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Hamvention
amateur radio buff writes "The Hamvention is coming up on May 16 - 18, for all you amateur radio people out there. This is the worlds biggest Ham fest held in Dayton, Ohio. With over 2500+ space outdoor vendor, and 500 inside exhibit spaces, find any amateur radio and electronic items there. Also the The 11th Annual Dayton Contest Dinner is held this year too! Dont miss it!"
When I was in scouts in Oz I remembered looking forward to the Jamboree On The Air in October each year.
;-)
http://www.scout.org/wse/jota.shtml
Off topic? No - about 48 or more hours (due to time zones) of talking to other scouts across the world. Pre-internet
At this particular event, every available piece of spectrum in the 2m and 70cm bands will be in use. CTCSS, DCS, and DSQ are all very helpful for filtering out what you want to hear from what you don't want to hear. And if at first you get stepped on (while transmitting), try, try again.
IMHO, physical crowding of bodies is a bigger problem than frequency congestion.
http://radio.linux.org.au/
And there are many other sites, too. I disagree with what someone stated earlier about being both into computers and amateur radio taking it too far. Believe it or not, there's a lot of overlap between the two. Hams often spend a lot of time tweaking their stations, building stuff, and completely customizing their equipment. Sound familiar to anyone on Slashdot?
73, KG6JBF
IAAL
If you haven't heard about tubgirl, trust me, you don't want to find out. If you click the link you'll think, "Oh, I should have listened to that guy on slashdot who told me not to click the link".
You have been warned.
I realise that most if not all of the people who read and post to this site are computer geeks in one way or another. (I am)
If you are into computers for the pure technical geek aspects, try out amateur radio. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed. There are so many different things you can do in ham that you won't be bored. I've done shortwave, packet radio, satelite, earth-moon-earth bouce, and microwave radio etc. etc. Amateur radio gives you an oppourtunity to delve into physics...
Oftentimes amateur radio is seen as an "old man's" game, as many of the newer geeks jump into computers immediately, and choose programming and networking as their fix of choice. I'd like to see more young people on the air! (I'm 25)
Anyway, give it a try, it doesn't cost much to get started.
No longer required to be skilled in CW? Perhaps not in the UK. In the States, however, one still needs to be proficient to 5 WPM CW to go any higher than a Technician-class license.
The dividing point is HF privileges (1-30MHz). If you want to work HF (with the possible exception of the 10-meter band), and you live in the U.S., you still have to pass a minimal CW test.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
These days, you have to be into computers to operate using the newer digital modes available.
Before the Internet took off in the consumer sector, hams were using their computers to participate in TCP/IP networks via packet radio in the VHF bands.
It doesn't take a lot of money or effort to get started these days. There are plenty of used radios available cheap and anyone with half a brain can study and pass the license exam.
It's still cool to throw up a simple piece of wire in a tree and communicate with someone halfway around the world.
Check out http://www.arrl.org for more information.
I could not disagree more!
;-)
Every year, I make it a point to attend a minimum of four ham swap meets; the big Mike & Key event in Puyallup, the two in the Bay Area (Livermore and Foothill), and the Radio Club of Tacoma event. I try to do more if I can.
The quality and quantity of gear at each one fluctuates wildly, year-to-year, as do the prices. That's part of the fun! While Ebay has the greater variety, in many cases, it can never substitute for the fun and satisfaction of making a face-to-face deal. Besides getting the gear on-the-spot, you can get a far better "feel" for whether you want to deal with someone when you're staring them in the face.
You say "The new stuff is better and cheaper than the old stuff." While there is some truth to that, in terms of 'cheaper,' there is also a lot of "WRONG!" in terms of 'better.'
A perfect example is test equipment, especially oscilloscopes. Tektronix completely discontinued their analog 'scope line beginning in 2000. However, their 7000-series (yes, analog) hardware can still beat the crap out of most modern stuff in terms of durability, flexibility, and value for the $$. Earlier this year, I bought a 7904A mainframe, with a basic bandwidth of 500MHz, from a local surplus place for $400. Plug-ins for it would have run around another $200 if I didn't have them already.
Would you like to tell me where I could have gotten a new O-scope, good to at least 500MHz and at least as durable, versatile, and well-made as the Tek unit for $600?
No? I didn't think so.
