It's easy... my name is Alfonso and I live in Chiang Mai.

Huh?

ckmb5150:

ck - my intials (chris k)

mb - "mesa boogie" guitar amplifier i use (im a guitar player)

5150 - 4x12 speaker cabinets i use (2 of em)

in other words: full stack of 8 - 12" 5150 model speakers topped off with a 150 watt amp head (mesa boogie 3 channel triple rectifier)
yes its very loud and yes i play hard rock music.
I play jackson and parker guitars if anyone cares hehe.

I design and build fireworks. A star is a lump of "stuff" that burns with a specific color. These burning lumps of composition, flying through the air, are what make the patterns you see in sky. A blind star is a star that has not been properly lit.

Pyropaul: Paul is my name, pyrotechnics is my passion, especially the annual Montreal International Fireworks Competition, for which I run this website:

http://www.montreal-fireworks.com

And I'm also the president of the Canadian Fireworks Association

http://www.canadianfireworks.org

For anyone who's interested, we're having our second annual convention in Strathmore, Alberta, this coming 19-21 April.

Paul.

Here is a link that might be useful: Canadian Fireworks Association Convention

ROFL! Very good, DallasBill!

Finesse is the name of my boat.

Kevin

I'm afraid that I am not as slick as other posters in regards to my handle name. Yep, first name = Gary, last initial = G (I have one of those multi-consonant Ukranian last names). I tell people that my cousin is Kenny G, the smooth jazz sax player.

It's a typical German nickname.

Well um,Im not sure what mine means.

havac "NOT" HVAC which is heating venting and air conditioning, Havac as in what I tend to create in this forum occasionally, and mister because the operation was a success.

Doc was a nickname from my time while serving with the Marine Corps. 8404 is the Navy Enlisted Classification I earned at Field Medical Service School.

VE2FSQ is my amateur radio call sign.

VE is for Canada, 2 is for Quebec, FSQ is for me.

ÂCW means Morse code to radio operators. I am still in favor of keeping the Morse code requirement to earn a ham radio license. So fsq4cw. Hi hi Â. .. Â. .. (laughter in Morse Code; kind of like LOL on a Morse code key instead of a keyboard).

73

de VE2FSQ (Steve)

The US has dropped the CW requirements.

Re: baymee

ÂThe US has dropped the CW requirements. Believe me, I know. So has Canada; more is the pity.

Any other hams out there?

SR

I was a military Radioman. I hadn't touched a key for 20 years. My buddy said: Let's try the test. I don't know why, but it all came back to me and I passed the Extra test 18 wpm on the first try. Then I had to do the coursework, which took about a year.

Sometimes I'll key up, but the wife has alot of junk piled around the rig and the computer seems to take time away.

Yup...effective 23 February the Morse Code is no longer required...

http://www.arrl.org/fcc/morse/

dah
dit·dit·dit·dit
dit·dah
dah

dit·dit·dit
dit·dit·dah
dah·dit·dah·dit
dah·dit·dah
dit·dit·dit.

dah·dah·dah·dit·dit
dit·dit·dit·dah·dah

dah·dit·dit
dit

dah·dah
dit·dah
dit·dah·dit
dah·dit·dah·dit
dah·dah·dah

73 sk dit dit

Re: daft punk

I hope that was 73 you intended to Âsend (a little too close to an 88, hi hi!).

Re: baymee

Your story is awesome, congratulations! (I liked the Âdit ditÂ.)

de ve2fsq

Yeah...that "83" was supposed to be "73", hi hi. I've not pounded brass for a while, so my code has suffered. This plastic keyboard is no substitute.

Haven't been on the air for a while. Does "Kayman" continue his megalomania on 75?

Peace.

Marco

Re: Marco

You must be referring to K1MAN, Glenn Baxter. He was fined $25K and is off the air.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: FCC

About a lifetime ago I was a truck driver and I drove a MACK truck which my 4yr old daughter had affectionate nicknamed the "Puppy dog". One day I was sitting at the house baby sitting my daughter and the dispatcher called and asked me to go load the trailer. I say, no way..I have been on the road for two months and today I am babysitting my daughter. Dispatcher says you'll only be about two hours, take the kid with you.

After loading the trailer, or more precisely overloading the trailer I was having a bit of a problem climbing a long hill on the way home. There I was sitting in the slow lane wrestling two gear shifts to work my way through 15 gears when my daughter, who had been watching all the cars zip around us turns to me and says,"Daddy,,today you are a LazyPup"

DE KA8UXZ KN And for the record I have been a die hard brass pounder for over 30 yrs

I only did this once, but I hooked my rig to the van and went to Florida; a 21 hour drive. I pounded the key to distant places on the east coast while driving 70 mph on Route 95, copying in my head the entire conversation.

