Ham Radio In Aviation

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Don Fritz

Filing Flight Plan
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Apr 26, 2017
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Don
I was wondering how many ham radio operator - pilots are here. There is an Echolink conference called "Aerolink" that I check all the time but never see anyone logged in. I was wondering if there was any interest in having a weekly net to discuss flying and ham radio. Let me know.
 
I hold an Extra class license but I'm off the air right now. My base radio took a lightning hit and is not repairable. I haven't replaced it yet. I'd enjoy a net, but I might not get my station back up for a while as all my discretionary cash is going into flying lessons right now.
 
Half Fast said:
I hold an Extra class license but I'm off the air right now. My base radio took a lightning hit and is not repairable. I haven't replaced it yet. I'd enjoy a net, but I might not get my station back up for a while as all my discretionary cash is going into flying lessons right now.
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Check into Echolink. It is a conferencing VOip program for hams only. You won't need a radio to check into the net, just a computer or phone. Just a thought. I just got into it a few days ago and check into the Michigan net every Sunday at 8. I have been a ham for about 35 years. N8BZN
 
Interesting the timing of your post, I just flew with an old flight instructor friend yesterday. I ask him if he remembered all the ham radio guys in the 70s that flew so they could talk on radios. He said he did and I suggested the old ham guys have been replaced by geeks who like to play with the stuff in TAA.
 
Don Fritz said:
Check into Echolink. It is a conferencing VOip program for hams only. You won't need a radio to check into the net, just a computer or phone. Just a thought. I just got into it a few days ago and check into the Michigan net every Sunday at 8. I have been a ham for about 35 years. N8BZN
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Yep, I've used Echolink, both from my computer and with my radio through a repeater. Sometimes I take along a handheld when I'm out of town so I can access a repeater with EL and check into nets back home.

But it just ain't the same as HF, talking to Australia with 50W and a piece of wire in the backyard...
 
I have an Eldico Xmtr built in 1956 at 100 watts, a hellicrafters rcvr built in about 1960 into a 6band vertical trap at rooftop. I run CW all over the world and it is pretty cool. I would like to start a net on Echolink. You interested?
 
Extra here who has used Echolink maybe 1/2 dozen times total. Haven't spent the time to get into it, not sure I have the time.
 
N1RN, was initially WN3SBS back in 1974. Got the extra in 1989 (back when it meant something :)).
 
AJ4CM, licensed in 2007. Got the Extra about 45 minutes after getting the General, which I got about 45 minutes after getting the Technician ticket. Used to be active in ARES and as a VE, but work got in the way and I haven't been involved for the last two or three years.

Not interested in contests, but I like working special event stations (Rt 66, 13 colonies, lighthouses, etc.) and someday I'd like to get my WAYLs award. :)
 
I've always thought it'd be fun to work some ham in the air, but I haven't done it yet. I never quite understood Echolink, though... it started as just an exclusive voip service. Once they started including some repeater peerings, sure, don't want to let every Tom, Dick, and Harry on... but it's not quite ham radio.

KE5HHG
 
mkosmo said:
... but it's not quite ham radio.

KE5HHG
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I wouldn't go quite that far. I see it (and use it) as a way of linking repeater systems, and linked repeaters are certainly part of ham radio. Echolink is also a useful tool during emergencies, and emergency comms are a critical part of ham radio.
 
Half Fast said:
I wouldn't go quite that far. I see it (and use it) as a way of linking repeater systems, and linked repeaters are certainly part of ham radio. Echolink is also a useful tool during emergencies, and emergency comms are a critical part of ham radio.
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May as well set up a ham only teamspeak server, then... lol

It's just not radio. It's an internet community of hams... and is now used for using the internet in lieu of radio.
 
I just renewed my license last week. I haven't set up my radios since I moved.... I actually haven't used them for quite a while mainly because I moved out of range of all the people I used to talk to and got busy with other things.

Might be time to bring it back up. Years ago I set up an echolink station and hooked it up to a 2 meter mobile radio. We had one of our local kids on talking to a guy in Germany. I patched them into the local club repeater and we had quite the international exchange going. Echolink can be a lot of fun but I think to really be ham radio it needs to have a real radio on at least one end.
 
Yeah, we used to carry our 2m/440 radios all the time (my wife is also an Advanced class ham). However, cell phones pretty much supplanted the need for that. I've not set up the HF rig since two houses ago. I did have a tentec mobile rig in the car with an outbacker. I may put that back up./
 
I think just playing with the radios is fun on it's own but the internet and cell phones really did suck the practicality right out of it.

I probably have a good case for needing a radio though. Our phone landlines are so bad that after a good rain they short out and the phone often becomes unusable for a day or two. We don't have cell signal on our property unless you stand in just the right spots either. Our road is lightly traveled and I've seen tree limbs fall across the road and not be moved for over a day. So it is conceivable that one nasty thunderstorm could put us in a situation where I might need to use a ham radio to call for help.... although the odds of this are pretty small.
 
mkosmo said:
May as well set up a ham only teamspeak server, then... lol
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You'd be surprised (or maybe not) at the code base underneath most of the popular linking products... ;-)

I've never found "internet headset operating" to be all that interesting, but have used internet to link RF things at either end of the IP pipe, quite a bit.

However, one form of internet linked headset operating is interesting... folks who've remoted their home shack and tower farm to a laptop so they can sit on the beach and drink a beer while operating... hahaha... Talked to a guy doing that during a 6 meter opening a few years ago.
 
denverpilot said:
You'd be surprised (or maybe not) at the code base underneath most of the popular linking products... ;-)

I've never found "internet headset operating" to be all that interesting, but have used internet to link RF things at either end of the IP pipe, quite a bit.

