Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
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Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#2This is delightful. I would love to start working on a project like this.
Side note, as someone who works adjacent to the RF and electronics industry, getting my Ham license was the best thing I could have done to help my CS brain understand the radio and electronics side of what we do. If you’ve ever been curious about getting your license, I highly recommend it!
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#3What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den.
I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this:
https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm
His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborhood. He'd be delighted with this.
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#4I bumped into kk4vcz at Defcon in 2021. I was standing around, looking clueless, and playing with my Baofeng near the ham radio village. He approached me and asked if I could transmit on a particular frequency to help test his watch. I said something along the lines of "oh that's really cool, I've read that guy's blog and follow him on Twitter." He said something along the lines of "yeah, that's me."
He even gave me a couple GoodWatch boards. Nice guy!
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#5What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…
Ham radio is a hugely diverse hobby these days.
Personally, I had been thinking about getting my license, but finally did it as a extra skill for my SAR team application. As the younger guy with the rope skills, I got into infrastructure work. Towers and antennas and remote cameras and microwave links, etc.
People are into everything from mesh networking to digitally encoded communication methods to hiking to remote mountaintops and seeing how many people you can contact to building prepper type SHTF communication systems to contesting and seeing how many/how far contacts you can make to setting up data collection systems for scientific research to supporting public safety, large events, and emergency communications. And a lot more I'm not coming up with off the top of my head.
My local radio club was in an area with a lot of retired defense and aerospace type engineers but it also had younger folks from tech, media and anything else type backgrounds.
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#6By the same author https://www.amazon.co.uk/PoC-GTFO-Manul-Laphroaig/dp/1593278...
The PoC||GTFO series, I only have vols 1 & 2, have to be some of the most fascinating books ever published. These and Stevens’ Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment are the most fun in my bookcase.
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#7What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…
One big thing recently is POTA and SOTA where people go to parks and mountain summits to make contacts. The latter requires small radio, putting up your own antennas, and using Morse code.
People talking on the radio is sort of dead. HF is still popular. There is FT8 digital mode that let's make contact with low signal. I've reached Australia, Chile, and Russia from west coast.
There is a lot of hacking, but it doesn't seem to get into mainstream. But there are lots of things to build; I have little radio waiting to be soldered.
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#8What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…
One big thing recently is POTA and SOTA where people go to parks and mountain summits to make contacts. The latter requires small radio, putting up your own antennas, and using Morse code. People talking on the radio is sort of dead. HF is still popular. There is FT8 digital mode that let's make contact with low signal. I've reached Australia, Chile, and Russia from west coast. There is a lot of hacking, but it doesn…
> People talking on the radio is sort of dead.
That's a shame. I have vivid memories of one radio or another chattering away in my dad's study when I was a kid. Of course, to the point I guess, he's still around but doesn't really do any of that anymore himself. He now mostly plays with radio astronomy in his dotage.
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#9What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…
One big thing recently is POTA and SOTA where people go to parks and mountain summits to make contacts. The latter requires small radio, putting up your own antennas, and using Morse code. People talking on the radio is sort of dead. HF is still popular. There is FT8 digital mode that let's make contact with low signal. I've reached Australia, Chile, and Russia from west coast. There is a lot of hacking, but it doesn…
> People talking on the radio is sort of dead.
I don't have any reference to how it used to be, but there's a fair amount of voice activity on the 2m and 70cm repeaters near me.
Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
#10What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…
if you get licensed you may be able to obtain his old callsign as your own