Jack of Clubs, Part Two

So my last post detailed how I came to be in an amateur radio club. It wasn't expensive, and it wasn't difficult. It was a simple online transaction, once I knew about the existence of the club.
As for why I joined, there are two reasons. The first is that I wanted to support the repeater that I thought I would be using a lot. The second is that I wanted access to some kind of mentoring, since I was new to the hobby. Both reasons turned out to somewhat ill-founded.

As it turns out, there were a few other nice UHF repeaters near me beside the few that I initially came across. TCFM wasn't the only game in town, and the game wasn't that good anyway. The "dot one" (444.100) repeater has good range, is very easy for me to hit, and has some activity. While there are several nearby UHF repeaters that I can hit easily, they either aren't very powerful or are largely unused. The exceptions are the .425 operating from the University and the .650 HandiHam. While the TCFM .100 repeater has a morning net, it's really dead beyond that. On my drive home, I always throw out my callsign on the repeater, and nobody ever answers. Other times, it's possible to get someone, but you can say that about the .425 and the .650, too.

The TCFM morning net is an interesting phenomenon in that it takes so little to draw traffic. It's usually three guys, though not always the same three guys, and the discussion is fairly inane. But it draws people because they know that someone will be there at that time, and it's guaranteed that they will talk to you. It also draws listeners for the same reason: it's reliably there. And, because this makes the repeater familiar, people tend to gravitate toward it slightly more than the other repeaters. This can't be capitalised upon, however, because there aren't people on there the rest of the day -- or at least, not people who actually talk.

While the "dot one" is kind of TCFM's claim to fame, it isn't much. It isn't linked in any way. Not to other frequencies, not to other repeaters (even those run by TCFM), and not to the internet. It has no audio feed to the internet, either. It's powerful and it has good elevation. Beyond that, it frequently breaks down and most of the people that inhabit it are cliquish, suspicious of strangers, and remarkably close-mouthed. Other repeaters in town could really compete and take away TCFM's 'market share' if three people could be rounded up for an hour or so for a similar net on a regular basis. Add an evening drive-time, and it's a coup.

So that leaves the mentoring. Well, that's quite disappointing, too. Every club wants you on HF, because they need people for contests. If you want to get on HF, you will get a lot of help and advice from any club. If you want to do something else, you will get no help and possibly be ridiculed. Want to try 6 meter SSB? No, you don't, and you won't get any help to do that. Maybe 2 meter PSK? Can't win a contest doing that, so no help for you there. Same with satellites, EME, or RTTY on 6 meters. It's not just that you won't get help, you will be told that you're stupid for wanting to do that.

Also, I've found my TCFM 'mentors' to be unable to listen. I'm told repeatedly that I "need" to set up an HF antenna. I respond that that I can only use Morse code on HF, and that there is no possible way for me set up an antenna at my condo. La-la-la, they can't hear you. Hey, you can string up a 40-foot wire and tune it up, and get on 12 meters. Yeah, I'm not allowed on 12 meters. I can't string up a 40-foot wire. The HOA won't let me. I can barely get away with a 16 inch dual-band mag mount antenna for 2M/440 FM work, because they haven't really noticed it. Well, my mentors just gloss over that and suggest that I cleverly hide a 40-foot wire -- and also cleverly conceal the ground wire and rod that runs for three floors.. Oh, and get rid of any interference caused by having my stealth antenna 15 feet away from a dozen peoples' stereo and TV. Yeah, they'll never figure it all out, will they? Gosh, why didn't I think of that before? Yep, now that I've got that wire strung up, we can talk about cleverly-hidden 16-foot beam antennas that mount on the roof. Nobody will ever notice. And it gets dumber. I can only use Morse code on HF as a Technician-Class licensee. Obviously, now I have to learn the code. Yep, get my speed up to 30 words per minute or so. Sure, just spend months learning a dead language that only hams use. Then I can get on HF and play the "Can you hear me now?" game with other boring geezers! Who could pass that up?