At my more mature age, I realize it wasn't the smartest thing to do.

I always suspected there were loads of hams on this ÂnetÂ.

Baymee you must have had brass you know what when you were younger!

de VE2FSQ dah·dit·dah

. / ... __ .. ._.. ._.. / __.. __ __ __

Back to work.

I have to ask-

Why "CW"? When my father was doing ham radio in the 50's we were taught CQ", or at least, that's how I remember it. We'd go out to the river or where ever and when it was time to come in he'd honk the car horn:

-.-. --.-

That's all I remember, save SOS, of course.

Great thread. Thanks.

Mark. In Montana. or, in the Mountains, if you prefer.

CW stands for continuous wave transmission. It a form of transmission. CQ means "any station may respond". You would send out a "CQ this is (your call sign)" and it's an open invitation for anybody who is listening to respond.

I spent 2 years on the high seas and talked with many military and merchant radiomen. The Russians were the fastest, by far, code senders. They would show their skill by sending and receiving high speed and I mean faster than 50 wpm. It was a solid blur.

Back in 1973 I was a long haul truck driver and I got idea that I wanted to get an Amateur Radio License, but not knowing any hams and never being in one place long enough to attend classes I did it on my own. I began by learning the code from some audio tapes, then i would dit dah away reciting road signs in code as I drove along. Finally I aquired a ham radio receiver and began copying off the air but i couldn't make heads or tails of it. I continued copying off the air for nearly a year and I could stay with the high speed code but I just could not grasp what was being said. Finally I was sitting at home a few days and a friend had been attending ham radio classes so she invited me to sit in on one with her. I went to the class and sat in on their 5 word per minute code practice. At the end of about ten minutes the instructor asked why i had not written anything, did i not copy anything? I said, at that pace, are you crazy, sure i copied it then i wrote out what was said. We talked a few minutes and i informed the instructor that i had been copying off the air but it didnt make sense to me. He said come on in the radio room and lets see your problem so I sat down to a rig and tuned the upper end of the 40meter band and began copying. After about ten minutes everybody in the room was laughing at me. I had copied a 40 word per minute transmission with 100% accuracy. My problem was that no one had ever taught me the telegraphers shorthand..Hi HI

For those unfamiliar with CW (Continuous Wave commonly called radio morse code) a typical transmission would look like the following:

KA1DAO DE KC8UXZ RR GE OM ES TNX FER CUL UR RST 599 599 NAME HR DICK DICK QTH MASS MASS WX CLDY ES RAIN BK TO U K

Translated- KAIDAO (station being called) DE (called by) KC8UXZ (Station calling) RR means message follows) GE OM (Good Evening Old Man) ES (AND) TNX FER CUL (Thanks for call) UR RST(Radio signal report-Readibility scaled 1-5 /Signal Strength scaled 1-9 & Tone scaled 1-9) NAME HR DICK (Senders name is Dick -repeated) QTH (My location is) Mass (Nassachusetts -repeated) WX-CLDY & Rain (Weather report cloudy & rain) BK TO U(Back to you) K (end of transmission)

Needless to say, i got my first Novice Ticket (Amateur Radio License -Novice level) that night.

In those days a Novice license was only valid for one year and was restricted to CW only, Max 75watts output and Crystal Controlled Transmitters). Twenty one days before my Novice Ticket expired the FCC approved renewing a novice license and they approved a novice to have a tunable transmitter as well as receiver. I was so content with brass pounding that I kept my Novice ticket for nearly ten years before upgrading to General Class.

I haven't run into many people who use or know what IMI (.._ _..) means. The commercial operators use it all the time. It's both used as a question mark and a "I will repeat" symbol.

My most interesting experience was taking an SOS from a sinking ship in the North Atlantic. The Radioman was so nervous and scared that his code was almost unreadable. You could tell by how sloppy it was that he was shaking. They had lost power and without power in a stormy sea, the ship rolls over. He went down with the ship. When we arrived the next day, the ship was gone and nothing but a slew of floating sea/land trailers were scattered on the face of the sea. It was eerie.

Tanama = butterfly in Taino, language of the indiginous folk of Puerto Rico.

Also, to keep with the subthread, I'm daughter to K8YDV and... darnit, can't remember my mom's call sign! Never bothered getting my license myself, though I'll have to admit that having learned through this thread that the morse code requirement was dropped, I might consider it.

Then again, one of my favorite movie scenes of all times is when the world was saved by HAM operators and old-timer comm officers doing morse code in "Independence Day"!