Any HAM radio operators in the club?

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 7:27 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

Those cheap Chinese radios has piqued my interest again. If it's useful at all I'll likely be able to listen in to whatever frequency is being used. Not enough time to get a license though.

FWIW, I've heard nothing but good things about the chinese radios. I'll stick with Yaesu myself, I think, but they are built to a bit tougher standard that I like.

--Donnie

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:03 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

Those cheap Chinese radios has piqued my interest again. If it's useful at all I'll likely be able to listen in to whatever frequency is being used. Not enough time to get a license though.

Same here. I have been looking over requirements to get a license. I don't need another hobby.

Richard

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2014 7:34 pm

Richard Casto wrote:

JamesMilko wrote:

Those cheap Chinese radios has piqued my interest again. If it's useful at all I'll likely be able to listen in to whatever frequency is being used. Not enough time to get a license though.

Same here. I have been looking over requirements to get a license. I don't need another hobby.

Join ARRL, buy license book, read book, take test, done.

Technician Class is really easy to get now and plenty useful. There are some excellent repeaters in the area to "hang out" on. APRS is fun to play with. Otherwise it's just a toy, though. Unless your significant other or someone you want to talk to often gets it, and you have conversations with that person often that you don't care if random strangers listen in on, it's fairly useless. You can just hang out on the repeaters and jump into random conversations, but in my experience, it's mostly old folks talking about their liver spots.

Orange County has an active club. I went to a couple meetings. There, you can talk about your liver spots in person! Okay, they didn't do that, but it wasn't far from it. The informal version of the club meetings is to go to Bojangles in Hillsborough every morning for breakfast, too.

The club guys are a huge help if you're into building your own antennas and such, and folks do group buys of things like the huge cable and coax ends and such. But if you're just into buying an HT and talking on repeaters, well, you don't need that crap anyway.

--Donnie

Jason Mauldin · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2014 8:03 pm

Donnie, do you know if these radios are useful for boating at the beach? (within a mile from the shore) Do they have the necessary marine bands?

From my understanding, aren't you allowed to use a HAM radio in an emergency, even without a license?

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:12 am

Jason Mauldin wrote:

From my understanding, aren't you allowed to use a HAM radio in an emergency, even without a license?

Are you really worried about that? In an actual emergency I'd use whatever was necessary and worry about the consequences later.

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:31 am

HAMs have a total nerdboner for helping out in emergencies. I don't think anyone would complain, and if they did it's unlikely the FCC would do anything.

Jason Mauldin · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:46 am

Vincent Keene wrote:

Jason Mauldin wrote:

From my understanding, aren't you allowed to use a HAM radio in an emergency, even without a license?

Are you really worried about that? In an actual emergency I'd use whatever was necessary and worry about the consequences later.

Yes, I would use whatever means necessary, but I think that I remember seeing that you wouldn't actually be subject to a fine in the case of an emergency. Just trying to get confirmation of that.

Bernie Baake · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:54 am

You can use any radio on any frequency in a real emergency...But it better be a real emergency if you use the amateur radio bands. They are anal retentive when it comes to others using Their frequencies, And will track you down better than the FCC will.

Jason Mauldin · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 11:06 am

Is this the radio you guys are talking about?

http://www.amazon.com/Baofeng-UV5R-136- ... uctDetails

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 11:37 am

Jason Mauldin wrote:

Is this the radio you guys are talking about?

http://www.amazon.com/Baofeng-UV5R-136- ... uctDetails

Damn that's cheap. We might need to pick up a couple of these to use in the pits at the next race.

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 3:25 pm

Yeah, that's it. Bernie mentioned it in one of the other threads.

Bernie Baake · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2014 4:20 pm

You'll be shocked at the range of these little radios they provide better coverage than the CP200's that Vir uses for flagging and communications. And the CP200's at Vir use a repeater!! There are also several different antennae available for these units including a mag mount that we've used on the car. I like them because of their small size that allows me to put them in a shirt pocket while using the headset.

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:57 am

Jason Mauldin wrote:

Donnie, do you know if these radios are useful for boating at the beach? (within a mile from the shore) Do they have the necessary marine bands?

From my understanding, aren't you allowed to use a HAM radio in an emergency, even without a license?

I'm late to the party, but on the question of marine bands, I *think* for some reason the radios sold as HAM radios aren't allowed to include those as available. That said, it's just programming that locks them out and many can be *easily* bypassed (usually you remove a panel somewhere and cut a PCB trace). I may or may not have done that with a Yaesu HT and it may or may not work just fine then as a marine radio. And it's waterproof and cheaper than most of the actual "marine" radios. And better, since it does a LOT more. (The Yaesu's aren't *cheap* like the Chinese radios, though.)

As for the emergency thing, yeah, it's completely legal to use a HAM for a real emergency. They won't consider "oh crap, I'm on the lake and my boat won't start" as an emergency, but they would consider "oh crap, I'm on the open sea and my boat won't start."

I can't speak to the radio posted and its quality, but in general, yeah, these things are pretty sick in how good they are compared to ANYTHING a normal person could be used to using. Only drawback to using them along with FRS radios on FRS frequencies is most don't do that "security" channel business so you can't use them on the "subchannels" that the FRS radios use. Stick to the main ones, though, and you're golden.

And like Bernie said, play with antennas and you can really start to go nuts.

--Donnie

Charlie Guthrie · **Joined:** Thu Aug 28, 2003 8:14 pm **Posts:** 832

Seeing just how cheap these are makes me want to get one just to be able to monitor the progress of SandBlast Rally next year. It could be interesting to know what's really going on while we wait for the next cars to come by.

While I' online, I'll bump the reason for this discussion and mention the road rally and afterglow party this weekend. See the 50Th Anniversary Road Rally posts here in the Lounge. I got to drive the course to check mileage and course instructions and it will be a lovely fall drive.
Charlie G

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:50 pm

So James had his Baofeng UV-5R at the party after the rally last night. It pushed me over the edge. I just bought two via Amazon. I also picked up the USB cable and two battery backpacks that allows you to use AAA batteries (http://amzn.com/B00CMMCATS). I like the option of using regular batteries in a pinch (i.e. Zombie Apocalypse).

I will likely work on getting my license over the fall/winter.

Richard

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