Yes indeed. I had a ham license in 1961 when I was in high school but let my license expire after I entered college. Now that I'm retired, I'm thinking of taking up the hobby again. I used to be pretty fast with the key, but I understand that these days the ability to use Morse code isn't even a requirement for the test.
Regardless of the value that the FCC itself puts on learning Morse code, it does have enormous value on the air. CW is sometimes the best way to make DX (long distance) contacts with a marginal antenna at low power at inopportune times in the solar cycle. Just tuning the bands, I hear CW signals all the time -- it is still very much in use.
Yes, but most of them are NO-CODE Technicians who took the test with a "volunteer" who helped them with the answers
Did I miss the study that the FCC did that proved that volunteer examiners were helping examinees to cheat on the exam? I've never witnessed that. Have you?
I got mine. As an old geek, I just challenged the exam and got it first try. My offroad club decided to switch away from CB towards HAM. It has improved our communications immensely as well as been useful in some remote medical and mechanical emergency situations.
An excellent reason to get licensed. VHF repeaters have a much greater range -- in general but with some exceptions due to terrain -- than 4-watt mobile CB radios and with vehicle-mounted whip antennas that are much smaller than those for CB. The repeaters tend to be fairly empty these days and use by the off-road and outdoors community is certainly very welcome.
Large urban trauma hospitals around the US oftentimes host rooftop amateur repeaters and provide free emergency power from the repeaters from the hospital's own generators in the event of grid-power failures. The availability of almost limitless emergency hospital power coupled with the height of these repeater stations would make the repeaters that amateurs have access to the best two-way communications capability available in the event of a power outage...
I hold an extra class license, which I don't really use, and my impression was that the average age was around 65. If you want to tune in and chat with other oldsters about medical problems... then amateur radio is for you! Though some will treat you as a lower class of operator for not being a "brass pounder" (i.e. someone proficient in morse code). And you might feel unwelcome if you're LGBT; they're, um, a little on the conservative side.
I totally hear where you're coming from. Many of the older hams domestic to the US are not a treat to chat with. If you have the capability, I would highly recommend you turn your antenna west-ward or east-ward. There is nothing at all like the thrill of making a contact with Japan or Korea or Hong Kong or Australia or Europe -- with the conditions are the best they have been in 10 years. With a 15-foot half-wavelength dipole for 28.5MHz and 100 watts you can work SSB 5,000 to 10,000 miles away easily.
Another part of the hobby I'm getting into is taking a portable HF transceiver, battery, and dipole up to the peek of some mountains and spending an afternoon seeing how far I can get with no household appliance interference and with an effective height far, far above the tallest Rohn25 tower.
The 700,000 is from the FCC. The 80% that Chrisq is citing comes from a survey of members of ARRL -- two different numbers, one of which Chrisq is using incorrectly to judge how many of the 700,000 are active.
Now I just need to convince the wife to let me spend $2K - $20K on fancy radio gear so I can talk further than the nearby 2M/70cm repeaters...
I hope you're kidding -- there is really no need to spend more than a few hundred bucks. From where I am on the West Coast, just last weekend I hit Japan and Hawaii with a cheap 10 meter dipole ($35 -- it would have been a third the cost if I built it myself) and a $650 used FT-897D.
No doubt that there are some Hams who have gone silent key still on the rolls, but most of their registrations will expire after no more than 10 years. And the dead certainly don't account for many of the new registrations (except perhaps in Chicago).
Let me put it another way -- there are 700,000 current members. From TFA:
'Over the last five years we've had 20-25,000 new hams,' said Allen Pitts, a spokesman for the group."
25,000 out of 700,000 is 3.5%. Two questions:
1) What is the average age of US hams? I would guess it's pretty old.
2) What is the rate of death of people of that age group?
And even if I'm wrong about how many hams are alive, I know from listening that the bands are not getting 3.5% more busy every year -- that no one can deny...
All that this data says is that 20% of the members that respond to a survey from an organization that you have to pay to be a member of are not actually active in radio.
While the number of licensees has grown considerably over the years, we realize that these numbers include some who are no longer active in Amateur Radio. A recent survey of ARRL members, however, indicates that more than 80 percent of those responding are active.
I did see that, but that data is irrelevant to the question of how many of those holding licenses are alive.
This is not a survey of all active hams, but of ARRL members. And it only counts those responding to their survey -- ie. it doesn't even count those that are members of ARRL but didn't answer the survey. The dead won't respond to a survey. All that this data says is that 20% of the members that respond to a survey from an organization that you have to pay to be a member of are actually active in radio.
