Good morning, everyone. We're about to start a panel discussion on what makes a good ham
radio operator. Subtitle also, what are the weird pieces of lingo we use? Ham operators
seem to love, love, love using a lot of really random speech and text patterns that have
historical reasons for being used but don't really make sense in a lot of context today.
So let's just go around. I am Eric, A-I-0-J. I'm Justin, K-E-A-M-Y-F. I'm Grant, W-4-K-E-K.
Sorry, I don't have the video yet. Good morning, good afternoon. I'm Richard, Victor Alpha
Seven Original Gangster or November Three Romeo Tango Hotel.
Great, great. So let's just, you know, start going around and, you know, sort of in a nutshell,
you know, what do you think of when you think of like what's being a good ham radio operator?
Rich, do you want to take it off?
Sure. For me, I think I've been in this hobby 20 plus years now. I think it's an overarching
understanding of being polite to other operators. Far too often, if you spend a lot of time on HF,
very specific to frequency, you'll hear a lot of really, really inappropriate behavior by hams.
Some of them have a lot of very expensive gear, pumping out a lot of very high power.
They love talking, looking over people, screaming at you. You know what, just be polite and understand
that you're talking to people literally all over the world. You're talking to people who may not
be as skilled as you are, may not be as well resourced as you are. And understand that we are
still, after being in this hobby for a long, a brotherhood, a sisterhood. And I think we need
to spend a lot more time treating other hams like the brothers and sisters they are.
Yeah, that's a great answer. One of the things that probably annoys me the most about bad,
bad operation is just the assumed, oh, well, I've been in this for a while. I know a lot,
or I've spent a lot of money, or it's even worse. So obviously, I'm the expert in everything I say
is 100% right. And I mean, there's just a lot in this hobby. I mean, it changes every day.
As we've seen in the talks this weekend, there's always new things to explore,
there's always new things to learn. And just like I think a lot of hobbies, you get people that have
been in it for a while and assume that they've learned everything and they're the master and
everyone should listen to them. And obviously, that's not very welcoming to new hams for sure.
Justin, do you want to chime in? Yeah, so one thing I would say is always kind of
the term always out there for hammering is kind of the good practices. I'm kind of coming from
the view of the newer ham. I'm still quite early, although I just got my extra. I've only been on
the air since March. But one important thing that I always try to think of is think of those who are
listening, who may not even be able to broadcast back because you'll have your people on shortwave
listening, or especially in more local communications on repeaters. Many of them have
something like echo link or broadcastify in place for your standard person can listen in. So you're
setting that example. If they hear people talking about maybe things that might put
them off from amateur radio, then it might kind of taint their view of it. And as well as making
sure everyone else has their kind of time to talk. Because when it comes to amateur radio,
you kind of got to control yourself, especially when there's a situation not like a network.
Making sure you can come back to yourself, but allow other people to talk as well.
It looks like we lost just for a minute. He's coming back.
Possibly.
One thing I'll say also while we wait for him to pop on is that...
All right. All right. Sorry about that. The Discord decided to
apparently restart and apply an update right now. So that's awesome. Yay, automatic updates.
I think we're back on the air. Do you want to continue? Just Esther, who were you talking about,
Rich?
Yeah, what I was saying is that ham radio has really taken off as far as the different things
you can do with ham radio just in the last five years alone. The abundance of much more affordable
ham radio gear coupled with the proliferation of single computing has really opened up a ton of
new things that hams can do. And I think what we have to be careful of as ham hams as we
get older is to not get into the trap of the people before us who say, oh, that's not ham
radio. No, that's ham radio. No, that's not ham radio. You know, how many times have you heard
in the past 20 years of hams saying, well, if you don't know more, Sergeant, you're not a real ham.
Or spark gap traders are the only real ham radio. No, no. The only way ham radio is going to
survive is as a hobby. The only way ham radio is going to survive and bring more people into
it is to embrace all these new things that are going to be only partially ham radio related,
but do things like connect to the internet. That's the only way we're going to attract
new people to this hobby. So just keep an open mind when you see something new. And the first
thing in your mind is, well, that's not ham radio at all. Just take a second and think about it.
