QST QST QST all operators
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BigRobT
Member
True, all licensees can be easily tracked to place of residence via the FCC database, which is online and public information. All one needs is the license/ call sign number. As a tech, my info is listed there.
Sistema1927
Member
I would hope that all licensees would already know how easy it is to get full information on name, address, even GPS coordinates from places like QRZ.com.
73 de N5xxx
73 de N5xxx
Devonai
Member
I used to think people who had the little lightning symbol on their license plates were super heroes or something.
jmtgsx
Member
You mean they're not??!
kd7nqb
Member
Its a calculated risk for me.
nico
Member
I think I can speak for everyone who hasn't yet replied to this thread, when I say. . . huh?
GlowinPontiac
Member
^^ radio callsigns.
if you know somebodys callsign its not hard to find out the address.
radio gear is not cheap and if somebody knows that the house also contains firearms it could become the target of a tech savvy burgular.
if you know somebodys callsign its not hard to find out the address.
radio gear is not cheap and if somebody knows that the house also contains firearms it could become the target of a tech savvy burgular.
DE wd0xxx
nico:
Much of the above is HamSpeak.
I tried to be a little circumspect about the warning, lest even more evildoers caught on to this. That's why I used the "QST" in the thread title.
But I guess now that the cat's out of the bag, I should probably offer a few more details.
Radio Operators (Marine, Commercial, Amateur, etc) use a lot of abbreviations because of the historical use of Morse Code, where words are spelled out with a series of on-off radio signals. This is much like today's text messages, where it saves both time and "bandwidth" to truncate and abbreviate a lot of words.
In fact, many of of today's text messaging shortcuts showed up in Morse Code a century ago, such as ur for you're and your, and cud for could, cul for see you later, etc.
Part of this shortcutting was the use of short "Q-signals" such as "QSY" for "I'm changing my frequency" and the one I used above, QST, for "Attention all radio operators." Many of the "Q-signals" are similar to the "Ten-Codes" still in use by emergency services and Citizen's Band radio.
A "rig" is a radio operator's transmission and receiving equipment, just as one might say, "I have a shoulder rig for my 1911."
The problem is that in the old days details (real name, station locaation, etc) about a "ham" (Amateur Radio Operator) would be listed by his/her FCC-issued call letters in a great big expensive book called the "call book," whose availability was limited because of the expense of the book. Mostly, only Amateur Radio Clubs had them available to members. And a Ham's station call letters, such as mine, wd0xxx, are unique over the entire planet because we communicate over the whole world.
Nowadays, however, with everything available on line, these details are available to anyone who cares to look up a Ham's call letters online or frequently, just by Googling them.
There are a lot of new Hams coming on board this wonderful hobby because the FCC has relaxed many of its requirements (the knowledge of Morse Code, for example), who might not yet be immersed enough in the hobby to realize that detailed information about a ham is available with only a couple of keystrokes and a mouse click.
And using one's call letters on a gun forum means two things: (A) you have lots of electronic goodies, and (B) you have guns.
I took my Ham license plates off my car a couple of years ago for this reason. "Wd0xxx" was a plate frequently seen in gun range parking lots and gun stores and the like.
Too bad, because I liked the slashed zero (part of my call letters) on my plates.
The "DE" is the Morse Code equivalent of "I am."
DE wd0xxx K
(The "K" means "go ahead, other operator.")
PS: Many Hams are also interested in firearms. There seems to be a gene somewhere that links interest in technical things with interest in guns. If you would like to know more about becoming a Ham (it's a lot easier nowadays, with no Morse Code requirement), you can go to
http://www.arrl.org/
The "ARRL" stands for American Radio Relay League, and is not a pirate's growl.
And Hiram Maxim is generally considered to be the first "Ham!" (But see Mal H's correction below)
Incidentally, in SHTF scenarios, Amateur Radio communication is usually the only long-distance communication available. Many Hams are completely set up for stand-alone emergency radio communication.
Beats silversmiths on horseback!
nico:
Much of the above is HamSpeak.
I tried to be a little circumspect about the warning, lest even more evildoers caught on to this. That's why I used the "QST" in the thread title.
But I guess now that the cat's out of the bag, I should probably offer a few more details.
Radio Operators (Marine, Commercial, Amateur, etc) use a lot of abbreviations because of the historical use of Morse Code, where words are spelled out with a series of on-off radio signals. This is much like today's text messages, where it saves both time and "bandwidth" to truncate and abbreviate a lot of words.
