Field Day 2012

What do you get when ham radio operators all over the country get on the air to contact as many people as they can in 24 hours? A madness filled event called Field Day.

Yesterday I participated in my very first amateur radio ARRL Field Day, and it was in a word, madness.

The Charleston Area Radio Society (CARS) held their Field Day event on board the USS Yorktown, where they had a few radio rigs set up for phone (voice), digital, satellite tracking and CW (Morse code) from the trailer.

The CARS Field Day activities were well organized. The madness was happening on the air, with everybody trying to contact everybody and making for just a chaotic jumble of overlapping voices on top of the static (at least to my noob ears). Most stations came in pretty loud and clear on the phone (voice) station, although a bunch more we were struggling to pick up out of the static.

I spent a most of my time at the phone station logging contacts and helping to decipher the contact info from the static so I didn’t get on the air. It’s a little bit intimidating at first with all the activity happening. It was pretty cool making contacts with other operators though. Managed to get people from Ontario and Saskatchewan, across the country in Los Angeles and even heard someone from Croatia. We spent a while trying to pick out his call sign from the static and trying to establish a contact, but I don’t think he was receiving us. Would have been a cool contact to make.

Had a really good time helping out with the Field Day events (I only smacked my head on a bulkhead once) and am looking forward to getting back to it today until it wraps up at 2PM this afternoon. I’ll probably even try operate the station and get on the air for a few hours.

I can haz radio?

Now that I have my amateur radio license, I needed a radio to play with. After browsing a few catalogs, checking out some reviews and some websites, I settled on a Yaesu VX-8DR which arrived today.

It’s got a lot of buttons, a lot of capabilities and will take me a while to figure it out. It seems like a pretty decent radio that I’ll be able to grow into as I learn more about amateur radio. I’m looking forward to playing with it.

So far I’ve managed to catch some activity on one of the local repeaters. Just lurking for now learning how radio people talk and announce themselves.

KK4JRP

My new call sign just showed up in the FCC database. Now I am an official ham radio guy!

All I need now is a radio.

Newly minted ham

The Atlanta Hamfest today was pretty cool. A pretty decent number of people, and lots of radio related gear up for sale. So many gadgets. I’ve always wanted an oscilloscope to play with, and there were lots of them up for sale.

Sat in on Connie’s forum on the social side of ham radio, which went pretty well. Some pretty good discussion and participation from the people that attended.

After that it was ham licensing exam time. I managed to pass the General exam so now I am a licensed ham radio guy (once it goes through the FCC). I took the Extra exam because I could, but didn’t really expect to pass it since I went into it pretty much cold and with no prep. I figured I was prepared enough to get General, and that’s what I ended up with so I’m pretty pleased with that.

Connie took this picture of me with my CSCE (Certificate of Successful Completion of Exam) showing that I passed the General test.

Now to see if some of my ham radio friends will let me hang out with them and see how it works. Will probably find out sometime next week what my call sign is. If there are enough examiners at Southeast Linuxfest next weekend, I’ll try to do the Extra exam there (and hopefully be more prepared for it).

Ham radioing

A new hobby is probably the last thing i need to get into right now, with all the PhD work I’ve been procrastinating on.

That’s never stopped me before though.

Decided to make a trip out to the Atlanta Hamfest where I’ll meet up with a road-tripping ham radio friend and most likely take the ham licensing tests.

I’ve had a passing interest in amateur radio for a while now and ever since I pushed it as a Barcamp topic a few years ago, I’ve had a few people “encouraging” me to get my license.

So now I’m finally going to do it and enter the world of amateur radio. This should be interesting and fun.