The article indicates that there are 700,000 licensed radio amateurs. But how many of those that are licensed are alive? There is no provision for the FCC to investigate how many hams are alive -- and they expire only every 10 years. I've attended meetings of a number of local clubs and the average age has got to be 70 -- I would say that the count of living US radio amateurs is 3/5ths or even half that 700,000...
How would an equidistant supercharger (thus, one that is 200 miles from each of two points, themselves 400 miles apart) fail to help drivers with cars that have a 230 mile range?
Good question. That quote was directly from TFA.
That said, there could be a couple of reasons that the drive from LA to San Francisco is not equal in energy use to other drives of a similar length. LA and San Francisco are separated by mountains -- it's not a perfectly flat route.
Additionally, there energy-consuming traffic on both ends of the route.
Finally, few drivers of the LA-SF route are likely to be driving downtown LA to downtown San Francisco. I would guess that many owners of the Model S will live in the upper-income suburbs, some of which are south or west of Los Angeles or in the case of San Francisco, in the North Bay.
This is a pretty important quote from TFA missing from the summary:
And while most of Teslaâ(TM)s current orders are for Model S Sedans complete with 300-mile battery pack option, expect Tesla to install multiple SuperChargers along the I-5 route to cater for drivers of lower-range Model S sedans.
So while an charging station placed exactly half-way between LA and San Francisco would be of limited utility to some Tesla owners, it would serve most buyers of the Model S sedan...
A-GREED. Operation Metro does not work at all well for Conquest. It's way, way too linear -- there are very few ways to flank once you get into the subway tunnel.
I'm really looking forward to the Back to Karkand pack -- the maps there are built for Conquest and will be a nice bit of BF2 nostalgia.
There is no ordering by the squad leader, it's just crap
While it is clumsy, there are squad leader commands in Battlefield 3. Specifically, the squad leader taps "q" while pointing his cross-hair at the point he'd like his squad to attack or defend. In the 3d representation of the point's location in space, there will then be a box around the point on all the squad members' screens.
Win7 is worlds better for everything except the file manager - somehow that has gotten worse in every release since 3.1.
Perhaps my single largest annoyance with Windows 7 -- and there are few, honestly -- is the file manager's sorting "memory".
Let's say that:
I have one folder that's full of spreadsheets in which the most relevant of them is the most recent -- in such a case, I would want that folder sorted by the "date modified" field.
I have another folder in which there are files of a few different types with which alphabetical sorting is more appropriate.
In Windows XP, if I set folder #1 to be sorted by the "date modified" field, it remembered it for that folder. If I left alphabetical sorting for every other folder, it remembered that too.
In Windows 7, if I set folder #1 to be sorted by the "date modified" field, it applies that setting to any folder I should happen to look at.
From what I understand about how easily patents on extremely general ideas on technology, how can anyone know what design is going to infringe on a patent? I don't see how anyone can write a design specification with one of the ground rules being to not infringe on a specific company's patent.
How can you know how a given patent will be interpreted by a court?
Minutes ago wikipedia was showing 512 for the 4th gen, and the error was fixed between my post and yours.:-) 18:30, 18 October 2011 12.70.47.254 (talk) (38,640 bytes) (Models: changed ipod 4th gen from 512meg ram to 256meg. the iphone 4 has 512 not ipod 4th gen. This is also stated by the url that is attached to that sentence.)
No shit? That is extremely weird. The iPhone 4 has 512MB and was released near the release of the 4th generation iPod Touch -- I assumed that that was the root of the confusion.
Many believe the iPod Touch is simply a contract-less iPhone, which is hardly the case -- it is indeed a contract-less iPhone with significant sacrifices in its bill of materials -- among these compromises is a reduction in RAM. Few seem aware of that distinction -- somewhat odd that wikipedia reported 512MB recently; I myself reviewed the page not too long ago and I swear that it said 256MB...
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At night the lower bands open up. I like 80m, 20m, 17m and 15m, and I loathe 40m. But that's just my opinion.
Out of curiosity, why the hate for 40m?
Yes indeed. I had a ham license in 1961 when I was in high school but let my license expire after I entered college. Now that I'm retired, I'm thinking of taking up the hobby again. I used to be pretty fast with the key, but I understand that these days the ability to use Morse code isn't even a requirement for the test.
Regardless of the value that the FCC itself puts on learning Morse code, it does have enormous value on the air. CW is sometimes the best way to make DX (long distance) contacts with a marginal antenna at low power at inopportune times in the solar cycle. Just tuning the bands, I hear CW signals all the time -- it is still very much in use.
