Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Shifting gears (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/)

-   -   The Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) thread (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/167728-amateur-radio-ham-radio-thread-3.html)

Even i am in the same boat as Aravind. Adding to his questions, is there any link/document where we can check the call signs (Including the expired ones).

You can do a search here:
http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/gb/ham/search.aspx

It may not be current and I think it was updated sometime in 2010/2011.

You could also search qrz.com

Yes I can see my call sign is still there :)
Does this mean that I can still renew it without taking the test again? Thanks.

From what I got to know, there is a 5 year grace period after expiry of license. After that you may have to take the test again.

Yes, they do. Periodicity varies but we are beginning to see new licenses slowing coming through. The process and overall time taken for getting a license could put some people off as someone also mentioned earlier. The exam itself for restricted grade (without morse) should not be very difficult for most with some coaching and training material provided.

Thanks skhendry.

How can I contact this group in Hyderabad and get started ? Its been a long time plan for me but for some reason kept going down my list.

Can you please message (PM) me details to avoid spamming ?

Thanks again for helping me.

Since you are from bangalore, try contacting http://www.indianhams.com/contactus.html
They should be able to guide you better.

Got my call sign. Thanks a lot for the link.

I did take my training and examinations through indianhams (A.K.A Satyapal) and also was very active in their programs/activities for some time.

Thanks for accepting me to the community and this is my first post to the forum.

I have always been fascinated by Ham, specially because my grandfather was into it. I have not yet appeared for the exam though.

He expired on 18 Feb 2011. Sharing his story as I feel it will empower enthusiasts. I profoundly miss him and try to keep him alive through my actions.

Regards.

Once a Ham, always a Ham

Very few people know the life threatening risk ‘Bob’ Tanna, VU2LK, took to help Mahatma Gandhi win India’s struggle for independence. After independence, Bob (as he is still known on the air), VU2LK, received official recognition as a nonviolent Freedom Fighter and was named a national hero for his underground radio work in the Gandhian movement.


For those who call on Bhavsinh (Bob) Tanna, it is a little annoying that there is no lift in his building near Grant Road. But for the 94-year-old Tanna, the oldest ham in the country, it doesn't matter that much. For, Tanna, 'Bob' to friends and VU2LK to hams, rarely stirs out of his fourth floor flat, where he lives with one of his daughters, and communicates with his friends in Mumbai through his radio and with family over voice chat through the internet.

As he moves around the apartment with the help of a walking stick, he seems content with his life. Because, this is how he had visualized his life to be even when he was a child.

Tanna narrates how a wayside vendor outside his school used to lend children a magazine each for two paisa. "One of them had an article titled, Travel round the world without leaving your armchair, and it was about amateur radio. And, I got hooked," says Tanna. "My father got me more literature on ham radio."

His father was the diwan of the erstwhile kingdom of Bhavnagar in Gujarat. "The king, who was called Bhavsinhji came to our house for my naming ceremony and gave me his name," says Tanna, whose family moved to Mumbai when he was very young.

Tanna learnt to operate a radio but had to wait till he turned 21 to apply for a license, which he got in 1936. "It is current till now," he says. The main income for his company, Tanna Radio, came from lending out public address systems. Tanna remembers that he was the second Indian to get a license while the first was a Kolkata professor. "Half a dozen British army officers also got licenses before me," says Tanna.

It is a stream of candid consciousness as he narrates his experiences as a ham but the old man is at a loss whenever I insist on chronological order. The purple patch was when he helped Indian National Congress leaders like Vitalbhai Javeri and Usha Mehta transmit patriotic speeches and messages. "They approached me and I made the equipment for them. There was no tape recorder in those days and we used to record the messages on acetate discs. The discs would then be handed over to the person who operated the system. The transmission was done from different places to maintain secrecy," says Tanna.

Apparently, it functioned for about 10 months before the British cracked the whip. Tanna was detained and kept in the Colaba police station. "They tortured me for seven days. I was made to lie down on a block of ice with only an underwear on me. When they realized I did not have many secrets to share, they shifted me to the Arthur Road jail and I was set free after nine months," he says.

Tanna has received official recognition as a freedom fighter for his underground radio work during the struggle for Independence but says candidly that he did not have much of an interest in politics. "My interest was in the radio part of it," he says. He met Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose while recording one of his messages at the now-defunct Capitol cinema in Boribunder but is unable to recollect much about the meeting with the legendary freedom fighter. "I simply said hello," says Tanna.

