Jumping in to the Amateur Radio world

[Bullitt6283]

Originally Posted by Midnightmoon

Decided to take the plunge in to the Amateur Radio world this winter. Passed the initial Technician level exam today. I only studied for that one and will start to prepare for the General next.

Welcome to the world of amateur radio!


Ron K3HIL
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[Midnightmoon]

Originally Posted by Bullitt6283

Welcome to the world of amateur radio!


Ron K3HIL
.

Thank you. My first radio ever just showed up via UPS. Going to set it up now. More excited than a kid at Christmas.

[CAG]

Originally Posted by Midnightmoon

Thank you. My first radio ever just showed up via UPS. Going to set it up now. More excited than a kid at Christmas.

I know the feeling

[Flyingaggie]

Originally Posted by Midnightmoon

Decided to take the plunge in to the Amateur Radio world this winter. Passed the initial Technician level exam today. I only studied for that one and will start to prepare for the General next.

I know a lot of you are already involved in the hobby. Please feel free to pass on your words of wisdom, tips, tricks, etc. I am truly a rookie at this so any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Congratulations and welcome to the hobby! I've been licensed for over 10 years now. Took the tech right before I left on vacation with my daughter in our RV. Took the General during that vacation and took the Extra as soon as we got home. I'm now a VE to help others get licensed. Great hobby and alway have HF-UHF capability in my RV with various versions of radios, depending on what I pack.

Great hobby, awesome people and you can look at Parks On The Air (parksontheair.com) for combining camping and HAM if that's an interest. Best thing is, it's like camping, there's something interesting in it for everyone and it's not the same for everyone.

Enjoy it as a hobby and don't get too bogged down in details. Hopefully I'll run into you on the air or in a park.

73,
Tim
KG1GEM

[Midnightmoon]

Originally Posted by Flyingaggie

Congratulations and welcome to the hobby! I've been licensed for over 10 years now. Took the tech right before I left on vacation with my daughter in our RV. Took the General during that vacation and took the Extra as soon as we got home. I'm now a VE to help others get licensed. Great hobby and alway have HF-UHF capability in my RV with various versions of radios, depending on what I pack.

Great hobby, awesome people and you can look at Parks On The Air (parksontheair.com) for combining camping and HAM if that's an interest. Best thing is, it's like camping, there's something interesting in it for everyone and it's not the same for everyone.

Enjoy it as a hobby and don't get too bogged down in details. Hopefully I'll run into you on the air or in a park.

73,
Tim
KG1GEM

Thank you, I appreciate the welcome. This has been a lot of fun in the short time that I have focused on it. From studying for the first exam, the test session itself, researching radios and equipment, and now getting things set up and working. I have enjoyed all of it.

I do have the 2 meter that I received today up and working and even was able to program and use the closest local repeater. A little trial and error getting the tones and offset programmed correctly the first time. But now that I know how to work through the process, it should be easier from here.

[sturgissteele]

Glad to see you're are getting into the hobby. I still remember when I first got onto the local 2 mtr station; that was exciting. Haven't had any ham equipment for a couple of decades, or more, but have kept the tech-plus license current. Maybe one of these days get back into it. Lot of memories from a lot of the contacts made on the different bands!

N8KYQ

[thenovaks]

Would one of you folks be able to provide a link that would give me information on how to sell two old shortwave radios?

[CAG]

I don't know where Plantsville is but I would start by doing a search of HAM Radio clubs in your area and once you have those make some phone calls.

[thenovaks]

Thank you CAG. I will give that a try. Plantsville is in CT.

[Midnightmoon]

Participated in my first Net this evening on 2 meter out of Morgantown WV. ~45 miles south of us here in PA. Very surprised that I was able to hit that repeater at all. Control operator was really great and welcomed me to the conversation and even talked me through their procedure. Great experience for my first Net contact.

[JFlightRisk]

Very nice! Great way to start the experience. Congratulations!

[Midnightmoon]

It's very interesting how busy 2 meter is in my local area. I've made quite a few contacts this week and have enjoyed getting to know some of the other local Hams.

Not a transceiver, but I started thinking about a mobile scanner that I had back in the early to mid 90's in a couple of my vehicles. It was a Christmas present from my mother way back when if I remember correctly.

Anyway, started digging through some things and sure enough, I found it just where I thought it would be. Plugged it in to a power supply and it works like it always did. I'm using it now to scan a few of the local repeaters.

[sturgissteele]

That's good you have traffic there. I seem to recall a huge decline in traffic here, but that was so many years ago now. No idea what it's like in the area. We also had quite an infiltration of new (young) hams that were just as rude as ever. You'd think they were on the CB and they acted up enough that a lot of us got off the air. They wouldn't listen or be taught how to use the radio in a correct manner. I can only hope they eventually got bored and moved on. But like I said, it was a very long time ago. Kinda surprising the issues we had considering it takes quite a bit of studying to get into the field and some money to get the equipment.

[Midnightmoon]

Yes John, it seems like a great local community here. I hope that it stays that way.

On a side note, passed the General this morning. Now to study for the extra.

[Midnightmoon]

Speaking of the testing, I've been using this group for my test sessions. Extremely professional and friendly and a great alternative if local test sessions are not available.

https://wm7x.net/examprep/

[Bullitt6283]

Originally Posted by Midnightmoon

Speaking of the testing, I've been using this group for my test sessions. Extremely professional and friendly and a great alternative if local test sessions are not available.

https://wm7x.net/examprep/

Thanks for this Link. I am studying for my Extra right now.
Cheers.


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[Midnightmoon]

Originally Posted by Bullitt6283

Thanks for this Link. I am studying for my Extra right now.
Cheers.


.

You are welcome. I also plan to take my Extra with them when I am ready..

Good bunch of people. In fact, the lead VE was camped at Quartzsite this morning. So, we spent some time talking RV's after the test session.

[Midnightmoon]

I mentioned it last week and I'll say it again, I can't believe how active 2 meter is here in western PA. There's a net happening at least once an evening on a local repeater and tons of traffic in the mornings and afternoons as people are commuting to and from work. It has been very enjoyable to listen to and participate in.

I mounted a dedicated 2 meter J-Pole outside the house last weekend and it is performing very well. I'm regularly hitting repeaters in a 30-50 mile radius around the house with good signal reports on a small BTech mini mobile. Most of those I can contact easily on low power. Next up will be a HF rig of some sort. If nothing else I want to find a cheap 10-meter and start working some FT8 or voice contacts.

Not a Ham radio, but I also dug out a new Bearcat 980SSB CB that I received as a gift from my Brother-In-Law last year out and set it up beside my VHF/UHF. Struggling a little with the SWR readings with the antenna I am attempting to use. But, that's part of the fun.

[David_ski]

Originally Posted by Midnightmoon

I could not get CHIRP to work on my Mac. I ended up installing it on an old Windows laptop that my daughter is allowing me to use. Going to try and do some radio programming tomorrow.

I finally spent some time figuring out what was wrong with CHIRP on my MAC.

I ran CHIP from the command line and it helped me identify my underlying problem.

/Applications/CHIRP.app/Contents/MacOS/chirp

I was getting an error that a library was not loaded for python2.7

When I did a ls -l /usr/local/bin/py* there was no python2* in the directory

At some point MAC OS removed python2.7 support. I was able to re-install python2.7 back in from this web site.
https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-2718/

I can run CHIP from the command line, and from the App Launchpad. Make sure that there is no old CHIP versions in the Applications folder

[Midnightmoon]

Thank you David. I will look in to the python 2.7 situation on my Mac and see if I can get it working. Thank you!!