Today I achieved the ultimate in my current goals…I became a licensed amateur radio operator. I was bitten by the bug a little more than a week ago, when playing with my Magellan Meridian GPS receiver, I stumbled upon APRS. I had just finished answering Tina’s questions the day before about how the receiver worked and chuckled when she asked if people can track you. I had always thought that would be cool if you could send the signal back to your home computer or something along those lines, but I believed at the time that it was only available to Public Safety and Corporate entities. It turns out you can send packets of data embedded with your location and some other info across amateur frequencies using nothing more than your GPS and a TNC enabled transmitter.
As I began to dig deeper I was further intrigued by the group of men and women known as HAMs. I had always written them off as a bunch of old fogies who didn’t know the computer-age was upon them. What I found was a dedicated group of international individuals pushing the envelope of wireless technology.
As I begin this journey into Amateur Radio I welcome you to follow me. As of today I am a Technician Class Operator, I look forward to the next test, but in the mean time I will be setting up my APRS station for the trip to Georgia. I will post more details on how to track us soon.