My point is that ham swap meets and electronic surplus stores still have a firm place in this world. Don't you dare judge them all by what you're seeing in the Bay Area! I've visited some places in Florida (Orlando & Melbourne) that still have Good Stuff at Good Prices, and I had outstanding luck at the 2002 Mike & Key and RCT swap meets.
In fact (shameless plug alert!), I have part of my web site dedicated to listings of Washington state and California (at least the Bay Area) surplus places and ham swap meets. I happen to agree with you on HSC, but there are other spots you should check out.
I guess the best way to say it is that both Ebay and ham swaps still have a firm place in this world. One will never take the place of the other, so you should use them both. Between the two of them, you will likely never lack in whatever you search for.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
At [Dayton] Hamvention, you bet there is a bandwidth crowding problem...especially on the more popular 2M and 440 bands. Almost every available frequency is in use. Most of my crew has now got 6M or 1.2GHz capability in their HTs, so we're hoping to move off to somewhere a little less crowded at Dayton this year.
--Chuck, KF9FR
but those things are still around here in Ohio. :)
;)
:) I just don't get to go every year. :( And there are plenty of other electronics besides radios at Hamvention each year.
We have Hamvention, of course, every year. We also have a large surplus store called Mendelsons in Dayton (cool place to get any and everything electronic -- well almost). There are some other places to get stuff, too. (In Fairborn, we have a little store called Midwest Electronics Surplus.)
However, you are correct... I love eBay for grabbing cheap stuff. I aquired my beige G3 desktop from eBay
Anyhow, I love Hamvention.
Peace!
~Steve
You are so right. With one exception. That's the Hamvention. Not to sound grandiose, but, what if you get almost the entire audience you are selling to on e-bay into the same place at one time all together to look at (and hopefully buy) your stuff?
The Hamvention is the grand-daddy of all Hamfests, which means people come from all around the US (World?) to attend. You then have the wide audience advantage you get with e-bay.
Also, there's nothing like being able to get your hands around what you are trying to buy, being able to test, prod, and sniff it, being able to ask questions before you buy a potential boat anchor. Also besides paying an admission, there's no "per auction" charges to display or sell items.
And finally, the other major function of Hamfests is to physically get together with your freinds and radio contacts, and go have a beer or dinner afterward. E-mail doesn't cut it for the social requirements.
What you have said is true for local small hamfests, unfortunately. You have a limited audience from a limited locale, and you keep seeing the same landfill each time you go there.
(Look for me at Dayton - I'll be there - Wearing my "Mad Scientist's Local 42 Union shirt").
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I think a friend of mine said it best; "You can be into ham radios and you can be into computers, but being into both is taking it just a little too far".
Problem is, it's getting harder and harder to be into ham radio without being into computers. Digital modes are used more and more, and computers are used for a lot of related things, like satellite tracking, timekeeping, logging, transceiver control, beam headings, etc. True, a lot of these things can be done without computers, but they are ideally suited for computers to manage.
It's kind of a shame ham radio has for being such a nerdy pursuit. It can be a lot of fun, and it has a lot of depth as a hobby.
The next fest in line for me is Manassas VA - I usually score something neat/cheap there. June 1.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
N2NHU here-
In 1993 I had a VHF amateur radio station. I connected it to a radio-modem (Terminal Node Controller) - like a modem, but works on radio instead of phonelines.
I could send/rcv e-mail, telnet to unix boxes and chat with folks - free - from my car - TEN years ago - all by ham radio!
It was a bit slow - 1200 baud...
Of course, much faster speeds are supported today - beyond 56 K.
The beauty of ham radio is that you can run real antennas, real power and nearly any mode (AM, FM, television, digital data, etc) - and communicate from anywhere, to anywhere, any mode - no cell phone needed.
Try that from, say, the north pole on cell phone...(not that I have, mind you).
I have a computer at my amateur station that is used to look up callsigns/addresses, observer space weather, track orbiting spacecraft and amateur satellites, operate digital modes, computer control of radio, one-click tuning for BBC listening, log contacts, remote operation of station via the internet, etc.
The radio can even be linked via the internet to radios around the world!
If you like to make things work and learn all the time, check it out - ham radio might be for you.
