Wednesday, May 21, 2008

NTS Traffic Handling Here I Come

Have you ever heard of the NTS Traffic Network? Did you know that you can send a message to anyone in the USA or Canada for free through Amateur Radio? I did but that's about where it ended for me. Over the 16 years of being a ham, I received two messages and always wanted to join in as a message handler.

Sure, I can email or pick up my cell phone and call anywhere in the US for "free" but there is something neat about having a message transfer over radio to someone you care about, all on a volunteer network. The main goal of the NTS system is to get information in and out of a disaster area when the internet and phone lines are down. The NTS operates nets all across the US and Canada every day passing messages. The overwhelming majority of the traffic is non-emergency related but it is done for the sake of practice.

I finally got organized and decided to figure out how to check in to a local net and start my "career" as a message handler. The Iowa Tall Corn Net operates at 6:30 and 10:00 PM local so I tuned into the 10PM net and checked in! There are a lot of new Q signals that are not normally heard during a CW QSO but I managed to get the basics down. The good news is it was successful and I broke the ice! More to come as I try to check in when I am down in the radio room studying. 73 Joe N0NS

Slow Speed To Texas

Well last night I was studying for my Computer Science degree. I have seven classes to go including the one I am currently taking. With work and family, I usually get to my books at around 9 PM and wrap it up around midnight. All the while, I have my radio on and am spinning through the bands listening for DX or occasionally a empty frequency to hear static and a possible CQ pop up. I heard a loud CQ on 7.052 from 5 land and decided to give the station a call. Since the band was quiet and there was practically no noise, I reduced power to 50 watts The Texas station heard me and we had a nice QSO. I like to crank my keyer speed down every now and then because even though I am not terribly fast and sending, there are plenty of stations that send slower then me. It was a nice end to the night and I still love hearing a station in some other part of the country/world come back with my call. 73 Joe N0NS

Saturday, May 17, 2008

CQ CQ DE N0NS/P K

This Friday night, Tom (KC0PNH) and I decided to go portable. I brought my Kenwood 450S with a 1/4 wave ground mounted vertical. Tom brought his FT890 with a vertical dipole. All together we worked 20 stations in a few hours. We worked Ireland, Canada, NM, CA, MO, MI, WV, SC, WA, TX, CO, and a few other locationss I may have missed. We worked 40 SSB, 40 CW, 30 CW, and 20 SSB. It was a great practice to troubleshoot our Field Day setup.

Thank you all for answering our CQ's!

Friday, May 16, 2008

Zero Land Radio

Hello and welcome to Zero Land Radio. My name is Joe Paricka and my amateur call sign is N0NS.

This is a amateur radio blog that will document my station activities as time goes on. My primary operating activities are morse code (CW), PSK31 and SSB on HF.

I decided to start this blog because my friend Tom (KC0PNH) and I are going to operate portable tonight as a pre-field day event. It's only for fun but will be a good reason to get on the air with an improvised setup. I will try to post pictures after the event.

73's Joe Paricka N0NS