Ham Radio Operators Respond To Haiti Earthquake

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The 10 VOIP Commandments

....From the IMPECCABLE mind of Paul Van Der Weegen, VK2EX comes this lil public service announcement about talking on VoIP systems which I found on the EchoProducer Yahoo! Group

1. Thou Shall Leave 3 to 4 Seconds between all overs.

2. Thou Shall not Connect to more than one Conference Server at a time

3. Thou Shall restrict local repeater Id's from entering the IP
Network

4. Thou Shall Keep all overs to a maximum of 4 Minuets

5. Thou Shall Not Force other Links or Repeaters into a Multi
Conference.

6. Thou Shall Listen on a Clear Frequency before attempting a
Connection to a remote station.

7. Thou Shall Listen for at least 10 Seconds before transmitting
after connecting to a remote station.

8. Thou Shall always announce ones Call Sign before sending DTMF
Commands to a System

9. Thou Shall inhibit DTMF tones from being transmitted though the IP
Network.

10. All Commandments are final and no correspondence will be entered
into.

The Importance & Value Of A PREAMP...

Boy did I quickly discover the importance & value of the preamp feature of my ICOM IC-706 MKII-G which I'm using as the link radio for my EchoLink node.

As many of you no doubt heard if you listened to the EchoLink Page I didn't even get 10 BLOCKS to the WSW of my QTH (Where the node is @ 7 floors, 10 ft. (Avg. height) for a total of 75 ft (This INCLUDES approximately 5 additional feet when you add the patio railing which the mag-mount base which holds my Diamond SG-7900 antenna is attached to).

Part of this was also due to my inability to hold my entire radio (My HT is an ICOM IC-T7H, though my hands are quite small) while I was traveling over a rather bumpy bike path in a small neighborhood park.  After I left the park, the RX signal started to weaken (I probably sounded a lot worse on TX).  From there, I just listened as the signal was only gonna get weaker as I moved further and further away from my node & closer & closer to the grocery store where I was headed.

However on the return trip, I got the RX signal within seconds after exiting the store.  From there it only got better as I only got closer & closer to the good ol' HOME SWEET HOME that is my QTH. :)

Well....That about does it for Today's Musing.  Cheers & 73 for now :)