Skywarn Sexiness

If there’s one thing we can’t get enough of on Hamsexy, it’s ‘chase vehicles’.

Skywarn is a great example of an organization full of people with weird, wild and wonderful ‘storm chaser’ rigs … a few rudimentary classes on what a wall cloud looks like and graduates are suddenly storm chasing experts, flush with a newfound entitlement to pollute the family minivan with lights, antennae and a laptop running a pirated version of GRLevel3 to magically turn it into a ‘chase vehicle’. Most have no real idea of the dangers of speeding headlong into a storm …. they are more interested in having flashing lights, decals and radios in their car than really doing much good. Anyone who doubts us can tune into any Skywarn net during any of the 300 thunderstorms that happen in summers across North America….only if you are interested in hearing reports of ‘rain’ a hundred times an hour.

A good source of Hamsexy gold can be found in this thread, where storm chasers of all stripes masturbate to eachothers ‘chase’ vehciles, marvelling at all of the flashing lights they have.

The whole Skywarn mindset is summed up by a few messages in the thread, including this one by user “Chipper:”

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The vehicles themselves range from pretty mundane to Hamsexy gold (even though some aren’t even hams…. I guess they think that studying for the test would take away from valuable ‘chase’ time).

While most are pickup trucks, SUVs or even minivans, some are forced to make do with whatever they have at hand. Here’s a great family truckster pimped out to be one hell of a sweet chase vehicle from Illinois….

[Image removed as per Hamsexy’s Polite Request Policy]
Take note of he non-committal of the magnetic storm spotter decals… You know, just to advertise to everybody that he’s on the case without actually committing to it (most likely so his insurance company won’t find out that he’s using his car to ‘punch the core’. The luggage-rack mounted lightbar is also a nice touch… I’d like to see what happens when a strong storm wind gets a hold of that sucker.

[Image removed as per Hamsexy’s Polite Request Policy]
Is this guy impressed with himself, or what?  ***OFFICIAL*** NWS Storm Spotter. Isn’t that like being an ***OFFICIAL*** Union Pacific Railfan?

[Image removed as per Hamsexy’s Polite Request Policy]

His radio rack is also pretty weak. Chickenband radio, FRS with aftermarket speakermike, and a couple of out-of-date scanners. The **OFFICIAL*** NWS Storm Spotter laminate is a nice touch, too – just in case the Tornado asks for identification before it tosses your car four miles into a beanfield.

But… what happens when you don’t actually have your own chase vehicle? Do you just sit and read the Chase Vehicle thread with envy in your eyes… no way dude… fire up that pirated version of photoshop and lets start dreaming!!

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Behold… the Weatherwarrior. A blue soccermom cruiser with orange velocity stripes, random junk bolted to the roofrack, pointless smiles of sheetmetal slopily riveted over the tires, a badly drawn tailgate being held open with a giant tampon, and a $3000 pornocam attached to the rear bumper. The Weather Warrior’s website is pretty funny too, but I’ll let you guys visit that site on your own. To his credit, I don’t see any lightbars or anything, but maybe Whelan’s website was down when he was searching for stuff to cut and paste onto the Weather Warrior.

Or, if you like, you can take the minimalist approach:

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Orange lightbars…. three orange ocotpus suckers… And the same three-light element from the lightbar photoshopped on various places around the front of the truck. If only the emergency lighting equipment that he wants to attach to his truck actually existed, he’d have one sweet looking ride.

Lights, lights, lights. As long as the good Lord continues to smite our Earth with severe weather, there will always be storm nerds willing to toss some lights on their mom’s car to go chasing after it. Here’s a pretty cool photo of a storm chase vehicle posing in front of a sight few of us would ever be privileged to see: the birth of a tornado. The majesty of nature’s might and fierce indifference nature holds towards us has absolutley no meaning to those who choose to see what they want to see in the world:

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Posted in Hamsexy WTF????, Skywarn, Vehicular Reviews, Whacker Alert! | 3 Comments

The Skullcracka…

Here’s another example of a terrible example of a scanner install. What makes it Hamsexy (aside from the realy dangerous hunk of wood taped (glued?) to the dash), is the fact the owner was proud enough of it to post it to RadioReference.
KC0JAR posted the best response in the RR thread for this deathtrap on wheels:
I’ve got to admit that’s probably one of the worst installs I’ve ever seen anybody admit to on this and many other boards I frequent. I honestly, and I mean this with 100% pure sincerity, I honestly can’t believe you would want the entire internet to know what a horribly unsafe and crappy job you did plunking down random pieces of equipment, wood, and cabling on your car.

