You'd better get used to it. As the FCC slowly keeps washing its hands of our service things will go from bad to total chaos. Its only a matter of time before testing for an amateur license goes away to cut costs and amateur radio becomes multiband CB. Its already happening. And having one lawyer who isn't even a ham to police the entire spectrum is a joke! The FCC has become all but useless. This is what happens when the inmates run the asylum. Bring back a REAL FCC with actual enforcement and you would see a lot of this crap go away. Unfortunately, our elected officials seem to believe that the FCC and radio in general is unimportant so this is what we have.

IF you survive....and IF you feel a need to try and communicate via radio...most of you forgot one thing. Most if not all of the solid state gear will be toast from the EMP...so you guys into the tube gear will be able to communicate but the guys with modern gear will most likely have very expensive paperweights. Besides, if the big one comes, the last thing Id be worried about is amateur radio..or any radio for that matter.

Im no lawyer and dont play one on TV but this sounds illegal to me. But, our friends ....and I use the term very loosely... at the league seem to be able to do as they please when they please without the FCC hassling them. The FCC attacked Glenn Baxter..who I will agree is a nuisance and probably a mental case for broadcasting.....yet the league is allowed to broadcast and promote its own web site for $$ and the FCC does nothing. Glenn even used the same legal loophole in part 97 that allows the league to broadcast..yet he got shafted and the league does not??? And why did Glenn get nailed? He had a personal gripe with ..you guessed it..the league. Makes me wonder how many league members got together to shaft Glenn just because he slammed them for being the money grubbers they are. Dont get me wrong, I dont agree with Baxters agenda in the least...but why cant he do what the league does daily under the same set of rules? As nutzo as Glenn is he did have a little organization called IARN that is supposedly a ham radio organization. So in effect he was doing exactly what the league does and yet he got shafted to the tune of over 20 grand in fines while the league qrms people day in and day out with their useless broadcasts of crap. So, of course they will do this and get away with it..but if one of us tried it I bet the FCC would come down on us like a ton of bricks. This selective enfarcement...what little there is of it from the FCC is a joke. I cannot legally "rent" air time to fellow hams at my station so why should the league get away with it? This is just one more bullshit reason not to support the league. This do as I say and not as I do crap is not in the best interest of amateur radio. Its only self promotion for money by the league bean counters.

Just a personal observation here....How F-ed up is it that we as licensed amateurs have to buy a new amp and modify it to use it on  bands we are legally allowed to use..while the FCC does NOTHING to stem the tide of the assholes who cause the interference problems on 11 meters or even the amateur bands to begin with? FCC mentality.....lets punish the guys who do things legally and properly for the sake of a bunch of scofflaws who do as they please.... 

No offense to anyone in particular...but why do so many hams have this doom and gloom mentality? Its so damned depressing to tune across the bands and listen to guys crying about how bad things are and we're all going to die due to some government conspiracy. Some of you boys need some prozac or something geeez!

Put a piece of plywood under it, put a small bottle jack under the bent bracket. Use the jack to bend it back into shape. Should work fine without destroying it. Looks to me like some kid stood on it. its only an aluminum bracket so it doesnt take much force to bend it.

Hector, Do yourself a favor and forget this ham ever existed! I personally know two fellow amateurs here in Florida who had lots of gear stolen from them by that slime ball. He lied about having a terminal illness and used to "borrow" fellow hams gear pretending to work on it for them and set it up for audio. Then he would sell the gear out from under them! I will not mention their calls here to save them embarrassment, but one is now a silent key. He lost a Kenwood TS850 in mint shape, an SB220, a Nye Viking tuner and other gear. Another friend of mine lost a complete Kenwood TS2000 station including an amp( Al 811H) a w2ihy 8 band eq and a heil goldline. This is why he suddenly disappeared Hector. The guy used to say he had terminal lung cancer and in the same breath on the air brag about climbing a 100 ft tower to string up an antenna. When was the last time anyone with half their lungs eaten out by cancer been able to climb a 100 ft tower on a 90 degree Florida day? He went back to Trinidad to hide from the hams he stole from. Hes a thief and a liar!

One of my favorite Joe Walsh tunes is "I like big t _ _ s". A true classic and what guy doesn't? 

I love FF and have been using it for quite a few years now. Both in XP and Windows 7 32 bit versions. Since I run Windows 7 in 64 bit I decided to try the FF Nightly Builds in 64 bit. It ROCKS! If any of you run Windows 7 in 64 bit, try it. Its so much faster and better than the 32 bit version I will never go back. I use many FF "extensions" to enhance functionality and so far I have yet to find one that is buggy or wont work. I had issues with some of the 32 bit versions because the browser would update faster than the programmers could create add on's for it. That seems to be a thing of the past as of now. Unfortunately, those of you still using XP don't have this option but you owe it to yourself to update your machines and try it. Its like a Ferrari on steroids in comparison to the old 32 bit platform versions. Simply Google Firefox Nightly Builds and there it is.

Nothing new at all. 14.313 has been a sewer for over 15years that I know of with little to no action on the part of the FCC other than a few hand slaps. As long as that joker up in Canada has a legion of fools here in the states to feed his agenda, he will continue his tirade. The FCC should bust any and all U.S. hams that mess with this idiot because they are just as bad if not worse. They may not be able to touch Karol but why are our hams allowed to do the same thing years on end with no enforcement?

Its not secret, but CW is a code that 3/4 of the hams today cant copy so just use it.

Skype uses an automatic gain control on the microphone. Its a simple matter to disable this feature and set the gain at a fixed level. Check the tools, options menu under audio settings.

Ive seen good and bad on both sides of this issue. Any net or informal group that establishes contact when a frequency is clear, should NOT be overrun with contesters who dont bother to listen first. Its just as rude for contesters to literally run someone off with qrm as it is for some net to proclaim they "own" a frequency. It doesnt matter if a contest is once a year or 50 times a year, the rules are clear on this. If someone is using the frequency legally with the proper callsign, they shouldnt be subject to malicious interference no matter how "important" the points are in the contest. Yes, it is malicious when the contester knows hes causing a problem and ignores it and continues to interfere.

 On the other hand, Ive encountered rude nets that insist on firing up on "their" spot no matter who is using it first and no matter who is close by. Theres a bunch of this type of rude clowns in New York that call themselves the "Roger" net. They will fire up 1 khz below your existing qso and pretend they cant hear you...while some of their members at the same time complain of noise. They have been asked and told numerous times their interfering, and insist on doing it anyway to those around them. Why would anyone, contester or net operator,intentionally fire up in some other qso's passband and be that ignorant on purpose? Arrogance? Stupidity? Both? I have nothing against contests or nets, just rude obnoxious operators who refuse to understand the rules or operate in a courteous manner. By and large, these types of hams are just a-holes and no amount of arguing will fix stupid.

Try 14.275 nobody will notice there.