As I've mentioned before, Friday afternoons and evenings are usually when I sit down and try to have fun on the radio. I leave work early on Friday, so I can go out and do propagation reports or stay home to use the base station.
This week, though, it wasn't looking too good. I sat down at the FT-897D and gave 6 meters a shot. No luck at all with that. The only thing that looked like it was happening on that band was CW, and CW/SSB on 6 meters causes a lot of interference for some unknown reason. The local 6 meter FM repeater is still down, and I'm starting to wonder if it will ever be put back into service. I had already pushed my luck by putting up the 6 meter antenna in broad daylight, so I took it down and put in my "good" VHF vertical (Nagoya MAG-79EL-3W). It doesn't tune up flat on UHF, but it's okay. I wanted to do some 2 meter or 70 cm FM, and I wanted to talk to one of the locals, KA0PQW.
That morning, on my way to work, I had decided to try out my disappointing new BaoFeng 2m/220 MHz radio in the car. I had a vague idea that it might work better mobile, so I put the 200 MHz whip on the trunk and dialled up the local 220 MHz repeater on 223.940. It's part of the HandiHam network, so I could work cross-band and maybe get a signal report during my short ride to work.
As it turns out, I immediately got someone to come back to my tossed-out sign. It was none other than KA0PQW (Matt), whose call sign is also assigned to the repeater I was using. He could hear me fairly well, from what I could tell, though my signal wasn't strong. Unfortunately for me, I could barely hear him at all. The receiver in the BaoFeng is pure crap, and the transmitter is no great shakes at only 2 watts. Still, it transmits better than it receives. I wasn't able to make put a lot of what he was saying; just bits and pieces. Still, I found out that the repeater has wide area coverage. I also asked him about the .975 repeater near Albert Lea, since he lives down that way. All that I got was garbled fragments.
So one of my goals was to find him again that afternoon and get the information that I had missed out on earlier. I tried the HandiHam repeaters, but he wasn't on. I tried the .520 simplex channel , but he wasn't there. So I settled down on the HandiHam VHF .450 and threw out my callsign every ten minutes or so. I thought that I'd get a response fairly quickly, as it's a popular repeater. Instead, there was nobody. I also tried the VHF .370, to talk to the guys there that I had run into before. Nobody came back to my sign. I went back to the HandiHam .450 and my ten-minute routine.
After about 30 minutes, I got a response. It was Al (KD0KJI), and he was talking about his new vertical antenna. At first I didn't understand if he was having problems or just wanted to brag, but he had a lot technical knowledge and we discussed antennae. Later, K0SHF (Lenny) came in and we continued to talk about antennae and the myths surrounding antenna theory. It was a bit dry, as far as conversation goes, but it was okay. Those two guys went off to make dinner (or some other pretext), and I soon had someone else come back to my sign. It was a new ham, KD0WQQ (Matt), who was polite and friendly. We talked about some of the exciting aspects of the hobby, but Matt is taking it slow and restricting himself to 2 meters for the time being, so we couldn't get into more diverse topics. Still, he knew how to hold up his end of the conversation, which is more than a lot of the "experienced" hams can do most of the time.
After a while, another guy joined us. He was named Reg (VK6BQQ), coming in from Western Australia on EchoLink. He was originally a Canadian that moved to Australia, and he worked for the government there on public safety radio networks. He had some issues with his internet connection, and Matt and I stood by while he sorted them out. Reg was the NC (Net Control, the person that organises the net) for the Friday Night Tech Net, and he was on early to get set up. Matt and I chatted with him for about a half-hour, until we ran dangerously close to the start of the net. I felt a little stupid for missing his subtle hints that it was time to wrap things up, but he's an interesting guy and I'd been sitting around for two hours looking for an interesting conversation. The Tech Net is different from the usual HandiHam nets. It's hardly any local people, and a lot of people in different parts of the U.S., Canada, Australia, and a few other countries. There was very little technical discussion, and the usual well-wishing, weather reports, and "one for the count" sort of material. The regular HandiHam nets are about about half local people and half non-local people using EchoLink or IRLP. The Tech Net seems as if it's carried on a lot of repeaters that aren't part of HandiHam, which is interesting. It creates common activity on machines that might not see a lot of normal use, and brings in people from far-flung places as much out of curiosity than design. The other thing about the Tech Net is that everyone gets their initial "turn", and then they get a second, immediate "turn" to expand on their previous remarks. It's okay, but it takes a lot of time to get through everyone over the course of the net.
I listened for about an hour, but didn't join in because I don't see a lot of point in the "one for the count" net stuff. For those that don't know, that's when someone gets their turn and basically just says "Hi" to everyone, which adds them to the total number of people ("the count") that participated in the net that night.
That pretty much wrapped up my Friday radio adventures. I threw out my sign on a couple of UHF repeaters over the course of the next hour, but nobody came back. UHF seems awfully dead lately around here, but even more so at night.
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