whats the big deal?

[Accrete]

here are some thoughts from a fellow HAM...

Sorry for the ramble below, please don't blast me to hard, just wanted to give my honest heart felt opinion of my HAMventure.

I got my HAM license back in 1999 as a sort of father/daughter bonding time while i was home schooling her (with huge help from my wife...the main teacher). My daughter wanted to get some extra credit and also wanted to somehow get the required "Second Language" thingy under her belt...so we picked HAM radio as her second language class. hehehe. Gota luv homeschooling for being flexible ey?

OK, so seven years of Ham'in later i can say that i've not been on the airwaves much at all except when my daughter and i would go out camping with the family. I'm not much into ******** chat with what i would call strangers, and i'm not into talking just to talk either. What really put a damper on my HAM time was the advent of PalTalk and the Instant Messinger technologies as I am a currency trader in my time away from the regular job and i can talk privately with any one of my currency buddies worldwide (Oz land or Scott Land : )...try that with a HAM radio. Every body and their brother can hear your conversation and it has to also be by-the-rules; no idle chat stuff.

I agree with the idea that CB is not for family-ears these days. But then it wasn't back in the late 60's either! Fortunately the FCC licensing for HAM has kept the airwaves safe. But unless you have something HAM-Radio-Specific, or life threatening communication then i don't really see that HAM is of much use as the regulations (or at least what i still hear locally on the Oregon Coast, and the old'timers enforce/police the conversations and will butt in if you start talking about "life" and "stuff"!) is just not much fun. I mean just how much fun is it to talk about this radio or that antenna or whatever. 8 years of listening and it's still all business and not much FUN-talk about life or living.

Maybe it's just the area that i live in and most of the HAM opperators are well into their 70's (i'm no spring chicken as a sputnik baby...1957) but i wanna have FUN conversations about LIFE when i talk to people. And i'm just not seeing HAM as an option for that with the current FCC rules...unless i'm just hanging around the wrong radio waves here in Oregon ! !


Cheers,
Thom

 

[thallca]

You don't have to just talk about ham radio, you can discuss anything you like as long as you are not using the ham band for business reasons. In other words you can't, for example, use ham radios to dispatch trucks, etc.
There are a lot nets that use the ham bands to talk about all sorts of things. I have heard hams talk about model railroading, computers, tv shows and, in my area, I think there is 4x4 net that meets once a week.
Thom, if you really like to "ragchew" as we hams call it, you should upgrade your license to general and work the HF bands. Some of those guys just can't stop talking!
I am in the middle of upgrading myself...

Tim

Sorry for the ramble below, please don't blast me to hard, just wanted to give my honest heart felt opinion of my HAMventure.

I got my HAM license back in 1999 as a sort of father/daughter bonding time while i was home schooling her (with huge help from my wife...the main teacher). My daughter wanted to get some extra credit and also wanted to somehow get the required "Second Language" thingy under her belt...so we picked HAM radio as her second language class. hehehe. Gota luv homeschooling for being flexible ey?

OK, so seven years of Ham'in later i can say that i've not been on the airwaves much at all except when my daughter and i would go out camping with the family. I'm not much into ******** chat with what i would call strangers, and i'm not into talking just to talk either. What really put a damper on my HAM time was the advent of PalTalk and the Instant Messinger technologies as I am a currency trader in my time away from the regular job and i can talk privately with any one of my currency buddies worldwide (Oz land or Scott Land : )...try that with a HAM radio. Every body and their brother can hear your conversation and it has to also be by-the-rules; no idle chat stuff.

I agree with the idea that CB is not for family-ears these days. But then it wasn't back in the late 60's either! Fortunately the FCC licensing for HAM has kept the airwaves safe. But unless you have something HAM-Radio-Specific, or life threatening communication then i don't really see that HAM is of much use as the regulations (or at least what i still hear locally on the Oregon Coast, and the old'timers enforce/police the conversations and will butt in if you start talking about "life" and "stuff"!) is just not much fun. I mean just how much fun is it to talk about this radio or that antenna or whatever. 8 years of listening and it's still all business and not much FUN-talk about life or living.

Maybe it's just the area that i live in and most of the HAM opperators are well into their 70's (i'm no spring chicken as a sputnik baby...1957) but i wanna have FUN conversations about LIFE when i talk to people. And i'm just not seeing HAM as an option for that with the current FCC rules...unless i'm just hanging around the wrong radio waves here in Oregon ! !


Cheers,
Thom

 

[Accrete]

...There are a lot nets that use the ham bands to talk about all sorts of things. I have heard hams talk about model railroading...

Thom, if you really like to "ragchew" as we hams call it, you should upgrade your license to general and work the HF bands...

Tim

Hi Tim, good thoughts in your post. I tried to be kind in mine about what i hear out on the coast in Oregon. It really is all about radios! A couple times i tried to stir up a conversation about something else (excluding religion, politics and sex) and got shut down by an old timer policing the band. Basicaly if it aint about your gear or something to do with say packet radio, ARS-GPS, or similar "HAM" stuff its not a topic to be discussed out in my area from what i've gathered over the last 8 years of being involved.

I passed my written general but the code threw me, and i haven't felt the need to attempt to learn the code again. I've made contact from our club's radio room aboard the Lightship Columbia, it was during a contest weekend and i helped man the radio for a shift. Quite fun talking to someone in OzLand or Asia.

: ) Thom

 

[DaveInDenver]

Hi Tim, good thoughts in your post. I tried to be kind in mine about what i hear out on the coast in Oregon. It really is all about radios! A couple times i tried to stir up a conversation about something else (excluding religion, politics and sex) and got shut down by an old timer policing the band. Basicaly if it aint about your gear or something to do with say packet radio, ARS-GPS, or similar "HAM" stuff its not a topic to be discussed out in my area from what i've gathered over the last 8 years of being involved.

That's not right unless it was a tech net or something. During commutes, tuning in the repeaters here will cover just about anything. Places guys have been, things they do, stuff about traffic and work and cars. It's just a open ended conversation. The whole point of radio is to connect people together and so you are free to talk about whatever you want (except illegal things, business and a few morally sensitive things). Definitely no foul language, too. That old timer I think might have been out of line, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[goodtimes]

Basicaly if it aint about your gear or something to do with say packet radio, ARS-GPS, or similar "HAM" stuff its not a topic to be discussed out in my area from what i've gathered over the last 8 years of being involved.

I passed my written general but the code threw me, and i haven't felt the need to attempt to learn the code again. I've made contact from our club's radio room aboard the Lightship Columbia, it was during a contest weekend and i helped man the radio for a shift. Quite fun talking to someone in OzLand or Asia.

: ) Thom

Conversations are certainly not limited to gear talk, unless like DaveinDenver mentioned, it was during a tech-net or similar deal. I don't think I have ever talked about gear with mine. There is also no need to learn code for a tech license anymore.

Personally, the only time I use my 2 meter is when I am travelling with someone else who is running the same. I rarely talk to 'strangers'...but when your own group gets spread out over large distances, it is nice to be able to talk to each other. By large distances, I am talking 50+ miles.