HollyKing's Journal

Last night I made my first contact using the new station setup. Well, I was unable to contact one net that was being held but I was able to contact other stations on other repeaters. I'm not sure if I had the settings right for the repeater used by the Nine O'Clock Net. Another possibility is that 5W isn't enough power to reach the repeater from my QTH. Tonight I'll verify the settings and see if I can join the net again.

One of my favorite radio activities has been traffic handling. There is a lot more traffic activity in Portland than I've found here. So far I've only found one net for passing traffic but it's at 17:30 and I'm rarely around my station at that time. I wonder if I can connect with the K7LED repeater using the VX-5R. I'll have to try that tonight.

Ok, enough rambling about radio stuff. For now...

73 de KD7LAH

I found a nice writeup of some amateur radio operators down in Oregon helping out during the flooding. Having participated in simulated emergency reponses I know that the article doesn't give us the full sense of how much work was required to keep communications going. I was exhausted at the end of the SET which was scheduled for an afternoon and didn't have to deal with the stress and chaos of a real emergency. So I say thanks to those who helped out!

Jeff Davis, KE9V, also blogged about this story. I wanted to mention his post because he brought up the point that the public service agencies have spent millions in upgrading their communications systems. Yet we still read about "amateur" operators who can deploy and communicate during an emergency when the "professionals" have lost their ability to communicate.

As you might know I've struggled a bit with how to be an active amateur radio operator while living in an apartment. I think I might have found a project that will make it easier. I want to build an ARES Boom Box. One box with radio, batteries, power supplies and charger. Plug it into the wall and you can operate while it charges the batteries. Pull the plug and carry it to an operation location and you're back on the air after a quick antenna setup. I have the radio which is the most expensive single part. Once I put together the final list of components I'll know how big of a box I need to put it all together.

Tonight was the weekly net for the Redmond ARES group. As I've mentioned before I was dreading this more than a bit. I had a knot in my stomach and was really tempted to just turn off my radio and skip another week. I didn't though. When the call came for visitors to check in I keyed the mike and clearly spoke my callsign. When I let go of the button I could hear someone just finishing their callsign. I had transmitted at the same time as someone else and thanks to the "magic" of FM radio they won and their signal made it through. It happens, so I keyed up and tried again. As I let go I heard the tail end of another transmission. I tried a third time and didn't hear anything when I released the transmit button and wasn't recognized by net control. A few more attempts and it was clear that my transmissions were not being received. I don't know what's wrong, but at least I tried. I have a week to figure out the problems and get things working before the next net. In the meantime I'm going to send an email to the emergency coordinator (EC) for the ARES group. I'll apologize for dropping the ball and ask if they'll have me back. That's going to be a fun message to write.

After attempting the net hollyqueen and I watched the last three episodes of Dr. Who. We've now caught up with everything but the last holiday special.

I setup a feed on LJ for my amateur radio blog (kd7lah) and so far it has three readers. I'm one of them. After he made a comment I found out that neuro42 was another. I still didn't know who could be the mysterious number three. With a "brilliant" flash of induction I figured that they would be one of my friends here on LJ. It only took two tries to find my third reader. Go me.

Of course I still don't have any idea how many people might be reading the actual blog. I know the feed is carried by PlanetHam.com so there is a huge potential audience.

I'm splitting my blog into two. I'm going to stay here on LJ for my personal blog and keeping in touch will my friends here. I just started a new blog on TypePad to talk about my primary hobby of amateur radio and emergency communications. If your interested in that I invite you to read kd7lah.typepad.com. If you just want to read my posts here in LJ you can add kd7lah to your friends list. (RSS rocks!)

73 de KD7LAH