Batboard

Dont worry about the right freq, those old shoeboxes will pick it out just fine and even might have a bonus with a product mix down the line, show me a moto that can do that!

Rules? what rules? Common sense


What if the whole world farted at once..?


KAØSQO

Wow. Never have I been more ashamed to be a ham. I mean, I never saw it in this light, and thinking about my own paths, it makes me ask some serious questions.

I've used my ham tag as an out before when detained by the police about my vehicle. It's a weird feeling to know you're being profiled because you're the first white guy they've seen driving an ex-cop Caprice, even if it is pure white. (Fun to watch him count the antennas though [all 6 of them].)

I've mostly looked at this as an out for dealing with radios that don't want to be mounted in a car. I've got no problem drilling a hole in my car (or using the ones it already had but I've had difficulty with a well known trouble radio (Yaesu's FT-8100) and frankly I find it a little disgusting that a "mobile" radio comes with the installation warning of "Do not place in direct sunlight. Do not use where temperatures will exceed 140 degrees." I'm switching my car out to a Motorola Syntor X 9000 (as soon as the rest of the parts get here) simply because I know it will put up with the abuse and give me none of the intermod. I've also thought about putting in a modern siren unit to match the radio and disabling the siren tones -- just leave airhorn/extrad/pa (who hears a car horn nowadays anyway). The only problem with this is defending myself when the cops ask. Sure, if you've got the software, you can make it do anything you want. But on the same line, you could cut up an S90 siren and still have it disabled and the cops could reason that you have a cut-off switch somewhere. Or you could whistle into the mic. Or use a Maglight with a SOLO cup over it (talk about making your own lenses).

It's a slippery slope when you're stopped. But at the same time, I acknoledge that, without the proper training, I'm only adding to the confusion -- not helping. Besides, I think you'll agree with me that most volunteer firefighters are just slightly nuts.

I got hackled a few years ago with my old dual head Maratrac to the point of the cops actually dragging me out of my truck and going through it with a fine tooth comb thinking they were stolen because "only cops can have these" At the time I didnt have a chance to show him that I worked for the local motorola service center so they went nuts and made it a felony scene for a while. I did manage to show them my ID card and after they verified they had the whitest faces I'd ever seen.

They got a good verbal beating from the captain but that didnt help the situation at the moment.

Now that I've lost a majority of my hair they leave me alone for the most part.

KAØSQO

haha. Regarding the PL tone.

Back in the day, I was quite active in my local Ham club (Was even given the "title" of Emergency Coordinator!). Anyway, The repeater went tits up from lightning once, and we were without a repeater.

Well, we ended up getting a Motorola Micor repeater donated to us (Thank You Barrie Police!). EVERYONE freaked out when they heard "Motorola"...they figured it was some high-tech thing. Anyway, we put it on the air. In the past, the repeater didn't need a PL tone to raise it, but we decided that due to intermod problems (it was within 1 mile from about two dozen very high-power commercial and paging transmitters) we'd have a PL tone on recieve.

Wow, you should have seen the uproar this caused. Half the membership freaked out saying they needed to get new radios, because their ancient 2m crystal controlled mobile wouldn't work anymore.

This is what got me more or less ousted from the club, because after hearing bickering for an hour or so, I more or less lost it and said "Look, any radio made since the transistor was invented can do PL tones...if you don't like it, upgrade, alright?" Because the membership was mostly of the 60+ range, that didn't fly very well ("What, you mean my home-brew tube rig won't work anymore??")...heh. At the time, I was using an HT600, which, in Motorola terms is ancient, but was LIGHTYEARS away from most of the crap these guys used.

Now I've got high-end radios (XTS3000, etc...). Hell, I had one ham tell me on a repeater that I couldn't use encryption on ham radio...I had MDC1200 Post-Transmission set up...I said to him "If I was using encryption, you wouldn't be able to hear me"...heh. Some people are a few watts short of a transmission if you know what I mean...

