Ham radio awash in rhetoric....

[CJB]

I've been monitoring HF ham radio for years, mostly in the good-ol-boys band, aka 80meters in the winter, and 40 meters most of the year - in my neck of the woods, I can listen to folks from about Pa to Fl, to Puerto Rico and Texas. Basically most of the eastern seaboard into about Tenn and west to Tx, south to PR (on occasion).

Gotta tell you, I have never heard, in decades of listing, the stuff I heard about the govt, and the President last nite. I have never heard the activity on various frequencies in those bands either. Seems like every Ham out there had something to say, none of it good concerning the big wigs in Washington, DC. I wont repeat it here, but some of it was fairly frighening. You gotta figure that these hams are mostly a bunch of rual folks, because they gotta have room for antennas that are 40 feet and more in length, most of the time on a pole that rotates on the top for directional use. Just country folks, with country ways and country mores. Read between the lines.

For those interested - I run a pair of IC-75's and an IC-78 (all band xmt version of the IC718), but right now only have a couple of barely sloping longwires, not really good for transmitting, so I listen. Also run a Lowe HF-150 (with their preselector and audio unit) and its by far the best "SW listening" rig I've ever come across. Its sort of like HiFi for SWL.

73

[JohnR]

Interesting.

How hard is it for the NSA to monitor that? Could there be government moles trying to stir things up? Just random thoughts...

[muggsy]

You don't need a very big antenna if your signal is going to a repeater. Good to hear that the nation is upset with the current White House resident. Sounds like the country is finally awakening from it's slumber.

[knkali]

CJB:
I am not sure what your position is on the chatter you heard. If you feel comfortable with it, please explain.

[wyntrout]

If we have a national emergency those guys will be the lines of communication with their shielded electronic equipment, as well as the old tube-based equipment unaffected by EMP or solar flares.

I maintain my license but haven't been "active" for a long time. After going to Europe I kind of got out of talking on radios after a few years back in the States up in Maine. While stationed at Abilene, Texas for about 9 years, I had a lot of fun with radios and antennas. You can put up quite a station and antennas in the suburbs, too. I didn't have a giant HF beam, though... just an inverted vee and 10M beam... started with 11 meter and an amp, then quickly went to Amateur Radio.

Guns, computers, Ham Radio, and audio-visual equipment are not cheap and I can only handle so many expensive hobbies!

I did work a satellite repeater once back in the late 70's 10-meter/VHF or UHF. The doppler shift made you have to keep tuning the frequencies.

I did some aeronautical mobile stuff from B-52's stateside and on the way to Europe... VHF SSB using the large broadband scimitar antenna for some of the Electronic Warfare Officer's equipment... shocking range from 30,000 feet or better... fun times!

Wynn

[TheTman]

Knkali, I figure they are probably talking about a revolution, that Obama should be impeached (or worse), Foreign troops on our soil to do the UN's dirty work, Probably a lot of racist talk about Ferguson, and minorities in general, the border, aliens, secret technology, End of the world type stuff, the same stuff you find on You Tube, only without any censorship. And yes I imagine this radio traffic is monitored. I doubt if they get too far out of line, as you have to have a license to transmit, and that can be tracked.
My uncle was into Ham, lived in an urban area, had an antenna that stuck up about about 2 more stories over his one story house.

[knkali]

Wow ...Got it TMan. Wondered what CJB thought about it.

[kahrnut1]

i have maintained my licence for 20 yrs.and keep a couple of radios ready to turn on in a emergency. but never use them, there is a privately owned repeater on mountain in my area owned by a red neck who u would believe would fight anything that moves.
they couple that repeater to one in ga and in short peoiod u would believe they are going to storm white house any minute
i had ocasiun to meet the loud mouth and at my 72yrs old 180 pounds 5'10" there is know doubt i could take him out in a very short altercation. and i am a lover not a fighter

[TheTman]

LOL, karhnut1, Doesn't it seem that for some people,, the more anonymous they are, the tougher they talk, and most the time they are some punk living in mama's basement. I've met a few internet bullies over the years, and most were pretty scraggly. ONE was a pretty hefty dude, but he only got obnoxious when he was drunk, otherwise he was a pretty nice guy. Alcohol sure brought out the A-hole in this guy though. Then I happened to run into one that was known for bullying women. He was a real no good, ran away from home at 14 and was a carny and con man and drug dealer most of his life. The type that would see a sign that said the floor was wet, then "slip" and fall down, and get a lawyer to get him a nice out of court settlement. A real sleazebag. The last thing I heard of him was that he'd ruined his liver, and conned some stupid woman into donating half of her liver to him, and is living on SS Disability now.

