At COMMS-CHECK, our mission is to provide the knowledge and education to further your radio communications experience. From beginner to experienced we offer our knowledge and experiences to you.
With over 28 years of experience in the radio communications, we have the knowledge and expertise to help you find the right equipment for your needs and teach you how to use it. We can provide advice on everything from product selection to installation and maintenance.
My Name is Jan (pronounced yawn). I was born and raised in Southern California and lived there for the first 33 years of my life.
My dad Phil had, at least in my eyes, an interesting story and background.
My mom Else (pronounced Elsa) also had an interesting story.
At the age of 10 I was introduced into radio communications. My dad took me to El Mirage Dry Lakes in Southern California to watch land speed racing at an SCTA event. SCTA uses CB Radio to announce the trap speed recorded by every car going down the track. At the time I did not realize just how much of an impact that would have on me. A few years later we would go again. Since my dad only had an ancient 23 channel Midland radio in 1996 I bought him a nice modern 40 channel radio. I also did a twin trucker antenna setup on his 1977 Dodge Crew Cab that we used to tow our Nostalgia Dragster from track to track.
In late 1996 I was living with my dad after my parents got divorced and decided to go out in the truck and turn on the radio one night. To my surprise I found the local channel and we will say that I was in hook, line & sinker after that. From the end of 1996 until we moved to Arizona in 2011 I lived and breathed the CB life. The most fun I had with CB radio was a game that we called T-Hunting or Transmitter Hunting. It was basically hide and seek with CB radios. It is a lot of fun when you start including four wheel drive trucks and a crazy amount of people hunting. I think our record when I was doing it was somewhere over 25 vehicles hunting.
In 2006-ish a buddy of mine was working for a local tow company. Since they were on 700mhz trunking system and that band was going to be rebanded they pulled all their radios from their trucks. My buddy acquired the radios and he was given permission to use them until the repeaters were taken down. He shared the radios with a few of us. These radios were a lot of fun to play with.
In 2008 another buddy of mine and I got serious about getting our Ham Radio licenses. I passed the Tech License with flying colors. My original call was KI6RKG. I then got my vanity callsign KC6RDF. RDF standing for radio direction finding since I was into T-Hunting and T-Hunting is RDF. After getting our callsigns we enrolled in CERT classes. In CERT classes is when I learned about emergency comms and the role they can play.
As soon as our I.T. guy at work found out I had gotten my Ham license he offloaded a lot of gear on me. The two main pieces were a Kenwood TH-77A handheld and a Kenwood TM-642A triband radio. I used those for about a year. Then I upgraded into a Yaesu FT-8900R and eventually a Yaesu VX-8R then a VX-8DR.
About this time I was getting more and more geeking out time with a wife's good friend who was a local police Lieutenant in charge of department comms and also a ham.
In 2011 we moved to Chandler Arizona. There was no CB nightlife like in my hometown per say. I did find a group of people interested in T-hunting. So I taught them all about it and we played for about a year. I still miss it. I got heavy into scanning and trying to figure out trunking systems. I found them very confusing since I was used to analog & P25 individual channels in my hometown. I eventually understood them and how they worked.
In 2013 I got back into team style Milsim & Airsoft. Nobody was using the cheap FRS radios anymore. So I upgraded too. I ended up getting a pair of Baofeng UV-82 radios. As soon as I recieved my radios the group I was playing with decided that they did not want to play anymore so I never got to use them for that. But I did decide to dabble in some of the local vhf/uhf ham radio every now and then.
In 2017 I decided to add GMRS License. WQZW565 is my callsign.
In 2023 I dove head first back into my shack and radios and really started watching a lot of comms videos on Youtube. For the most part there is a lot of good information on Youtube but there is some misinformation and some incomplete information on there too.
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