2009 January archive at Hamsexy dot com

Archive for January, 2009

Jan

More Skywarn Lameness….

By Dr. Whacker 11 Comments

Categories: Skywarn, Skywarn Online Gold and Whacker Alert!

Because you asked for it, here are more Skywarn douche chills, brought to you by the fine folks at the Skywarn Online message forums.

Here’s a video by a weather whacker who is in serious denial. First of all, he claims that his car isn’t supposed to to look like an emergency vehicle, yet he has pointless emergency lighting displayed prominently in what he determines to be an “ideal flash pattern.” Flash pattern for what…. letting the Wall Clouds know you’re coming and to make way?

Look…. Storm Chasers are no different than any other breed of whacker out there, and here’s why: civilians, especially those with such pointless hobbies as “storm chasing”, have no more rights on the road than anyone else. If you feel the need to pull over to take photos of a funnel cloud, then put your four-ways on. The *only* purpose emergency lights serve on ‘storm chaser’ cars is the ‘hey, look at me’ factor… the same reason they plaster their car with “STORM SPOTTER” decals, license plates, etc. But hey, don’t take my word for it. Here’s a lemon wearing a condom to explain it further:

Here’s another stormchaser truck, this time with a huge ugly lightbar.

All that’s missing the rainbow flag, and it’s ready for the pride parade.

Here’s another video from Youtube, complete with some pretty dangerously mounted equipment.

This setup is proof that these weather nerds have never been anywhere near a real storm. Look at where those CB radios are mounted, with what appears to be a single screw on each side of a flimsy bracket mount. Any sort of good sized jolt will send those fuckers into someone’s skull. And what’s with the “SEVERE STORM COMMUNICATIONS” logo on the window… severe douche chills indeed.

The owner of the above truck is part of a couple of buddies who call themselves… get ready for this… SWAT… “Severe Weather Alert Team”. Isn’t that precious? I bet they wear matching uniforms, too. For info, here’s their Myspace page.

If you’ve got more info in these or any other Whacker stories, email us!

Jan

Best shack in the world…

By Clyde McPhail 4 Comments

Categories: Hamsexy Danger! and RadioReference Gold

An anonymous submitter sent us these photos, but they should be familiar to anyone who frequents the “Post your Shack/Setup photos” forum on RadioReference.

The OP took a lot of flak for posting these, but I don’t know…. there’s kind of a Kafka-esqe charm to them, and it certainly looks like it belongs to a scanner user. I’m pretty sure a woman hasn’t been anywhere near this apartment in quite some time.

�

Maybe he’s hoping the fire will take care of the stained carpet and the tobacco-yellowed walls. As always, click on the photos for larger.

Jan

More whackerism

By Dr. Whacker 2 Comments

Categories: Hamsexy Sadness...., Whacker Alert! and Whackometer

… who says you have to be a Ham to be a whacker? Not us!

There are lots of examples of whackers existing without a smelly ham in sight. All one has to do is visit any REACT or weather spotter’s webpage to see them in action.

A reader of the site sent us this gem, the website of the Sundance Citizens Patrol, serving the fine citizenry near Sacramento.

Like most whacker groups, they have a very inflated sense of their worth… according to their website, their goal is to franchise their concept to branch teams across America. This is Whacker Warning Sign number one: make themselves out to be greater than they are.

Their goals, according to their website:

Sundance Citizens Patrol and Emergency Services is dedicated to the growth of our�team and it is our goal to be able to provide our services through branch offices throughout the United States. We plan to be associated with the Office of Emergency Services, American Red Cross and Homeland Security. We are currently in the process of providing all of our members with Sundance S.E.R.T. training.

I think he meant to say “C.E.R.T. Training”

Whacker sign number two is assigning their members ranks. Headed by a chief� (who has his own Myspace page, btw), he is joined by a mismash of Officers, Captains, Commanders, etc. He also is thoughtful enough to include his recruits on the Officers Page, but keeps their swelled ranks from us by declaring this information “classified”.

Whacker sign number three is outfitting vehicles as ‘response’ vehicles. The only photos of such vehicles belongs to the good chief himself, an older-model Jeep Cherokee. While it doesn’t have the plethora of decals and other pseudo-police markings that is a hallmark of whackermobiles, it does fulfill sign number three by having a copious amount of emergency lighting. Another tick in the checkbox of whack is the fact he calls the jeep his “Traffic Control Response Vehicle.”

There’s a video on Youtube of the Jeep in all its amber glory. In fact, it reminds us of the COVERT/V.E.T.S. Hamsexy Venture Van featured on this very website about five years ago. We aren’t claiming that the good chief uses tie wraps to secure his lights, but who knows.

As for what this group uses for radio communication, they are surprisingly quiet. Usually an enormous interest in radios is a common thread in whacker groups, but here its significantly absent. There is but a single antenna on the green Cherokee of whack, and it appears to be CB whip.

So, let’s break it down on the Hamsexy patented Whackometer:

For their goals of franchising their original idea, they get the full score of four peppers. For Assigned Ranks, they only get two because their self appointed ranks aren’t nearly as elaborate or unnecessary as we’ve seen. As well, the leader of the group calls himself “chief”, and not “Supreme Commander” or something. They only have one Whackmobile (that we know about) instead of a fleet of vehicles with UNIT 802 on them or something, so again they only get two peppers. The Lights and Sirens category sees three hot peppers, because of the garish display on the youtube video. They would have gotten the full four points, but they didn’t prove they had a siren (or maybe the gay music in the video *was* the vehicle’s speaker, who knows). For Radio Obsession they only get half a pepper, because of the CB antenna. So, all in all, the Sundance Citizens Patrol gets 11.5 out of a possible score of 20. Not too shabby.If you know of a local REACT/ARES/WeatherWhacker/Citizens Patrol group that deserves to be put under the Hamsexy microscope, drop us a line at hamsexy.submissions@gmail.com.

Jan

Hamsexy from the past….

By admin 2 Comments

Categories: Hamsexyness!

A friend of the site emailed us this gem from the greatest decade in the history of the word…

“….I just stumbled into this uber-sexy armband picture in an old 73 magazine and knew I had to submit it.”

Nice armband… It goes great with the white polyester bellbottoms.
Click on the image to make it bigger.

Jan

Skywarn Sexiness

By Dr. Whacker 3 Comments

Categories: Hamsexy WTF????, Skywarn, Vehicular Reviews and Whacker Alert!

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:”

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!!

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:

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:

Jan

The Skullcracka…

By Clyde McPhail 4 Comments

Categories: Hamsexyness!

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.�

Jan

Ham Radio and Ike

By motorola_otaku 4 Comments

Categories: Hamsexyness!

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.

Jan

Parking Lot Patrol

By Clyde McPhail 0 Comments

Categories: Hamsexy Danger!, Hamsexy WTF???? and Hamsexyness!

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.