In about a month, I’ll have officially held an amateur radio license for 25 years. While the requirement to join the Quarter Century Wireless Association is to be in the 25th year since the date of your first licensing. Mine was in 1999, so I was eligible January 1.
At that point, I was unsure of how much longer I would be living in Metro Atlanta, so I had flagged the emails I had exchanged with the QCWA’s office manager for follow up later in the year.
Once I had a mailing address in my new part of the country, I submitted my membership application and became a member of the QCWA. I was unsure of which chapter to join as it appears the chapters up here are not super active, so I looked at Chapter 49, which is the one for Georgia. Turns out the interim president is someone I knew, who also now lives in 7-land, so I dropped an email to him, and became a member of that chapter.
I finally ordered my official QCWA name badge the other day, so whenever I next go to a hamfest, I’ll have a “universal” name badge to wear as no matter where I go, I’ll be a member of the QCWA. The same can be said about the YLRL, and I suppose once I’m further along in my transition, I’ll find a badge for that group too and wear both of them.
I’ve written about D-STAR before in this blog, and when I first heard about it in either 2002 or 2003 from Icom itself, I was quite interested in it as it talked of wireless Internet access. In those days, I had not yet moved to GSM, so I didn’t yet have more portable Internet access.
Anyway, as time progressed, D-STAR repeaters started appearing across the world. I had purchased a pair of IC-U82s for my (SK) father and I, and later bought two IC-91ADs for us. I was more interested in it in the early days, but at some point I was tasked with building the WB4HRO repeater system. While this project is something I still discuss to this date, it really made me gradually lose interest in actually operating D-STAR, and for that matter, ham radio itself.
Ultimately, I put an APRS radio back in my car, then it ended up in the next car, and finally for my move my current car. This, along with the I-Gate I ran at home from 2016 until I moved in early 2024, had me performing “noninteractive” ham radio, aside from the random messages I’d receive from hams who knew me or wanted to say hi.
Along those lines too, I ended up buying into Internet Labs’ DV Dongle and DVAP Dongle (2M and 70CM) products, then ultimately upon learning about DMR in 2016 or so, flashed the DVMega I’d bought to use DMR as well, and that rabbit hole opened up.
The only radios I brought with me directly when I moved were my TH-D74 D-STAR/APRS handheld and my TM-D710A mobile rig. I’ve listened to the local FM repeater nets on my HT, and I’ve listened to the main 2M FM repeater in the mobile a few times, though with my apartment building having a low-ceiling garage, I’ve had to take the antenna off the roof for a while. I believe if I get the Comet B-10NMO, which I’m pretty sure I had at one point in the past, and throw that on the magnet mount, that’ll let me clear the garage entry.
Anyway, I mentioned DMR: well, I decided that it’s high time I pick up a new radio so I can get back on DMR. I wasn’t sure which one, but then I found out about OpenGD77, so I’ve got the Retevis RT3S arriving next week.
I’m not sure how often I’ll actually talk on the radio outside of the Pride Radio Network since voice training is something I’ve been rather unmotivated to do properly. It’ll be nice to be able to listen to the DMR repeaters around the area to see just how busy (or not) they are.
As has been the new normal for digital voice in ham radio, I will likely use my personal hotspot, a UHF ZUMspot Raspberry Pi hat on an old Pi 2 running WPSD in Hardened Power Systems’ DHAP G3 case, set up for battery or shore power, primarily as I can go to whichever talkgroup I want to.
The only static-ish talkgroup I have right now is the Pride Radio Network’s talkgroup on the TGIF network, so we’ll see if I end up remembering to check into the net since I’ll have an actual radio vs. using EchoLink.
I’ll be sure to add the local FM repeaters to the radio, so when it’s net time on those repeaters, I can flip over to them.
I’m kind of excited to get back on DMR as I never really used it outside building a codeplug or two for someone at the store years ago, and with PNWdigital having a codeplug for the area repeaters, that will save me a ton of time.
I do want to add a choice few talkgroups for my hotspot zone for the PRN, SDFARC’s talkgroup on TGIF, the old Atlanta Metro BrandMeister group, and maybe a few others elsewhere.
We’ll see how it goes, though. The real fun will be once I get all my stuff back up here and my openSPOT3 will become available to me again since that’s quite a lot more portable than the DHAP.