Turkey day travels 2021

[WROA675]

Hello everyone, hopefully y'all enjoyed the long holiday weekend and were able to spend quality time with friends and family. 

My daughter and I traveled north for a family gathering outside of Arroyo Grande (California) and the day before I eagerly programmed my DB20G with the repeaters I thoughts I'd hit along the way (5 north and 166 west), thanks to the mygmrs repeater list.

I was able to hit three of them (out of seven) and make a couple of contacts and on two of those I made a couple of contacts (hello, Greg and Steve) the whole trip.

Shout out to Rugged Radio for their repeater set up, it has great range.

Interestingly enough, I was quite surprised that I didn't come across more traffic on the radio and how some spots seemed very quiet, almost void(New Cuayma, Taft), where no gmrs or ham(PAPA system) was traffic to be heard. Not surprising was the reaction I got from some family members when sharing details about GMRS and my new radios (oh that's nice, pass the potatoes please ). However, all the kids did have fun with the 4 radios I did bring, not including the mobile (2 frs & 2 gmrs HT's).

Returning home via a different route (101 south and the 126 east), there was also a noticeable lack of CB traffic. Was able to make three contact on my Andy II. Saw a lot of truckers with antennas on their rigs, and just as many with no antennas, so I'm not sure what's going on there. 

All in all, it was a great roadtrip and time together with the kinfolk. As for radio traffic or the lack thereof, I attribute it to the holidays as most people may not have been on the radio as much because of the holidays. I believe GMRS is growing, based on the many forums I've seen, here and social media, and new stations popping up daily. The chicken band seems to be struggling though, yet it might still be more popular in certain regions of the country. 

Well, that's it for now. Let's keep radio alive and if you hear someone looking for a signal check as they're traveling through your area of operation, key up and say hello...cause it might just be me. 

73

[WyoJoe]

I've found with radio while traveling is that you have to be in the right place at the right time. Unless someone is involved in a long ragchew as you're passing through, the radio seems to be pretty quiet. I occasionally monitor the "KERN System" and sometimes it's silent for hours at a time, yet at other times, it's quite busy. During this holiday weekend, it's been pretty quiet when I've listened to it.

I haven't looked at the numbers, but I suspect there aren't a lot of GMRS users in the Taft and Cuyama areas. My experience shows that there may be only about one GMRS licensee for every 10 or more ham licensees. Other than on my family's personal repeater, the only place I've heard traffic on a GMRS repeater is in L.A. where there are a lot of users.

I've found the same thing with CB. Unless there are a couple of people ragchewing, local traffic on the radio is basically nonexistent. About the only time I hear much of anything is when there are traffic problems on the freeway, and even then there isn't a lot of traffic.

The airwaves are a lot like our roadways. It's often nice to have the road to yourself, but it does feel lonely when you don't see any other cars around. In some ways, it's kind of nice to have the airwaves mostly to yourself, too, but only as long as you have someone else to talk to when you want to talk.

Like you, my experience is that the family's interest has mostly been passive. I think the biggest problem for me is that most of my family is spread out to where we are out of range of each other for CB, GMRS, and UHF/VHF ham bands. In order to use the radio to talk to each other, we would need to use either a linked system or HF (which would likely require they get at least a General class ham license). We would probably also have to call each other to find out when we would be on the air, so we could coordinate our contacts. This kind of defeats the whole purpose of radio, since we could just talk on the phone in that case.

It would be good to have the ability to use radio in the event of a major disaster, which where we are would most likely be a major earthquake. In such an event, I will likely scan CB and GMRS frequencies, and the local ham repeaters. If I need to reach someone by radio, most likely, it'll be on a ham repeater as that's where most of the radio traffic seems to be.

[MichaelLAX]

1 hour ago, WyoJoe said:

I occasionally monitor the "KERN System" and sometimes it's silent for hours at a time, yet at other times, it's quite busy. 

 

Every time I dial over to Frazer Mountain, I hear that female voice reminding me how limited the solar batteries are on the KERN System and I feel guilty and do not key up! 

We're trying to get @Papatreeup and running on that repeater as soon as he passes his Technician test next month! 

[WyoJoe]

34 minutes ago, MichaelLAX said:

Every time I dial over to Frazer Mountain, I hear that female voice reminding me how limited the solar batteries are on the KERN System and I feel guilty and do not key up! 

We're trying to get @Papatreeup and running on that repeater as soon as he passes his Technician test next month! 