In fact, many of of today's text messaging shortcuts showed up in Morse Code a century ago, such as ur for you're and your, and cud for could, cul for see you later, etc.
Part of this shortcutting was the use of short "Q-signals" such as "QSY" for "I'm changing my frequency" and the one I used above, QST, for "Attention all radio operators." Many of the "Q-signals" are similar to the "Ten-Codes" still in use by emergency services and Citizen's Band radio.
A "rig" is a radio operator's transmission and receiving equipment, just as one might say, "I have a shoulder rig for my 1911."
The problem is that in the old days details (real name, station locaation, etc) about a "ham" (Amateur Radio Operator) would be listed by his/her FCC-issued call letters in a great big expensive book called the "call book," whose availability was limited because of the expense of the book. Mostly, only Amateur Radio Clubs had them available to members. And a Ham's station call letters, such as mine, wd0xxx, are unique over the entire planet because we communicate over the whole world.
Nowadays, however, with everything available on line, these details are available to anyone who cares to look up a Ham's call letters online or frequently, just by Googling them.
There are a lot of new Hams coming on board this wonderful hobby because the FCC has relaxed many of its requirements (the knowledge of Morse Code, for example), who might not yet be immersed enough in the hobby to realize that detailed information about a ham is available with only a couple of keystrokes and a mouse click.
And using one's call letters on a gun forum means two things: (A) you have lots of electronic goodies, and (B) you have guns.
I took my Ham license plates off my car a couple of years ago for this reason. "Wd0xxx" was a plate frequently seen in gun range parking lots and gun stores and the like.
Too bad, because I liked the slashed zero (part of my call letters) on my plates.
The "DE" is the Morse Code equivalent of "I am."
DE wd0xxx K
(The "K" means "go ahead, other operator.")
PS: Many Hams are also interested in firearms. There seems to be a gene somewhere that links interest in technical things with interest in guns. If you would like to know more about becoming a Ham (it's a lot easier nowadays, with no Morse Code requirement), you can go to
http://www.arrl.org/
The "ARRL" stands for American Radio Relay League, and is not a pirate's growl.
And Hiram Maxim is generally considered to be the first "Ham!" (But see Mal H's correction below)
Incidentally, in SHTF scenarios, Amateur Radio communication is usually the only long-distance communication available. Many Hams are completely set up for stand-alone emergency radio communication.
Beats silversmiths on horseback!
Last edited:
Crystal River Charlie
Member
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- Nov 16, 2006
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I have been a ham on and off since 1967. I am currently a General and do mostly QRP PSK-31.
C R Charlie W4- - -
C R Charlie W4- - -
True, but there is often confusion amongst gunners and hams about who is who, including me quite a while back.
Hiram Stevens Maxim is the famous Maxim of machine gun fame, his son Hiram Percy Maxim was the early pioneer in amateur radio and one of the founders of the ARRL. HPM was involved in perfecting suppressors for firearms and early mufflers for automobiles.
U.S.SFC_RET
Member
This is cool. I have been seriously thinking about becoming a ham for years. Anyone living in Md PM me and hook me up with a tester so I can get started please.
agreed. I've been mentioning this in the past. Your call is great and all, but on a public forum where you are talking essentially about your firearm collection, etc. it can be used against you.
It is VERY easy to recognize a call sign and even easier to pop it into the FCC's ULS to get full name and address.
Divulge once in a blue moon to a local ham on the forum if you want to chat (at your own risk), but I don't advise it and certainly not anything beyond.
All it takes is a dedicated crook to search the forum to find a gun owner near him (by address!)
- TE (Just another General Class)
It is VERY easy to recognize a call sign and even easier to pop it into the FCC's ULS to get full name and address.
Divulge once in a blue moon to a local ham on the forum if you want to chat (at your own risk), but I don't advise it and certainly not anything beyond.
All it takes is a dedicated crook to search the forum to find a gun owner near him (by address!)
- TE (Just another General Class)
U.S.SFC_RET:
By now, I imagine you've got a couple of responses to your inquiry. However, for the benefit of others, you can go to ARRL.org and click on the second tab on their home page.
Also, by way of illustrating the point in the original post, you can drive around until you see a ham license plate (one or two letters, a number, and two or three more letters), write it down, look up the ham's name, and call him/her.
The initial letter will usually be A, K, N, or W, although others are possible for United States licensees.
Local amateur radio clubs are almost always named by the first letter of your town followed by an "ARC" for "Amateur Radio Club." Example: the Boulder Amateur Radio Club is called BARC. Chances are fair to middlin' that if you stick "Something"ARC.org in your browser window, the home page of your local club will pop up. Otherwise Google "Something" Amateur Radio Club.
