Loose Notes 5/9/15

Just a few thoughts and observations of the course of he previous week, as usual.

• I noticed this morning (Saturday) that the UHF 444.425+ (114.8 PL) is being used for the MS-150 bike ride. It's nice to see UHF being used for these events, as the band seems to generate a fair amount of disdain among the more snobbish and 'elite' local operators. The .425 is a fine choice as well. It's a great, well-maintained machine owned by KA0KMJ (John), who sets high standards for performance on everything that he puts on the air. I recall a marathon last year where the MARA 444.800+ was used as an alternate net control repeater, and I also recall the bitter whinges heard over the air from operators compelled to use UHF. It's a bit pathetic that hams portray themselves as so resourceful and able to operate in any conditions, but they can't tolerate using UHF for a few hours. It's even sadder when you realise that the .800 has excellent coverage, in spite of having no remote receive sites whatsoever. 

• I've been spotting more and more APRS gateways popping up in scattered locations around the metro, and then disappearing after a couple of days. It's great to see that local hams are experimenting with this technology and getting experience in making I-Gates and digipeaters work. The more operators that we have locally with this knowledge, the better off we are having people that can put up a gateway or digipeater quickly in an emergency or for an event. The most recent occurrence of this phenomenon was a receive-only I-Gate in Circle Pines, and judging by the callsign, it was a relatively new ham doing the experimenting.

• The local infrastructure is being put to the test today, with the MS-150 event generating a lot of traffic, and the receive-only gateways seem to be very helpful in distributing that load. We could still use a couple more of these in the west and north-west metro, but it's great to see that what we have now is rising to the challenge. 

• With the recent hail-storm, it was interesting to listen in to the SkyWarn traffic on the "emergency" 146.700- (127.3 PL) repeater. I'd note that the concerns of some in the EmComm community over allowing non-emergency traffic on this machine proved once again to be completely unfounded, as no one interrupted or failed to yield to emergency traffic. Though I'm not a "trained spotter", I was able to contribute by going over to the UHF 444.775+ (114.8 PL) and talking to one of the guys at the Weather Service directly. They operate a weather net on the Robbinsdale .775 machine (under the sign K0MPX) whenever the weather merits a warning, and they're cool guys, too. 

• Speaking of the 444.775 repeater, I had a nice chat with KD0RRA (Travis) this week there. While it has low activity, the .775 has great coverage and is very close to Travis, so it worked out quite well. One of the things that we discussed was the absence of mobile amateur operators reporting real-time traffic conditions. There are more than a few hams on the road during peak traffic times, and they're uniquely situated to provide a very simple public service. This might be an interesting project for an enterprising club (or individual) to promote and organise, as we certainly have excess repeater capacity. If it ever took off, MNDOT would probably monitor the repeater. And, while it may not encourage non-hams to get licensed, it could very well encourage a lot of hams that don't even turn on their mobile rigs any more to contribute their reports. Depending on how formal you want to make it, there could even be a NCO. And APRS could be used, too. It's pretty easy to set APRS up on an HT, after all, and your smart-phone can do the same thing without using RF.