Another meeting with a national leader was when then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, an amateur radio enthusiast himself, summoned some hams for a chat at his office in Delhi. "It was a proud moment," says Tanna.

The biggest setback to his career came in the early 50s when the builder of his apartment decided to have another floor in the building. "I used to have my antenna in the terrace but I lost that facility forever. Now, I only interact with hams in Mumbai and that too mainly when we have our 'Night Owl's Net' at around 10 in the night," he says.

He takes out his equipment and tries for signals but finds none. But Tanna knows that it pays to listen for signals. Once, several decades ago he got an SOS from a sailor who was on a yacht that was coming from Australia to Chennai and got caught in a storm in the Bay of Bengal. "I alerted the Naval people in Chennai who then sent a boat. The ham got rescued but his colleague died," says Tanna.

His daughter, Lata, remembers the time when her 'daddy' had a special assignment in Ahmedabad. "I think it was in the mid-70s. There was a blackout in the city and they needed to have some kind of communication link. So, they took him there to operate his radio, with security people accompanying him like a VVIP," she says.

Sorry if this is the wrong thread. Kind of a noob regarding radios. Saw this in a gypsy at a car wash today. Is this a HAM radio or something else? I think this is the type they use in police vehicles. Does operating this on a track day or OTR require a license? And what would be the range on these things?

Hi guys, I wrote the license exam today. It was real easy. All it too was a couple of days preparation. Now the wait for getting the license begins.

This should be a CB radio. The max range for these is 25 miles (although in reality you'd probably only get a few miles) and unlike HAM, they don't need any license to operate. In my little research, I haven't come across any small sized CB radio. Even the handheld ones are bulky compared the handheld HAMs. And unlike HAMs, there doesn't seem to be any community of CB users, which in-turn reduces the effectiveness. In countries like US, truckers use CB radios to communicate among one another while on the road.

This is Motorola GM300 VHF/UHF radio. These are commercial radios that can be programmed to specific frequencies licenced to the operator(generally an establishment, like radio taxis, security agencies, etc). The frequencies are programmed to channels and the operator will have specific channels for communication within their establishment. The frequency range covers the Amateur radio band also, so hams can also use it.

Edit: BTW, that is a neat mounting in the Gypsy!

This is good news. I saw some pictures of the exam that happened today. You can expect the results in 2-3 months.

Cant seem to be able to thank posts. Thank you for this information. Will keep a lookout for an opportunity to see it live in action.

The only place I've seen it in Nav aids is in Racons.

Looks like VU3 BOJ has given all the latest updates on this thread. I saw it quite late :).

This most probably would be a Motorala GM300 set which was used either by a call taxi company or by the police, but now discarded by them. This set is quite rugged and some of the features it has makes it ideal to be fixed in vehicles (like this jeep). In this set nobody can punch in a frequency manually. Each frequency has to be programmed as a "Channel". I think this set supports 16 channels. So HAMs would program into channels all their usual frequencies (repeaters & call channel etc). It becomes easy to operate as well - you just switch channels on the go. Chances of misuse is also less, as nobody can experiment with frequencies etc.

CB radio frequency in India is in the 27Mhz range (which is like at the higher end of the HF spectrum; which ends at 30Mhz). They also have a power limit set to 5W. All this, plus the fact they don't have the concept of repeaters makes them pretty much useless.

My understanding is that this type of license does NOT test the applicant's knowledge in basic electronics. Or does it? But what is tested is the proficiency in understanding and following a huge set of procedures, call signs, pro-words etc. And in the days of morse code a very high level of skill there. My understanding is that a Radio Officer had to receive and transmit 25words per minute?

Remember reading it in a Malayalam news paper. The Kerala Police still has a H.F network (as a backup on the state wide VHF network), and people operating it still keep their morse code skills upto date. And a friend of mine who is with the merchant navy says that some of their crew members still are trained to use morse code. Because GMDSS can fail too, and then only available thing is the good old HF set and morse code.

I have a clamp (lip-mount??) on the bonnet of my vehicle. The power is drawn directly from the battery. I have a provision to mount the set on the right side of the front passenger seat. In city I generally fix the 1/4 antenna which is more than enough. On longer trips, I replace it with the 5/8 whip antenna (which is longer). The only problems I noticed is that, at high speeds communication may get a bit cracky (but copyable), and you may have to answer questions when people see a wireless set on a (seemingly) civilian vehicle.