Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby ktrout » Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:50 am

aquaregia wrote:And no one uses marine VHF on land, arrr.

A few years ago I crossed the US on a bicycle. In some places WX was the only thing I could get on my VX-7R. I still get a little wistful when I listen to it.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby swordpoint9 » Tue May 22, 2012 8:10 am

I use 2 M or 6 M mostly 73's !
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby gnaruki » Tue May 22, 2012 7:07 pm

Nice thread. I've been working out a CB network around my work place neighborhood in case of disasters. The CB network is for people in the near vicinity and on top of the CB network there is a group of hammers that can reach out further to government services and other areas beyond CB reach.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby Enochian » Sat Jul 21, 2012 1:43 am

The Yaesu VX8DR is a great radio, but way over priced. The cheap battery that comes with it needs to be replaced with the high capacity battery. Plus I never use the 6 meter or 220 bands. I would recommend the dual band (70cm and 2 meter) Yaesu FT-60R which is well built with a great battery life for only $169.95 vs $450 for the VX8DR.

I also use the Yaesu FT-450D with a Buddipole deluxe in a vertical configuration or a GRV5 wire antenna if there are trees to hang it on for HF operation. The setup easily hits most of Europe under the right conditions. There is also a 440 / 10 meter repeater system located on the Empire State building in New York that has great coverage. Digital modes are fun too.

If you're in New York City on September 11th, 2012, tune to 449.225 (PL: 82.5Hz). A few hams met up last year and we plan to do it again this year.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby JITW » Mon Jul 23, 2012 2:27 pm

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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby ktrout » Fri Jul 27, 2012 4:41 am

LOL. How about those Lambda Mus?
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby db36046 » Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:26 pm

By all means, get your license. In US, the FCC does monitor the frequencies for abuse and fines for operating without the license are currently running in the neighborhood of $10,000 per violation. Each day of illegal operation is typically considered one violation. If FCC doesn't snag you, other Hams will detect you and turn you in; it's called self-policing and is necessary to keep the bands assigned to Amateur Radio available for Hams. Pirates are not tolerated. Hams are particularly good at Radio Direction Finding and they will find you.
The license is not that hard to get; you can get a copy of the self-study book at your local Radio Shack store or online from arrl.org and in about two to six weeks of study you can pass the test. The tests are handled by local Hams and they are typically very helpful. They want you to pass the test.

There are small CW only single band HF rigs that you can stick in a backpack and run off a small battery for when you're way out in the boonies and need to stay in touch. They cost around $150 and with a piece of copper wire for an antenna you can have world-wide communications from anywhere.

As mentioned by other posters, for VHF/UHF, the Yaesu VX series are superb. You can even adapt a homemade directional antenna to one of these and do LEO satellite digital and voice communications using about five watts of power, as well as using them for local tactical communications or wider area comms through a repeater. You can set up a simple interface on your computer at home and have world wide communications via VOIP from your handheld as long as there is Internet available at your base station. If you are in a civilized area there will already be such gateways available locally and you don't have to build your own interface.

Study the book, take the test, get the license. What you learn in the course of study will get you going with a lot of stuff you've only heard about in SciFi.

Drawbacks? Main one is you are only allowed to communicate with other licensed Hams. In an emergency, of course, anything goes, but you may have to defend yourself afterward to whatever authority is in charge in your country.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby db36046 » Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:28 pm

Very funny, JITW.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby thewalrus » Sat Mar 16, 2013 3:02 pm

If you want a really cheap VHF/UHF handheld that has a decent set of features, this is $50:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=UV-5R+pl ... =firefox-a

Image

It's not a $400 Yaesu, but it's also not even a hundred bucks... The feature set and performance is remarkably good. You can get pairs of them for $95 on eBay. One of the fun things you can do with them without a licence is use the FRS frequencies for local communications within a few km.
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Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There

Postby russlits » Fri Nov 30, 2018 5:18 am

after seeing 25 in the thread, I got my hopes way fucking up there.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby Chimborazo » Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:22 pm

Studying up for my amateur radio license (technician) now so I'm resurrecting this 10 year old thread.

