Simply Simplex

On April 29th I celebrated 25 years in ham radio!  So I have doing a series of blog entries to celebrate the achievement! I will highlight a few accomplishments.

    It happened again, I made a simplex contact  from about 80 miles away. Not exactly a record but still pretty decent.  This isn't my first major contact but every simplex contact is special. It's a sign my radio and antenna are receiving, and more importantly transmitting properly. Ever since I  got my license twenty five years ago, I have been fascinated with simplex more than repeaters. For those who don't know the difference between a repeater is a machine usually in a high building or other structure that receives on one frequency and transmits on another.  With simplex it's just one frequency, direct from radio to radio  line of site. There are atmospheric conditions that can increase the distanced, that's call ducting and there's a map on the Internet that shows  the conditions!  

    Every day  I look the VHF Propagation Map to see if  the conditions are right to make a distance contact/. Another clue is I have a few public safety frequencies programmed into my scanner from Virginia. When they start I start calling on 146.5200! So far my longest contact was made almost a year ago into Wilmington, NC! I have been listening daily and checking my scanner. Usually i f there are distance public service stations, usually the ham radio stations aren't far behind!

I had a few contacts with ham radio operators vacationing in Cape May and  Wildwood, I have even help a few hams with suggestion for places to eat. It's something to give back to a hobby that has given me so much!!!!!!

So if you're a ham vacationing or passing through the Cape May area, please drop your callsign on 146.520, I'll bge sure to answer you back!!!!

Happy Fourth of July