Yeah, of course, I see a lot of that with all the internet radio and things like that.
I'm like, well, it's not, it's not radio. It's not radio. I was like, well, I mean, it's all,
you know, it's all fine. Either the hobby can expand and reach into new areas and stuff like
that. Let's change topics a little bit. You know, what's probably the, maybe we'll go to you,
Justin, as a newer ham. You know, what did you find the most confusing in terms of like, you
know, ham lingo, as you know, you started getting the hobby and everyone's immediately assumed,
you know, every piece of, you know, our lingo? Yeah, definitely. What I would say there is
when I got into it, those cue codes, that's always where everyone likes to start off. You're
saying everyone's like QSY, QSL. Those, of course, meaning if you're going to change frequency and
acknowledging a receipt in that order. But one thing I would say is, once you start listening
to them, it's very easy to pick up on it. Once you kind of hear what they're saying, and then
you can either Google it real quickly, or you can kind of just think about what they're saying. So
if they say QSY and they see a frequency, they're probably switching over there. And as well,
there's kind of your other terms that people might say, especially if you're a technician
coming in and you're on a repeater, a lot of people might take a bite or break. That just
means that they are letting the repeater reset because many of them have those talkout timers.
That's one thing I kind of was curious what they're meaning there. And then I kind of
realized they're just letting that repeater reset.
Yeah, I think that's also some great, good operating tips, too, on repeaters and more or
less on 2Meter and VHF and up. But if you're using a repeater, you definitely do not want to call
CQ to look for contacts. It's sort of common. It's a weird thing, but we just don't do that,
right? Instead, we say, oh, hey, this is K3K monitoring this repeater. And more than often,
it'll come back and talk to you, but it's just not sort of accepted to just go on to the repeater
and say, hey, K3K calling CQ on this repeater. And I don't really exactly know why we chose to
do that, but that is just what we do, right? And there are a lot of just sort of gotchas.
And I think it's important as experienced TAMs, if that happens, it's fine. I say,
oh, hey, by the way, you should probably not call CQ. You should call monitoring
instead of being like, hey, that's not how you do it or just being a jerk about it,
which unfortunately, you can see a lot. Yeah. And I'll add on to that. One thing,
Dave Kessler, K-E-0-O-G, he's one of the bigger YouTubers, ham radio YouTubers. Even he covered
that topic. And on a repeater, sometimes calling CQ might be good for like a last resort because
most likely if you do it, you will get that ham that tells you not to do it. But if you haven't
made a contact and it's your first time on the air, then you just made your first contact.
Although it might be for someone who's telling you not to call CQ. I guess technically a contact
is still a contact and that's how you can get a conversation going. And he's actually been one of
the people who wrote the book on ham radio. He's one of the licensed or the authors for the license
manuals for the ARRL. Yeah, very, very cool. And Saito, is your audio working? Do you want to jump
in? Yeah, I did want to say, I believe it comes to the fact when you're calling CQ, you're on a
frequency, you're not sure who's listening. Meanwhile, on the repeater, you can assume
there's people listening on that frequency. So I feel like that's why you would call CQ
on listening frequency versus on a repeater. Yeah, that's a great point.
Yeah, I think probably the most sort of frustrating thing, like the cue codes,
you know, they make sense. I mean, a lot of the sort of terminology that's used
in ham radio originates from, you know, Morse code CW usage, you know, where, you know, you're
trying to literally save time and save the amount of time as you're tapping your finger, of course,
back in the day. You know, so I mean, I think there's a good reason for all those abbreviations.
And of course, it's, you know, now in our modern tech society, I think there's still value in that.
But one of the ones that really my personal pet peeve is when people type hi hi instead of ha ha,
which in Morse code is much, much quicker. I hate that so much. Yeah,
in Morse code is much quicker to type an I than it is an A.
Totally understandable. On a keyboard, it is literally the same word count.
Yeah, oh man, it just annoys me to no end. It's like, just just stop. You don't,
you don't look any more important. I don't know what it, you know.
Now, what's some other sort of weird lingo that people might not be familiar with?
