Scanning the Airwaves

From Saturday June 23 to Sunday June 24, I participated in my very first ARRL Field Day. I also helped set up for an hour on Friday the 22nd. Field Day is best summed up as an emergency preparedness exercise with a contest aspect to promote amateur radio to the general public. I participated in field with my local club, the North Shore Radio Association . It was held at Endicott Park in Danvers, Massachusetts. One of the attendees was Dr. Mark Patterson, WB2OIL from Northeastern University's Global Resilience Institute who was there to interview fellow hams on their opinions on Field Day and how it pertained to emergency response. Despite my limited time of being a ham, I still gave my input. We had a SSB voice station, along with two CW stations and new this year, an FT8 digital station. I only did operating on SSB voice, operating on 80 and 40 meters. I managed about 19 contacts. The club as a whole managed 2852 contacts. I enjoyed F...

It's been quiet here, I know. Though, not like my blog is highly trafficked in the first place. Anyways, I purchased a TYT MD-2017 a week after I wrote the last post. I followed that up with a ZUMspot hotspot I ordered from HRO to get into the world of DMR. Then using the hotspot kinda fell by the wayside, since I was having trouble getting it to work. Then I used said TYT MD-2017 in analog only, supporting the 2018/122nd Boston Marathon on only 3 hours sleep. (More about that in another post.) However, this has been a busy week for my by far. First, I purchased an Anytone AT-D868UV as part of a group purchase from the local ham club. I tried it down on Nahant Beach and was able to get in the Boston DMR repeater. (It helps that you can see the Boston skyline from Nahant, which is were the repeater is.) Then, I got a text from a co-worker. His grandfather, who is a ham, was going into a nursing home. He nor anyone else in the family is a ham, so they had to decide what to ...

I have long had an interest in radio, whether it be broadcast, public safety or amateur. Besides listening to regular AM/FM radio, what got me down this road first started with listening to shortwave radio back in 2009 when I was 19. I started with a Grundig GM300PE Mini World that I bought at local Radio Shack because it was all I could afford. I also bought a copy of the Passport to World Band Radio for that year, which turned out to be last. Even though the book was discontinued, my passion for radio hadn't and I kept listening. By 2015, I was studying for a Technician license using the ARRL Technician study guide. But, despite my efforts and using the ARRL test prep site I felt I wasn't getting it. I lapsed for a year in 2016 and in mid-2017 after buying my first digital scanner and first scanner in years, the bug bit again and I buckled down this time. Working for TSA for almost 9 years at this point was another one of my reasons for getting my amateur radio license ...

It's been five months since I first got licensed and I have a confession. I haven't had a single QSO. At all. Yes, it may be shocking but it's the truth. I blame it on a variety of reasons/factors. Work and Time : I've worked an odd schedule for the past half year, working from 1700 to 0130. As many hams are driving home, I'm driving to work. It doesn't give me much time to talk as most non-retired hams are in the middle of their work day when I'm just waking up. Plus while working I obviously I can't talk on my radio.  Location : I live in Lynn, Massachusetts. Lynn has odd geography, it's flat near the ocean and the Saugus River, but other parts of the city are very hilly. I happen to live in the hilly section. The only problem, the slight hill I'm on is surrounded by taller hills, so in essence, I'm a valley. My club's main repeater is located in Danvers. Which while only separated by another city is about 10 miles. A...

As you can see I changed the theme, when I first created the blog, I didn't see these new themes despite being out since March 2017. I'm doing some tweaking to them right now.