KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Amateur radio in the news: Hams fight antenna restrictions, Sunnyvale HRO
closes, hospital emcomm

Posted: 02 Apr 2017 12:12 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


Amateur radio group dislikes 30-foot limit on antennas. 


They’re required
to refer to themselves as “amateurs,� but only because they’re absolutely
prohibited from making any money from the hobby which is their passion.
When several local ham radio operators took turns making comments to the
Payette City Council at last week’s regular meeting of city government, the
operators were quite comfortable explaining the technical details at the
heart of their argument that Payette’s new ordinance regulating tower
heights is too restrictive.

Sounds like Canada needs a Parity Act of their own.Dan


Sunnyvale Ham Radio Outlet closes after 26 years. The Sunnyvale Ham Radio
Outlet signed off for the final time WednesdayÂ*after 26 years as a hub for
Silicon Valley’s amateur radio community.Â*Due in part to rising rent in the
city, the outletÂ*at 510 Lawrence Expressway chose to close its doors and
merge operations with its Oakland location,Â*according to shop employees.

Part of the reason that this HRO closed, I think, is the shift from
hardware to software in Silicon Valley. More and more, Silicon Valley is
about companies like Facebook and Uber and less about companies that
actually make silicon, like Intel and AMD. While lots of software engineers
do become hams, in general, fewer hardware guys means fewer ham radio
operators.Dan


Amateur radio operators keep emergency communication lines open at area
hospitals. Andy Finick walks up the stairs and opens the door onto a roof
at Franciscan Health in Hammond. He points up to a higher roof at several
antennae that would — in an unthinkable emergency — provide communications
for the hospital. In Northwest Indiana, Finick, a licensed amateur radio
operator, helps hospitals maintain communications when all other systems
fail in an emergency situation. He has radio equipment bolstered with a
repeater system and antennae squirreled away in hospitals throughout Lake
County.

The post Amateur radio in the news: Hams fight antenna restrictions,
Sunnyvale HRO closes, hospital emcomm appeared first on KB6NUs Ham Radio
Blog.