Do any of you use amateur radio?

I've been dabbling with GMRS (not the Wally World bubble pack FRS/GMRS kind) and decided I wanted to get my amateur license for a few reasons:

    1. I'm a dork.
    2. I want to talk to astronauts on the ISS.
    3. I like 2-way radios (see item 1).
    4. I think it's neato to be able to communicate with radio waves in this internet world we're living in.
    5. Maybe for emergency communications during a natural or other disaster, though I don't have all the backup power I'd need to get me through more than a few days of connectivity.
    6. GMRS is more for communicating with people you know while doing other activities, and I only have one friend. He did get his license and a radio too, so now we can ignore each other over an additional medium, but amateur is more friendly toward talking to people you don't know who are also dorks.
    7. There are far more ham repeaters than there are GMRS repeaters.
    8. I'm a dork.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby Kurt » Mon Jan 30, 2023 4:33 pm

Chimborazo wrote:Studying up for my amateur radio license (technician) now so I'm resurrecting this 10 year old thread.

Do any of you use amateur radio?

I've been dabbling with GMRS (not the Wally World bubble pack FRS/GMRS kind) and decided I wanted to get my amateur license for a few reasons:


I gotta do this too but for work. I want to integrate radio into our CSOC / SOC. We have a number of things that can be interfered with by shitty Baofengs either bleeding into another band or being modified to fuck with our shit.

We also have some sensitive fixed location GPS stuff that is really, really critical. You would not think a building need 100% accurate GPS until a jammer hits you and fucks up everything.

And, to make things worse the vendors we have been checking with say "wireless ethernet" when I say "all radio" for monitoring and alerts.

I am guessing SIGINT in the military is the place to check out but right now it is looking like we gotta build out our own kit and integrate it with the SOC.

So yah.

Plus time to learn...I may have to give up "Beer time" for this.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby Chimborazo » Fri Feb 10, 2023 3:23 pm

Kurt wrote:
Chimborazo wrote:Studying up for my amateur radio license (technician) now so I'm resurrecting this 10 year old thread.

Do any of you use amateur radio?

I've been dabbling with GMRS (not the Wally World bubble pack FRS/GMRS kind) and decided I wanted to get my amateur license for a few reasons:


Plus time to learn...I may have to give up "Beer time" for this.


I don't think you'll have to give up much beer time at all. I bought the technician course from https://hamradioprep.com/ and that's all I needed. Their goal is to get you to pass the exam, but I think they do explain things decently and there's plenty of things in there to prompt you to dig deeper for your own knowledge, so I got a lot out of it. I think you've got much deeper knowledge than I do in this area so I'm not sure if you'll get as much out of it, but you'll at least know how to pass the exam. I'm probably going to go for general class too. I don't know if I'll use it, as I don't have the money to really get into much of this anyway and dealing with HF antennas seems a pain, but it is pretty cool and I know I'll learn a lot. If I'm right about your level of knowledge and I were in your shoes, I'd get the technician and general courses and take both exams at the same time. I hadn't looked at any of the general class material but they talked me into taking the exam by asking what I had to lose besides a little more of my time that day. He said he bet I'd get at least 50% and it would be a free preview of the exam. I think I got 60% right, but I did a lot of guessing so that score doesn't reflect my knowledge. One guy there studied for technician, general, and extra and passed all three, but he said he has a heavy electronics background.
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby Kurt » Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:20 pm

Cool link.

Also related to HAM + Travel.

http://www.arrl.org/news/bouvet-island- ... on-the-air
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Re: Any Amateur Radio BFCers Out There?

Postby Big Duke 6 » Thu Nov 02, 2023 1:36 am

I tried getting into this a while back. I have the same radio that Walrus posted earlier. In Wyoming, there was fuck all. Makes sense being the least populated state, but now that I'm in a more populated state I still hear close to nothing outside the permanent weather beacons that are out there. I think I probably need a better system to get the stuff skipping off the stratosphere, but I've also found out this can be quite an expensive hobby. Too expensive currently for my tastes when it's just something I'm dabbling in.
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