To ham or not to ham, that is the question....

[DaveInDenver]

And best of all, unlike most of the CBs out there, you can buy radios that are not made in China

That is an interesting point, both of my Yaesu units were made in Japan.

 

[Seldom Seen]

Yabut, don't things get cluttered with a bunch of 4x4 groups doing their inane chatting on the trail and somebody across town trying to use the same frequency gets irritated? CBs fall off pretty quickly, keeping things more private and less intrusive in such a situation, no?

1)go QRP, decrease your power to the min required to keep contact. When Groucho and I went to Mt. Bross we were talking between trucks with as little as 1 watt and still had better performance than CB but weren't bothering any one else on freq (at least until we got above tree line)

2)Attenuate incoming signals, tighten up your RF gain. Essentially you are DECREASING your radio's receiving distance. Some radios have this option some don't.

3)CTSS, Continuous Tone Squelching System. Basically a sub-audible tone that is sent with YOUR signal. I set MY radio to only accept transmissions that contain the tone (and visa-versa)

 

[Groucho]

3)CTSS, Continuous Tone Squelching System. Basically a sub-audible tone that is sent with YOUR signal. I set MY radio to only accept transmissions that contain the tone (and visa-versa)

I totally spaced that one! What that means is that in a way, the transmission is basically encripted with a sub-audible tone. When you transmit, that tone says to other radios "If you aren't set up to hear me(the tone) then you won't get the rest of the transmission". That way, only others in the group with the tone will hear you. And it is not hard to figure out the tone if you know the freq and don't hear anyone. Most radios have a tone search to figure it out.

Nice call, Brian!

 

[Red_Chili]

Brian, right after you teach me to field strip my AR-15, you gonna hafta skool me in da ham arts.

 

[Groucho]

Brian, right after you teach me to field strip my AR-15, you gonna hafta skool me in da ham arts.

Are you saying you don't know how to field strip your AR-15? Is it just that the hand guards are difficult to get off, is the bolt hard to put back together or is the trigger where you just can't figure it all out?

 

[Red_Chili]

I ain't done it since new. I wanted to sit at the feet of an ex-Army guy and learn the dark arts. It's just that... that... he is so SeldomSeen.

 

[Groucho]

I qualify. Don't tell the neighbors. Had Top Secret clearance while on active duty due to my responsibilities in ordering, issuing, transporting and handling ammunitions. Nuthin special, just had enough different kinds of ammo right be hind me most of the time to make a crater out of Berthoud.
Was an armorers asst for 3 mos. HATED the handguards. But I got to carry a 9MM instead of an M-16A2, so I felt like dirty harry instead of GI Joe.
I don't think I remember the difference between th AR-15 and the M-16A2 trigger mechanism to enable me to adapt the AR-15 to semi-auto or even full-auto(M-16A1 style).

 

[Red_Chili]

Mine is semi auto out of the box. Oly. Full auto, though fun and expensive, would net me a permanent retirement plan I'd bet.
Gee, another one stop shop. Field stripping and hamming it up mentoring. You're on.

 

[Seldom Seen]

Groucho, do you remember, "Shoot, Communicate, Move"? I think we got'er covered X3 !

 

[Groucho]

Qualification

No, I remember:
"Is there anyone downrange? Is there anyone downrange? Range 216 is about to conduct a live-fire exercise. If there is anyone downrange please indicate to the tower by sight sound or signal." (PAUSE)
"Ready on the left?"
"Ready on the right?"
"Firers rotate your selector switch from safe to semi."
"and firers, watch your lanes!"

 

[Seldom Seen]

But just about every single 2 meter ham radio can receive the weather bands. There's only 9 frequencies and the one in Denver is 162.550 MHz.

I've noticed that my 2mtr works better receiving NWS broadcast than my CB. NWS transmits on VHF and 2mtr is VHF so the antenna and radio are optimized for receive in this band. CB's are HF with the VHF receiver thrown as a marketing gimmick.

My mobile does not have an alert but I do have it set up for 1 touch access.

During last years blizzard I volunteered to bring people into work. in a 12 hour period I made 17 trips between Swedish, Porter, Skyridge and Littleton along with picking people up at their homes. While I was on the road I monitored one of the Skywarn nets. Skywarn is a group of trained volunteer on the ground weather observers. Skywarn feeds information directly to the NWS, guess how the get their info to the weather guys? Yep 2 meter radio. Throughout the storms they fed hourly info in to the NWS. Accurate, concise and timely 1st hand info, instead of the homogenized generic NWS broadcasts.

 

[Uncle Ben]

Busted!

Found this on Mud while snooping around....interesting!

http://bb.bc4x4.com/showthread.php?t=122797

 

[DaveInDenver]

I've noticed that my 2mtr works better receiving NWS broadcast than my CB.

BTW, I made a mistake, there are only 7 NWS frequencies (the 7800 has the WX alert, the 8800 required them to be programmed in).

162.400
162.425
162.450
162.475
162.500
162.525
162.550

 

[Uncle Ben]

BTW, I made a mistake, there are only 7 NWS frequencies (the 7800 has the WX alert, the 8800 required them to be programmed in).

