SeldomSeen

I now have learned and used all of the letters except Q,X,Y and Z. Those come tomorrow. I can send at 10 wpm and receive at about five with a character speed of 15 wpm. I don't thing that's too bad for only six days of study. But there is a problem however. Every time I use the letter 'V' (...-) The first few minutes of Beethoven's Symphony no. 5 goes through my head for the next half hour.

I passed the Tech exam this morning by remote! I missed one question. Now it's time for some serious thought about which radio. That FT-991a is sure tempting but I may just start out simple with a dual-band unit.

Marc et all: I think you just boosted the gain on my motivation.

I passed the Tech exam this morning by remote! I missed one question. Now it's time for some serious thought about which radio. That FT-991a is sure tempting but I may just start out simple with a dual-band unit.

Update:
 
Now my base radio is a fine simple analog dual-band IC-2730A with a Diamond X-50A antenna. Six repeaters and a few simplex folks can be reached despite being in a valley. I joined a local club and have participated in their interesting twice weekly nets. They are a nice bunch of folks. The rest of the time their repeater is almost totally unused. Other repeaters have the occasional mobile during the day and a couple of small groups that talk daily.  Ninety some percent of the talk is about radio equipment. I consider myself to be eclectic and would like to converse about various other topics. Like Hamlet said: "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreampt of in your philosophy." That doesn't seem very likely though. I like DOCSGMRS's idea of more involvement with GMRS. It's certainly worth another look. I may have to get something more powerful than my Wouxin KG-805G though. And there's always HF and the general ticket down the road. Possibly. Maybe. I can't say for sure.

This reply is in response to the OP question ... Here’s another perspective  ... I tested and passed my Tech license in Nov 2017. Prior to that, I went to a local Ham club meetings in hopes of meeting and interacting with other Hams. After an introduction to the group, there was little interaction and discussion, I felt invisible.  I attended meetings for three months and finally just stopped going.  I had a BaoFung radio which was a pain to figure out but I finally got it working.  The local repeater was silent ... I’d sign on as monitoring and listen to the repeater call sign.  Crickets.  I got the big C, retired, and put the radio in a box for two years because I had other priorities.  It was like starting over but I did a lot of reading and decided to give it a try again.  I ditched the BF and got a Yaesu FT-70 and found a much more useable handheld.  I was in Arizona now and again attempted to get things going. Current situation did not allow face to face meetings, and I did get logged into a club net meeting ... much better response, actually had my first conversation with another Ham while I switchEd antennas and checked the response.  After that, crickets on the local repeater, so I scanned the spectrum and listened to the local aircraft traffic pattern and other freqs with activity.  I blundered on to the the local GMRS repeater by accident.  I found an active group of users and just listened ... after a month or so of listening, I decided to get my GMRS license and do what I wanted to do on the radio in the first place - communicate with people and family in my area.  I didn’t have an interest in building or tweeking or exploring technical opportunities ... I wanted to turn it on and talk.  I wanted to communicate and my experience was limited or no communication on the amateur bands.  GMRS did that for me.  Ham was just a no show ... my face to face interactions with my first Ham club didn’t help.  So, this is another perspective on Amateur vs. GMRS ... BTW, I’m still an ARRL member but not sure why at this point.

Have a look at this set up. It's temporary but putting it up and down would be a snap.  https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/mfj-1982mp-end-fed-antenna.705831/

I now have learned and used all of the letters except Q,X,Y and Z. Those come tomorrow. I can send at 10 wpm and receive at about five with a character speed of 15 wpm. I don't thing that's too bad for only six days of study. But there is a problem however. Every time I use the letter 'V' (...-) The first few minutes of Beethoven's Symphony no. 5 goes through my head for the next half hour.

I spent some time studying the manual for my HT last night and discovered that I wasn't enabling the repeater tone encoder for some of the saved frequencies. Remember, I'm brand spanking new at this. Today I found the sweet spot on the roof and made my first QSOs on three different 2m repeaters. They said I was a good 4 1/2 with just 7W and a (no need ground plane) mobile antenna. That was a total surprise! I'm pretty sure I could also nail some 70cm repeaters. There are a lot of them out there. Now, that do it all FT-991a ain't lookin' too bad.

Everyone I have met has been cool you are trying to learn CW. Some are bitter that they had to struggle with it to simply get a "Novice". I would just spin the dial and find some one else. Sometimes, even posting to a forum asking about a practice partner for "slow CW" will net some one to chat with via CW. Once you learn it you need to use it or you will lose it shortly.
 
I have been using this smartphone app "morse toad" . 
 
