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I realized that I probably post a lot of club stuff and haven't explained this.
So Ham Radio... There's different modes like Side Band, AM, FM (talking on the radio) there's digial, using your computer to send sounds that will be decoded by another computer, there's CW continious wave or Morse Code. Code is sometimes called "the original mode" and the people at FISTS used to say, "talk is cheap, real hams beep!" It's not for everyone... There's different bands, this is how various frequencies have been clustered and called, based on the wavelegnth of the frequency braodly. The 40 meter band is 7 mHz, the 10 meter band is 28mHz, and there are "band plans" that you can find typically put out in American by the Amateyr Radio Relay League or the ARRL.
Now clubs is where we were going and club activities. There are mode specific clubs, and I'm partial to CW or Morse Code. There are band specific clubs like the Ten Ten or 10-10 club that liked 10 meter band. There are even clubs for power levels such as the NAQCC North American QRP CW Club that is for low power morse code operators. The FISTS are a CW club that prides itself on good operating form on the air. SKCC the Straight Key Century Club likes to use only manual "straight keys" no electronic keyers to send Morse Code. The 1st Class Operators Club is for high speed high skill Morse Code, and I'm not that good at it! The Flying Pigs is a QRP or the 4 State QRP club and they don't care what mode you use so long as you're 5 watts or less of power.
Clubs have events. As a member of a club you usually are given a number. I'm member #196 of the NAQCC and when they do an event like a Sprint when members make contact with each other they swap numbers. Clubs like SKCC not only want you to do this with a straight key but collect member numbers to advance in rank. When I started SKCC I was given the number 4045. The idea was that you would try and work other members and get 100 of them. Then you were a Centurion and you'd add a 'C' to your number. I'm 4045c these days, and if I want to go up I need 100 C numbers to get a Senators rank and an "S".. you see it's all a paper chase. Many clubs do Sprints and a sprint is a timed event that usually only lasts an hour or two on a particular date and you want to work as many club members as you can in the time alloted. I'm not crazy, it's just an excuse to pass a few numbers for me and make a few contacts. Some folks treat it as Radio Sport though and they are out to win. There's a leader board and you're ranked by how mamny contacts you made in the sprint. There's a mandatory exchange, that is you must exchange particular data. Often it's a singal report or RST, your SPC the state postal code where you are, in my case NY and your number, though some groups like to use first name and state, or in the case of the RandonGram it's a list of 5 letter groups that you pass to each other or it dosen't count!
I don't do much voice radio so I'm not sure what the equivalent is like, but it makes it more of a sport and not just a net where we get together to talk about stuff. There's the Quarter Century Wireless Association and that's just for hams who've held a license for 25+years. Nets are fun, I liked doing traffic nets where we pass messages or train for emergency but most of the time I'm doing code and it lends itself to this codafied exchange.
Ham Radio is often global in scope so to coordinate we use Universal Time. This does away with the time zones you're in and gives us one clock to sync up with. It's a little confusing here on the east coast as often events start at DDMMYYYY 00:00z so if it's for example an event like a sprint that is published for 14AUG2024 at 00:30-02:30z it's going to start at 20:30 local time on the 13th for me, as that's equivalent to midnight on the 14th Universal Time. You get the hang of it and most groups publish a local time reference to make sure we're all on board! The Flying Pigs are the only group I've seen lately that don't seem to understand how this works and they like to hold the day but still use the Universal time or UTC start time.
So, hope that's a good start at a crash course in radio events and some terms. SKCC is a good group that I recomend to anyone into Morse Code. They do lots of events. Some Sprints like the WES or Weekend End Sprint is from Friday evening till sunday so everyone gets a shot! Very eventful and most also have io.groups so you can be on a mail list and make sure you don't miss anything coming up. It's a sad fact that communication is often where Hams are found lacking. We're surrounded by the means but come up short.
Best 73, de N2QFD AR SK..
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Aug 15 · 4 days ago · 👍 Addison