Posted: 7/18/2014 8:25:54 PM EDT
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... today.
I got my license number yesterday and thought I was ready to go. Not so much... I had almost every repeater programmed wrong. 
I got it straightened out and now I can hit more repeaters than I thought! I'm in the mountains hills on a UV-5R, so I thought I would be lucky to hit one repeater. As it turns out, I can hit, at least, 4 repeaters, with the farthest being about 25 miles away! Pretty soon, I'll have to try something other than 2m. 
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Quoted:
I tried calling on the local repeaters for days before someone answered No one wants to talk to someone they don't "know". Get on the internet and find different nets, then check in. I was Net Control within 6 weeks of my first QSO. After that I was "known" and people would talk to me. Lots of Hams are Engineers and are painfully shy IRL and are even a bit shy with someone they don't know LOCALLY on the air. You might look them up on the ULS and drop by to knock on the door. On HF the shyness is gone as you can't just pop by as easily. |
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I don't have the equipment to do anything on UHF/VHF. I listed for a few days while waiting on my license to show up. Turns out I had it for a few days before I knew it. For whatever reason the FCC won't list my license unless you search for my first name, last name AND middle initial. I got a letter in the mail addressed to my new callsign from someone in state that apparently sends out a packet to everyone in the state that shows up in the database with a new license. I really feel like sending him a return letter, and tell him the way to make friends in this part of the state is to NOT put an Ole Miss sticker on your envelope. I nearly chunked it without looking at it. The first day I hooked up my antenna the first conversation I tuned in was a guy in Rotterdam and I pretty much was hooked after that. I just listened to him talk about where he lived. Anyway I listened for a while then one day I heard someone calling CQ from a small town I know well a few states over. My parents are both from there and I lived there for a while. Turns out after I looked up his callsign he's a distant cousin. I only had him long enough to exchange call signs. The one day I heard someone calling CQ from Dubai. I returned the call and he acknowleged. Only talked a second. I printed out a 24"x36" band plan to hang on the wall and 8.5"x11" one with my call sign on it in case I forgot it lol. The next day someone was calling CQ on 17m and I returned the call. I told him he was really my first contact and we talked for a while. He was pretty happy to be my first real contact. I got a QSL card from him today with a handwritten note on it. I still have to practice listening. I live in the south and about 3/4 of the people talk to fast for me to catch their callsign without really listening hard for a long time. I'm sure they are used to spouting it out fast. I've had several complaints that people can't get the last letter in my callsign which is Juliet. So I started using Japan and that helped. I have a shorter/easier vanity call sign applied for. Once you get your callsign downpat just jump in. You can always tell them you are new, people seem really helpful. Might not say that during a big pile up however. Had my license now with an actual call sign just over a week and I have contacts in a two states so far and Dubai, Czech Republic, Cuba, Lithuania, England, France and Estonia. I don't know if I'm just lucky or it's because of the hours I use the radio. |
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Quoted:
It took me WEEKS to get up enough nerve to transmit. A traffic net check is dead simple. "KD8XXX No Traffic" Unless Net Control screws the pooch and gets your call wrong, you are done. That is the sum total of my first dozen or so transmissions on Ham Radio. Next thing you know you'll be talking to girls
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I'm normally not a talkative person. However 2 months ago I had to take mass steroid infusions for a week. I'm glad I didn't have my license then. My giflfriend of 19 years (yeah you read that right), several of my friends, my sister, and both of my parents said I talked more in that 5 day period than I had talked in the previous 20 years combined. I can see myself having my license yanked lol. |