Ham radio is still "fun" for me, so to speak, I've met alot of really decent people on it. Ham Radio is like a fleamarket...you have to wade through alot of sh!t to find the decent ones...

-Mike

Wouldn't Muskoka EMS be kind of far for somebody from Toronto to work for?

or did you just borrow that avatar?

Naw, just stole the avatar.

I got bored of my old one, it's the only GIF I could find on my hard drive that was small enough.

I'd put my current employer's logo, but it's just downright ugly..haha

-M

But no, Muskoka wouldn't be that far. I know someone who works at the Wallaceburg (Sarnia) CACC and lives just east of Kitchener

Arguments have come to me from these guys about how the 202 has a tight front end and never caves into intermod

I can't believe the people that still use these things. There are guys around here that proudly annouce it too. The 202 is the biggest piece of S*** ever made! I had one given to me and after tinkering to see if it had any usable parts I simply threw it away. It locked up with a full meter about every 15 Khz across the band. It was completely useless. You could get better selectivity with a 386 amp chip clipped to a mile of wire.

Garbage.... and damn ugly too.



mancow

I avoid the regular ham crowd like the plauge. THe only ham talk I do is on our UHF repeater with guys I already know and who all work in public safety.

I honestly don't remember the last time I used 2M ham around here.

Wow. I'm glad we don't ave it this bad around here. Well, at least the UHF repeater I am usually on, everyone is great. You won't get any flack for commecial radios, MDC etc since the ones who own and maintain the repeater use it. It is a very "modern ham radio" group I guess.

I've never been to a ham fest around here but I would venture a guess it would be similar to what others have described. There are several 2m repeaters around me but I just am not on them very often. No reason other than I usually have the VHF side of my Dual Band on some other public safety channel.

Can you find the Ham???????? Might be a tough one......... hint, its orange.... can you find him??..........hehehehe




<img src="http://www.geocities.com/ho_r/pics/IM002526.JPG" height=600width=800>


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The biggest issue with Ham 2M and 440 repeaters right now is that no one is using them! Ham repeater traffic has dramtically declined, probably due to ultra cheap cell phones, and the Internet mode of communications. In most major cities, you will find that the top 2 or 3 repeateres that just a few years ago were transmitting nearly non-stop 24/7 are now typically always silent, sometimes for days at a time. Kind of sad, becasue the FCC is aware of this trend, and IMHO I believe Hams will lose 2M and 440 to commercial interests in perhaps a few short years. It will be interesting to see how long ICOM, Kenwood and Yaesu can survive in this piece of their markets, let alone the only 2 big Ham dealers left: AES and HRO. Notice that their catalogs are less than one-third as thick as they were even two years ago. Remember what happened to Wayne Greene when his magazine got that thin?

Larry

ROFL Robert! I thought you didn't get a picture of him. You should've gotten the front with the radios hanging in all the pockets...

That had to be a hamfest..................

If I could stomach going to them around here, I'd get pics that would make your eyes roll back in your head.

Ehh, yeah I guesss you can say its a ham fest, it was the TRW Swapmeet over here in El Segundo, CA or near LAX

Its half Ham and Commercial stuff, picked up a STX 821 for 45 bucks there with 2 battery, it was a 9 condition, good deal......

Half Ham?!! It's 1/4 radio and 3/4 crappy computer junk. I've never seen so many damn brand new ISA 33.6 modems in one place!

Well thats the biggest issue with hamfests anymore, no real "ham" stuff just appliances and useless junk that no one wants to even admit to owning. Don't know how many minnesota locals here remember the very first Fall Hamfest that took place at Richfield Highschool but that was a REAL hamfest. Lots of Collins 'S' stuff, plenty of /\/\ research and GE PRO junk along with enough tubes that if only the heaters were running they would keep the whole place warm... Did fail to mention plenty of the butt-picking dweebs that complain about how things were so damn expensive!
That was over 20 years ago and I recently stopped going to that fest out of frustration, its nothing but computer junk, dead 286s and ESDI drives along with mono 12" ambers and gulp even a 600bps cup modem. When that hamfest started I was 14 and had radio fever really bad, I was the only kid on the block with his own real "radio workshop" that was filled with everything tube, this back in 1984. Now its just garbage.. Stuff I wouldn't have even brought home when I was 14 let alone today.
I can tell you my last "good deal" from a hamfest and that was an Onan DJC-12 diesel generator with zero hours SMOH, that was last year but I wont be going again.

