Speaker 1: A seriously dumb question in Ham radio. Now, let me
Speaker 1: tell you something. There are no such things as dumb questions. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this right off the bat. This
Speaker 1: is an article I found and the title of it
Speaker 1: is seriously dumb question? Why question mark? There's a Reddit
Speaker 1: article and I think and it's it's answered very well
Speaker 1: by folks on Reddit. But I don't think there are
Speaker 1: such things as dumb questions. Don't let anyone tell you your
Speaker 1: question is dumb. If you have a question about Ham radio,
Speaker 1: you're welcome to ask it on this channel. Join us
Speaker 1: on discord Hamdradio two dot com forward slash Discord for
Speaker 1: any and all hand radio questions. We're going to read
Speaker 1: this one and I want to know what you guys
Speaker 1: think about it. Check this out. So this is the
Speaker 1: the article right here, written by our region fifty eight
Speaker 1: oh four. Okay, he says, I've had my ticket for
Speaker 1: quite some time, and I like, I still feel like
Speaker 1: I know nothing about Ham radio. I have all the equipment,
Speaker 1: dabble with HF. I spend some time listening to and
Speaker 1: Raghewing on two meters seventy centimeter, but over the years
Speaker 1: I have never really gotten into it like I was hoping.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, I foolishly always feel judged when
Speaker 1: I'm keying up and trying to start a conversation. I
Speaker 1: know that's on me now. That's a very real thing.
Speaker 1: Mike Fright is a very real thing. And being a
Speaker 1: ham radio operator for thirty years myself, I still feel
Speaker 1: that sometimes. I still feel that sometimes if I'm driving
Speaker 1: around in a new area, if I find a new repeater,
Speaker 1: or if I find it more likely if I find
Speaker 1: a repeater or a simplex frequency where a conversation is
Speaker 1: already going and there might be a pause or break
Speaker 1: in there somewhere, and I might feel like joining in
Speaker 1: the conversation. Sometimes I get Mike fright. But we need
Speaker 1: to get over that. Me, you, we all need to
Speaker 1: get over that. I've issued my twenty twenty five repeater challenge.
Speaker 1: Key up your repeater once a day, make a log,
Speaker 1: send it to me at the end of the month.
Speaker 1: Somebody's gonna win a new mobile radio at the end
Speaker 1: of at least the first three or four months of
Speaker 1: the year. More importantly, I have a question, he says. Okay, again,
Speaker 1: I don't really think your question is silly at all.
Speaker 1: I think this is a very good question. When you
Speaker 1: are driving around and in an area you don't know,
Speaker 1: sort of looking up repeaters on your phone and then
Speaker 1: programming the radio in accordingly. Why are the radios not
Speaker 1: smart enough to find local repeaters, figure out the input
Speaker 1: and output frequency and the CTCSS tone. Why can't you
Speaker 1: key a frequency and if there's a repeater, it can't
Speaker 1: discover the correct settings and just work. I always end
Speaker 1: up filling my memory slots with dozens of repeaters I
Speaker 1: will never hit across all the states that I travel.
Speaker 1: Most of the time those repeaters are either offline or
Speaker 1: the info is outdated and wrong. Seems like there should
Speaker 1: be a way to just go key and go am
Speaker 1: I being just being an idiot because this magic already
Speaker 1: exists or I just never explored my radio enough to know. Well.
Speaker 1: Two thoughts on that number one that really kind of
Speaker 1: does exist. The problem is the info you're getting is
Speaker 1: not kept up very well. So there's two ways to
Speaker 1: look at this. Number One. You can load repeater databases
Speaker 1: into Icon radios, and I believe you can do it
Speaker 1: in Yazoo radios as well. Admittedly, I've never actually played
Speaker 1: around with that very much. It's something I should do
Speaker 1: if you guys think that is a good video for
Speaker 1: me to demonstrate a repeater database loading looking up the
Speaker 1: call when you're traveling, because you can add a GPS
Speaker 1: dongle to the icon mighty fifty one hundred, which is
Speaker 1: what I have in the truck, and I believe you
Speaker 1: can add it to some of the Yazu models FtM
Speaker 1: five hundred and two, I think. But then the GPS
Speaker 1: tells your radio where you are, and it says, okay,
Speaker 1: everything within a twenty five or a fifty mile radius,
Speaker 1: here's all your repeater lists. You load it onto an
Speaker 1: SD card from your computer, put it in your radio.