Struggling to think. I do think there's some terms that are, you know, not misintentioned,
but probably outdated. You know, XYL was sort of a three letter code that, you know, historically
has meant, you know, young lady, as in, like, typically the ham operator's spouse. And I don't
think there's ill intention in it, but it's just a little outdated today, you know. And I personally
just kind of cringe a little when I hear that. So Mr. Radar had a question. What's the what's
internet lingo-gations on the air? LOL or BRB? Look, you know what? This is my opinion,
and I'm sure everybody has a different opinion. But I don't hate it at all, because it's become
part of general language now. And you see everywhere, not just on the internet anymore.
There are definitely going to be some older old hams who hate it because it's new. But you know
what? Language over time. I don't have any problems. Anybody say LOL or BRB or things like that
in ham radio, because it's, it's, it's, it's extended in real life now. So go for it. The
more and more you use regular language, which in ham radio, the more realized it'll become.
If someone gives you grief over things like that, you know what? It's probably not even worth your
time to engage with them. Just keep being you. Don't, don't let some ham who's been doing, doing
this for years, and the skin there, that they're old, away from, from, from bullying you. Because
you see a lot of that in radio, especially with some of the older people. They do behave like
bullies, because they've been stuck in there for such a long time. And I hope is that other,
and say, you know what? Time changed, either. I want to see more hams interject into conversations
like that, saying, look, you know what? It's time for you to just, you know, lighten up a little
bit. We could use a little bit more of this hobby. Yeah, I think it's a fair point. It's a bit of a,
I think almost a loaded question, because that is very much more of a societal question, right?
Some people are okay using things like LOL and BRB just in person, or, you know, even, you know,
a video conference chat. And some people are like, no, that's not proper English. And I don't think
that's ever going to be solved. That's probably not hobby unique. But I tend to agree with Rich's,
you know, comments like, yeah, it's totally fine. I mean, it's all about your audience and their
comfort level and your comfort level with them, you know. Certainly, if you're on a repeater,
and it's a bunch of people, you know, I think it's, you know, the level of comfort of in
conversation in general is much different than if you're just, you know, making conversation with,
2000 miles away. I would, the only thing I'd add to that is I would definitely caution about that
if you're doing anything, long distance, also known as DX, another piece of lingo there,
distance, just because, you know, if English is not their primary language, sometimes,
you know, those acronyms and things like that can be confusing, you know, if they're not used to
that. So that's my point. Oh, new challengers appeared. Well, welcome, Baloo. I don't know
if we have audio from you yet. We do have a question in chat about if there's a trick to
memorizing cue codes. Yeah, I don't think there's, you know, any real trick. There's really probably
only a handful that get used a lot. I mean, if you go online, you find like list of cue codes
or ham radio cue codes, you'll see like, I don't know, like 20, 30 of them. But there's probably
only like, I don't know, five or six that get used commonly, you know, like, you know, in some only
really in like contests and stuff. Like, you generally don't hear QRZ being called a lot and
except if like you're working a pile up or something like that in a contest. QTH is probably
the one I hear the most, which is me shorthand for location, you know, it'd be, you know, if you're
in the old CB days, it'd be, you know, what's your 20? I don't do that on the handbands, by the way,
that will definitely anger people using any of the CB lingo. So I would not I recommend not using any
10 codes, you know, no 10 for a good buddy or anything like that, or that'll definitely rile up
the old hams. Yeah, I'll add on to that, especially how you said not using 10 codes, especially once
you get into the more, I guess you could say, emergency comms with stuff like Skywarn. If
you're in a spotter group, and they're taking check-ins for spotters, it's pretty important,
especially in those scenarios, to make sure you're using the kind of set and stone phonetics.
Everyone kind of has their funner version of phonetics that they'll usually have for their
call sign. I actually don't have one for, I haven't thought of one for me yet. But in those
more serious scenarios, it's much more important to kind of listen to what the net control station
is saying, and follow their instructions, because they're expecting to hear what they have asked for.
If they can get more check-ins from spotters, right when a condition might change to yellow,
then it allows for more efficient communications. And that's where it's
more important to make sure you're following those good practices, like proper phonetics.
