Beginning of May I sat for my test(s). I did not know you could keep going as long as you passed each one.
Anyway, just awaiting my official call sign in the FCC but I passed all three (Tech, General and Extra) on the same day!
WHOO HOO
Lorna
Congratulations Lorna! That’s a big deal. The guy I Elmered was a EE and he did the same thing, passed all three in one sitting. I only upgraded to General at that testing.
I think FCC has a way to check on their website for your call sign before it arrives snailmail.
Congratulations Lorna. I think you have made a wonderful achievement. I bet you are looking forward to using your new Call Sign. I know how thrilled I was, in 1983, when I was let loose on the airwaves.
Congrats to our newest /AE. That is no small feat! Here’s to many years of another hobby draining off your LS Train funds.
btw: I’m launching a Amateur Radio Podcast in a few weeks if anyone is interested.
Thank you all. Now to get some equipment and hooked up.
Lorna
lorna dane said:
Thank you all. Now to get some equipment and hooked up.
Lorna
Check with your local Ham Radio clubs. I know some have loaner equipment for new hams, usually good stuff donated by the family of Silent Keys (dead ham guys).
Ham Radio. Got my Novice in 1971. Over the years finally made it to Extra. WA7SKG. Been off and on over the years. Did County Hunting for a while. Like Field Day and occasional QSO Parties. In the past was active in MARS and Civil Air Patrol.
Any interest in having Special Event Stations at NGR Conventions? We’re thinking about one for 2019.
Oh yea, checking in every Thursday evening on the CAP net. Been there, done that.
N6RGZ … still have my 50 amp Astron 12v supply… could run a heck of a lot of HO!
Greg
I’ll be sitting for my very first technician test on the 22nd. Studying!
W1KBW - Still just a Tech, but had it since you needed 5WPM code. Was going to sit for my General a few years ago, but never did it. Been inactive for about as long as I have been into Large Scale. Just in the last few weeks have been trying to get back on two meters. I have an old (35+ years) Kenwood TS700SP all-mode. It’s a little glitchy due to dirty switches etc; but seems to work; just not good enough to get into the local repeaters. I also have an old HF station; Yeasu FT101E that hasn’t seen power to the finals in many a year.
Been wanting to get into digital FM; but don’t have a digital capable rig yet. In the mean time I have Echolink hooked up and can use my PC to get into repeaters all over. Talked to my son in Denver last week on a 2M repeater on the front range.
AB1XO here. Nice to meet you all.
Hello Eric, welcome to LSC, hopefully I’ll have my own call sign sooooon.
Surprised to see this old posts from 2010 still going… lol. I still have one of my first Receivers ( Old all band H-craft.) I use with CW as a novice with the old call letters on it. “K6WGZ” Not to sure i could even use a CW bug anymore.
Kind of be nice to see and hear what everyone is using for Rigs (transmitters ) now.
Most of our stuff we had in early 50’s… we had to build or revamp Gov. surplus stuffs. We worked with a lot of help to get my BC-610 up that would idle at 750 watt with 5 amp modulation.
With it for a short time …Also, cause a few problem with TVI with peoples next door TV’s if didn’t watch it. Some pi-net work sometime didn’t away work right on some difference meters. 40M and 75 M . no problem. But then this was the old days…
Greg E. said something about use his Ham equip. power supply, that he could run a lot of trains with… Had to laf. Our could run a few also at 220v @ 60 amps. That was just one transformer out of the three we had in our BC-610J
If i remember right our transmitter wt. around 250 lbs, so never went portable /6…lol.
Call sign N9XLZ General class. Had my license shortly after I got thru high school. Mostly active on 2m for Skywarn spotter activities in our area. Haven’t been on HF in many years but used to work 10/20/40m phone when I was. Hope to get an older hybrid HF radio again soon. I learned on a Kenwood TS530s, still have my cheat sheet the gentleman made me on how to tune up and load the radio each time. So I will buy one of those when I find one I can afford. Most are way beyond my means when they come up for sale localy. 73’s Mike
One recent project for which I’ve used my ham privileges in the 900 MHz band is working out a way to read AEI tags. Here’s a video of tags being read from a 70-mph Amtrak Downeaster.
Eric Reuter said:
One recent project for which I’ve used my ham privileges in the 900 MHz band is working out a way to read AEI tags. Here’s a video of tags being read from a 70-mph Amtrak Downeaster.
Please explain more about this. Are you setting your own detector next to the tracks, or are you receiving info from an existing detector?
I have my own reader. After a lot of research, I found an off-the-shelf reader in the tolling/parking industry that is able to read ISO 10374 formatted tags, which the standard that AEI is based on. I had to write my own software to convert the raw tag data (128 sting) to readable information, based on the ARR S918, which is the AEI standard.
The big challenge is getting close enough to the tracks to read the tags without trespassing. I found that I can get reliable data at about 20’ from the rail, running 2 W into a 13 dBi horizonally polarized antenna for a total of 23 W ERP.
I logged date for about a month, and correlated it with noise data (I’m a noise control engineer), as part of a feasibility study on using AEI for rail noise studies. It worked quite well. I can determine the consist, direction, length, and speed of the train from the tag data.
Got it! Call sign KC1HHG, technician class.