

 

[RicardoJM]

I was a bit unsure of how best to proceed last night. On the one hand, not know who form RS was arriving late, if we moved to another freq the late arrivers may not have found us. On the other hand, I agree wholeheartedly with Dave's comments regarding our "priority" and use of the repeater.

That said, it seemed that Frank and the group were not at all put out and the Rising Sun Group was very open to letting the others use the repeater. I guess the only odd part was the very different nature of the group conversations.

Perhaps our learning lesson from last night is to have a plan for when 145.145 is in use, and post that plan here so that all would know the primary and alternate frequencies for Monday nights at 9:00.

How about this for a start?
145.145 primary repeater
147.225 secondary repeater

 

[Groucho]

Definitely, I never thought the fellas using the repeater really seemed to be in the middle of anything. They were on simplex, back to the repeater, down on HF, off the air taking care of a cat. I don't feel bad for trying to use the repeater. Just pointing out that the Rising Sun Radio Hour is not an officially recognized net on the CRA and so we can't monopolize their repeater if two members are ragchewing. They have every right to say no and keep using it if they want and we just should ask and be courteous.

Sitting inside with an HT all the way across town, kind of unlikely that I was gonna hear Nathaniel and I was just too lazy to go outside and try in the truck. I could hear your half of the conversation and thought about timing it and seeing if you could hear me, but I just went to bed instead.

I always use my homemade beam FM VHF 2M antenna at home. It is pointed to Squaw Mtn, so if you are in the 'ranch area of town, you would have been on my nulls. I am also kinda in a hole, too, so my signal probably will be driven higher toward the atmosphere before lower toward the ground. I use my Yaesu FT-2800M that used to be my 80's radio in the house hooke to the kenwood powersupply I use for my Kenwood HF rig. It has 14.1 volts at 30 amps continuous. That coupled with my 2M beam (homemade from $5 worth of 1.250" PVC pipe and a couple of welding rods) gives me about 7dB gain in the forward direction. I built that antena for use on the 14'er event, where lightweight and portability were essential. It was just as easy to quick clamp it to the chimney and use it for a temp base station. Cool thing is that from the street, the white PVC makes it look like the trees behind it.

I was a bit unsure of how best to proceed last night. On the one hand, not know who form RS was arriving late, if we moved to another freq the late arrivers may not have found us. On the other hand, I agree wholeheartedly with Dave's comments regarding our "priority" and use of the repeater.

That said, it seemed that Frank and the group were not at all put out and the Rising Sun Group was very open to letting the others use the repeater. I guess the only odd part was the very different nature of the group conversations.

Perhaps our learning lesson from last night is to have a plan for when 145.145 is in use, and post that plan here so that all would know the primary and alternate frequencies for Monday nights at 9:00.

How about this for a start?
145.145 primary repeater
147.225 secondary repeater

Previously, we had kinda met on 145.145 as an informal starting place, and had the 145.340 as a backup. If those two were in use, we would go to the Colorado Connections repeater at 145.310 to figure out where we would try next.
My opinion is that we handled ourselves well when we went on. I listened for at least 5 minutes before I put out my callsign. We aren't holding a formal "net", so scheduling is unecessary. I usually don't worry about the 145 machine since I emailed LJ (K0AXE) and he told me that as long as we aren't rude if someone wants to use the repeater, and leave long breaks, no one will care. The CRA assumes that the 145 machine will be a rag machine, and the culture surrounding that machine is much more loosey-goosey.
That doesn't excuse us from being good and neighborly operators.
If we want to arrange a formal net (not really something I think we need to do) then we need to become members of a repeater club and schedule a net. Only drawback is the dues. And they aren't that much. IIRC, the CRA is $20 a year. I think if we keep in mind to be hospitable, we will do just fine.

We can re-post a plan for monday nights, we just gotta make sure Romer has the frequency and tone in big numbers so he has it programmed in beforehand.

 

[Romer]

we just gotta make sure Romer has the frequency and tone in big numbers so he has it programmed in beforehand.

braile too please.

The VX-7r is programmed so I just got to find it.

 

[Red_Chili]

Bill,

You need the number designator.

These aren't taken:
KB0RCH
KD0RCH

So just exactly how do I apply for a vanity call sign? Can't figger it out.

 

[Uncle Ben]

So just exactly how do I apply for a vanity call sign? Can't figger it out.

Start here.

 

[DaveInDenver]

UB had a typo, got it fixed.

Start here: http://www.starbucks.com/

Actually, I think KH1LI would be cool and don't let Kevin know I said so, but K0UBN is neat, too.

 

[Red_Chili]

Start here.

I tried logging in to the FCC using my call sign, but it is associated with an FRN to which I do not know the password. I created a new FRN but can't reassociate the call sign to it (it is linked to the original FRN).

 

[nuclearlemon]

I tried logging in to the FCC using my call sign, but it is associated with an FRN to which I do not know the password. I created a new FRN but can't reassociate the call sign to it (it is linked to the original FRN).

yep.


i wouldn't mind kdoige, but no $, so frivalties have to go.

 

[Hulk]

You'll get your FRN and password in the mail soon, direct from the FCC. Patience, grasshoppers.