Yeah, definitely. I think more important than memorizing any cue codes or anything like that,
yeah, knowing the NATO alphabet is way more useful. And yeah, I do expand on that in any
sort of, you know, more formal net, which is just a fancy word for on-air meeting.
Yeah, definitely short and to the point is better. You know, a lot of times people try to ramble on,
if it is like a spotter net, you know, that's like, they just need the information,
and they want to get out and go on, you know, do their job, right? So,
now, obviously, if it's a, you know, weekly club meeting on air, and it's just sort of more of a,
you know, weird, or just a normal sort of conversation, also in ham parlance called
a rag-chew, which is a term I personally don't like. But, you know, rag-chew just means to have
a casual conversation. It's another term you'll see.
It's always great when you see a ham on the radio going like, okay, this is tangerine, tomato,
pineapple, Z, H-I.
Yeah, M as in Mancy jumps to mind.
Learn the phonetic alphabet.
Oh, here's a good question in the chat. Do you guys have any stories of people actively trolling
the ham spectrum?
I have one.
How do I?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I know. I was once looking at SCR of 20 Meter Band, and I hear a station in the data
portion speaking. So, it's like, I go there and some Russian station, I recorded, some of my
friend recorded it, but it was like this weird Russian saying thing, bunch of stuff, bunch of
stuff. And a bunch of Russians later got on and tried to speak over this person. So, it was pretty
interesting seeing that happen.
About 15, 18 years ago, yes, there was a guy who was not licensed and initially put up a big
vertical, much like the one you have in the background of your room there, in downtown
Toronto, and was broadcasting on FRS1 at 100 watts, and would bank at the entire city in FRS1
traffic where ham and hams would just take over FRS1. And eventually, he moved over to 46.552
and did the same thing there. But he would go back and forth, he would just stomp over anybody
else he'd hear talking. And I'm not saying I was involved, but a few hams after months of this got
tired of it, triangulated his position, and may have stuck a piece staple into his coax one night
at two in the morning, climbing his tower. That's just what I heard. And I do know that
he came back the next day and fried his face, so he never ever did again.
I'm not sure, it might be ruining the reputation of the friendly Canadian there, but you know.
That's just a story I heard.
Yeah, I mean, I think there are some... if you look online, there are definitely some well-known
people that have caused interference in the ham bans. Some guy, I think out of New York or
something, had a 1.5 kilowatt amp and a Yagi, and would just routinely trash over the bans.
You know, the high-profile ones like that, the FCC in the U.S. does go after them, and they will
issue you very, very large fines. They don't mess around. If you've pissed off enough people,
the government's getting involved. Yeah, it usually doesn't end well. And most of the time,
they're not even hams, but sometimes they are.
That's a great point, Eric. Go online and search for FCC Interference Action Ham Radio or Hampshire
Radio. Just read some of the recaps that the FCC published, some of the behaving hams and some
things they've done. And you'll just read crazy stories about some of the stuff these people have
done, including some pretty crazy fines. I've seen fines, $20,000, $30,000 type fines, confiscation
of it. So like you said, if you piss off enough people for enough time, the FCC will come looking.
It's the same thing in Canada. History Canada will eventually come and find you if you cause
enough mischief out there on the airwaves. Yeah, I don't know if I'd want the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police coming at me asking for my radio. It seems like it'd be bad.
On the other side of malicious intent, there's a lot of people, including businesses,
that are just ignorant. They have no idea. They buy this bow thing, they turn it on.
Hey, housekeeping gets a radio, front desk gets a radio. We've had a local hotel, they were using,
they were tromping on our repeater for two or three months. And we didn't realize it because
we have a tone. But once you go in reverse, it's like, hey, these guys are on our input frequency.
So us as a group, we were like, hey, we didn't get mad. We were wanting to educate these people.
So the whole club finally found out who it was. And club president went down and talked to him
and said, hey, we understand you got some new radios. You are interfering with our communications.
I will help you program your radios so you're not breaking law.
And I think that is a great example of positive ham culture.
Yeah, how many times have you had people going absolutely hog-miled over people doing
something like that. And instead, just be calm, be gracious, just walk them through
what they're doing. Because all these people want to talk. They don't know anything else,
but other than the fact they just want to communicate with each other. So you would
use the time, use your knowledge, use your experience to be nice to other people.