The wood mount will kill you in an accident. And, it looks like ass. What the hell is that thing wrapped around it anyway? At least the scanner will still be belted to the wood when it smashes your face in!

The wires running everywhere from the mobile rig are a fire hazard and look horrible. Where do they even go?

The GIANT speaker mounted conveniently in the same space that I would probably want to have my left knee if I was riding with you will more than likely slide your ‘friends” kneecap right up to their nutsack if you ever rear-end someone.

The mag antennas on the back are understandable, I used them for years. But did you have to jam them all in the same spot? Being a ham operator, you surely should remember the whole ‘distance between antennas’ thing, right? Spread those mo-fos out!!!!!!

The coax through the window… Well, I uhh… hmmm. I’m actually not sure what the hell to say about that except to ask you why you just didn’t run it through the door???

I give the install a 1.3/10 as it sits. It’s very improvable but it’s a disgrace to the radio community right now. I don’t want people associating ME, with YOU because we both have antennas and yours remind them of Deliverance. 

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Posted in Hamsexyness! | 5 Comments

Ham Radio and Ike

We’ve all seen or read it at some point. In the aftermath of a major disaster, “news articles” and “press releases” get published touting the role of Amateur Radio as the only means of communication left working and describing its role in aiding disaster recovery and emergency management, often with varying degrees of embellishment. Like many of you who go years or decades, or maybe even your entire lives without experiencing such an event, I read these stories from the perspective of an outsider: skeptical, maybe even a little jaded, but still believing that at their core there was some small nugget of truth where Amateur Radio did, in fact, provide needed and appreciated communications relief “when all else failed.” Well, on 12 September 2008 and in the ensuing weeks I got to experience it up close and personal in the form of Hurricane Ike.

Here is what I saw.

I live in the city of Pasadena, Texas, a suburb of 150,000 people on the southeast side of Houston. Our emergency services operate on the Harris County Regional Radio Network, a 24-site 800 MHz Motorola Smartzone trunked system. The city also hosts its own amateur radio volunteer group, the Pasadena Emergency Communications Group, under the direct management of the city’s OEM. While they were active before, during and after the storm, they were not called upon to provide fill-in communications for emergency services when the storm knocked the two 800 MHz sites closest to this area off-line, nor were they tapped in the days after when the two sites continued to go on- and off-line and in and out of Site Trunking mode and despite the fact that both of the City-owned amateur repeaters never went off-line at any point during or after the storm.

More telling, however, was an incident that happened to me personally on the Thursday after the storm passed. On that day, the electrical service restoral crews re-energized the portion of the grid servicing my neighborhood but without performing any repairs or tree removal. As you can imagine, this sparked a number of fires.  One such fire ignited in the back yard of one of my elderly neighbors, who was staying by herself. Not having any cellular service (Nextel was weak in my immediate area until at least two weeks after the storm had pased), I put out two emergency calls on the local 2-meter machine. I finally raised an elderly ham, who:

-did not identify himself.

-did not want to call 911 because he believed the situation did not qualify as an emergency.

-basically gave up after he got no answer at the fire department’s non-emergency number.

By this time I had flagged down a passing police officer, and he radioed it in. While the event did end up not causing any significant structural damage, the seeming callousness of this anonymous OF ham left me dumbstruck.
I should also mention that despite this, amateur radio volunteers did provide a service for FEMA relaying information from the many food-and-water points of distribution (PODs) in Harris County back to their staging area via 2-meter simplex and various repeaters. I’m sure there were also other instances of Amateur Radio providing legitimate assistance in the greater Houston-Galveston area (it’s pretty big, and I didn’t personally stray too far from home for several weeks after the storm.) But overall, the activity in my area sure as hell wasn’t indicative of ARRL’s “when all else fails” party line.

Posted in Hamsexyness! | 4 Comments

Parking Lot Patrol

An anonymous submitter sent this to us….

An article from the Macon, Georgia Sun features the “Santa Patrol“, a group of hams who lurk in parking lots, looking for suspicious behavouir (all the while, looking rather suspicious themselves).

As our submitter said, he doesn’t know what’s funnier … the article’s subject matter, or the reader comments…. including one guy who somehow worked the article into a comparasion of the Patriot Act to George Orwell’s book “1981” (It must have been a prequel to his better known book…)

View the article (and its Hamsexy goodness) here.

