K6MIB

So the FCC has reinstated license application and renewal fees for ham radio. And, ham radio being 90% overweight old white guys looking for something to complain about, this has become a common topic on the air. If you can’t afford $3.50 a year then you have other VERY SERIOUS problems with your life management and should probably not renew and sell all of your ham radio gear (which likely cost much more than $35) and try to get your life in order.

You are NOT “almost destinated at my home QTH”! “destinated” isn’t a word. You are JUST “almost home” so say that.

Some ham people have a propensity to use completely different words when having a radio conversation. Don’t do that. Do you say “petrol” instead of “gas” when talking in a non radio conversation? Then don’t say “petrol” on the radio either. Especially on a high quality 440 repeater system. 440 repeaters are generally a “conversational” mode, so just have a normal conversation.

What is the best length to set your TOT? If you are a beginner and tend to ramble set your TOT for 2 minutes or maybe less, this will help train yourself to not go on too long. Once you are conditioned to keeping your transmissions short put your timer back up, but usually no more than 3 minutes.

If you’re an “old timer” who tends to just ramble on and stay keyed up while you’re trying to “think of something else to talk about” then you should set your TOT to one minute or LESS.

Do you like watching someone throw up? Probably not, and people don’t usually care to listen to people in a radio conversation just regurgitate what the last person said. It’s a waste of time. If someone talks about the line at the grocery store 4 days ago, something in the news last night, and how their kid won a “participant” trophy, you DO NOT need to come up with a personal example of all three topics or even address them when it’s your turn the next time in rotation. And you DO NOT need to reiterate (regurgitate) each thing the last person said, you don’t need to prove you were listening. It’s just a waste of time, if you don’t have anything to say, say good bye for now and stop talking.

NO it’s NOT. And 1 minute isn’t TEN MINUTES! There is NO NEED to start each transmission of a conversation with your callsign. It hasn’t been 10 minutes, it is not HF where it is sometimes useful to use callsigns to indicate the communication path. Just have your brief conversation and give your callsign at the END. Since on a large linked UHF repeater system the general rule is to keep conversations under 15 minutes (it doesn’t count if you just “pause for a moment to see if someone wants to use the system”) If someones “reason” for constantly giving their callsign is “habit” because they are an avid HF operator then maybe they need a caretaker… do they try to “shift” when driving an automatic transmission vehicle out of “habit”? Noooo so if they ID on a 440 conversational system it indicates they don’t know where they are and what they are doing right?