I’m still fairly new to the amateur radio business, so haven’t learned all the tricks of the trade.
But I know there are nets and frequencies in use by railfan hams - I’ve seen some listed for Michigan.
If there are any hams out there - are there common freqs in use by railfans?
Most use 146.49 Mhz simplex when railfanning. There are many web sites with railroad frequencies listed. Set your radio to scan the railroad frequencies and you will be set.
I m also a ham 73 to you I have never heard of a ham frequency used by railfans there lots of simplex out there and of course the regular scanner freqs good luck
If you’re a ham but interested in other modulation schemes, you might want to check out the SoftEOT Yahoo group…
The scanner is a given. It’s the ham side I’m curious about.
Something potentially interesting to railfans is this note in the ARRL Frequency Allocation Table:
Unless I am mistaken this refers to repeaters. I would be concerned that the conditions that apply to a fixed AMTS station might now apply to the region within which a PTS radio might find itself at some moment; this might dramatically reduce the sites available for these ham repeater devices once PTC becomes ‘pervasive’ (note that it involves a 100-mile-wide corridor centered on each active line’s track). Be interesting to see what the ARRL does in this regard.
I expect the next generation of ham gear to include SBRs, and quite possibly the ability to receive and decode PTC transmissions.
Mention of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) took me back almost seven decades to when I was in my last year or so of grammar school and on through high school. Back then, I was interested in vacuum tube technology and even considered learning the code so that I could obtain an amateur license–knowing the code was required for the basic license, as I recall. I did build a radio (6 volt tubes with a 5 volt rectifier), a power supply, and an amplifier for a record player, using surplus military equipment primarily.
This is all very fascinating to me. In my youth, a neighbor was a ham operator, his “cave” was filled with cards sent from “hams” from all over the world that he had talked to. Do they still do this? I thought that with newer modes of communication, that ham operators were as obsolete as steam locomotives. I was wrong.
Oh, heavens, no! Hams are as active as ever, both in the traditional sense and in embracing new digital technologies. The Internet has opened new realms as well. “Echolink” lets me log into a repeater from my smart phone. And it could be any of the hundreds of repeaters on that system. Talked to a guy from New Jersey the other day who had logged into our local repeater.
DMR (digital mobile radio) has a nationwide network.
While many hams still very much enjoy making contacts over long distances, I saw a set-up the other day that was attempting to use wireless routers (like you may have at home) over significant distances.
Those are QSL cards. That is definitely still done, although there are internet alternatives that are growing in popularity. Personally I prefer the real cards. I’ve only gotten 4 of them because I don’t usually ask for them, but it is a nice aspect of ham radio.
If your in the Philadelphia Pa area please put a call out on the Railfan frendly repeater 444.700 or 224.700 both 131.8 PL. We’d be glad to have ya!
73 from Mike N2ICV
cool thanks 73
[;)]Johnny, I read your post and it brought back my times with “DXing” with my old tubed BC-348r. It had no power supply SoI built one from a early Philco radio I found in a trash can. I got the speacker too and hooked it to thejury rigged set. The antenna was nothing fancy, just a single strand of copper10 ga.wire about 25ft. long strung between 2 trees with glass insulators ,then to my set. With the band selector I could get a lot of stations. The fartherest i got was Belgrad Youg. in the night times. At that time Halicrafters Star Roamer was "the one " but too expensive. Thus, my home built which cost 15.00 total from Army surplus store.I don’t recall whyI left the set( girls I think… 73s to you.
Respectfully, Cannonball
Thanks, Cannonball. I just remembered some more detail as to my masterpiece. It also had an electric eye which was supposed to aid in fine tuning. At times I used an OZ4 to rectify the AC (full wave rectification); the mercury vapor gave a beautiful glow. For some strange reason, even though it built it to receive the standard broadcast band only, I was able to pick up WWV at 2.5 megs. I had a pillowspeaker, and would go to sleep listening to WWL (New Orleans), and wake up to a station in Kannapolis, N.C. (I lived 50 miles south of Charlotte).