Speaker 0: Mike tells world number four twenty seven for
Speaker 0: the what is it? The twenty first of
Speaker 0: November twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: When I was a young boy, there wasn't
Speaker 1: any Internet. There wasn't any World Wide Web.
Speaker 1: There wasn't any egghead sending you texts saying
Speaker 1: those are the same thing. You don't have
Speaker 1: to say Internet and World Wide Web. They're
Speaker 1: the same thing. There weren't any video games
Speaker 1: when I was a boy. Well, there was
Speaker 1: Pac Man. That was a game, I guess.
Speaker 1: And Asteroids, Wizard of War, Scrambled. Defender was
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of fun. Those
Speaker 1: were what we called video games. Did I
Speaker 1: say we didn't have video games? Because that
Speaker 1: would have been a mistake. But there is
Speaker 1: one thing you have now that we didn't
Speaker 1: have when I was a boy that I
Speaker 1: wish we did.
Speaker 0: Mike Dell's World. Yep. And we also had
Speaker 0: ham radio back in the day, although I
Speaker 0: didn't participate in ham radio. I did participate
Speaker 0: a little bit in CB radio. CB radio
Speaker 0: is, not the same thing. It can be
Speaker 0: close in some regards, but CB radio is
Speaker 0: really limited to forty independent channels, so exact
Speaker 0: frequencies and nearly don't deviate in between those
Speaker 0: frequencies. Starts in around twenty six megahertz, twenty
Speaker 0: six point nine megahertz up to about twenty
Speaker 0: seven five in that vicinity. And, it and
Speaker 0: if you think about it in meters, and
Speaker 0: that's the wavelength of the radio wave, it's
Speaker 0: eleven meters. And ham radio is a lot
Speaker 0: deeper than that. Ham radio, first off, has
Speaker 0: a lot of traditions when it comes to,
Speaker 0: you know, just how people communicate via ham
Speaker 0: radio, but that's where it all kinda diverges.
Speaker 0: There's, there's UHF. There's even some higher frequencies,
Speaker 0: than UHF, ultra high frequency. But, you know,
Speaker 0: the most commonly used bands are, you know,
Speaker 0: in the UHF and VHF, and HF. So
Speaker 0: I kinda go I'll go through some of
Speaker 0: those. Like I said, CB would be considered
Speaker 0: eleven meters. In fact, CB radio was of
Speaker 0: a a ham radio band when it first
Speaker 0: started, and then the FCC and other places
Speaker 0: around the world decided that they should have
Speaker 0: a citizen's band where people can talk with
Speaker 0: well, at first, you needed a license, but
Speaker 0: it wasn't hard to get one. You know,
Speaker 0: getting a ham radio license is a little
Speaker 0: more difficult, although, nowadays, it's not too bad.
Speaker 0: But the most commonly used bands, for VHF,
Speaker 0: UHF would be, well, twenty three centimeters. Nobody
Speaker 0: even calls it that. We call it twelve
Speaker 0: hundred megahertz, but it's between twelve forty and
Speaker 0: thirteen hundred megahertz. Not very many people use
Speaker 0: that. It's, you know, usually used for linking
Speaker 0: things or talking to satellites, which you can
Speaker 0: do on ham radio. The next band that
Speaker 0: I don't know anybody that uses it. We
Speaker 0: used to have a repeater around here on
Speaker 0: it, but nine hundred megahertz or thirty three
Speaker 0: centimeters. It's three or nine zero two to
Speaker 0: nine twenty eight megahertz, mostly FM, but there
Speaker 0: is some other modes on it. I guess,
Speaker 0: I'll explain the modes a little bit. How
Speaker 0: about that? FM, frequency modulation. That's, what you
Speaker 0: listen on your FM radio, and, it's usually
Speaker 0: pretty clear and more high fidelity. Although, not
Speaker 0: as good as this podcast, but, pretty high
Speaker 0: fidelity. You know, not a lot of static,
Speaker 0: lot not a lot of interference. FM does
Speaker 0: have what's called the capture effect. Meaning, if
Speaker 0: you're listening to two people talking on FM
Speaker 0: and one's stronger than the other, you're only
Speaker 0: gonna hear the one that's strongest, and you're
Speaker 0: not gonna hear anything from the one that's
Speaker 0: not strongest. They don't mix well. Then there's
Speaker 0: AM, amplitude modulation, which is kind of the
Speaker 0: opposite. That's what airplanes use because of this
Speaker 0: effect. When two people are talking, you might
Speaker 0: hear both of them or you can hear
Speaker 0: at least the fact that somebody else is
Speaker 0: talking at the same time. So, that that
Speaker 0: helps. And it doesn't, isn't affected by the
Speaker 0: Doppler effect. And what the Doppler effect is
Speaker 0: if you're moving and it's right. Especially moving
Speaker 0: rather fast. FM might get a little bit
Speaker 0: of weird warbly effect, because you're moving where
Speaker 0: AM didn't matter. So that's why an airliner
Speaker 0: going five hundred miles an hour can, talk
Speaker 0: to a tower, sitting still or, you know,
Speaker 0: or or an air traffic control facility, and
Speaker 0: the communication is pretty clear. And it goes
Speaker 0: for a long ways because they're usually up
Speaker 0: in the twenties and thirties and forty thousand
Speaker 0: feet range. So, you know, higher the better.
