Recent content by jeff48356

On QRZ, when an amateur radio operator becomes a silent key, how does that information get sent to QRZ? I might become a silent key myself soon. I have been having symptoms lately of any number of serious medical problems, and I refuse to go to the doctor to have any tests or treatment done.

Is it just me, or does it seem that there is far less conversation on 2M repeaters than there used to be? I'm just getting back into the hobby after 8 years of being off-the-air due to the fact that my last 2M radio broke in 2005, and I sold it for parts and never bought a new one until last...

That's not going to work. I'm looking in the 18-30 range.

Where are these YL's located? How old are they? I'm one of the younger hams myself.

Does anyone have any suggestions how a single male ham operator can meet single YL's on the air? I realize that men far outnumber women in this hobby. Are there any singles nets anywhere, either on 2-meters or HF?

In the Detroit area, there's some kind of business operations taking place on 446.150 MHz. I'm listening to them right now. I haven't been able to figure out what kind of business it is, but how did they get assigned a ham frequency to operate on? Isn't there enough business frequencies they...

With few exceptions, nearly all repeaters have their own courtesy tone that sounds between sides of a conversation. Is this an FCC requirement? Also, some repeaters have a robotic-sounding voice that identifies the repeater, like "This is KE8HR Repeater. 146.760 megahertz". What is that...

Back when they used analog cell phones in the 800 MHz band, some scanners used to be able to pick up these conversations. And then having such scanners was illegal unless that portion of the band was blocked. But what good would it do anymore these days to have that band blocked, or to have...

Has anyone ever played around with them by scanning through all the channels for a transmission (some will actually do this automatically), then talk to strangers on them? I've talked to a bunch of kids or teens on them before, and it was hilarious! And do kids actually use these things...

I have a standard police scanner that covers VHF and UHF bands up to 512MHz (FM only). It seems most radio services have gone all digital, if not encrypted, thus rendering my scanner nearly obsolete. Besides 2M and 440 ham radio operators, is there anything to listen to anymore on the...

Is it true that ham operators are not allowed to use the words "husband" and "wife" on the air, and that they must use "OM" and "XYL" instead? As an example, one day I was driving to visit some extended family (my cousin, his wife, and kids). I was talking to another ham on a local repeater...

So why is it illegal for the ham to use his modified rig on 11M as long as he keeps the power output under 4 watts and uses an exact CB frequency? You don't need a license to operate on CB. And how would the FCC know whether he is using a regular CB radio or a modified HF rig with legal power...