In one of my exchanges with K0BUD on this matter, he offered the worst analogy that I have ever heard. I still present it to people as an example of staggering non-logic. He told me, "If you're a ham and you're not on HF, it's like driving a car with one wheel". Okay...really? So, I'm unstable and I can easily fall over if I'm not on HF? How does that work? What happens when I fall over on the radio? What he's really saying is, "If you don't do what I do, then I'm gonna consider you to be stupid". What are the other three wheels of ham radio in this bogus analogy, anyway? Maybe I could ride a bicycle in this analogy. But what is the engine of the ham radio "car"? Perhaps a motorcycle, then. Do we all agree that unicycles are stupid?

I'm going to cover this in a separate article, but HF sucks. It sucks because:

• Constant background noise, unlike FM. It can get really irritating and turn off others.
• Need for a big antenna. No antenna is ever big enough, in fact. Once you get a dipole, you've got to get a beam. And a tower. Yep, a big tower or you're driving a car with one wheel. 
• Lack of meaningful discussion. I can hear you, can you hear me? Okay. Now I need to find someone else who can hear me, so goodbye. 
• Arcane rules and procedures, combined with cranky old men that go ballistic if they aren't carefully observed. 
• Expensive equipment. Sure, you will always hear about the tiny transmitter that you can build. It's so weak that you won't reach anyone, but if you wait for just the right moment and spend several months trying....forget it. Besides, this is like driving a car with one wheel because you need a lot power to use all four wheels...or something. 
• Need for a higher class of licence in order to spend all of that time and money finding out if someone can really hear you, and bawl you out because this is a Life or Death matter, folks. 

See, it doesn't really matter what you want or like, or what is even practical. What matters is that the club gets a few more points in a stupid contest because you are now on HF. Because the club that gets the most people to admit that they can, in fact, hear their radios is important. I'm not sure why, though.

This kind of crap is found all throughout ham radio. There's always somebody telling you that you've got to spend more money or time, or else they will decree that you are "wasting your time". You've gotta have huge, stacked Yagis if you want to do 2 meter SSB, for example. What happens if you don't? The world ends? One of the wheels falls off your proverbial car? You won't reach anyone? Well, given that I don't see a lot of people with huge, stacked 2 meter Yagis, maybe there isn't anyone to talk to in the first place? There's this moronic competition among "mentors" as to who can set the bar the highest and still be taken seriously. When I hear that crap, I just say, "Okay. I guess I won't be getting into that, then".

I'm far more interested in someone telling me what I can do with the situation I'm stuck with. Why isn't the club organising 2 meter SSB nets instead of discouraging people? Maybe the club could help establish "skeds" for 6 meter PSK or send digital propagation reports? What about satellite? What about beacons? If the code is so cool, how about 6 meter CW nets? Forget contests. Let's actually expand our ability to communicate. None of these things cost money. Why is it an "FM Club", when SSB/CW is so damn important?

Why don't I do those things? Because I've been labelled an inconsequential idiot due to my failure to parrot orthodoxy. Who's going to listen to me, when I'm doing it wrong and driving on one wheel?

I'm looking for a new club. TCRC sounds interesting, though their UHF repeater is hard to reach. Maybe I could set up a small UHF beam, but that wouldn't help me in my car. I recently spoke with the president of the Maple Grove Radio Club (Tim), and they sound really interesting. They run a VHF repeater that's decent, and they are starting to set up a club station. That would let me get on HF or work some other modes. I'm spending more time on their repeater, because activity draws activity, and I'm finding people that are willing to offer real advice and think outside the box. It would be nice if they had a UHF repeater, but there's already one in Maple Grove. Knowing what I now do about the ham radio situation in my area, I would not have joined the TCFM Club. I still support HandiHams and TCRC because they have valuable repeater networks, and I'll probably do the same with TCFMC after I leave. But TCFMC fails to embrace technology, and I don't like that. It took four months to get the Echolink logged in on the .76 VHF repeater, even though their website brags about Echolink connectivity. Most of them have contempt for Echolink, anyway. I doubt that they would set up an audio feed for any of the repeaters, either. But activity draws activity, and accessibility makes activity more likely.