Gimme a Hint, Just a Little Hint

Tue   8 May 2007   11:42 by Kevin McGehee 71° and sunny in Coweta County, GA 4 comments [AK4MC]

I have a secondhand HTX-242 2m mobile radio from Radio Shack that I want to mount in my truck. The mounting bracket and hardware didn’t come with the radio and Radio Shack has been no help in identifying the screws that will fit into the sides of the case so I can improvise something. I might be able to estimate the shaft diameter, but I’d have to buy samples of just about every possible thread count and try them all to find the right one. If any of my readers has (or has had) a Radio Shack mobile ham radio and can offer any information that will help me find substitute screws for mounting this radio, I’ll be very grateful.

Perfect Timing

Sat   21 Apr 2007   10:07 by Kevin McGehee 57° and sunny in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [AK4MC]

No sooner do I get my vanity callsign, which doesn’t have to be renewed for another ten years, than this happens: The FCC has proposed reducing the regulatory fee to obtain or retain an Amateur Radio vanity call sign by more than 40 percent starting later this year. In a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) released April 18, “Assessment and Collection of Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2007,“ in MD Docket 07-81, the Commission is proposing to cut the fee from its current $20.80 to $11.70. If ultimately adopted, that would mark the lowest fee in the history of the current vanity call sign program. The FCC proposed to collect nearly $290.3 million in FY 2007 regulatory fees. “These fees are mandated by Congress and are collected to recover the regulatory costs associated with the Commission’s enforcement, policy and rulemaking, user information, and international activities,“ the FCC said. “Consistent with our established practice, we intend to collect these regulatory fees in the August-September 2007 time frame in order to collect the required amount by the end of the fiscal year.“ Comments on MD Docket 07-81 are due May 3. Reply comments are due May 11. The vanity call sign fee has fluctuated over the 11 years of the current vanity call sign program—from a low of $12 to a high of $50. The FCC says it anticipates some 14,700 Amateur Radio vanity call sign “payment units” or applications during the next fiscal year. The vanity call sign regulatory fee is payable not only when applying for a new vanity call sign but upon renewing a vanity call sign for a new term. The first vanity call sign licenses issued under the current Amateur Radio vanity call sign program that began in 1996 came up for renewal last year. » ARRLWeb:   FCC Poised to Cut Vanity Call Sign Fee by More Than 40 Percent So by 2017 the fee could be back up to stratospheric levels. Then again, gasoline could be over $10 a gallon… Well, it could be worse. My wife Chris‘ vanity callsign renewal comes up in 2009, so she ought to save some money.

I Like the Short of It a Lot Better

Fri   20 Apr 2007   14:33 by Kevin McGehee 66° and sunny in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [AK4MC]

As complained about here, the hard-copy license the FCC generated with my first upgrade arrived only three days after the upgrade was processed, but the next upgraded ticket took twelve days. So even though my vanity callsign was granted last Tuesday, I really wouldn’t have been surprised if my newest ticket had not arrived today. But it did. So, I think I was right—it was the income tax returns clogging the postal system that accounted for the delay. I’m sure of it.

Now I’m Not So Sure

Thu   19 Apr 2007   23:43 by Kevin McGehee 57° and clear in Coweta County, GA 4 comments [AK4MC]

As noted yesterday, I’d been thinking that once I got all those FCC interactions out of the way I’d sign up as a Volunteer Examiner under the ARRL. Well, it turns out that the ARRL’s manual for VEs is seven years out of date. I’m about 85% inclined to tell ARRL to stick it until they can be bothered to update their manual. On their site and in their magazine QST they’ve got mentions of how they and their VE teams are slammed since the FCC rule change, but the manual that hams have to use to qualify to help out, was published before the last big rule change that cut the number of license classes from five, six, or six and a half (depending on how you counted them) down to three. Thing is, the members of the VE team here in Coweta County are my friends (and in one case, my wife). So I don’t know. I was in a grumpy mood already and this doesn’t help. Update: And neither does the fact Blogrolling.com’s ping server has been down for several days.