Speaker 0: It's all kinda line of sight. And same
Speaker 0: thing with UHF, VHF, FM, and whatever whatever
Speaker 0: other mode that's more or less line of
Speaker 0: sight. So, you know, the two antennas can
Speaker 0: see each other. Now we get into the
Speaker 0: more popular band of seventy centimeters or four
Speaker 0: forty is what a lot of people call
Speaker 0: it. That is four twenty to four fifty
Speaker 0: megahertz, and that's mostly FM, mostly, you know,
Speaker 0: repeaters. And what a repeater is is you
Speaker 0: talk into it on an input frequency, and
Speaker 0: it repeats it out on an output frequency,
Speaker 0: usually at a high level, or on a
Speaker 0: building, on a mountain, whatever. And then when
Speaker 0: you unkey, somebody else can key up, talk
Speaker 0: to that repeater, and you hear it. You
Speaker 0: know? So it takes, you know, these little
Speaker 0: handheld radios and makes it so that it
Speaker 0: goes a lot further. That's what's known as
Speaker 0: a repeater. And then, you know, like I
Speaker 0: said, the seventy centimeter band is fairly popular.
Speaker 0: Not as popular, but still somewhat popular as
Speaker 0: the we call it two twenty, but, it's
Speaker 0: one point two five meters. That's the, two
Speaker 0: twenty two to two twenty five megahertz band,
Speaker 0: and that's the same thing. It's mostly FM,
Speaker 0: you know, repeaters and simplex. Simplex just means
Speaker 0: you're talking directly to somebody. Repeaters, you're talking
Speaker 0: through a repeater station and some satellite work,
Speaker 0: on that band. Same thing with the, you
Speaker 0: know, four forty band, seventy centimeters. A lot
Speaker 0: of satellite work, there, and there are some
Speaker 0: ham and satellites. And the most popular band
Speaker 0: of all time on ham radio is two
Speaker 0: meters, and that is hundred and forty four
Speaker 0: to a hundred and forty eight megahertz, at
Speaker 0: least here in the US. Other countries, it
Speaker 0: might go one forty four to one forty
Speaker 0: six rather than, all the way up to,
Speaker 0: you know, one forty eight. And that's VHF
Speaker 0: high band, is another name for it. And
Speaker 0: that is probably the most ubiquitous ham band.
Speaker 0: You come into the ham radio license, level
Speaker 0: of technician. That's usually the first level that
Speaker 0: people come in at. It used to be
Speaker 0: one called novice, and novices couldn't use two
Speaker 0: meters, but technicians could. We've done away with
Speaker 0: a novice license altogether. There might be a
Speaker 0: few left. They're grandfathered in, but they don't
Speaker 0: get two meters. They get two twenty, two
Speaker 0: twenty two to two twenty five. They don't
Speaker 0: get two meters or four forty. But like
Speaker 0: I said, it's the most popular. The radios
Speaker 0: are cheap. I mean, you can get a
Speaker 0: a Bofang, a Chinese little radio from Amazon.
Speaker 0: I think you can get get one for
Speaker 0: under sixty bucks and, you know, puts out
Speaker 0: a couple of watts and, you know, you
Speaker 0: can program it for repeaters and, you know,
Speaker 0: talk all over town with it. You know?
Speaker 0: And then that's about it for these VHF,
Speaker 0: UHF, frequencies. It's mostly line of sight. Now
Speaker 0: there are some propagation. Propagation just means, you
Speaker 0: can, talk longer distances depending on atmospheric can,
Speaker 0: you know, conditions. Being here, next to the
Speaker 0: Great Lakes, we get one called tropospheric ducting.
Speaker 0: I know it sounds sounds geeky, but, basically,
Speaker 0: what can happen is, say, right now, the
Speaker 0: lake is very warm, the air is very
Speaker 0: cool, and the troposphere can get confused and
Speaker 0: get a little bit of a temperature inversion
Speaker 0: going, and that sometimes carries these UHF, VHF
Speaker 0: frequencies longer distances. I remember one time, I
Speaker 0: was out fishing, with a buddy of mine,
Speaker 0: and we were out on a lake and
Speaker 0: happened to have a two meter radio handy
Speaker 0: in the boat. And we, turned on the
Speaker 0: two meter radio while we were trolling and
Speaker 0: heard a bunch of people talking on a
Speaker 0: frequency that, we usually don't hear a lot
Speaker 0: of people talking on. And come to find
Speaker 0: out, they were in Oklahoma. Here we are
Speaker 0: in Michigan. That is extremely long propagation for
Speaker 0: two meters, but it was kinda neat. It
Speaker 0: came in you know, it comes and goes,
Speaker 0: kinda fades in, fades out. But we had
Speaker 0: a fairly good conversation with a couple people
Speaker 0: in Oklahoma, on two meters. That that is
Speaker 0: very rare or at least rare that there's
Speaker 0: people on when that's happening. I I, you
Speaker 0: know, I think what happens sometimes is just
Speaker 0: nobody's talking, so nobody knows that that duct
Speaker 0: opened. You know? And that happens on some
Speaker 0: of the lower bands. As you get lower,
Speaker 0: the distances can get longer and, you know,
Speaker 0: in frequency, lower in frequency and higher in
Speaker 0: the number of meters. The wavelengths get bigger.