[CJB]

Sorry for being absent a bit...

The Tman was essentially correct. No so much revolution, but strong resistance.

Ham radio is not anonymous. The radio operator must identify his call sign at sign on and sign off, as well as regularly during his transmission. The registry of call signs is public record, very easily searchable on the internet.

I really don't think they give a damn about being anonymous.

As for repeaters, they are one frequency pair. So it rather limits the scope of whats available to use. Around here, reapeaters are mostly for VHF or UHF operation, not HF.

Wynn's VHF/SSB experience is soemthing new to me, as we normally run FM on VHF which would not use sideband transmission. Unless of course its for the aviation frequencies, which still use AM in the VHF range (or so memory goes... its been a while on that).

I listen almost every night for a few hours..... just tune up and let it play while I'm browing the net or such. Usually its just bs about radios and antennas and amps and mics... old trucks, old guns, who's sick, that sort fo thing. Then whammo all the chatter immediately changes overnight. Its an interesting development.

[wyntrout]

SSB is normally used for longer range. There were times that I could hit the FM repeaters in Fort Worth from Abilene... 150+ miles... due to atmospheric inversions or ducting. Then there are all kinds of things that reflect radio waves. I've seen long distance contacts made off of C-130s flying overhead... called it C-130 scatter.

Radios were a lot of fun and antennas were easy to experiment with in VHF and UHF... requiring MUCH shorter antennas due to their shorter wave lengths than HF.

Before cellular phones, we had access to private or club repeaters that gave us extended range from antennas atop building or mountain tops... some with push-button tone access to the phone lines. Of course, everyone listening to the repeater could hear the conversation, so most of us had no illusions about privacy... unlike those who blathered on CB-frequency unencrypted cordless phones of the day... or the cellphones that were available to many scanners back then.

A lot of the popularity for repeater access to the phone lines using handie-talkies went away with the advent of cellular phones... no tests or Morse code to learn. Most will never experience the joys and frustrations of sending and receiving Morse code messages and chatting that way, sometimes with a transmitter that boasted a transmission of less than one watt! Most of us could use a "bug" or electronic keyer to send maybe 4 times as fast as we could copy.

In the late 70's I sent a Radio Shack audio cassette tape copy of a program to a buddy over FM radio and he captured it with his cassette recorder used for data storage on the earliest TRS-80 computer. He was amazed that he got the whole data transmission and it worked as if he had stored it from his own computer to the cassette storage recorder... before floppy disk. It was experimentation like that that helped the field progress and develop. It just seemed logical to me. Basic programs were much like text, so we could actually send text messages that way.

My 3-year hiatus from SAC to West Germany got me away from Ham Radio and, though I did get back to it on VHF and UHF, I never really got that enthused again. I got marreid again and did have a neat VHF/UHF rig with terrific scan capability... especially after clipping a wire that gave it unlimited scanning that included the cellular frequencies! I once hear law enforcement yakking on cellphones and talking about an ongoing anti-drug operation as we drove by Las Angeles... not to mention private conversations about sex and the like... all over the air.

Some or most cordless telephones were using CB frequencies and were UNSCRAMBLED... not Spread Spectrum technology...allowing anyone who could tune those frequencies to listen in. Needless to say, when I shopped for cordless home telephones, I looked for those with some kind of encryption for privacy... Spread Spectrum being one of the earlier ones. SSB on CB frequencies gave you some isolation from most of the AM modulated CB's, as well as longer range.

Well, I have to get stuff ready for an early arising in the morning for day 2 of our gun sale weekend. We did better than the last three or so shows and netted enough to more than pay for a table by noon. Dang! I still like to yack sometimes!



Wynn