Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
Recently, on one of the email reflectors associated with repeater owners, someone asked how to deal with kerchunkers on the repeater. The term kerchunk means to key up the repeater to see if it is there. It just takes a quick push of the Push-to-Talk (PTT) button on the transceiver to bring up most repeaters, … Read more
I have been writing the FM column for CQ VHF Magazine for a number of years. I really enjoy doing it and I think the magazine is great. This quarterly magazine has special feature articles on VHF (and higher bands) and includes regular columns on satellites, space, radio direction finding, beginners guide, FM/repeaters, antennas and propagation. … Read more
I received a comment on my previous post on The Android HT, pointing to this Android mobile phone plus UHF transceiver: Runbo X5. This is not quite what I described as the Android HT but this device is certainly interesting just the same. Runbo X5 Android Phone with UHF Radio Looking around on the web, … Read more
You may recall the story about the origination of the Golf November Tango frequency of 146.55 MHz. Unfortunately, we have discovered an oversight in the selection of this important frequency. On the 2 Meter band in the US and Canada, we have two different channel spacings in use. Some regions use a 15-KHz channel spacing … Read more
My article on the Android HT generated some interesting comments and ideas. Thanks so much! One of the main themes in the feedback is to have the radio be “faceless”, with the user interface done on a mobile device (i.e., smartphone or tablet). The mobile device would communicate to the transceiver via Bluetooth (or maybe … Read more
I’ve been watching all of the innovative work going on in the smartphone and tablet arena and wondering how we could get more of that going in ham radio. To be sure, there are always radio amateurs developing creative technology. Some examples are adaptations of D-STAR, IRLP, improvements on APRS and sound card modulation modes. However, amateur radio … Read more