Speaker 1: Your radio has that in memory now, and it just
Speaker 1: follows the GPS signal and it can do that. The
Speaker 1: problem is that a lot of those repeaters that you're
Speaker 1: downloading on the SD card, the information is not up
Speaker 1: kept by the repeater owner. It's all up to the
Speaker 1: repeater owner to update the information. Some of it's done
Speaker 1: by aborl some of it's done by hand radio clubs
Speaker 1: if it's a club owned repeater, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it's done by the individual repeater owner, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it is not updated. So it's a it's kind
Speaker 1: of a catch twenty two. You can load all this
Speaker 1: information in your radio. Is it up kept very well?
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not. A lot of radios will do CTCSS
Speaker 1: tone searches. You can go into a certain menu and
Speaker 1: can search the tone. Now, there has to be activity
Speaker 1: coming back to you for the radio to hear, but
Speaker 1: you can click on a button in the menu and
Speaker 1: it'll say search tone and it will find that CTCSS
Speaker 1: tone that that repeater needs. There's also, especially on two
Speaker 1: meters because two meters so narrow banded, there's also a
Speaker 1: list of most commonly used frequencies throughout the nation. Like
Speaker 1: you can get probably twenty or thirty maybe not that many,
Speaker 1: ten to twenty frequencies on the two meter band that
Speaker 1: are used everywhere. Because you got to remember, if you
Speaker 1: have a repeater on let's say my local two meter
Speaker 1: repeater here is one forty seven one hundred megahertz. Now
Speaker 1: put a comment blow if you have a repeater near
Speaker 1: you that's on that same frequency. That repeater near me,
Speaker 1: which is a hearst Amateur Radio Club W five HRC
Speaker 1: is the call sign on it. That repeater here will
Speaker 1: reach twenty thirty maybe forty miles on a good day.
Speaker 1: If we've got some VHF ducting, it might reach one
Speaker 1: hundred miles, okay, But normally speaking it covers the Dallas
Speaker 1: Fort Worth metroplex and not much further. So people in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City aren't going to hear it. People in Texarcana
Speaker 1: aren't gonna hear it. People down in Austin, Houston, San Antonio,
Speaker 1: you're not going to hear it. So there's other repeaters
Speaker 1: on that same frequency in other areas, and they're all
Speaker 1: twenty thirty, forty, fifty miles reaching. Some of them that
Speaker 1: are on higher towers reach up a lot taller than that.
Speaker 1: If you have a mountain range in your area, then
Speaker 1: you're going to reach out a lot farther than that.
Speaker 1: So it really depends on how far the repeater can reach,
Speaker 1: how far up it is. You have to submit all
Speaker 1: that information when you register. Yeah, when you register repeater
Speaker 1: with whatever registration service, you use height of the antenna
Speaker 1: output power EARP effective something radiation power, which is basically
Speaker 1: the dB gain of your antenna multiplied by the output
Speaker 1: of the repeater fifty watts, hundred wats, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: My point is that frequency can be used over and
Speaker 1: over again throughout the United States, and there's a list
Speaker 1: of repeater frequencies that are commonly used, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a terrible idea to put those frequencies into your radio.
Speaker 1: Maybe I will compile a list and try to put
Speaker 1: something like that together for you guys. So, once again,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a dumb question at all. I
Speaker 1: think that's a very good question. And this first comment here,
Speaker 1: forget about repeater listings in programming, you are right, is
Speaker 1: mostly a complete waste of time. What I do when
Speaker 1: visiting a new area is put out an interesting call
Speaker 1: on one forty six five to two simplex and try
Speaker 1: to scare up a local or two. Then I ask
Speaker 1: what the most used repeater in the areas when local
Speaker 1: net time and when local net times are, and then
Speaker 1: I program that data by hand if needed. In most
Speaker 1: urban areas there are often a small hindfluo stations monitoring
Speaker 1: the call frequency. I would like to believe that's true.
