My Little Ham ShackAs you may or may not know, I am visually impaired which makes reading small things nearly impossible. That said, people are always helping me out and I do my best to respect what they do for me. In this case, a local ham loaned me an ICOM 2 meeter radio and I want to do all I can to be the best operator around.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Mack KA5JNL for the use of the 2 meter radio, antenna and power supply.
The idea of having this new band capability, however, is a lot easier than the actual operation of the radio… Let me explain:
The radio is much, much more complicated than the 10 meter rigs I’ve operated in the past. Since repeaters are involved, and they are owned by other hams I want to be as respectful utilizing them as possible. Additionally, I need to know if each local repeater is duplex – or duplex +. These are things I didn’t realize 2 days ago.
I printed out a list of nearby repeaters and just this afternoon noticed the -/+ after the freq.
I guess you could say my learning curve is pretty steep, but not quite swift enough for me… ha ha.
I’ve had a few brief conversations with local people and discovered that people on the 2 meter band don’t us Q codes. Now I realize Q codes were mainly designed for CW operators, but I thought it was perfectly okay to call CQ on the 2 meter band. It didn’t take long for a repeater owner to correct me on my mistaken belief. I thanked him for correcting me, but now I don’t know how to call for anyone to talk to me.
If you came to this site because of a QSL card, I wantto thank you for visiting.
73s to you and yours.
Dan KE5UTN
West Monroe, LA
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Mack KA5JNL for the use of the 2 meter radio, antenna and power supply.
The idea of having this new band capability, however, is a lot easier than the actual operation of the radio… Let me explain:
The radio is much, much more complicated than the 10 meter rigs I’ve operated in the past. Since repeaters are involved, and they are owned by other hams I want to be as respectful utilizing them as possible. Additionally, I need to know if each local repeater is duplex – or duplex +. These are things I didn’t realize 2 days ago.
I printed out a list of nearby repeaters and just this afternoon noticed the -/+ after the freq.
I guess you could say my learning curve is pretty steep, but not quite swift enough for me… ha ha.
I’ve had a few brief conversations with local people and discovered that people on the 2 meter band don’t us Q codes. Now I realize Q codes were mainly designed for CW operators, but I thought it was perfectly okay to call CQ on the 2 meter band. It didn’t take long for a repeater owner to correct me on my mistaken belief. I thanked him for correcting me, but now I don’t know how to call for anyone to talk to me.
If you came to this site because of a QSL card, I wantto thank you for visiting.
73s to you and yours.
Dan KE5UTN
West Monroe, LA
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