How high can you get your antenna? I used a roll-up J-pole antenna on an 18′ collapsible pole supported by our patio table and could be heard across the city using only my 5W HT.
Every Monday night, I check in to the Palo Alto ARES/RACES training net. I can almost always hear net control, but they can rarely hear me. I guess it is good practice relaying traffic, but it makes it hard for me to contribute substantially.
I found a new paper on wilderness communications via a post on Clarke Green’s blog. It is a good resource, but it just doesn’t address the real situations I’ve experienced on treks. It seems to be written from the viewpoint of a professional rescuer, which leaves out a whole range of emergency situations that don’t involve rescue.
Paul Petzoldt didn’t include “wilderness survival” The Wilderness Handbook, but he did cover avoiding survival situations. Similarly, my preference is to avoid rescue situations, and reliable communication can help me do that.
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and Boy Scouts of America (BSA) published a memorandum of understanding where the ARRL will help with some merit badge requirements and get access to more young people for a dangerously-aging amateur radio population.
Let’s hope this project is more forward-looking than the new ARRL electronic kits which debuted with Morse Code practice oscillator.
I’ve been studying for the Amateur Extra license exam, the highest level of FCC license for amateur radio. Right now, I’m reading about Hilbert transforms because they are mentioned in a question (E7C09 from the Extra question pool, if you care). I’m pretty sure that I learned Hilbert transforms thirty years ago in my Signal Theory class.
Most Casual Observer 