Speaker 0: The frequencies get smaller. Another one that is
Speaker 0: somewhat popular, but definitely not as popular as
Speaker 0: two meter, and it's considered the VHF low
Speaker 0: band, and that is fifty to fifty four
Speaker 0: megahertz or six meters. Six meters does have
Speaker 0: a mix of, sideband AM, FM, repeaters, kinda
Speaker 0: has the gamut of stuff. A lot of
Speaker 0: hams call it the magic band. The openings
Speaker 0: on that, propagation wise are a little more
Speaker 0: often and can consist of different kinds of
Speaker 0: propagation, not just like tropospheric ducting or ionospheric,
Speaker 0: you know, propagation that, mostly is what is
Speaker 0: kind kind of the thing. But, you know,
Speaker 0: six meters can be pretty active, but it's
Speaker 0: not highly used. Most HF radios come with
Speaker 0: six meters included, but you gotta have a
Speaker 0: different antenna. And, you know, again, it's not
Speaker 0: highly used, but, you know, kinda neat band.
Speaker 0: First of the HF or high frequency bands,
Speaker 0: I know it makes no sense. High frequency
Speaker 0: is lower than very high frequency VHF or
Speaker 0: ultra high frequency UHF. HF is anything below
Speaker 0: thirty megahertz, and the first band in there
Speaker 0: is ten meters. Ten meters is twenty eight
Speaker 0: megahertz to twenty nine seven megahertz. And notice
Speaker 0: that eleven meters, which was CB, is twenty
Speaker 0: six twenty seven. And then there's another one,
Speaker 0: twelve meters, which I don't know anybody that
Speaker 0: uses twelve meters, but that's at twenty four
Speaker 0: megahertz. So, you know, ten meters is just
Speaker 0: above what the, typical CB band is. And
Speaker 0: that one, when it's open, is very active
Speaker 0: and, very long distance. Not always long distance,
Speaker 0: but pretty long distance. I remember when I
Speaker 0: first got licensed, I got licensed as a
Speaker 0: novice and radio operator, and one of the
Speaker 0: bands we could use was ten meters on
Speaker 0: voice. You could use Morse code on other
Speaker 0: bands, otherwise known as CW, but, this was
Speaker 0: the lowest frequency that we could use voice
Speaker 0: on and also, you know, allowed you to
Speaker 0: talk long distances. We call it DX for,
Speaker 0: you know, talking to somebody outside the US,
Speaker 0: you know, or outside your country. That's that's
Speaker 0: DX. Well, that was the the the lowest
Speaker 0: frequency that a novice operator or a technician
Speaker 0: operator can use on voice. And I I
Speaker 0: just got licensed, so it's, I think, back
Speaker 0: in nineteen eighty seven or eighty eight, something
Speaker 0: like that. Boy, I've been at this a
Speaker 0: while. And the, the cool thing was you
Speaker 0: could modify a CB radio to, transmit on
Speaker 0: twenty eight megahertz instead of twenty seven, and
Speaker 0: that was totally legal. As a ham radio
Speaker 0: operator, you're allowed to modify your radio as
Speaker 0: long as it stays in technical specifications. You
Speaker 0: know, your bandwidth is not too wide, and
Speaker 0: you're not splattering frequencies all over the place,
Speaker 0: and you stay within the power limit. On
Speaker 0: ten meters, for novices, it was two hundred
Speaker 0: watts as opposed to four watts for a
Speaker 0: CB or twelve sideband, but that's a whole
Speaker 0: another ball of arms. I don't wanna get
Speaker 0: too technical, but I had a, an old
Speaker 0: CB radio that I put a different crystal
Speaker 0: in and modified it so that it would
Speaker 0: talk on twenty eight megahertz. And for about
Speaker 0: two weeks, I would drive to work. I
Speaker 0: had you know, I was in the air
Speaker 0: force, and I would live ten miles away
Speaker 0: from the base. So I had this thing
Speaker 0: in my truck, and I could get on
Speaker 0: there. And, I got out of there, and
Speaker 0: I talked to a guy in Japan. His
Speaker 0: call sign was, what is it? I don't
Speaker 0: know, mate. J o j o four h
Speaker 0: q q, I think, was his call. I
Speaker 0: now I don't remember exactly, but he was
Speaker 0: my first official ham radio contact. And I
Speaker 0: talked to him every day on my way
Speaker 0: to work for about two weeks. The conditions
Speaker 0: were such, and then, you know, the conditions
Speaker 0: went bad and whatever. But, yeah, I used
Speaker 0: to it was j o one h q
Speaker 0: q. There we go. It just popped back
Speaker 0: in my head. And at my at that
Speaker 0: time, my call sign was k b seven
Speaker 0: f g t. Fun and good times. But,
Speaker 0: anyway, I quickly upgraded to technician. Yeah. And
Speaker 0: when I got my, novice license back then,