Rather then learning the dit/dashes that correspond to a letter, listen to the tone patterns in your head and do a copy. A ham in my neighborhood (doesn't live here, travels a lot and is using his friend's address) pretty much is strictly CW. If you are musically inclined he said he has seen new user have an easier time with it. Instead of going ".-." equals R in your head and write it down. He said you should try and train so ".-." sound is trained in your head as "R". It is hard to explain in text. You kinda will understand what I am trying to say, if you speak a second language where you are trying to translate the foreign word in your head to your native language, is what you want to avoid. Instead you want to be able to see and apple and instantly translate into apple in any\ language. VIDEO OF WHAT I WAS TRYING TO EXPLAIN.
 
Also, I have this as a visual reference. It may help you also.

Don't worry about it. Switch to another repeater or use the VFO to find somebody else to talk to. The crappy attitude was at its height around the time the FCC dropped the CW requirement for all license classes. There were endless debates, some still going on, about the merits of dropping or not dropping the CW requirements. Some of the old timers hated that change, and likely will never get over it. I guess they though of it as a some kind of exclusive club. If that was what they valued most then they got into Ham radio for the wrong reason. Go out, make contacts and have fun.

There are a ton of encoders and decoders out there, but if another operator is free-handing it and is not transmitting in a consistent speed, they fail to copy correctly.
 
Yes old-timers and people who took the time to learn will give you grief. But many of those same people will brag about all of their unattended, automatic FT8 contacts to Japan when they were sleeping. So I wouldn't sweat it.
 
There really is no way of gauging how many people use automatic tools, but I'm willing to say it's a lot. Especially since many HF radios made in the last 20 years have memory slots for pre-programmed words and phrases that are used often.

Those things are frowned up. There are gun laws, drug laws and laws in general that are broken by people all day long. You'll learn where to stay away from and again just adopt the mentality of " spin the vfo". You can't unfortunately, change other people only yourself. You can make some awesome friends on HF even if it is only for a few minutes. Don't let those type of things discourage you. Your are going to see the same issues with any hobby, group of people or the likes. To loosely quote the Simpsons "like people some of them are just jerks". Just the nature of things. You are going to find the chill, the angry, the elitist, the lazy, it's just life. You'll find them all. Makes life interesting!
 
Here is another CW study tool. http://www.g4fon.net/

Marc et all: I think you just boosted the gain on my motivation.

I just ordered a Yaesu FTM-7250DR Dual Band radio, base antenna, p/s, cord and LM240 coax today from Universal Radio. After a ton of research on the Internet this radio seemed like a good starter setup. I should get my call sign today or tomorrow. For an HT I will eventually get something like the Yaesu FT-65R.

I passed the Tech exam this morning by remote! I missed one question. Now it's time for some serious thought about which radio. That FT-991a is sure tempting but I may just start out simple with a dual-band unit.

I passed the Tech exam this morning by remote! I missed one question. Now it's time for some serious thought about which radio. That FT-991a is sure tempting but I may just start out simple with a dual-band unit.

Perhaps I should obtain a technician and general class ticket after all. That way you get both HF and FM and only need to purchase one radio. I am not interested in digital over the Internet communications. That just seems so millennial. I wouldn't know an iPad from an ink pad and have never even owned a cell phone (no cell towers in my valley).

Perhaps I should obtain a technician and general class ticket after all. That way you get both HF and FM and only need to purchase one radio. I am not interested in digital over the Internet communications. That just seems so millennial. I wouldn't know an iPad from an ink pad and have never even owned a cell phone (no cell towers in my valley).

Marc et all: I think you just boosted the gain on my motivation.

Regardless of how this turns out, the exam will still be taken. Learning new things is a lifelong passion for me. At sixty-nine however there is not a moment to lose.

GMRS - mainly talking to people you know within a limited distance - 2 - 50 miles. (unless you are in N GA). Mostly utilitarian communications.
 
ham - mainly talking to people you don't know (unless local repeaters and simplex VHF/UHF). Mostly experimental communications. Last weekend I talked 250 miles on VHF with an omni-directional antenna. That same evening some people with beams were getting 800 miles. All done via FM mode.

Great points!  I forgot to mention that most of my VHF DX stuff is upper side band.  Its a great mode.  The transceivers don't run as hot, have a higher duty cycle and are much more efficient than FM or AM.

One thing that VHF and UHF ham radio has over GMRS is the ability to use modes other than FM.
 
Keep in mind that it is a whole different world on 2-meter and 70cm when you start playing with CW, (Morse code), TV, (yes, Television), Data, (Packet, APRS), FAX imaging, AM, and single-sideband phone modes.  You will find that there are thousands of other hams playing with those modes also.

Regardless of how this turns out, the exam will still be taken. Learning new things is a lifelong passion for me. At sixty-nine however there is not a moment to lose.