Posted in Hamsexy Danger!, Hamsexy WTF????, Hamsexyness! | Leave a comment

Hamcom 2008

Hamcom 2008 has come and gone. The highlight of the event was, of course, the Hamsexy dinner at Bone Daddy’s. The star of the show was totally unexpected and totally welcome by all. Thank goodness motorola_otaku remembered his camera.
Hamsexy Waitress
Ahh yes, Hamsexy indeed.
The Crew
The Hamsexy crew from Dallas, Houston, and Oklahoma. Seated counter-clockwise: Nathaniel, KE5OMF (blugu64), Josh, KD5QCZ (motorola_otaku), Scott, (N0XMZ), Curran, KD5UXO, Brent (kd5wyu), Leah (mam1081’s g/f), Mark, AE5DN (mam1081), Rick, W5TUX (aka “the lurker”), Jonathan, K5VX (Victor Xray), Chris (sklnd). Good food, great service, good times!

Posted in Hamsexyness! | 4 Comments

GOT A GOOD DAYTON STORY? We’d love to hear it!

If you have a good Dayton story, drop us a note at hamsexy.submissions@gmail.com

We’d love to hear from you!   I spent most my time hanging out with my friends by the truck, so i don’t have any.  There must be hundreds though.  Maybe one about some asshat driving a  Durango with an antenna farm, that cut you off in traffic on 70west or something.

Posted in Dayton 2008, Hamsexyness! | 5 Comments

Time for skywarn Pt. 2

Well we got another one with the “cool” antennas, lights, and stickers. This is one of the better ones I have seen for a while. I will even make an equipment list for this guy.

  1. Code3 Mini Lightbar
  2. RDF antennas
  3. Over the counter stickers
  4. Antennas

I think that sums it up.

……..Without further ado.

Gay Skywarn

Inside:

Inside weather car

(click for fullsize)

Posted in Hamsexyness! | 16 Comments

Hams to the rescue

Local hams in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta keep local emergency services online.

http://www.crowsnestpasspromoter.com/News/391624.html

A failure to communicate…

By Bryan Passifiume
Reporter, Crowsnest Pass Promoter
Friday April 11, 2008

It was a tense weekend for emergency workers as equipment failures brought the Crowsnest Pass emergency radio system to its knees, causing the municipality’s paramedics and firefighters to rely on cellular phones to communicate with dispatchers.

The failure occurred on Thursday afternoon, when a repeater near Hartell Ridge failed, cutting off local workers from their dispatchers in Black Diamond. Members from the Crowsnest Pass Amateur Radio Club worked throughout the weekend to repair the equipment, finally restoring service Monday evening.

Emergency communications in the Crowsnest Pass follows a complex and often problematic path from the Crowsnest Pass to dispatchers in Black Diamond. Communications are routed from the main repeater site on top of the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre, and transmitted to a tower in Burmis. From there, a VHF radio link transmits the signal about 145 kilometres north to another tower near Hartell, which is then transmitted to the dispatch centre at Black Diamond Hospital.

These multiple and sometimes long distance hops periodically cause problems, as a single issue between any of these radio sites can cut emergency workers off from their dispatcher.

These issues, along with reception issues, will be solved once a new radio repeater is installed at the Amateur Radio Society’s repeater site on Ironstone Mountain, but that can’t take place until the snow melts enough to allow access.

According to members of the amateur radio society, who are generally responsible for maintenance of the radio system, the new repeater system is ready to go, it’s just a matter of getting access to Ironstone Mountain.

Paramedics had to rely on dispatchers calling them on cellular phones in order to receive calls. According to Crowsnest Pass EMS director Troy Linderman, the failure of the radio system cost the service close to $300 in extra airtime. As well, as EMS currently has a usage contract with Rogers, crews weren’t able to get a signal in some parts of the Pass, specifically Frank and north of the community.
According to Paramedic Nick Spencer, crews were delayed by several minutes as dispatchers attempted to reach crews who were on duty to assign incoming calls.

“It delays our response time because dispatch has to call us on our cell phones,” Spencer told The Promoter. “Sometimes, due to coverage issues, they had to call us three or four times before they could get through.”
Even though the delay in responding to incidents didn’t cause any serious incidents, emergency workers are concerned that repeated failures of the system could cause serious problems down the road.
“It slows everything down and we’re all about speed,” Spencer added. “In an emergency, every second counts.”

Posted in Amateur Radio News | 1 Comment