Speaker 0: two general class operators could give you your
Speaker 0: novice license test. It didn't have to be
Speaker 0: a volunteer examiner or the FCC to give
Speaker 0: you the test. Just any two generals could
Speaker 0: sign you off on the test, and you
Speaker 0: had to pass a, five word per minute
Speaker 0: code you know, most Morse code check, and
Speaker 0: you had to pass a written test, which
Speaker 0: was, I don't know, thirty questions about rules
Speaker 0: and regulations, whatnot. Wasn't wasn't that hard. It's
Speaker 0: novice. You know? It's just a learning permit,
Speaker 0: basically. But, anyway, I got my I upgraded
Speaker 0: to my technician so then I could get
Speaker 0: on two meters, and that was kind of
Speaker 0: the thing. You know, where I was in
Speaker 0: Idaho, you know, we had mountaintop repeaters, and,
Speaker 0: I mean, we could talk for miles and
Speaker 0: miles and miles with a, with a HT
Speaker 0: or a, you know, walkie talkie style little
Speaker 0: radio. And that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 0: And, you know, I I met a lot
Speaker 0: of people and had you know, I have
Speaker 0: a lot of friends to this day that
Speaker 0: I used to talk to on two meters
Speaker 0: there in Idaho off of the mountain top
Speaker 0: repeaters. But, on ten meters, you know, I
Speaker 0: used to use that. You know, we'd get
Speaker 0: on ten meters. I'd go, you know, climb
Speaker 0: we we had a couple of mountain top
Speaker 0: parking spots, you know, kinda overlooks or whatever,
Speaker 0: and I'd go up there and set up
Speaker 0: my radio, you know, my my bigger antenna.
Speaker 0: And it's at there and talk, you know,
Speaker 0: for two or three hours with people all
Speaker 0: over the country, all over the world on
Speaker 0: ten meters. It was, it was pretty cool,
Speaker 0: but that was the top of the sunset
Speaker 0: sunspot cycle. And, you know, again, odd conditions
Speaker 0: that was, I I you know, like I
Speaker 0: said, in the late eighties, early nineties. And
Speaker 0: the we're right now, we're at the peak
Speaker 0: of another sunspot cycle, and, those bands are
Speaker 0: are wide open right now. So, it's kinda
Speaker 0: cool. Twelve meters, that's, that one I was
Speaker 0: telling you, that's just below where the CB
Speaker 0: frequencies are, and that's around twenty four megahertz.
Speaker 0: It's a kind of a weird cutout of
Speaker 0: bands. It's a it's twenty four point eight
Speaker 0: nine to twenty four point nine nine. So
Speaker 0: it's not very much bandwidth, but, you can
Speaker 0: use twelve meters to, to talk. I I've
Speaker 0: never heard anybody on there, and I've never
Speaker 0: used it myself. One of the legacy bands,
Speaker 0: the older bands that, people use a lot,
Speaker 0: it's it's especially popular in Europe and, on
Speaker 0: the East Coast of the US. I don't
Speaker 0: know. I guess worldwide too probably, but, the
Speaker 0: most usage I hear is East Coast US
Speaker 0: and Europe. But it's fifteen meters, and that's
Speaker 0: twenty one megahertz to twenty one point four
Speaker 0: five megahertz. So, you know, four hundred and
Speaker 0: fifty kilohertz worth of, bandwidth there, and, yeah,
Speaker 0: that can can get busy. And then there's
Speaker 0: seventeen meters, and that's what's known as a
Speaker 0: work band. Work was the World Amateur Radio
Speaker 0: Conference carved out this little frequency, range, in
Speaker 0: the seventeen meter band at eighteen point six
Speaker 0: eight to eighteen point one six eight. So
Speaker 0: it's a pretty small band. You know, it's
Speaker 0: only a hundred kilohertz wide, but, people get
Speaker 0: on voice and they use digital modes there.
Speaker 0: And I'll explain digital modes when I get
Speaker 0: through the, the bands here. Twenty meters, that's
Speaker 0: also a legacy band, and that's probably the
Speaker 0: most busy HF band. And that one, you
Speaker 0: know, you can talk all over the world
Speaker 0: on, or, you know, you know, it's mostly,
Speaker 0: you know, kinda worldwide or cross country. Like,
Speaker 0: we, the group I belong to, has a
Speaker 0: net, which is a, you know, a scheduled
Speaker 0: time that we all get together on a
Speaker 0: particular frequency, and we have a net on
Speaker 0: twenty meters on Sunday mornings. And I can
Speaker 0: hear the people in California, Arizona, Texas, you
Speaker 0: know, that are on this group, but I
Speaker 0: really can't and maybe Florida from here in
Speaker 0: Michigan, but I can't really hear Ohio or
Speaker 0: other people in Michigan. You know, so it's
Speaker 0: it's a longer skip zone, longer propagation. It's
Speaker 0: never really short range unless we're really close.
