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Repeater-wise it's actually pretty active here, 2M and 440. During drive-times there's always activity on at least 2 repeaters, other hours there seems to be a 2M repeater that has like 5 old guys rag chewing like 12 hours a day. So if I really wanted to talk to someone on my HT there's usually someone there. 146.52 is a little quieter but being close to 2 interstate highways activity isn't bad. When I first got licensed I loved playing on 2M/440 since that was all I had and antennas are small. I reached a point though and got equipment and antennas for other bands. I'd say my favorite are 6M and 10M for the real randomness of the bands. 90% of the time they are quiet except for some local repeaters and local SSB activity, then BAM, out of the blue it's CQ CQ from the Bahamas or Canada! Hopefully those bands will pick up as sun spots increase.
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Feb 28, 2010 05:27
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2010 06:34
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10 is open most afternoons lately from the PNW to the deep south. It isn't opening north/south very much lately but it probably will during the spring and summer before the sunspot cycle starts in earnest. If you live in 7 land or 4 land you should give 10 a listen every afternoon. Once cycle 24 gets going everyone will want to be on 10 meters, even if you are just a tech. There are already reports of stateside hams working Europe consistently on 15 meter sideband with 5 watts or less... That is a good sign. We also had our first 30-day stretch of observed sunspots last week. Sometimes in 2000 when I tuned 10 meters it was wall-to-wall signals from 28.1 all the way up to 29.000+ Mhz. It's seriously an amazing band. Also for the people using HT's: I second the recommendation of getting a whip with better gain, or better yet getting a mobile mag-mount antenna and sticking it on your stove or something else than can act as a ground plane. It will make a lot of difference. Even one of the cheap mobile scanner antennas from Radio Shack will work much better than your stock rubber duck antenna.
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Feb 28, 2010 14:24
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I've been studying for a while to get my technician license (and general too, hopefully) and the study guides posted in the OP are an invaluable resource. Thanks. On a more serious, content-filled note, I'm wondering what wavelengths tend to have a fair bit of CW activity on them. I've heard 40 and 80 meters are both pretty active.
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Feb 28, 2010 15:47
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recon_etc posted:On a more serious, content-filled note, I'm wondering what wavelengths tend to have a fair bit of CW activity on them. I've heard 40 and 80 meters are both pretty active.
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Feb 28, 2010 20:56
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nmfree posted:Every band up to 6 meters, and at the height of summer E season and the height of the solar cycle there'll be plenty of activity on 6 as well. Forgive my ignorance, but when you say 'up to' six meters do you mean longer wavelengths or shorter wavelengths?
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Mar 1, 2010 00:48
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recon_etc posted:Forgive my ignorance, but when you say 'up to' six meters do you mean longer wavelengths or shorter wavelengths?
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Mar 1, 2010 01:20
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nmfree posted:From 160 meters (1.8 MHz) to 10 meters (28MHz) you'll find plenty of CW activity, especially the "traditional" bands (160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10). As the frequency goes up, the wavelength goes down (since the speed of light is a constant). Okay, I just didn't know if you meant 'up to' in the context of wavelengths or frequency, because they're inversely related. Thanks for the help.
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Mar 1, 2010 01:34
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I finally managed to make my first contact today. I was able to hit the repeater I've been trying to work from my backyard using my FT-60R. The repeater was about 25 miles from here. I'm sure I'll have better luck once I get my J-pole put together and mounted up over the neighbor's roof line.
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Mar 3, 2010 22:27
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My j-pole is still sitting in my office, waiting to be installed. It's been there since last summer.
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Mar 3, 2010 23:32
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Grilldos posted:My j-pole is still sitting in my office, waiting to be installed. It's been there since last summer. You're one up on me. Mine is still in pieces at the various stores I need to buy them from.
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Mar 3, 2010 23:42
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I just picked up the Kawamall USB cable for my VX-7R, but I had to go through three drivers to even get it to install and now when I try to read from the radio with VX7 Commander it barfs back a VB runtime error 8020, which Microsoft says means the driver isn't handling something properly. Anyone using this cable or any other PL-2303 based cable on Windows Vista/7 x64 with one of the Commander apps? e: XP Mode saves the day, but I'd still like to get it working natively... wolrah fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Mar 5, 2010 |
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Mar 5, 2010 18:39
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wolrah posted:e: XP Mode saves the day, but I'd still like to get it working natively...
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Mar 5, 2010 22:03
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Speaking of old versions of Windows... I overheard a conversation this afternoon between a couple of OFs on the statewide linked repeater system.  I read that some hackers took down a big website and stole some identities. It's crazy how PCs are these days. I heard that if you get a copy of Windows 98 and fully update it, it's pretty much hack proof. What? Really? Yeah. It's so old that modern computers don't know what it is anymore.*5 seconds of silence*  I'm 69 years old and have Alzheimer's and even I can see through that bullshit.It took me about 5 minutes to catch my breath after that one.
