Hey People...
What's shakin ? 

A few of you that I have had the pleasure of talking to on a sum-what regular basis know me as Patrick KC8 CBZ I've had my no-code tech license for a while now. I all ways seem to think its only been a couple of years but looking at the date on my ticket hanging here in the shack, "Effective date 01/19/96" I guess its been a little longer than that. I suppose the reason I think of it as shorter is because I have just started to really get out there and use it in the last couple of years. 

What some of you may not know is that another of my favorite obsessions is computers. I've been known as trick@cyberspace, or [email protected] or author publisher trickwarez Ltd. for longer than I've been a ham. Well ok I've always been a ham... But. I've been programming - 7 languages at present, designing, building, trouble shooting, repairing, writing web sites - both commercial and private, and administrating networks for at least 15 years and probably longer.

I recently purchased a whole bunch of new ham gear and have been studying the highly technical aspects of VHF and UHF. My current obsession along that vein is transmit audio. If you read even the very basics about vhf/uhf radio equipment you will no doubt read that they purposely chose to use FM as one the most common phone modes because of the high-fidelity characteristics that FM has as apposed to AM.

Yet in actual practice I have heard more really nasty sounding radios on fm than I ever did on am. Think about it honestly. Most of the radios you hear on 2 meters sound tinny and pinched up. They only use a small portion of the legal audio frequency spectrum. I'm not talking about deviation or amplitude here, strictly by the book, it is very possible to achieve easier to understand and more pleasant to listen to audio at and  below legal deviation and bandwidth limits. I mean simply normal sounding voice reproduction with a good balance of both hi tones and low tones. Many of the rigs you hear have so much hi frequency audio and so little low end that it hurts your ears just to listen to them. Think about that the next time someone comes on the air and you find yourself reaching for the volume control.

Not that I'm antisocial or any thing like that. With the right topic I can time out a repeater with the best of them, but I prefer the technical, electronics and all of that kinda stuff about radio more so than chewin the rag just for something to do.

Well that's a taste for now. I'll be putting up a few pages here in the near future. and probably some links to a bunch of hi-tech stuff. If your interested Please stop back from time to time and have a look.

7 3s
KC8 CBZ  Clear.