Speaker 0: And then, of course, it's called ground wave,
Speaker 0: and I can hear somebody that's really close.
Speaker 0: Like, you know, when my dad used to
Speaker 0: get on it from eight miles away, I
Speaker 0: could hear him, but I couldn't hear the
Speaker 0: the guy twenty miles away from me. It
Speaker 0: was, you know but I could hear the
Speaker 0: people in California. And every once in a
Speaker 0: while, we have a friend of ours in
Speaker 0: Australia that gets on that, and we could
Speaker 0: hear him. So that's that's kinda interesting. There's
Speaker 0: another band, another warp band, thirty meters, and
Speaker 0: that's at ten point one to ten point
Speaker 0: one five megahertz. So it's only fifty kilohertz
Speaker 0: wide, and it's Morse code and digital modes
Speaker 0: only. There's no voice on thirty meters, so
Speaker 0: you can't talk. You can, you can do,
Speaker 0: Morse code or, some of the digital modes.
Speaker 0: Forty meters is another legacy one, and, we
Speaker 0: do another net on forty meters that pretty
Speaker 0: much covers the eastern half of the United
Speaker 0: States. And that's that's actually a really good
Speaker 0: band certain times of the day, usually mornings
Speaker 0: or evenings, not so much in the middle
Speaker 0: of the day. It all depends on, like
Speaker 0: I said, conditions, of the atmosphere and it
Speaker 0: you know, not always the same every day,
Speaker 0: But, we have a pretty pretty good luck
Speaker 0: hearing pretty much anybody in the eastern half
Speaker 0: of the US and, of course, Canada. I
Speaker 0: don't have any check ins on that one
Speaker 0: from Canada usually, but that one, is is
Speaker 0: a pretty popular band. And, if you're gonna
Speaker 0: hear some activity, it's either gonna be on
Speaker 0: twenty or forty meters most of the time
Speaker 0: during the day. Then there's sixty meters, and
Speaker 0: sixty meters is weird. And, nobody really uses
Speaker 0: it, in the contiguous forty eight states, but
Speaker 0: most of, you know, most of it happens
Speaker 0: in Alaska and Hawaii and, you know, other
Speaker 0: parts of the world, but there this is
Speaker 0: channelized. There's actually, five channels, and you have
Speaker 0: to stay right on those channels. It's just
Speaker 0: like, CB, and it's only, upper sideband phone
Speaker 0: or CW, which is Morse code. And you
Speaker 0: can only run a hundred watts. As a
Speaker 0: general class or higher licensee, you can run
Speaker 0: fifteen hundred watts on most of the bands.
Speaker 0: But, on sixty meters, you can only run
Speaker 0: you can only run a hundred watts, and
Speaker 0: they're in a five megahertz channel segment. So
Speaker 0: that's around fifty three hundred kilohertz or five
Speaker 0: point three megahertz up to five point four.
Speaker 0: And like I said, it's in five hundred
Speaker 0: kilohertz wide channel or five megahertz channels. So,
Speaker 0: kind of an interesting weird band that not
Speaker 0: a lot of people use. Eighty meters or
Speaker 0: sometimes called seventy five meters because it applies,
Speaker 0: you know, it's between seventy five and eighty
Speaker 0: meters wavelength. That is probably one of the
Speaker 0: more popular bands in the evenings and in
Speaker 0: the mornings. And there's you know, it it's
Speaker 0: between three point five and four megahertz. And,
Speaker 0: I don't know if you hear the dog
Speaker 0: groaning in the background. He's probably, ready to
Speaker 0: go in and go to bed. I'm recording
Speaker 0: this the night before, so just, those of
Speaker 0: you keeping score. But, anyway, eighty meters is
Speaker 0: is good. We have a local net here
Speaker 0: in Traverse City called the Amateur Radio Social
Speaker 0: Hour, which is nine AM on Sunday mornings,
Speaker 0: and we're on thirty nine thirty five or
Speaker 0: three point nine five megahertz. No. Thirty nine
Speaker 0: thirty five. There we go. Thirty nine point
Speaker 0: three point nine three five megahertz or thirty
Speaker 0: nine thirty five kilohertz, and it's in lower
Speaker 0: sideband. So if you have a shortwave radio
Speaker 0: that does sideband, you can you can hear
Speaker 0: that. You can also find an SDR. Look
Speaker 0: up Kiwi SDR, and, there's a a couple
Speaker 0: of them here locally in Empire, Michigan. And,
Speaker 0: you can tune in to thirty nine thirty
Speaker 0: five and listen to the Amateur Radio social
Speaker 0: hour. I get on that one almost every
Speaker 0: Sunday, and, that covers, you know, Michigan or,