Test Your Boreblogger Endurance

Wed   18 Apr 2007   19:25 by Kevin McGehee 71° and fair in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [AK4MC]

...by reading this post! So, now that all of my FCC interactions are over and done with for the next ten years (give or take a day or 90), I’m looking into joining our club’s Volunteer Examiner team—the guys (and gal) who administer the ham tests for those wanting to get, or upgrade, an amateur radio license. The way things go, though, I’ll probably be certified just in time for the volume of would-be test-takers to settle back to what it was before the Morse code testing requirement was dropped. I’ve also just placed an order for a mag-mount antenna so that the recently repaired 2-meter mobile radio will be useful when we get around to installing it in my truck. We had another antenna just like the one I’ve ordered, but something happened to the magnet in the base, and the funny thing about a mag-mount antenna without a magnet is, it won’t stay on the roof of the vehicle. That’s some kind of design flaw or something. Got something to say that nobody else in the world cares about? Post it in comments!

All Is Vanity

Tue   17 Apr 2007   10:36 by Kevin McGehee 63° and sunny in Coweta County, GA 2 comments [AK4MC]

The FCC has finally granted my vanity callsign request, and I am now AK4MC. At long last, a callsign that doesn’t look like the name of a foreign currency. I mean, obviously I didn’t mind it but so much before, but still… Afterthought: Jeez, now I get to wait for yet another printed license in the mail. Update: I’m also working on an actual QSL card. In case I ever make a contact on HF. » Read more "All Is Vanity"

The Long and the Short of It

Mon   9 Apr 2007   17:12 by Kevin McGehee 52° and cloudy in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [AK4MC] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

At least I hope so… I received the hard-copy of my upgraded ham license today, exactly 30 days after I took and passed the test to qualify for Extra, and twelve days after the license was printed. The last upgrade ticket had arrived only three days after being printed. My vanity callsign application will supposedly be either granted or denied within about a week from now. If granted, I sincerely hope I don’t end up waiting nearly an additional two weeks to have the new license in hand. But I suppose it could have been worse. The vanity app could have completed processing (about a week from now) before the KLØTY Extra ticket arrived. Then again, I had just about decided that’s what was going to happen…

Must Be All Those Tax Returns

Wed   4 Apr 2007   16:43 by Kevin McGehee 73° and cloudy in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [AK4MC] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

All you pesky taxpayers gotta quit clogging up the postal system. You’re delaying delivery of my again-upgraded ham license! The new one back when I upgraded to General nearly a month ago arrived only three days after the FCC printed it. The one for my more recent upgrade was printed a week ago and still hasn’t shown up. So it’s all you snail-mail-usin’ tax-return filers that are to blame, I just know it. If you have to stick with the low-tech way of doing things, why can’t you put off mailing the dang thing until the last minute (April 17, this year)?

Non-Commercial Two-Way Radio
Mon   2 Apr 2007   18:05 by Kevin McGehee 74° and mostly cloudy in Coweta County, GA 3 comments [AK4MC] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]	I wonder just how widely remembered it is these days, that a license used to be required to use Citizens Band radio? » Read more "Non-Commercial Two-Way Radio"

Divide By Ø

Fri   30 Mar 2007   21:08 by Kevin McGehee 62° and partly cloudy in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [AK4MC] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

Anyone searching Yippee-Ki-Yay! for my ham callsign—KLØTY—may have a problem if they just type “KL0TY” into a search box, because I’m substituting an extended character for the zero so that it has that slash through it. They’d only get one entry—this one. The best thing to do would be to copy the callsign with the slashed zero and paste it into the search window. If I get the vanity callsign I’ve applied for, that pesky zero won’t be my problem anymore. Unless you want to search for Wifey-Ki-Yay‘s callsign, in which case you’d need to copy-and-paste KLØUD. It sure would be nice if I knew of some way to make the slash display on an ordinary zero in any font. Update: That didn’t work (stupid ExpressionEngine search utility). Try this instead: KLØTY—or KLØUD for my wife’s call.

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