Yes, but most of them are NO-CODE Technicians who took the test with a "volunteer" who helped them with the answers
Did I miss the study that the FCC did that proved that volunteer examiners were helping examinees to cheat on the exam? I've never witnessed that. Have you?
I got mine. As an old geek, I just challenged the exam and got it first try. My offroad club decided to switch away from CB towards HAM. It has improved our communications immensely as well as been useful in some remote medical and mechanical emergency situations.
An excellent reason to get licensed. VHF repeaters have a much greater range -- in general but with some exceptions due to terrain -- than 4-watt mobile CB radios and with vehicle-mounted whip antennas that are much smaller than those for CB. The repeaters tend to be fairly empty these days and use by the off-road and outdoors community is certainly very welcome.
Large urban trauma hospitals around the US oftentimes host rooftop amateur repeaters and provide free emergency power from the repeaters from the hospital's own generators in the event of grid-power failures. The availability of almost limitless emergency hospital power coupled with the height of these repeater stations would make the repeaters that amateurs have access to the best two-way communications capability available in the event of a power outage...
I hold an extra class license, which I don't really use, and my impression was that the average age was around 65. If you want to tune in and chat with other oldsters about medical problems... then amateur radio is for you! Though some will treat you as a lower class of operator for not being a "brass pounder" (i.e. someone proficient in morse code). And you might feel unwelcome if you're LGBT; they're, um, a little on the conservative side.
I totally hear where you're coming from. Many of the older hams domestic to the US are not a treat to chat with. If you have the capability, I would highly recommend you turn your antenna west-ward or east-ward. There is nothing at all like the thrill of making a contact with Japan or Korea or Hong Kong or Australia or Europe -- with the conditions are the best they have been in 10 years. With a 15-foot half-wavelength dipole for 28.5MHz and 100 watts you can work SSB 5,000 to 10,000 miles away easily.
Another part of the hobby I'm getting into is taking a portable HF transceiver, battery, and dipole up to the peek of some mountains and spending an afternoon seeing how far I can get with no household appliance interference and with an effective height far, far above the tallest Rohn25 tower.
The 700,000 is from the FCC. The 80% that Chrisq is citing comes from a survey of members of ARRL -- two different numbers, one of which Chrisq is using incorrectly to judge how many of the 700,000 are active.
Keep in mind that technician class is limited to CW transmissions below 30MHz, so morse code is still somewhat required for shortwave.
Well, that's not true. From this chart, technician licensees have phone (SSB) privileges in the 10-meter band at 28.3-28.5 MHz.
Now I just need to convince the wife to let me spend $2K - $20K on fancy radio gear so I can talk further than the nearby 2M/70cm repeaters...
I hope you're kidding -- there is really no need to spend more than a few hundred bucks. From where I am on the West Coast, just last weekend I hit Japan and Hawaii with a cheap 10 meter dipole ($35 -- it would have been a third the cost if I built it myself) and a $650 used FT-897D.
No doubt that there are some Hams who have gone silent key still on the rolls, but most of their registrations will expire after no more than 10 years. And the dead certainly don't account for many of the new registrations (except perhaps in Chicago).
Let me put it another way -- there are 700,000 current members. From TFA:
'Over the last five years we've had 20-25,000 new hams,' said Allen Pitts, a spokesman for the group."
25,000 out of 700,000 is 3.5%. Two questions:
1) What is the average age of US hams? I would guess it's pretty old.
2) What is the rate of death of people of that age group?
And even if I'm wrong about how many hams are alive, I know from listening that the bands are not getting 3.5% more busy every year -- that no one can deny...
Correction:
All that this data says is that 20% of the members that respond to a survey from an organization that you have to pay to be a member of are not actually active in radio.
From FTA:
While the number of licensees has grown considerably over the years, we realize that these numbers include some who are no longer active in Amateur Radio. A recent survey of ARRL members, however, indicates that more than 80 percent of those responding are active.
I did see that, but that data is irrelevant to the question of how many of those holding licenses are alive.
This is not a survey of all active hams, but of ARRL members. And it only counts those responding to their survey -- ie. it doesn't even count those that are members of ARRL but didn't answer the survey. The dead won't respond to a survey. All that this data says is that 20% of the members that respond to a survey from an organization that you have to pay to be a member of are actually active in radio.