Speaker 0: you know, Wisconsin, the UP. You know, we
Speaker 0: get a check and we get check ins
Speaker 0: from Ontario. We got one of the guys
Speaker 0: that lives up on Saint Joseph Island up
Speaker 0: by Sugar Island in the UP area in
Speaker 0: in Ontario. So, he gets on there pretty
Speaker 0: much every week as well. But, that's the
Speaker 0: most likely if you're gonna hear me on
Speaker 0: the radio, that's the most likely place to
Speaker 0: hear me on the radio. It's thirty nine
Speaker 0: thirty five at nine AM eastern time, here
Speaker 0: in Michigan. But, you know, if you're out
Speaker 0: of the area, you can get on the
Speaker 0: the Empire SDR. K f eight k k
Speaker 0: is the the Kiwi SDR, but that's on
Speaker 0: Sunday mornings. And then, there's another band a
Speaker 0: little bit lower than that that is used
Speaker 0: quite a bit, but it it requires a
Speaker 0: really long antenna because it's a hundred and
Speaker 0: sixty meters. And that's at one point eight
Speaker 0: to two megahertz. And that is the lowest
Speaker 0: HF band, high frequency band. And there are
Speaker 0: bands lower than that, that, is usually usually
Speaker 0: experimental stuff and whatever. But, if you think
Speaker 0: about hundred and sixty meters is one point
Speaker 0: eight megahertz or eighteen hundred kilohertz, that's just
Speaker 0: above the AM broadcast band. So it has
Speaker 0: similar propagation to, like, your AM radio station.
Speaker 0: So, you know, at night, it goes a
Speaker 0: long way, and during the day, it doesn't
Speaker 0: go so far. So, you know, that's that's
Speaker 0: it. But, you know, you get on the
Speaker 0: AM broadcast band at night, and you hear
Speaker 0: stuff from all over the place, you know,
Speaker 0: listening. And, that's what a hundred and sixty
Speaker 0: meters is. I don't play on that one
Speaker 0: very often. Every once in a while, I
Speaker 0: will. But, anyway, that that that's the difference
Speaker 0: between CB and ham radio or family radio
Speaker 0: service or any of the other kind of
Speaker 0: radio service. You know? The ham's have a
Speaker 0: lot more variety of frequencies, propagations, modes, all
Speaker 0: that. And I was talking about the digital
Speaker 0: modes, and there's a mode that's kinda taking
Speaker 0: over a lot of the ham radio world.
Speaker 0: It's, I forget what it's called. Benny, would
Speaker 0: you just quiet down? I don't know if
Speaker 0: you heard him in the background, but he's
Speaker 0: whining at me because he wants to go
Speaker 0: in the house and, you know, he's gotta
Speaker 0: wait. Poor dog. Anyway but, yeah, there's, there's
Speaker 0: modes, that are completely automated digital modes, and
Speaker 0: there's no actual communications going on. And but
Speaker 0: a lot of people are using it. So,
Speaker 0: you know, you could just sit here and
Speaker 0: click click click and make contacts all over
Speaker 0: the world, but you're not actually communicating anything.
Speaker 0: I'm trying I'm blanking on what it's called.
Speaker 0: Here, let me bring up an SDR. Let's
Speaker 0: see if, I can get up get the
Speaker 0: SDR going here. I don't know if, you
Speaker 0: you won't be able
Speaker 1: to for the EI. For nine years old.
Speaker 0: You can hear some stuff. Yeah. Let's find
Speaker 0: find one of the digit. Okay. F t
Speaker 0: eight is one of them. So listen to
Speaker 0: this listen to this noise. Okay. I am
Speaker 0: not gonna bore you with that, but listen
Speaker 0: to that noise. And what it is is,
Speaker 0: a bunch of ham radio transmitters transmitting all
Speaker 0: at the same time. And then so, you
Speaker 0: know, like, right now, I could click on
Speaker 0: something if I was running it. I'm not
Speaker 0: running it, but I'm just listening to it
Speaker 0: on the, software defined radio, the SDR. And
Speaker 0: it's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 0: ham radio operators just clicking a thing. Oh,
Speaker 0: make contact with this one. And boom. You
Speaker 0: know? It automatically gives the exchange, and all
Speaker 0: of a sudden, you know, boom. You've got
Speaker 0: a contact from, you know, lower Slavovia or
Speaker 0: wherever. And, you know, to me, it's kinda
Speaker 0: like watching paint dry with annoying noise in
Speaker 0: the background. So I'm not a fan. There
Speaker 0: are other digital modes where it's actually keyboard
Speaker 0: to keyboard. You know, packet radio was the
Speaker 0: first one, and RIDI, which is radio teletype.