Hamfests are for the most part dead around here, high prices, entry fees and complainers just make it that easier to just skip it and stay home. Whats really bad is I can't even bribe my kid into a hamfest!

KA0SQO

Heh, just found this thread.

My name is Joe and I'm a ham radio operator.

I use to have all the Isuwood radios and crap, then I found batlabs. Actually, let me start from the begining. I was first introduced to Motorola when I was in the first grade (we're talking early '60s here) when my best-friend's dad was the local Motorola rep. I would draw picutres of Motorola radios in crayon. In grade school I found telephones and Western Electric equipment. In the fourth grade I interviewed the local Bell System marketing guy and wrote a report on IMTS radio phone. Ah, WECO + Motorola, it just didn't get any better!

The main CO in my town had a junk yard behind it and the telco guys would just toss out the old, broken switching gear. I would sneak in at night, like a rat, and cart home old Stroger switch parts and anything else WECO I could find (and carry on a bike.) Durring my high school years I was introduced to the local ham club. It seems like all they were interested in was getting me to learn how to pound brass. That didn't last too long. I felt that electronics was the future, not the past.

Anyway, the years pass and I've had many jobs in radio broadcasting, computer crap, networking, all that. I got my ham ticket about 10 years ago and did the normal dorky things. Can we say a used Icom 2m HT, VHF amp from a convertacom and a Radio Shack marine antenna?

I went through all sorts of YaeKenCom radios looking for the one that would feel right, nothing. I'd look at the used radios on eHam and what not and would see all these guys trying to sell old crap for what they paid new. So I found eBay and took a chance on a SyntorX that came with programming. I got lucky and the seller did a very decent job of showing me where to get the info I needed to know what I wanted in the codeplug.

Now, I've got five Motorola radios in my truck, got a maxtrac in my wife's car, three on my desk, seven HTs, and more various Motorola junk in the garage than I can deal with. I have a beat-up R1200 service monitor, an old 386 with a RIB and EPROM burner, watt meters and dummy loads. I'm having so much fun with Motorola that my wife is about to leave me.

I must admit that I still have a Yaesu VX-5R and a TH-D7. The VX-5 is cute and, with the stubby antenna, easy to carry around when a MT1000 is just out-of-place. It's also damn handy on the bench for quick tests and really is a tough little unit. I won the D7 as a door prize and keep it because it has the built-in TNC. The D7 is too fragile for day-to-day use. I work on a ham repeater where most of the guys use it as their main rig and most of them look like sh!t.

I'm involved in the local RACES because they kinda have their sh!t together (the local RACES repeater is a Motorola) and they don't peacock around much. It has good ties with the locals and good training by the local emergency management officials.

I keep my ham license so that I can play with my Motorolas. I live "above Line-A" so GMRS is dead here, although I do have WPXK308. Now my county is moving to trunking so I'm learning about all that now.

Anyway, take what you want from ham radio, ignore the rest, don't force your idea of ham radio on others, and give back what you can. Several of the local hams have seen my Motorola gear and have become interested themselves. If you're into disaster preparedness, wouldn't a MT1000 and a SyntorX 9000 serve you much better than the normal retail ham plastic crap? I'm also meeting some other Motorola-hams in the area, PETNRDX, kc7gr, and some great DX friends like Will Bartlett.

I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing with nine HTs, but they feel so right!

73

Hey, where did that picture of the fat ham go? I wanted to show a friend, but the image was gone

Dang, he would have laughed as hard as I

-Josh