New friends. And you never know, you know, like a hotel, if you could come back six months later
and say, hey, do you think maybe we could put an antenna on the roof there for something?
Yeah, they may say, it's easier to make friends than it is to make enemies. So why not just use
your knowledge and try and help some people understand what they're doing and why they
do it differently.
Definitely.
Yeah, and it's definitely complicated, I think, by the fact that they're... I mean,
the FCC has actually gone after some companies for marketing radios as like, yep, you don't
need a license, just bubble pack radio, open this up and transmit. And the radios are not
actually designed for that. And they were operating in bands that needed licensing,
whether it's business band or, you know, on handbands, things like that. So, you know,
the government has gone after those as well, which is good. But it certainly doesn't help,
right? And just complicates it. And, you know, people, you know, just, you know,
novices who don't have a lot of experience with Zoom, oh, well, the more power, the better,
right? That's all that matters, right? I just need the most powerful radio, I'll put as much
power in the air as I can. And really, that's not the solution. I mean, you know, as you start to
learn more, like adding power is probably like the least effective amount of thing you can do.
It's much more about improving your antenna system and, you know, reducing noise, all that,
that stuff far more effective than just like dumping more power into the problem.
And so you do catch a lot of interference and stuff like that. And you can certainly catch,
you know, electronics these days have a lot of noisy components. So, you know, if you're in a
dense area, it's it can be very common, you know, to have like, oh, you're in something your
neighbors, you know, if they still have a plasma TV, yeah, that's gonna be cause lots of interference.
So it's good to be friendly about that sort of stuff. And not just immediately go and put up
200 foot tower without, you know, talking to your neighbors first, just because the first thing
they're going to do is say, oh, well, this is causing problems, and I don't want to help you
now. Right. So, you know, and now you just just as be as friendly as possible, I think is super
important. Adding more power is a great way to blow things up. Yes, yes. There's a question about
looking for resources for getting into DMR. I'm definitely not the person to answer that.
I guess I can. DMR is one of those things that might be really hard to
understand without just being able to go back and forth and ask your questions.
I would join up with a group, the wireless village discord, the ham radio village discord.
Very helpful folks. They'll help you get online. There's some quick basics you'll need to know,
such as getting a hotspot, getting a radio. But after that, there's just a lot of little things
that could take you days to understand when you could just chat with somebody for 30 minutes and
have a working system. So I definitely definitely suggest going to a community and getting some help
other than that. If you can't, YouTube is a great resource because just reading documentation,
sometimes you don't get the things you need to know, such as a receive list. If you don't add
a receive list, you might be able to talk out fine, but you won't be able to hear anybody.
And a lot of documentation I've read doesn't even mention it. So it's great to get those
little tidbits of information that could make or break your system from somebody that knows.
It's amazing how far it has come even in the last couple of years. I had a couple of
workshops I did a few years ago around monitoring systems, like trunk systems and DMR systems,
things like that. And now, those little pie pie zero, because you can buy 75 bucks,
and then you can buy the AnyTone DMR radio is under $200 now. Surplus Motorola. Yeah,
there you go. There's one right there. And I think that's what's not like $150. It's not very
expensive. It's really simple to get these things on the air and get started with. And I'm,
for one, really excited to see all this digital stuff really take off because it's the next
radio. And as neat as it is to say, you know, do more code and stuff, this is far more useful,
far more practical today. Kind of on a little side note there, kind of going back to what we
were talking about earlier. I said on the club net a couple weeks ago, hey, I have a new DMR
repeater. Those with DMR radios who would like to know more about DMR, come on, get on the repeater,
talk with us. We had a few less ignorant hams. I don't know. I'll just keep using the word
ignorant. That brings me back to that South Park episode. We've had ham say no, club, don't listen
to this guy. You do not want to get into digital radio. Digital radio is not where you want to be.
It's not real radio. And it's just... that very deeply frustrated me. I just let it go.
But there's definitely some pushback from the older ham community.
Yeah. And I mean, I think there is maybe a couple of reasons for that. You know,
it definitely is the bar of entry is much higher, especially, I think, with, you know, DMR.