Speaker 0: That's another kind of digital mode. One that
Speaker 0: I really liked and not very many people
Speaker 0: do anymore is PSK thirty one, and it's
Speaker 0: a a very slow digital mode. But, you
Speaker 0: know, think of think of it like texting
Speaker 0: back and forth with somebody, but via the
Speaker 0: ham radio. And I can blame my, my
Speaker 0: ability to type on a keyboard from packet
Speaker 0: radio. Back in the day, I used to
Speaker 0: do a lot of packet radio out west,
Speaker 0: and, I had a, what we called a
Speaker 0: VT fifty two terminal. And, basically, it was
Speaker 0: a computer terminal that used to be used
Speaker 0: to connect to a mainframe computer that we
Speaker 0: repurposed through what's called a TNC, a terminal
Speaker 0: node controller, which is basically a modem that,
Speaker 0: sent twelve hundred baud packet signals, through VHF,
Speaker 0: and then there was nodes that would repeat
Speaker 0: that. And and, you know, there was quite
Speaker 0: a network all over the country of these
Speaker 0: nodes. And if you were patient and connected
Speaker 0: to this node, then connected to the next
Speaker 0: node and connected to the next node and
Speaker 0: whatever, you could go all the way across
Speaker 0: the country with a rather slow twelve hundred
Speaker 0: baud. And if you think of that in
Speaker 0: Internet speed, twelve hundred baud is painfully slow.
Speaker 0: I think if we used a baud number
Speaker 0: for what your normal Internet connection would be.
Speaker 0: That would be somewhere in five to seven
Speaker 0: million baud is what we're doing now with
Speaker 0: Internet connections. So this was painfully slow, and
Speaker 0: it was also, half duplex, they call it.
Speaker 0: So you type, send, and then the packet
Speaker 0: would go to one node, then the packet
Speaker 0: would go to the next node, and the
Speaker 0: packet would go to the next node, the
Speaker 0: packet node you know, so it wasn't real
Speaker 0: time in any way. But I used to
Speaker 0: be able to connect to my dad here
Speaker 0: in Michigan when I'm out in Boise, Idaho,
Speaker 0: And I used to connect to my dad,
Speaker 0: unpack it, and I'd send, you know, a
Speaker 0: a a text what's essentially a text message.
Speaker 0: And then he would get it probably ten
Speaker 0: minutes, fifteen minutes later, And he would answer
Speaker 0: it and send it back to me, and
Speaker 0: then it would go through all the, you
Speaker 0: know, the different nodes all the way across
Speaker 0: the country. And, you know, we could have
Speaker 0: a keyboard to keyboard conversation that, you know,
Speaker 0: nowadays, you could do in, you know, ten
Speaker 0: minutes on a cell phone. It took, you
Speaker 0: know, two or three hours to get three
Speaker 0: or four messages across the country. It's kinda
Speaker 0: cool. Then they had these bulletin board systems
Speaker 0: where you could log into the bulletin board,
Speaker 0: write a longer message, and send it sort
Speaker 0: of like email. And this was before email
Speaker 0: existed. And I could send a, bulletin board
Speaker 0: message to my dad's local bulletin board here
Speaker 0: in Traverse City from my local bulletin board
Speaker 0: in Idaho. And, you know, it might take
Speaker 0: a day to get there, but it would
Speaker 0: get there. And then he could reply, and
Speaker 0: then he would send it back. So, you
Speaker 0: know, I did email before email was cool
Speaker 0: via ham radio. And, you know, then there
Speaker 0: was these HF gateways where, you know, you
Speaker 0: could jump across long, places, you know, on
Speaker 0: a bulletin board system that would shoot it
Speaker 0: across the country on twenty meters or ten
Speaker 0: meters. So, you know, the hams kinda got
Speaker 0: email sort of figured out before email was
Speaker 0: a thing. And same thing with cellular. These,
Speaker 0: VHF, UHF repeaters, was kind of the basis
Speaker 0: of cellular telephones. You know, you'd have a
Speaker 0: repeater near you, and then the repeater were
Speaker 0: was connected to another repeater somewhere distant. And,
Speaker 0: you know, that was that that was a
Speaker 0: thing. And, you know, now nowadays, you got
Speaker 0: more power in your pocket on your iPhone
Speaker 0: than, than any of this ham radio stuff,
Speaker 0: but, it's still fun to play with the
Speaker 0: old technology. So, anyway, boy, I hope I
Speaker 0: didn't bore you to death with, a lot
Speaker 0: of geeky details. But, yeah, it's, you know,
Speaker 0: it's been a real ride for me. I've
Speaker 0: met, you know, many, many, many, many, many
Speaker 0: good friends via ham radio. Same thing with
Speaker 0: aviation, and some of them crisscross. I got
Speaker 0: some friends that are aviators and ham radio
Speaker 0: operators, and that's kinda cool. But, you know,
Speaker 0: it's a big fraternity, I guess, is the
Speaker 0: right way to put it. And, you know,
Speaker 0: sometimes it's just fun to get on and
Speaker 0: call CQ. CQ means, hey. I'm here. I
Speaker 0: wanna talk to somebody. You know? And you
Speaker 0: call CQ, and somebody answers you, and you
Speaker 0: have a nice conversation with them and meet
Speaker 0: them, you know, from could be across town,
Speaker 0: could be across the country, could be across
Speaker 0: the world. So Haim radio is a a
Speaker 0: pretty interesting hobby. And and nowadays, you can
Speaker 0: get in without learning Morse code. They've done
Speaker 0: away with all the code requirements. Although some
Speaker 0: people use Morse code, I have a code
Speaker 0: key here. And periodically, I do get on
Speaker 0: Morse code a little bit just just to
Speaker 0: keep my skills up. But, you don't have
Speaker 0: to learn that anymore. So there's three levels
Speaker 0: of ham radio license here in the US.