Speaker 1: I have trouble believing that's true, but I think it's
Speaker 1: becoming more true if we go down through this, and
Speaker 1: I'll put a link to this in the description below.
Speaker 1: All of this and these people are a lot of
Speaker 1: people are talking about calling monitoring one forty six five two,
Speaker 1: which is a national simplex calling frequency for two meter
Speaker 1: simplex two meter FM simplex, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: comments are about the calling frequency. But let me tell
Speaker 1: you something. So I initiated my twenty twenty five repeater
Speaker 1: challenge to you, and what we really didn't talk about
Speaker 1: during that repeater challenge is the repeater challenge in a nutshell,
Speaker 1: is to key up your local repeater once a day,
Speaker 1: make a log of it, send me the log at
Speaker 1: the end of the month, and I'm gonna pick a winner,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna win a brand new mobile radio, dual
Speaker 1: band mobile radio. This is for local comms. This is
Speaker 1: for when you're in your home area you have a
Speaker 1: home local repeater, trying to get more activity in the
Speaker 1: home local repeater. On top of that, what we all
Speaker 1: should be doing, all of us, all of us should
Speaker 1: be doing this, especially on road trips. If you are
Speaker 1: on a road trip, you should be monitoring one forty
Speaker 1: six five to two and you should be periodically calling
Speaker 1: out throwing at your call sign on one forty six
Speaker 1: five to two on a regular basis. I do this
Speaker 1: I monitor one forty six five to two. I don't
Speaker 1: throw out my call sign as often as I do.
Speaker 1: My personal goal for twenty twenty five is to start
Speaker 1: doing that more. But there's been two or three times
Speaker 1: where I've been testing radios in this shack over the
Speaker 1: last two or three months over here, and I was
Speaker 1: doing a test on one forty six five two, and
Speaker 1: I had people come, and I'm like, wow, there's people
Speaker 1: actually listing. Throw out your call sign sometimes and see
Speaker 1: what kind of information you could drum up. Throw out
Speaker 1: your call sign sometimes on one forty six top five
Speaker 1: to two, and see what kind of information you can
Speaker 1: stir up. This comment right here is a perfect example
Speaker 1: what I was talking about. It doesn't quite do what
Speaker 1: you're looking, what you're asking. But with the icon ID
Speaker 1: fifty one hundred, which again is what I is my
Speaker 1: main radio in my truck right now, I can load
Speaker 1: up a bunch of repeaters ahead of time with their coordinates.
Speaker 1: Then I'll use the GPS to tell me the closest ones.
Speaker 1: Still have to load them ahead of time. There isn't
Speaker 1: a utility for that, so I'll just save off a
Speaker 1: few different ones if I need to. Just got the
Speaker 1: radio on Friday. I haven't played with this because I
Speaker 1: don't have an SD card reader, but this was a
Speaker 1: big thing that pushed me towards this radio, and a
Speaker 1: commenter replied says, I believe the ID fifty two can
Speaker 1: do this. Also, yes it can. Blue Cat does something
Speaker 1: similar for the IC seven thousand and seventy one hundred.
Speaker 1: Several Yazoos also, Yes, ID fifty one which does that.
Speaker 1: That feature was the thing that pushed me toard this
Speaker 1: rado just got my SD card working. It was super
Speaker 1: easy to add fifteen hundred of my closest repeaters, scan
Speaker 1: near looks like my GPS, and scans all the repeaters
Speaker 1: within one hundred miles. It was easy and I couldn't
Speaker 1: be happier with the purchase. Okay, so the Icon mighty
Speaker 1: fifty one hundred will do this. I think there's a
Speaker 1: way to do it on the Yazoo. Also, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to look that up. Admittedly I don't I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of experience with doing that. Let me
Speaker 1: know if that's something you guys would like to see.
