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As part of our armegeddon preps, my wife and I are pursuing our HAM licenses. My wife has obtained hers, and I will have mine soon. Any HAM operators out there and if so, what are your call signs and what repeaters, if any are you using? We are newbies, so we welcome any advice you have.
 
I've got a license but haven't done much lately. Pm for my call sign. What are you looking at using? HF/2M, etc? The repeaters and transmission tones for a lot of repeaters are published.
 
Two of the most active repeaters in the Valley are 147.040 W7RPT in Portland and 145.290 WA7ABU in the hills around Silver Falls State Park. 145.290 has remarkably good coverage. There are a couple repeaters on Mary's Peak too, although the exact frequencies escape me at the moment.

Ham radio is great for emergency communications, my eventual plan is to have a Yaesu FT-1900 and FT-60 HT in every vehicle and at home, all programmed identically. So far I have one FT-1900 :rolleyes:

Need to get my wife her license too. In a few years I'll get another HF rig, I sold the one I had to build up the gun fund.

Greg
KF7***
 
ham license and have alot of experience using h.f. in the jungles of south america and asia as well as setting up duplex radio/data feeds in the jungles. not going to give ya my call sign,, that would be like giving you my name and street address.Heee;)
 
How much of an investment to start up? I was just searching for the costs of the radios and it looks like anywhere from $300- $2500 for a stationary set up. That is quite a range. Is an amp needed or just desired? Excuse my ignorance. Any advice would be welcomed. We've only ever had CBs and race radios.
 
Used radios pretty much all my life - air traffic control, law enforcement, walkie talkies as a kid and now RC planes and helos as an "adult."

Where can I read up/listen a little to learn what sort of traffic I would typically hear if I had a ham radio. Emergency stuff? Fun stuff? What's the deal? I'm curious.

Thanks in advance for ideas.
 
Where can I read up/listen a little to learn what sort of traffic I would typically hear if I had a ham radio. Emergency stuff? Fun stuff? What's the deal? I'm curious.

On a daily basis? Bunch of old guys that sounds like they have a foot in the grave already yabbering on about nothing for hours on end, some noobs asking silly questions, and the occasional traffic or club net. That just about covers the typical uses of the 2m band. On HF you add some contesting and DX hunters to the mix. A few times a year you will hear a local or sometimes a state-wide emergency exercise going on, and some special events(I do the Portland Marathon stuff with the Portland club every year, I would say it's probably the biggest public service event for hams locally outside ARES). If you are listening at the right time and to the right repeater, you could hear some SAR stuff - but it seems like most of those groups have their own radio gear and repeaters on the land mobile bands these days(or piggyback on local fire/police channels for the agencies they are sponsored by).

There really are a lot of different things to do within the hobby, but until you jump in and start talking to people and exploring stuff you have no idea who does it or when/where it happens. Think about gun stuff - if you were just buying your first pistol, or thinking about it, aside from random stuff read on the internet would you ever have any clue what all the different types of shooting matches were or what they meant? There are a lot of things out there that really don't get noticed unless you are involved in it. After 15 years of being licensed, I still find new things in the radio world.
 
On a daily basis? Bunch of old guys that sounds like they have a foot in the grave already yabbering on about nothing for hours on end, some noobs asking silly questions, and the occasional traffic or club net. That just about covers the typical uses of the 2m band. On HF you add some contesting and DX hunters to the mix. A few times a year you will hear a local or sometimes a state-wide emergency exercise going on, and some special events(I do the Portland Marathon stuff with the Portland club every year, I would say it's probably the biggest public service event for hams locally outside ARES). If you are listening at the right time and to the right repeater, you could hear some SAR stuff - but it seems like most of those groups have their own radio gear and repeaters on the land mobile bands these days(or piggyback on local fire/police channels for the agencies they are sponsored by).

There really are a lot of different things to do within the hobby, but until you jump in and start talking to people and exploring stuff you have no idea who does it or when/where it happens. Think about gun stuff - if you were just buying your first pistol, or thinking about it, aside from random stuff read on the internet would you ever have any clue what all the different types of shooting matches were or what they meant? There are a lot of things out there that really don't get noticed unless you are involved in it. After 15 years of being licensed, I still find new things in the radio world.

You're right, there is a lot of different things. I'm looking at playing with APRS right now for location services. I knew some people that did a fair amount of things with packet radio.

Field days are fun to participate in. You set up a quick station in a park, field or somewhere. There's a lot of stations operating so you can make lots on contacts. It's not an everyday thing though.
 
Used radios pretty much all my life - air traffic control, law enforcement, walkie talkies as a kid and now RC planes and helos as an "adult."

Where can I read up/listen a little to learn what sort of traffic I would typically hear if I had a ham radio. Emergency stuff? Fun stuff? What's the deal? I'm curious.

Thanks in advance for ideas.

Teflon -

I see you're in Portland? If you want to hear some local repeater traffic get a scanner and tune to 147.040. It's a pretty popular repeater and gets lots of local traffic.

440.400 is also a popular one, it's usually connected to the IRLP "Western Reflector", which means it's connected to the internet and rebroadcasts through any number of other repeater sites around the world that are also hooked to the Western Reflector.
 

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