The hobby has changed vastly over the years-
My station can transmit and receive all frequencies from shortwave to UHF - and it will fit in your briefcase - you can talk around the world on it - or, send digital data!.
The radio can also communicate via any of the two dozen or so orbiting amateur communications satellites.
Drive time is nice to round-robin on a repeater.
The gov't gives you 1500 Watts, enough to be heard on any mode around the world!
There are satellites so sensitive now that a handheld radio can access it for world-wide comms!
Jump over to http://www.arrl.org - less than $20 bucks and a very simple test gets you your license, for ten years!
Yep, guilty on that count myself; been a licensed HAM since undergraduate.
For people who have never gone to the Dayton Hamvention, you are really missing quite an event. I live close to dayton, and try to go every year. They sell all kinds of radios and such, but they also sell tons of computer equipment, and virtually anything electronic... Need an actual working Cellular base station? There's a guy in the parking lot who will sell you one; put it in your truck and haul it home. You'll find that booth right next to one selling old copies of 2600 magazine. Come to think of it, the Hamvention was the first place I saw the famous Winamp plugin Holiday Dancer... playing on 15 monitors at once. That what I call eye catching...
It's a great place to get extra (insert ANY kind of battery here), diagnostic/test equipment, components, antennas... electronic doodads galore. If you're any kind of hardware hacker (particularly Wifi), I'll bet anything you need can be found there.
I'll be there... oh yes.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
interested in getting started? there are some great Linux-compatible scanners, wideband receivers and transceivers (many supported by tk/tcl apps from bob parnass at http://parnass.com):
- Radio Shack Pro-92 scanner, supported by tk92; big, clunky, but works great
- Yaesu vr-120d, vr-500 wideband receivers, supported by tk120 and tk500; truly amazing long-life on 2 AAs!
- ICOM ic-r2 wideband receiver, supported tk2; a tiny wideband receiver!
- ICOM ic-q7a, a tiny dual-band transceiver the same size at the ic-r2, suppported by tk7...
- Yaesu vx-5r, multi-band handheld transceiver, supported by a simple image-cloning C program for Linux...
- Ten-Tec RX-320, serial-controlled high-frequency receiver, supported by the rx320 command-line program and rx320 xclass-enabled X client...
wish i could make it to the hamvention; maybe next year...
With 'raw' AX.25, you plugged in your callsign and went. You got little *automatic* routing assistance, but didn't need much; standard operating procedure for AX.25 over radio was like tcpdumping a 300 or 1200BPS link, and you could discover 'digipeater' nodes (which anyone's radio+node controller could be) and form your own route through them, sometimes crossing a good chunk of country in the process. (There was a USEngland gateway for a while, supposedly routed over one of CBS's leased circuits on an undersea line, so the rumor had... maybe it was over the 'early' Internet in reality.)
... all IP would've added was automatic routing (which wouldn't work too great, anyway) and protocol encapsulation (not too necessary, either; you can encapsulate just about any protocol that can fly over ASCII in AX.25).
In contrast, IP packet required contacting *someone* for an IP assignment. Figuring out *who* was responsible for your physical area, and hoping to get a response back, could be a pain, and a multi-week snail-mail process at the best of times. Plus, conventional routing, as we all know, doesn't play nice in mesh networks, though amateurs were responsible for some early mesh-routing breakthroughs.
The hairiness of IP assignment was, in part, legally motivated; amateurs are required to provide station identification every 15 minutes or so while operating. The idea was to have a callsignIP registry, such that your source IP (in every packet) could be considered as an identifying transmission. (The other problem- if you ran DHCP, which didn't exist in the earliest days, the DHCP servers would still need to know about all others to avoid IP conflicts. Subnetting based on location could've helped; I have no idea what IP packeteers do today. Anyhow, with DHCP, you'd either want DDNS to allow end-stations to set their callsigns, as in 'regular' AX.25, or some sort of identifyd to send a broadcast packet with the callsign in ASCII every X minutes, which AX.25 digipeater/packet BBS nodes would have to do.)
---
Point is, as such, AX.25 was/is Good Enough for 90% of amateur activity, and much more Plug'n'Play. It handles error detection/retransmission, and manual/static routing (um, gah... there *was* a way to specify automatic 'wildcard' routes and try to get digipeaters to do path-discovery for you, wasn't there? My last use was in 1997 or so.)