Speaker 1: Do you want to see a video on that. I'll
Speaker 1: go learn it because I've told you several times that
Speaker 1: I learned more than you do because I could go
Speaker 1: learn something before I make a video about it, which
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Speaker 1: them that ham Radio two point zero sent you this
Speaker 1: right here was probably my most favorite comment. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to call anyone out, but I'm not
Speaker 1: calling you out. This commentary is okay, get your general
Speaker 1: It opens up the entire world. No repeaters or other
Speaker 1: infrastructure necessary. Okay, he's not wrong. This comment was the
Speaker 1: one that I like. Man, this is like the worst
Speaker 1: answer ever. Is there a technical reason why this thing
Speaker 1: on VHF can't happen? Simply get HF Radio and upgrade
Speaker 1: your license. Why is this subreddit obsessed with you brought
Speaker 1: the wrong car? Answers to why is my car doing this?
Speaker 1: I completely agree with that getting your upgrade to general
Speaker 1: and extra is an excellent idea, but we need to
Speaker 1: be more receptive to people's questions with vhf UHF Again,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this twenty twenty five repeater challenge. I want
Speaker 1: us to use our repeaters more. We've got a ton
Speaker 1: of repeaters out there. Guys, there's a ton of repeaters
Speaker 1: out there. I get comments all the time about how
Speaker 1: they don't get used. So let's start using our repeaters.
Speaker 1: Let's make a list of useful repeaters. People that are
Speaker 1: driving around in new areas, Okay, if there's activity on
Speaker 1: your repeater, maybe there's a it's gonna scan through the
Speaker 1: two meter band or the full forty band and they'll
Speaker 1: pick you up and start talking to you. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you've got more activity on your repeater.
Speaker 1: But it's up to you and I the local HAM
Speaker 1: radio operators in that area to use our repeaters. We
Speaker 1: need to use our repeaters more. We need to use
Speaker 1: our repeaters more. Key up your repeater every day. Pick
Speaker 1: a repeater, Pick four repeaters if you want to say,
Speaker 1: well there's four near me. Good key all those up
Speaker 1: every once a day, or at least pick one to
Speaker 1: key up every day and the other three key up
Speaker 1: at least once a week. Key up your repeater throughout
Speaker 1: your call sign, and see what kind of conversations you
Speaker 1: can get into. The long and short of it is
Speaker 1: that there are radios that will do this sort of
Speaker 1: kind of like you're talking, but not really. You have
Speaker 1: to load the database into the radio like the icon does,
Speaker 1: and you download it from a dstar info dot net
Speaker 1: I think is the website, and it loads the d
Speaker 1: Star repeaters onto your SD card, but it loads up
Speaker 1: all the analog stuff too, So it downloads a database,
Speaker 1: loads it onto an SD card, You put it the
Speaker 1: st card in the radio, and then the radio will
Speaker 1: tell you what's near you. Okay, So you do have
Speaker 1: to add a GPS dongle to the ID fifty one
Speaker 1: hundred because it doesn't come with it by factory default.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you can Bluetooth D or not.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'ma have to research that. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff the ID fifty one hundred does that
Speaker 1: I've never even touched on. Okay, I got several repeaters
Speaker 1: programmed in my own radio, but it will totally do this.
Speaker 1: You can load databases in there are the databases maintained
Speaker 1: sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think the answer of monitoring
Speaker 1: one forty six five two and asking local hams what
Speaker 1: the repeaters are in that situation, I think that's a
Speaker 1: great idea. I think that's a great idea. If you're
Speaker 1: in the North Texas area or in the Galveston area,
Speaker 1: I can tell you what are some really really good
Speaker 1: repeaters in those areas. You guys, have a repeater in
Speaker 1: your area that is a good repeater, whether it's used
Speaker 1: or not. Quote a comment below, let me know what
Speaker 1: the repeater is, what the frequency is, if you think
Speaker 1: it's one that should be. If you're thinking this repeater
Speaker 1: is an excellent it's got great coverage, it sounds really good,
Speaker 1: well maintained, but nobody ever uses it. Put a location
Speaker 1: and a frequency and a pl tone in the description.
Speaker 1: Blow we'll see if we can get something a little
Speaker 1: bit more going on that. So thanks for watching today.
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