Talk:Amateur Radio Network

Purpose of these pages is to help people get Amateur Radio equipment and learn how to use it to form a viable network of international communications to bring people closer together while they are far apart. To help form a FEMA Network that can be useful in good times or bad.

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 11:34 AM, Charley Scarborough <charley.ac7lu@gmail.com> wrote:

In order to set up a nation wide amateur radio net to support HHC, we need at least one licensed operator in each congregation as Gregory has said. These FCC licenses come in three classes or levels named Technician, General and Extra. Applicants must first pass the Technician class before progressing to General and General must be passed before Extra. A nation wide network would have to be composed of folks who'd at least acquired a General class license. Roughly speaking, a Technician license allows one to transmit on the VHF/UHF bands. General class allows limited HF band transmission and Extra class allows full HF band privileges.

A nation wide HHC would need to operate on the 40 and 80 m HF bands, which explains why operators would at least need to acquire HF privileges. The UHF/VHF band are usually only usable for shorter range local communications. Might be great for keeping in touch with the local congregation. A question that often comes up is, would I have to learn international Morse code and the answer to that is no. The code requirement was removed around 10 years ago. Another question I might foresee coming up in this group is what if you're unnumbered and I have to admit I have absolutely no idea how that works. Licenses are currently issued free of charge by the FCC. They are valid for 10 years and renewal is also currently free, although the operator must apply for the renewal.

Licenses examinations are performed by volunteer examiners from either the ARRL or W5YI groups. Website are: http://www.arrl.org/ http://www.w5yi.org/ These volunteers often charge a small fee for administering examinations to cover their cost of complying with FCC requirements and testing materials. The most I've ever hear of anyone charging to take the test is $20 and there are a small number of folks that used to do it for free. These sites offer their own manuals one needs to study in order to pass the tests. I personally used the ARRL manuals, but have had folks tell me the W5YI manuals are better. These sites will also tell you where and when examinations are offered in your area. Usually this will be at a local Ham Radio club, but other organizations offer testing as well.

Once licenses are acquired, the next step is equipment. This would consist of the following: HF Transceiver with microphone HF antenna or antennas for the 40 and 80 m band A 12VDC power supply capable of feeding the transceiver An antenna tuner to match your transceiver to the antenna is often required

Although this brief summary is far from complete, I hope it gives you an idea what you'd need to do to get started. There is already an HHC group dedicated to the topic of communications we could use https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/hhcbroadcasts I'd be glad to help Elmer anyone (Ham speak for mentor) who needs help getting going or has questions. I can be reached via Skype phone at 307-two-five-seven-6789 or email at charley dot AC7LU at gmail dot com.

Charley in Wyoming PS The phone does not work very good, but it does work.