Tag Archive for 'ham_radio'

28
Nov

Twinlead slim-JIM antenna

I finally finished my first antenna tonight! I made a twinlead slim jim and tried getting on the air. Unfortunately, there aren’t many people on this late on a holiday evening. I was able to make one contact with a gentleman up in Placerville. He reported me 5×5, so I must have been hitting the repeater fairly strong. I’ll try again tomorrow, during the noon net at least.

The only difficulty I found with this design is the feedpoint. Stripping the insulation mid-cable is a little fiddly, but a sharp knife does wonders. When I soldered the coax (RG-58), I should have done the shield first–it was a bear to solder the (stranded) shield once the center conductor was already attached. A pair of “third hands” may have helped.

29
Sep

My callsign

I just realized that I never posted my ham (amateur radio) callsign, something which I meant to do as soon as I received confirmation. It’s:

N3JIM

If you want to know more about radio callsigns (both ham and broadcast), here’s some additional information. The leading “N” is one of the 4 letters assigned to United States radio operators. The other US identifiers are “K”, “W”, and “A”. (K and W are familiar to most people because of broadcast radio and TV station identifiers such as “WGBH” and “KXPR”.)

The “A” designator is a little different, because it’s partially assigned to the US — only “AAx” through “ALx” are for US operators. The rest of the A’s are assigned to about a dozen other countries large and small. See the Allocation of International Call Signs for the complete list.

Broadcast stations are identified by a 3- or 4 letter (only) code, typically Kaaa in the west or Waaa in the east. Ham call signs, at least in the US, include a single digit in the second or third position. The digit normally identifies the part of the country in which the operator was living when their license was granted. See the table “Geographic Region-based Numerals” at the bottom of the FCC Sequential Callsign Systems page. Because I’m in California, my digit should be “6″, but…

I really wanted a 1×3 call sign that ended with my name, “JIM”. The only one that was available when I got my license was N3JIM, so I took it, even though the “3″ would normally be used in Delaware, DC, Maryland or Pennsylvania.

I don’t know if I’d bother switching to K6JIM, N6JIM, or W6JIM if/when any of those came available. It’s probably not worth the trouble, and a few people are starting to recognize N3JIM when I announce. The only downside is occasionally explaining that I really am from California, not somewhere back east. :)

02
Mar

Arden Park hams

I got my amateur radio (”ham”) license last week, but I haven’t posted my callsign very widely because I applied for a vanity callsign as soon as I got my license. (It isn’t possible to apply for a vanity call until one has been granted a license.) It usually takes 18-20 calendar days for a vanity callsign to be granted, so I expect to announce my new call on March 17.

I’m interested in finding other local hams, so I visited QRZ.com and pulled up “my” grid square, CM98ho. The grid doesn’t quite line up with my neighborhood boundaries, so I also needed to look at grid CM98hn for the southern section. The map shows about 20 markers (which may represent more than one person) in Arden Park:

To get to QRZ’s gridmap display, go to QRZ’s search page, enter “grid: CM98ho”, then click on one of the listed callsigns. If that person hasn’t restricted their information, click on the green bar that says “click for more detail”. A map will appear on the right. Click on the “Explore on GridMap” link below the map.




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