Links

Links

Getting started with amateur radio (ham):

What Is Ham Radio: Introduction and how to get started in ham radio
W5YI: Many resources for amateur as well as commercial radio. W5YI publishes study materials to help prepare you for license exams.
Pacific Northwest Hamfairs & Events

Radio and Telecom History

Thank you to Sarah and Alex Boyd for pointing me to the FSMG: Telecom Timeline. You two reminded me that I was missing an important part of our hobby, HISTORY!!
You can’t get to where your going, if you don’t know where you have been. Here are a few sites that show how communications have changed over the centuries.

Popular General Ham Radio Sites

- - ARRL: National Association for Amateur Radio, the leading organization for hams everywhere.
  - QRZ: Many resources including finding ham users by call sign, taking practice license exams and discussion forums.
  - EHAM: Many resources including equipment reviews and discussion forums.
  - WB7QIW: Hoodview Amateur Radio Club: Many resources including newsletters of regional activities and much more.
  - AC6V: Amateur Radio and DX Reference Guide: a treasure trove of resources and interesting ham info on virtually every topic.
  - Q code list: a listing from Wikipedia with the common shorthand codes that start with the letter Q which originated in morse code but continue in the voice/phone communications of ham radio as well.

HF and DX

- - - - NG3K Beam Headings: a Great Circle map you can print to see headings from Seattle .
      - QSL.NET Beam Headings: a VERY complete listing of country prefixes, headings to them, coordinates, times, distances, etc.
      - County Hunters’ Net meets daily from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. PDT. Home frequency is 14.336 MHz (20 meters). For regional county hunting (Pacific NW) the frequency is 3.903 MHz.

Emergency Assistance:

- - - - Oregon ARES/RACES
      - ARRL Oregon Section: after clicking this link look to the left side and find the ARES specific sections
      - National Weather Service Skywarn: severe weather storm spotter resources
      - Skywarn.org

Other area resources:

- - - - Spout Springs Repeater Association (SSRA) operating a 2 meter repeater at Spout Springs (30 miles North of La Grande) on 146.800- 123.0Hz with wide coverage. A very friendly Cracker Barrel Net is scheduled Monday-Friday at 8PM Pacific discussing many topics.
      - Joseph Oregon Weather Not only a professionally constructed weather site that is consistently ranked in the top 5 nationally, this is also a web site for the KB7DZR repeater system. 147.000+ 103.5 Hz, System Fusion Digital Code 103, EchoLink Node #323569. This repeater system also acts as the communications hub for the Eagle Cap Extreme Sled Dog Race in January with linked repeater systems, VHF remote bases, and EchoLink Conferences.