162.400
162.425
162.450
162.475
162.500
162.525
162.550

More specifically...

162.475 - Alamosa(P)
162.475 - Colorado Springs
162.550 - Denver
162.550 - Grand Junction
162.400 - Greeley
162.550 - Longmont
162.400 - Pueblo
162.400 - Sterling


And still even more specifically...
http://www.weather.gov/nwr/CntyCov/nwrCO.htm

 

[DaveInDenver]

More specifically...

162.475 - Alamosa(P)
162.475 - Colorado Springs
162.550 - Denver
162.550 - Grand Junction
162.400 - Greeley
162.550 - Longmont
162.400 - Pueblo
162.400 - Sterling

True, thanks Kevin. You put these 7 frequencies into memory and you can scan them no matter where you might be located in the USA. If there's a NWS station close, it will be on one of these.

 

[Uncle Ben]

New question that I'm surprised has not come up yet. I am already tired of yaking with the same old folks that sit in the basement in their tightie whities! It would be awesome if we as a club chose a "home" frequency that we would all monitor when we are in our vehicles besides 145.145 (the tighty whitie freq! ) I know it has been said that we would use the 146.460 freq when 4 wheeling and if .145 is busy .310 as back up. I would like to ping in on a freq that others in our talk circle might also be on when they happen to be in their vehicles or HT's and possibly rag chew at un-scheduled times! Monday nights just don't always work for me! What say the masters?

 

[Seldom Seen]

I understand and agree. 145 became the default 'cuz its the designated "rag chew" freq for the Denver area. It's a good place to go when starting out, but gets old fast.

310 is is OK to monitor but not a place to rag chew. You have to remember that if using it for local comms your QSO will be heard through out the state. If someone in Durango is trying to contact someone in Glenwood they might get miffed, nothing 'wrong' with it, just not good practice

340 is the IRLP CQ machine so not good for local use,

225 is the local "net" freq so it only is used for comms between net times.

805 is IRLP enabled, but the machine seems under used and might be a good home.

 

[Uncle Ben]

I understand and agree. 145 became the default 'cuz its the designated "rag chew" freq for the Denver area. It's a good place to go when starting out, but gets old fast.

310 is is OK to monitor but not a place to rag chew. You have to remember that if using it for local comms your QSO will be heard through out the state. If someone in Durango is trying to contact someone in Glenwood they might get miffed, nothing 'wrong' with it, just not good practice

340 is the IRLP CQ machine so not good for local use,

225 is the local "net" freq so it only is used for comms between net times.

805 is IRLP enabled, but the machine seems under used and might be a good home.

You bring up another good point Brian. When I first started using my FT-8800 that at that time was borrowed from a friend I had no idea of what transceivers were differant than others. I assumed all radios had two freq monitoring. Later when I learned more I leaned towards buying a 7800 because the backlit buttons made sense. Nakman was the one who opened my eyes and pointed out the luxury of two freqs vrs one (8800 vrs 7800) I went ahead and bought my buds 8800 at that point! Right now my machine is set at 5.145 and 5.310 so I monitor both freqs when I'm in my Cruiser in case one of you all pop up on one or the other. I have rag chewed on 5.310 with a couple wheelers on the western slope that have popped up mainly because of the dual freq monitoring and easily switchable "main" freq. That all just justifies my choices but it relates to my original point that we need a freq we call home as I know we all would chat more if we could ping in during our commute to or from work whenever! I have no desire to become a full time Ham geek but I do enjoy chatting with my friends! I would monitor 5.310 and 6.460 all the time I'm in the truck if I knew others in RS or across the state would do the same! I think we are all capable of DCS too which would really keep the cross chatter off the speaker and only those of us who chime in would play.......something to ponder for sure!

 

[Seldom Seen]

I'm not super familiar with the 8800, maybe Tim, Dave or Chris will chime in. Check out your owners manual and see if you can do a split/scan.

ie; you can set 1 side to scan all the active repeaters in the metro area with a chosen (say 805) as your "home" or priority freq. then channelize the other side with the Colo. Conn. machines.

 

[nakman]

I hear you Kev, it would be sweet if our little community had its own repeater that worked across the front range, where we could all hang by default and be a little less apprehensive about speaking up. In fact keep your eyes open, if someone were to stumble across the equipment necessary to build our own setup, I'd gladly donate the hillside & power to keep it running. Heck maybe the club will decide to buy all this stuff some day.. still kicking myself that we didn't grab that 40' tower than was available a while back, but alas I didn't own any land then.

But I am like you, I typically monitor 145.145 on one, and 145.310 on the other, though lately I've been listening to 146.805 instead of .310 because that's one of the repeaters that lets people monkey around with the IRLP stuff... like when we do the Expeditions Portal stuff that's the channel you go on, then Ricardo or Blake will push the magic buttons and we're on the Western Reflector. But point being, it's a little more interesting over on 146.805 than .145 or .310.

However, just about every time I start talking with someone on .145 the guy on the other end has been super cool, and half the time they live in Bailey and we'll often discover we know the same people. In fact a couple of them are threatening to drop in on our meeting next month