This home page will invariably have contact points for VEs (Volunteer Examiners).
These are pics of me and my "Dream Beam" 2 Meter beam antenna which I "invented." It's actually an extension of prior art, based on the proximity fuse antenna of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb, which you can see in many pics of the "Little Boy."
----------
The Little Boy:
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/LBFM/images/LittleBoy.jpg
----------
The Little Boy antenna used a folded dipole for the radiating element, as you can see in the linked image.
My "Dream Beam" antenna is meant to be compact and foldable, and hung from a tree. It consists of half-elements of a three element Yagi, where the "other" half of the elements are actully reflected images of the the real halves. The radiator in my "Dream Beam" is gamma-fed. In the pics I had it mounted on a pole, but if hung from a tree, the elements would actually be hanging downward. (After all, it made no difference to the signal whether the elements were pointing up or down. Except I had to hold the mike upside down to talk. )
The elements were collapsible telescoping units available from Radio Shack. When folded, it was no more bulky than a back-packing fishing rod.
It worked pretty good, SWRs being adjustable down to 1.3 or 1.4. It had to be retuned every time you used it in a different location or position, but the tuning only had to be made in the radiating element. The reflector and director could be adjusted and marked and extended to the same dimensions each time it was set up.
I never got around to making any gain measurements on it, though. Probably maybe 4dB, by guesstimation.
For relevance: GUN
By now, I imagine you've got a couple of responses to your inquiry. However, for the benefit of others, you can go to ARRL.org and click on the second tab on their home page.
Also, by way of illustrating the point in the original post, you can drive around until you see a ham license plate (one or two letters, a number, and two or three more letters), write it down, look up the ham's name, and call him/her.
The initial letter will usually be A, K, N, or W, although others are possible for United States licensees.
Local amateur radio clubs are almost always named by the first letter of your town followed by an "ARC" for "Amateur Radio Club." Example: the Boulder Amateur Radio Club is called BARC. Chances are fair to middlin' that if you stick "Something"ARC.org in your browser window, the home page of your local club will pop up. Otherwise Google "Something" Amateur Radio Club.
This home page will invariably have contact points for VEs (Volunteer Examiners).
These are pics of me and my "Dream Beam" 2 Meter beam antenna which I "invented." It's actually an extension of prior art, based on the proximity fuse antenna of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb, which you can see in many pics of the "Little Boy."
----------
The Little Boy:
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/LBFM/images/LittleBoy.jpg
----------
The Little Boy antenna used a folded dipole for the radiating element, as you can see in the linked image.
My "Dream Beam" antenna is meant to be compact and foldable, and hung from a tree. It consists of half-elements of a three element Yagi, where the "other" half of the elements are actully reflected images of the the real halves. The radiator in my "Dream Beam" is gamma-fed. In the pics I had it mounted on a pole, but if hung from a tree, the elements would actually be hanging downward. (After all, it made no difference to the signal whether the elements were pointing up or down. Except I had to hold the mike upside down to talk.
)The elements were collapsible telescoping units available from Radio Shack. When folded, it was no more bulky than a back-packing fishing rod.
It worked pretty good, SWRs being adjustable down to 1.3 or 1.4. It had to be retuned every time you used it in a different location or position, but the tuning only had to be made in the radiating element. The reflector and director could be adjusted and marked and extended to the same dimensions each time it was set up.
I never got around to making any gain measurements on it, though. Probably maybe 4dB, by guesstimation.
For relevance: GUN
Last edited:
Sheldon J
Member
De N8mxx
Yeah on a gun discussion group or other sensitive area that could be a bad idea to use your Ham Call, something I am in this ID theft world ashamed to say I never thought of.
Yeah on a gun discussion group or other sensitive area that could be a bad idea to use your Ham Call, something I am in this ID theft world ashamed to say I never thought of.
kb2iaw
Member
But of you know the address as seen on any fcc/qst website is the location of the transmitter/reciver and my not be the persons home address . The fcc requires only the physical location of the radio equipment ...as any radio station .taxi / taxi cab co. / auto wreckers/ fleet dispatched trucks etc.etc.
True, but of all the hams in the US, what percentage don't have their shack in the home or nearby? Less than 5%, I'll bet.
BTW, if anyone does want to change their username here, send me a PM with your new name choice.
BTW, if anyone does want to change their username here, send me a PM with your new name choice.
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