So let’s start out with a little edit of my previous post. Seems I spoke a moment too soon — this morning around lunch, I punched Refresh on my FCC license search tab and kaboom my callsign has been published! Finally!
Ladies and Gentlemen, in the ham bands I am now known as: KG5RHR. Hello!
I made my first contact tonight on the Austin ARC repeater 146.940 MHz. Was some cool cat named Kevin who lives out in far east Travis County. We chewed the rag a bit, he gave me good advice, talked about Chinese radios. He now has the magnanimous honor of being my first contact. 73’s!
From my side of town, 3 watts and my mag-mount groundplane car antenna is enough for my Baofeng HT to get into the repeater mounted on the KXAN tower in Westlake. I need to try from other areas of town to see what my reach is (my apartment balcony has a direct line of sight to the tower, so I can probably work it with just my rubber ducky antenna). Apparently that club’s repeater is pretty sensitive, and its location and elevation is great, so it’s tough to be in a dark location in this town.
I can’t wait to make my first simplex contact; that’s when I know I’ve arrived.
Also, this is the annual AARL VHF contest weekend where hams can try to make as many contacts as possible above 50MHz within certain time, power, and location limits. It looks like it’s a little too late for me to get in on this, but it’ll be interesting to tune in and see if I can monitor any contacts. Should be fun!