Back on the Air!

Yesterday I got my new handheld out of the box, expecting that it would be at least a day before I could use it as that the last time I bought a handheld (1986), the battery needed some sixteen hours of charging.

Well, I installed the battery pack, and to my surprise it was ready to go!  I spent a few hours going thru the owner's manual to learn how to operate the thing.  It's got more bells and whistles than I'm used to, but so far it's been fairly easy to grasp the concepts.  Tone squelch selection is a great deal easier than it was on the old handheld, and I've already stored a repeater in one of the memory banks.  I've also had fun scanning the business and aviation bands, which is great as that the ham repeaters aren't as active while most users are at work.  In the evening repeater activity picks up, and after listening last night I finally decided to get my feet in the water.

For those of you unfamiliar with ham radio, repeater operation is a lot different than the HF bands.  On the HF bands, if you want to talk to someone, you call CQ (calling any station) or you find someone who's calling CQ and you answer him.  On repeaters, it's a different ballgame.  You say "(your callsign) monitoring".  If someone is so inclined to answer you, he calls you.

Now repeaters are a different breed of bird for an HF guy like me.  I didn't spend a lot of time on them in the 1986 timeframe.  I did use repeaters when I was in El Paso on a road trip, and again in both British Columbia and Alberta when I was there in 1990 (my license is honored by Canada, and I wanted to be able to say I operated there).  I used repeaters again in Santa Cruz when I was a member of a local club, and even used it once or twice to use a phone patch.  Aside from that, I didn't really use them, and that was mainly because I didn't consider myself an enthusiast of that kind of operation.  Yes, I might have looked down on that considering it to be some glorified kind of CB.

Last night I returned a call on a repeater from a local gentleman named Wendell.  He answered back, and before too long we were joined by Ruth and Jim, and another gentleman who I now cannot recall his name.  It was a great roundtable discussion.  Ruth has already placed into the snail mail, plans for an antenna construction project.  I have to admit that I'm impressed by the friendliness of the local ham community here, and the way in which they welcomed me.

Later on this evening, my intention is to be back on this repeater, this time using a whip antenna.  I don't know if any of these hams are members of that one club that I'm thinking of joining, but hey, I can pick their brains.  That club has a UHF repeater that I can hit (sometimes) using the rubber duck antenna ,and I'll have to try again with the whip.

My hope is to be active on the HF bands within two weeks.  I might start out with a jury-rigged dipole that will at least get me on the air, and I don't see myself as ever losing my love for the HF bands.

However, the realm of VHF and UHF is lure, and I feel the need to learn more about this and to do more things there.