On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:51:36 EST, dave wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:40:04 -0500, Steve Bonine wrote:

Somehow hams
have a mysterious ability to tune around looking for a QSO, check the
antenna match, and carry on a conversation without this activity
distracting them from driving? If it wasn't for the clear danger it
poses, that would be funny.

My 2-meter Kenwood tunes itself. I've had 2 driving jobs with 2-way
radios and was a dispatcher eventually for one of them. [snipped]
I thunk a repeater (with callsign) when I get on the road,
to check the gear, and don't think about again, unless someone comes up
and asks for a radio check.

Exactly! Anyone who would do what Steve described needs to have their
sanity checked. As most of us probably do, I set my dual-band mobile
on the channel that I would use (the other channel monitors a non-ham
safety system) and never touch the mike again unless there's a very
important reason to do so. Working a contest of snagging a QSO are
not important reasons while driving.

Steve should realize and accept that there's a world of difference
between dispatch communications, which we do, and having a duplex
conversation. I can blame the cellphone industry for fooling the
public into thinking that a cellphone is just some special type of
telephone rather than a radio transceiver. We ran into this attitude
when the industry twisted The Congress into amending the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act to make unauthorized interception of
cellphone signals a crime, giving only the illusion of privacy, rather
than providing robust encryption of the signals in the first place.

I've been using mobile radios, both ham and non-ham, for decades and
know how to do it safely. The local 30-somethings with the cellphones
up to the ear and no hands on the wheel obviously do not. I spent a
lot of effort to get the ham exemption written into the Oregon
hands-free statute, and I do use a hands-free device with my cellphone
at all times.

That's my two rings....
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net