However, one form of internet linked headset operating is interesting... folks who've remoted their home shack and tower farm to a laptop so they can sit on the beach and drink a beer while operating... hahaha... Talked to a guy doing that during a 6 meter opening a few years ago.
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That I can get behind. The core of it is still radio. It'd be cooler to actually operate from a beach, but sometimes you want to be on the beach but not actually have to set it up. I have no problem with using the internet as a tool in ham, but using the internet instead of ham isn't ham is all.
 
mkosmo said:
That I can get behind. The core of it is still radio. It'd be cooler to actually operate from a beach, but sometimes you want to be on the beach but not actually have to set it up. I have no problem with using the internet as a tool in ham, but using the internet instead of ham isn't ham is all.
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Agreed. It's one of the reasons I helped with the IRLP project for years and years and pretty much ignored EchoLink. Well that and I was a Linux guy. Using an entire Windows box to stream 8K or 33K audio seemed overkill. Still does.

(And it's just a hacked version of speekfreely for Unix... with a connection auth scheme wrapped around it. Replace spacebar with COS signal from the parallel port... and trigger PTT whenever an audio stream of packets is being received... back when it started... of course it's been ported to the RaspberryPi and GPIO pins these days.)
 
Since I was a kid. Extra. Interest has come and gone through the years. I have an old ten tec Triton II I fire up now and then hand out a few field day contacts or just see if it still works. My latest spurt of interest a few years ago was doing some QRP. Built a few Pixies and Rockmite have worked out to about 800 miles with them considering my antenna is a compromise. The pixie admittedly I needed to use my Triton II or a WebSDR on the receive side. The Rockmite works much better. Have not done much in the last few years.
 
I know a ham that lives here in central Florida part of the year, and in the UK the rest. Several times I've talked with him while I was driving home, using the 2m rig in the car and a local repeater while he was on a 2m repeater in the UK, with Echolink connecting the two repeaters.

You can say "it's not ham radio" but we were both using ham radios at either end of the QSO. More importantly, we were having fun, and that's the main point of a hobby.

Do I enjoy HF DX more? Sure! But my 75m dipole doesn't fit my MINI Cooper very well. :)
 
N6TPT here. Also an Extra. Didn't help me at all when I was learning to fly in 2000. My CFI was a ham, as well. You'd think I could talk on a radio, but that first transmission as a student pilot probably still has the controllers in the tower at KOLM laughing. :)
 
It took some convincing to my CFI that I could ID the VORs without having to look at the little morse code symbols on the chart.

Amusingly, I was in the back seat when my wife and her instructor were out doing some dual XC work. They were having a hard time with the EMI VOR. The ID was going continuously during all this. I finally had to point out to them that it was sending TEST. My wife is an Advanced Class ham (and this was back when they still required morse code).
 
Ex WA6NXL WA7ESD, HL9VL I simply forgot to renew until the grace period had expired. I had an advanced class. Code always sucked for me. I copied exactly 13 words when I took the General test back when the FCC gave it. If 13 WPM and one single additional letter had been required I would have failed. :)
 
I remember when you had to go to the FCC to take the written and code test. 45 minute drive to park in downtown Detroit at 7:30 in the morning. What fun! There are a lot of easy ways to get a license today and we have fewer hams. I bought a lot of used commercial crap and rebuilt it for ham bands. Today they want to buy a box and open it. Things sure have changed.

Does anyone know who runs the areolink conference in echolink? I would like to start a weekly net for pilots. Lemeno

I log into the areolink conference often if you would like to log in and send a text message so it alerts me.

Thanx

Don
N8BZN
N6904M
 
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I've always been mediocre at CW but can hack my way through if need be.

Need be meaning "Aww crap, I really need that grid square on 220 MHz and UHF!" Haha. I don't go in the shack and do CW for fun. Have friends who do, and I appreciate it and their skill. No skin off my nose.

But...

I won't even post here even with the profanity filter what I told an old coot at a VE Team I was trying to volunteer to help out many years ago when he mistook my two by one for an old timer call, and proceeded to rant and whine about the low code ops, the hobby going to hell, all the usual horsecrap.

My response may have included telling him to fornicate with himself as I hung up on him. Perhaps. Along with specific bodily positions to try since he was already in a cranial-rectal inversion position and it'd be easier.

:)

They held VE sessions two blocks from my old house within walking distance the entire twelve years I lived there. I never darkened their door and told everyone to go elsewhere if they could.

Hopefully the old prick is dead by now. Seriously. Don't need that crap in the hobby.
 
denverpilot said:
I won't even post here even with the profanity filter what I told an old coot at a VE Team I was trying to volunteer to help out many years ago when he mistook my two by one for an old timer call, and proceeded to rant and whine about the low code ops, the hobby going to hell, all the usual horsecrap.
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LOL!! (...or I should say, HIHI)

That reminds me of an exchange I had on one of the ham forums a few years ago. There was an extended "old coot" rant going on about code requirements going away, so I added my own "new coot" rant. Written in the same tone, I went on for a couple of paragraphs ranting about the people on digital modes who had zero typing skills. I complained about how these "hunt-&-peck" hams slow down comms, clog up the bands with their slow character generation, seem to peck out about 3 words and 10 mistakes per minute, etc., etc. I then proposed that we replace the old code test with a typing test, setting a minimum of 25wpm typing rate.

Nobody seemed to like the idea..... :)

73!
AJ4CM
 
Don Fritz said:
I remember when you had to go to the FCC to take the written and code test. 45 minute drive to park in downtown Detroit at 7:30 in the morning. What fun! ...
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Been there, done that (Detroit, 1980 or so). My mom drove me down there (I was only 13).

I still have my novice study materials from 1980.
 
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