eHam.net News

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What's the Frequency?

Posted: 07 Aug 2016 06:40 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/37331


SUNBURY -- Their words are always around us but rarely heard. Amateur radio
operators prefer it this way. More than 200 amateur radio operators in
Snyder, Union and Northumberland counties broadcast thousands of messages
to one another each week on frequencies only tapped into by each other. The
messages range from 25-word verbal postcards transmitted through a series
of operators to their destinations to whole conversations between two
operators located on opposite sides of the world. Tim Gelvin, a Sunbury
operator better known to his ham radio brethren by the call sign K3TEG,
said his work with the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) has expanded
to include video and other file transmissions. "When there's a flood
someone can send their camera through the network to the emergency
operator," he said. "We just send out the data, the digital messages. It
only takes a few minutes and it's highly reliable that way." Just like
other wireless transmissions, such as broadcast radio and satellites,
amateur radio operates by sending invisible waves into the air. Each type
of use is allotted a range of frequencies, or limits on the size of the
waves, and equipment for each use only broadcasts and listens in to its
proscribed frequency sets. Because of licensing, amateur radio remains a
more exclusive club. Unlike its broadcast brother, the cell phone, amateur
radio has few enough users to maintain clear channels even when traffic is
high. This makes amateur radio desirable by emergency officials during
high-traffic times, such as when a natural disaster occurs, because callers
attempting to reach loved ones by phone don't tie up the airwaves.


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Threats Over Police Radios Have Officers and Scanner Buffs on the Case:

Posted: 07 Aug 2016 06:40 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/37330


A male voice came over the police radio, speaking in standard departmental
jargon as he asked to be patched through to the duty captain in the Midtown
South Precinct in Manhattan on July 30. The captain responded. "South
captain, remember how you put me in jail?" the man on the radio asked. "I
am out now, and I'm coming to put a bullet in your head." The threat, so
brazen across the restricted airwaves of the New York Police Department,
was a shock. How had the man gained access to the radio frequencies? Had he
stolen a police radio? Another theory was widely repeated in conversations
last week with experts on the radio system: The man had hacked a
store-bought two-way radio and turned it into a police walkie-talkie. The
man returned to the airwaves three nights later, threatening a different
captain: "I'm going to put a bullet in your head," he said, according to
the police. An investigation is continuing. A parallel search for the
culprit seems to be underway within the community of amateur radio
operators and those known as scanner buffs -- people who listen to police
frequencies at home. It is a long-established group in the city, but at
times, a fractured one, with feuds over the airwaves that have devolved
into curses, threats and "jamming," or blocking a frequency from legitimate
use.


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Amateur Radio Roundtable: Hamvention New Location:

Posted: 07 Aug 2016 02:17 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/37326


This week on Amateur Radio Roundtable, our
guests include Michael Kalter, W8CI from the
Dayton Amateur Radio Association to discuss
the move of Hamvention.