Ham Radio as a life skill
- 3 minutes read - 539 wordsI’ve been thinking of some other things to write about. One of the things I’ve been toying with lately is ham radio. Several years ago, I went and got my Technician license, and played around on the local repeaters and things, but then I decided I really wanted to get onto the HF bands. To do that I needed to upgrade the license, so I studied for the General and Extra exams and, miraculously, passed both. I only really expected to pass the General.
Fast forward a few more years, and I’ve barely done anything with the license. I bought two kit radios (maybe 3?) but my soldering skills weren’t up for the task, so they are still in kit form somewhere. It’s really unfortunate, I had the perfect back yard for it, with my choice of 100+ foot tall trees to string antenna to, but without gear, I never got around to doing it.
Now times have changed. I have plenty of money, and bought a radio, but I’m in a tiny townhouse I have no intention of staying in, long-term, and while I’ve got plenty of trees out the back I could in theory run an antenna to, they’re not on my property. But I did buy a relatively inexpensive radio, a Xiegu G90, and a very compromise antenna, a SuperAntenna, and I’ve managed to make a contact or two on digital modes. I haven’t actually tried much with voice, as I’m a bit timid about speaking up. I guess I’ll have to fix that.
The closest thing to an Elmer I’ve got, a guy I work with who has his gear together and set up, found me another antenna, a Chameleon EMCOMM III Portable, which I’ll be able to rig up in the back pretty easily to get on the air better, and when I move and can get a better setup, I’ll be able to move it to a backpacking antenna to try to do some SOTA/POTA activations, and generally just use everything mobile. Unfortunately, that antenna is currently back-ordered, so no telling when it will arrive. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to get it tried out before the weather gets too cold, and maybe do some car-mobile operating with the G90 sometime soon.
One other aspect of ham that always interested but intimidated me is CW, or Morse code. I actually picked up a book on ham as a tween or teen and read a bunch about it, but the CW requirement for the tests back then kept me from actually getting my license. Today, CW isn’t a requirement, so that makes it even more intriguing for me. I’ve played with phone apps to help me learn CW, and I’ve got a pretty good handle on hearing all the letters, numbers, and a few punctuation symbols. But I’ve never tried sending it, other than when I was doing some experiments with my kids’ scout troop. But, there’s this thing called CWops Academy that is supposed to teach you how to do CW and involves actual commitments to actual people. So I’m signed up for January-March 2021. Now I need to get myself the things I need to practice, and I’m on my way.