Andy got on the air for the first time last night 📻
Amateur radio is a deadly hobby, you learn loads, meet great people, and that first contact feels like magic.
Big thanks to South Dublin Radio for hosting the 2m net and being so welcoming and encouraging.
If you have a #qrz1 Explorer HT and programmed it with CHIRP and it does a weird thing where it's receiving a signal from a repeater but it will not break the squelch, I found a workaround that should at least fix the issue for some of the repeaters:
In CHIRP go to View -> Show Extra Fields
In your saved QRZ-1 config find the affected repeater(s)
Change the Optional Signaling option to OFF
Save the config and upload it to the radio
Do I want one of these? YES.
But as far as I can tell, they're strictly illegal in the United States, as there is zero allowance for even ultra-low-power #VHF and #UHF signal broadcast without a license.
Am I missing something here or are all the USians using one of these just playing with fire til the #feds knock down their door and raid their #homelab?