[Coco] Ham Radio

[John Guin]

Hello all,

I was reading Jim Cox's mail about not pursuing ham radio work with the Coco
in the Seattle/Bellevue area.

I'm also a ham radio operator in the Seattle area, and have had antenna
restrictions to deal with as well.

Back when I had my packet radio set up, I used a 19" long antenna made from
#12 wire and got reception and transmission good enough from West Seattle to
the node closest to my condo - about 3 miles away.  I used my old 2 meter
handheld, and it worked very well.  It only had one watt of transmitting
power.  That's all you need to get started on packet

IIRC, there was actually a packet article or two in the Rainbow, but I'm not
sure how useful the information would be.  The packet modem does most of the
work, though, so the easiest thing to do with a Coco now would be to use a
terminal program to log data.  Since the Coco uses a standard voltage on the
serial port, it is not as hard to connect the modem as some other 8 bit
machines (Commodore, I'm talking to you).

Anyway, the point of this letter is not to let antenna restrictions keep you
off the air.  Unless you were wanting to get involved with Clover or some of
the other low frequency modes, a really cheap "coat hanger" antenna sitting
in a window is all you really need.

73,
John Guin
KB7ZJW