Emergency Communications

[BenRaines]

i am a big procrastinator. I have had the manual to study for my license for two years and only gotten through the first two chapters. Need to get it done and get a hand-held radio to go with all the other emergency preparedness stuff I have.

Ben Raines

[dalepres]

Heck, they give you the questions and the answers now And no CW

[wy0mn]

Hey, now.
I like CW, and I worked most of north & latin America with 3w on 10MHz!
Besides, there are several ways to get reduced voltage from an auto battery. One of them is as simple as coiling a wire around a pencil... But all hams know that, right? hihi
73
wy0mn

[dalepres]

Originally Posted by wy0mn

Hey, now.
I like CW, and I worked most of north & latin America with 3w on 10MHz!
Besides, there are several ways to get reduced voltage from an auto battery. One of them is as simple as coiling a wire around a pencil... But all hams know that, right? hihi
73
wy0mn

I like CW as well. CW and QRP represent what amateur radio is about - though I wouldn't mind a kilowatt rig with a 200 foot tower or a rhombic.

But I have to say, I have worked in electronics and two-way radio for 30+ years up to about 10 years ago; now I write computer software in .Net. I wouldn't recommend trying wire wrapped around a pencil on a battery unless it was specifically high-resistance wire. A coil is a dead short to a DC or constant load. To AC, assuming the coil is designed correctly for the load, a coil represents an inductive load that will develop an EMF across it and drop the voltage to a device but for a DC or constant load, it would act like a heater or a fuse...

[wy0mn]

Glad you caught that, lol.
I want a bodaceous vertical. Horizontals & wires don't last long here. Ice/snow/eagles plus WIND take their toll. I've lost one rigid dipole & two homebrew wire aerials in less than 3yrs.
DX Engineering has a few ground mounted monobander verts that seem as if they would answer my prayers.
I get so much wind here that I was forced to guy my stubby 26' Rohn towers! Thats with 36"/320# Sakrete in the base!

[dalepres]

I am just guessing from your screen name that you are from Wyoming? That is where I started in the 2-way radio business as a field engineer for Motorola many years ago. My territory was the entire state of Wyoming. I have probably been to every repeater site in the state at one time or another. Living in Casper, Wyoming and Glenrock, Wyoming, we used to laugh when the news reported hurricanes in Florida with winds lower than what we endured for days on end. I also lived in Buffalo for a few years; now that was definitely God's country!

What size Rohn towers? 25's? And 36" deep or square on the base? I assume that represented three each 10' sections with one buried in the concrete? For a Rohn 25 (edit - make that a properly - as in very lightly - windloaded Rohn 25) that's overkill but then with high windloading and Wyoming sized winds, the risk would be snapping off at the base - especially a base that solid. . Assuming you didn't have a microwave dish on the thing, a Rohn 45 would hold up with that base and even Wyoming winds at only 26 feet tall.

[wy0mn]

Screen name & FCC vanity callsign. Got it 'cause it looked like the name 'Wyoming'. Just gotta remember to append /7 in CW mode. How'ja get the 6 callsign?
Buried the bottom 3' of the lower section of each Rohn 25G tower in 360# of mud each. Odd length due to using used (cannabalized) tower sections as base sections.
Chose to erect vertically rather than lever up entire tower. Swaying at 16' convinced me to guy! Even with stubby towers I have more than enough wind to run my AIR403 turbine almost continuously at peak output.
Building the cabin, 12x20, I had to jack out a short wall & add extra bracing due to wind damage during construction. Only place I've ever been where you gotta accelerate downhill with a load of concrete just to maintain speed against the wind (true story).
Wifes job lets her travel occasionally, shes been to most of the larger 'cities' (hihi). Me, I'm content with my 40ac of cactus & wind.
Sampling other trout streams is the only valid expenditure of fuel in my mind.

PS: Just had my dog fixed, they put one of those plastic cones on him to prevent licking... now he's a hairy wind vane!

[dalepres]

I got KK6TF when I got my advanced class license many years ago. I was in California then. At the time, you could apply for a 2x2 license as an advanced but you had no idea what the FCC might come up with. Getting to ask for the 2x2 was as close as there was to a vanity call sign at the time.

I wondered if that was your call; I just couldn't figure out how you got a 0 in Wyoming.

It used to be that you could get a relative idea of how long a guy (or gal ) was licensed by their call sign. Not any more, though.

[wy0mn]

I wish they'd left things the way they were, but since they didn't, I took advantage of it.
My first call was KD4ZSO, then I got KS4YL as an Advanced. When they offered the vanity calls I jumped at the chance to free up the "YL" call to one of the ladies on a YL net! I was an 'honorary' lady with that call lemme tell ya!

[dalepres]

Wow. I'll bet that YL was sure excited to get a call with YL. But I would have never suspected you of being a YL; your mustache is thicker than that of most women I know. LOL

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to agree about wishing they'd left it like it was way back when. I'm sure it would be much to BenRaines dismay *grin* as he studies for his license, but it was a lot more fun when people who were involved worked harder to get it and had a better technical understanding of what they were doing instead of being appliance operators... and I had to buy crystals at 10 bucks a piece for every frequency I wanted to talk on... Ok, I don't miss crystals but I really, really miss Heathkit!