Speaker 0: There's the technician class, which is the entry
Speaker 0: level, and you have to pass a, a
Speaker 0: test. You find a a VE session, a
Speaker 0: volunteer examiner session near you, and you sign
Speaker 0: up and go pay the, license fee. I
Speaker 0: think it's forty bucks or fifty bucks, something
Speaker 0: like that, and take the FCC test. And,
Speaker 0: if you pass the test, they issue a
Speaker 0: call sign and you're ham. And then there's
Speaker 0: the next level is the general class, and
Speaker 0: that gives you all of the bands, but
Speaker 0: you don't get all of the frequencies in
Speaker 0: all of the bands, because there's a little
Speaker 0: carve out for the next higher license, but
Speaker 0: not much. I mean, it's not, you know,
Speaker 0: like, a huge difference. General class license is
Speaker 0: totally adequate for most people that wanna play
Speaker 0: around on the, high frequency or HF bands
Speaker 0: and talk around the world. If you just
Speaker 0: wanna talk, you know, with a handy talk
Speaker 0: here around town or around the state, on
Speaker 0: repeaters and whatnot, the the technician class license.
Speaker 0: So then there's the extra class, and that's
Speaker 0: what I am. I've had my extra now
Speaker 0: for twenty five years, and that just means
Speaker 0: I'm I'm able to operate on all frequencies
Speaker 0: of all bands, and, I have that privilege.
Speaker 0: I can also become a volunteer examiner. Well,
Speaker 0: that's one of the things. You have to
Speaker 0: be an extra class to give the extra
Speaker 0: class test, and so I have done that.
Speaker 0: I am a, registered volunteer examiner with the
Speaker 0: American Radio Relay League and the, w five
Speaker 0: y I group, which is another licensor licensure
Speaker 0: group. So I'm qualified for both of those.
Speaker 0: And every once in a while, I'll do
Speaker 0: a test session with, one of the VE
Speaker 0: groups around here, and I haven't done one
Speaker 0: in a while. But, you know, they they
Speaker 0: do them periodically. And now you can do
Speaker 0: them online. There's actually online testing where you
Speaker 0: can, join a, a volunteer examiner test session,
Speaker 0: via Zoom. So, yeah, there's some weird rules.
Speaker 0: You know, you gotta you know, you can't
Speaker 0: go off. You can't turn your camera off,
Speaker 0: and and the the the test itself actually
Speaker 0: locks you out of getting into any other
Speaker 0: device nearby, and you have to have your
Speaker 0: camera on so that they can see that
Speaker 0: you're not looking up questions on your phone
Speaker 0: or a book or something nearby. But, it
Speaker 0: it can be done now online. Although, you
Speaker 0: know, I'd recommend going to a session because
Speaker 0: you'll meet people, and it's kinda cool. But,
Speaker 0: yeah, that's, Ham Radio. And, again, like I
Speaker 0: said, I hope I didn't bore you with
Speaker 0: too much technical stuff, but, a lot to
Speaker 0: say about it, I guess, because, you know,
Speaker 0: it's been a big part of my life.
Speaker 0: And, you know, I got my dad into
Speaker 0: it. And before he died, you know, he
Speaker 0: was really into it. He got his extra
Speaker 0: class, license before I did. But, like I
Speaker 0: said, we, had a good time with it
Speaker 0: all along. And, and like I said, I
Speaker 0: have some lifelong friends because of Ham Radio.
Speaker 0: Those of you that know about podcasting, the
Speaker 0: inventor of podcasting, Adam Curry, is is a
Speaker 0: Ham Radio operator, and, I think it's, k
Speaker 0: five a c c or something like that.
Speaker 0: Anyway, he's, he's a ham radio operator. My
Speaker 0: current call sign is k eight l m
Speaker 0: j. Used to be n seven l m
Speaker 0: j, but when I moved to Michigan and
Speaker 0: after several years, I changed it to eight
Speaker 0: because the call sign number kinda gives you
Speaker 0: the area of where you're at. It's not
Speaker 0: required that you change it to the correct
Speaker 0: area, but I did. So, anyway, everybody have
Speaker 0: a good rest of the day. I'll get
Speaker 0: this one out so it goes out first
Speaker 0: thing in the morning since it's a longer
Speaker 0: one. And, I'm not sure what I'm gonna
Speaker 0: talk about tomorrow, but, I'll be here. Catch