The article indicates that there are 700,000 licensed radio amateurs. But how many of those that are licensed are alive? There is no provision for the FCC to investigate how many hams are alive -- and they expire only every 10 years. I've attended meetings of a number of local clubs and the average age has got to be 70 -- I would say that the count of living US radio amateurs is 3/5ths or even half that 700,000...
Last I heard, Netflix streaming uses Silverlight, despite the completely lack (at the time) of support on any platform other than Winders.
According to wikipedia, Silverlight is supported on Macs by Microsoft's own software.
Really? Most buyers purchase this car for that particular route? Even prior to the charging station being deployed?
I don't know why they bought the 300 mile models rather than the models with shorter ranges. But the fact is, they have. From TFA:
"...most of Tesla's current orders are for Model S Sedans complete with 300-mile battery pack option..."
How would an equidistant supercharger (thus, one that is 200 miles from each of two points, themselves 400 miles apart) fail to help drivers with cars that have a 230 mile range?
Good question. That quote was directly from TFA.
That said, there could be a couple of reasons that the drive from LA to San Francisco is not equal in energy use to other drives of a similar length. LA and San Francisco are separated by mountains -- it's not a perfectly flat route.
Additionally, there energy-consuming traffic on both ends of the route.
Finally, few drivers of the LA-SF route are likely to be driving downtown LA to downtown San Francisco. I would guess that many owners of the Model S will live in the upper-income suburbs, some of which are south or west of Los Angeles or in the case of San Francisco, in the North Bay.
This is a pretty important quote from TFA missing from the summary:
And while most of Teslaâ(TM)s current orders are for Model S Sedans complete with 300-mile battery pack option, expect Tesla to install multiple SuperChargers along the I-5 route to cater for drivers of lower-range Model S sedans.
So while an charging station placed exactly half-way between LA and San Francisco would be of limited utility to some Tesla owners, it would serve most buyers of the Model S sedan...
Operation Metro should only be a Rush map.
A-GREED. Operation Metro does not work at all well for Conquest. It's way, way too linear -- there are very few ways to flank once you get into the subway tunnel.
I'm really looking forward to the Back to Karkand pack -- the maps there are built for Conquest and will be a nice bit of BF2 nostalgia.
There is no ordering by the squad leader, it's just crap
While it is clumsy, there are squad leader commands in Battlefield 3. Specifically, the squad leader taps "q" while pointing his cross-hair at the point he'd like his squad to attack or defend. In the 3d representation of the point's location in space, there will then be a box around the point on all the squad members' screens.
I don't just have one folder I want sorted a certain way -- I have dozens. Would I need to have like...dozens of custom libraries?
Hmm. I've googled around for this before, and didn't turn anything up. Any idea what those reg tweaks may have been?
Win7 is worlds better for everything except the file manager - somehow that has gotten worse in every release since 3.1.
Perhaps my single largest annoyance with Windows 7 -- and there are few, honestly -- is the file manager's sorting "memory".
Let's say that:
In Windows XP, if I set folder #1 to be sorted by the "date modified" field, it remembered it for that folder. If I left alphabetical sorting for every other folder, it remembered that too.
In Windows 7, if I set folder #1 to be sorted by the "date modified" field, it applies that setting to any folder I should happen to look at.
Annoying.
From what I understand about how easily patents on extremely general ideas on technology, how can anyone know what design is going to infringe on a patent? I don't see how anyone can write a design specification with one of the ground rules being to not infringe on a specific company's patent.
How can you know how a given patent will be interpreted by a court?
Minutes ago wikipedia was showing 512 for the 4th gen, and the error was fixed between my post and yours. :-)
18:30, 18 October 2011 12.70.47.254 (talk) (38,640 bytes) (Models: changed ipod 4th gen from 512meg ram to 256meg. the iphone 4 has 512 not ipod 4th gen. This is also stated by the url that is attached to that sentence.)
No shit? That is extremely weird. The iPhone 4 has 512MB and was released near the release of the 4th generation iPod Touch -- I assumed that that was the root of the confusion.
Many believe the iPod Touch is simply a contract-less iPhone, which is hardly the case -- it is indeed a contract-less iPhone with significant sacrifices in its bill of materials -- among these compromises is a reduction in RAM. Few seem aware of that distinction -- somewhat odd that wikipedia reported 512MB recently; I myself reviewed the page not too long ago and I swear that it said 256MB...
But iPod touch alternative? Seriously?
2.5K RAM vs 512M RAM
From wikipedia, Apple has included only 256MB of RAM in even the latest model of the iPod Touch.
260 horsepower...can someone give that to me in jiggawatts?
Anyway, here is, from google.