Michael, I know what you mean. She interrupts almost every conversation I hear on that repeater! It's a little better now, though, because you can talk over her if she interrupts you. It used to be that she would talk over you in that case, but it's been changed (for the better, IMO).

The funny thing is that she says to limit your QSOs to 20 minutes, but she doesn't say anything about additional QSOs immediately following...

[WyoJoe]

Another funny thing: right after I clicked send on my last message, she came on the air within about 30 seconds!

[MichaelLAX]

10 minutes ago, WyoJoe said:

Another funny thing: right after I clicked send on my last message, she came on the air within about 30 seconds!

Her ears wiggled! 

[wayoverthere]

1 hour ago, WyoJoe said:

Another funny thing: right after I clicked send on my last message, she came on the air within about 30 seconds!

She heard you talking about her! I hear her on the Buck Rock machine as well.

[WyoJoe]

13 hours ago, wayoverthere said:

She heard you talking about her! I hear her on the Buck Rock machine as well.

I guess that doesn't surprise me since it's linked to the KERN System as well.

[MichaelLAX]

4 hours ago, WyoJoe said:

I guess that doesn't surprise me since it's linked to the KERN System as well.

Which raises the question: are ALL the linked repeaters on the KERN System vulnerable to its solar-powered generation of electricity to run their repeaters, or just one or a few of them?

And if indeed only one or a few of them have such a limitation, why isn't her message limited to just those repeaters, such as when Morse Code IDs are not broadcast over the linked network: only on the repeater for which it is ID'ing?

[wayoverthere]

4 hours ago, MichaelLAX said:

Which raises the question: are ALL the linked repeaters on the KERN System vulnerable to its solar-powered generation of electricity to run their repeaters, or just one or a few of them?

And if indeed only one or a few of them have such a limitation, why isn't her message limited to just those repeaters, such as when Morse Code IDs are not broadcast over the linked network: only on the repeater for which it is ID'ing?

I wonder how much is the technically involved in the dual pl system the CARLA network runs, where one pl only activates that repeater but not the link, while a 2nd activates the link too.

[MichaelLAX]

1 hour ago, wayoverthere said:

I wonder how much is the technically involved in the dual pl system the CARLA network runs, where one pl only activates that repeater but not the link, while a 2nd activates the link too.

I was unaware of CARLA.

I see that it is primarily Northern California and Nevada plus one link in Los Angeles which I was able to hit.

A helpful Ham responded that it is a "no dues, but donations appreciated" system.

Good to know!

Which repeater do you use to gain access to CARLA and do you use CARLA DMR?

[wayoverthere]

8 minutes ago, MichaelLAX said:

I was unaware of CARLA.

I see that it is primarily Northern California and Nevada plus one link in Los Angeles which I was able to hit.

A helpful Ham responded that it is a "no dues, but donations appreciated" system.

Good to know!

Which repeater do you use to gain access to CARLA and do you use CARLA DMR?

I'm still at an impasse on DMR; didn't have any luck monitoring for what I transmitted on DMR coming through on the system, either (I only tried one of the nodes, though, Orinda; it looks like they've added more since).  Kind of put it aside for now, but I'll come back to it again at some point.

As for RF access, the Joaquin Ridge/Fresno County (#15) is the only one in range, and it's on the edge of what I can reach with my current setup with the antennas indoors; trying to avoid outdoors due to local restrictions.  I may be pick up a dual band yagi in the not too distant future now that I've finished shuffling the radio setups (dual band base went to truck, single band UHF in truck came inside and joined its VHF twin).

The other system with an interesting setup is up in the Bay area, WB6ECE with their Simulcast system.

[MichaelLAX]

Sounds like you are too far from Orinda to hit that DMR repeater.

Got to get some work done, so I'll check out WB6ECE later; thanks again! 

[wayoverthere]

1 hour ago, MichaelLAX said:

Sounds like you are too far from Orinda to hit that DMR repeater.

Got to get some work done, so I'll check out WB6ECE later; thanks again! 

Yeah, I was trying to hit it via dmr (on my hotspot), not via RF. Trying to get into a dmr-enabled machine locally is on my future to-do list, as I believe the evx539 I have is dmr-capable...I wouldn't have high hopes of that little 2 watt thing with it's stubby little built in antenna being much use outside of hotspot or monitoring.

And glad to pique the curiosity. I have one more day before it's back to the grind myself.