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Mar 8, 2010 23:54
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Mar 9, 2010 03:37
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Mar 10, 2010 20:26
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Jose Pointero posted:I recorded a sample for y'all. This shows what the DSP noise blanking (crackles, pops) and noise reduction (random noise) filters are capable of in this thing. That is bad rear end. I just got my first taste of DSP, and I'm loving it. Just got a new-to-me FT-857D.
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Mar 10, 2010 22:46
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Mar 11, 2010 05:15
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Beefington posted:I just got my first taste of DSP Allow me to introduce you to the world of digital voice... (also if you've ever used a modern cellphone then you've had a taste of DSP  )
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Mar 11, 2010 07:48
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Friday night, the smell of solder and heat shrink tubing wafting slowly in the air. Working on my OpenTracker APRS setup.  edit: Well it's all together, and all the cables have been built. It's got a gps signal and the HT is transmitting something. If only I had the right cables to receive aprs from my mobile too! blugu64 fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Mar 13, 2010 |
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Mar 13, 2010 04:45
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Without churning through the entire thread, are there any D*STAR users here? All the locals in Houston seem to be giant, elitist jerkoffs. I have yet to make a voice contact with someone using D*STAR and I've owned the radio for three years at least.
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Mar 13, 2010 07:48
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iCom donated a D*STAR repeater system to the Penn State Amateur Radio Club (I've been president for a while). We're going to have it up and running by the end of the semester.
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Mar 13, 2010 08:12
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2010 10:52
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Just passed the tech exam! Didn't study for it but tried for General too, but was 8 questions short. Oh well! Looking forward to getting active. Luckily a fellow goon has offered to loan me some equipment to get started once I'm legal.
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Mar 13, 2010 17:47
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Jose Pointero posted:That's pretty cool, how'd y'all work that out? Are they donating any IC-7800's? They donated a 2 meter and a 70 cm repeater along with the control and internet link boxes, as well as a whole mess of radios (I forget the model). The current president's Dad knows someone in iCom, they had someone return the kit and it was in perfect working order, so they donated it to us. We're going to test it out as a possible emergency communications network for Center County (the county that Penn State is in). I'm really looking forward to flipping that switch.
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Mar 13, 2010 17:57
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Jose Pointero posted:Yeah we're gonna need some pics on this one... I've always found that ham projects always make for underwhelming pictures, but here you go.  I've got an arrow II hooked up to my old Kenwood TH-79a HT, which in turn is being controlled by that little mess of boxes and cables on the lower left. The center black box is the OpenTracker+, which takes the GPS location from that little Garmin puck on the lower right, and transmits it every so often via the HT. It can also do some fancy stuff like waypoint output if I had it hooked up to a fancier gps but I'm just using the basic functionality. Now that I've verified it's working I'm going to rebuild those cables with some nicer hardware to prevent damage. I only brought out the arrow II because I wanted to be drat sure my signal was getting heard as I didn't want to be troubleshooting the tracker and not be 100% sure my signal was being heard. The obvious question is why would you want to broadcast your location? Well, I plan on hooking it up to my motorcycle, and as I like to take long rides in the middle of nowhere...Ya. Also it'd be a pretty cool way to let your family keep track of your progress. They can simply go to a website like aprs.fi and punch in your call sign and they'll be able to see all your latest position reports. As some folks operate gateways that shoot off all the latest heard position reports to that (and other) websites. Bigbrothery for sure, but I'm not going to have it chiming away all the time, and it's pretty drat cool. A lot of fun and you can get an OpenTracker+ assembled and tested for under $50, or get the kit and solder the whole thing together yourself for around $30, it's not hard if you have any experience and shouldn't take too long and is pretty awesome seeing something you built actually working. 
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Mar 13, 2010 23:44
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Mar 14, 2010 08:08
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Jose Pointero posted:You are correct, but I still like seeing the pics. At first I thought that was a satellite setup there The ISS does have an APRS digipeter on board, and I have been meaning to actually use that antenna for a satellite contact.
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Mar 14, 2010 09:26
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Speaking of APRS, does anyone know anything about APRS weather stations?
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Mar 14, 2010 20:07
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AtomicMonsters posted:Speaking of APRS, does anyone know anything about APRS weather stations? Not a ton, the OpenTracker does have some basic weather station functionality, but you have to use a different firmware, so it's not too big a deal. I'm not really all that versed in aprs weather stations, so I'm not sure how it compares to other packages.
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Mar 14, 2010 20:33
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AtomicMonsters posted:Speaking of APRS, does anyone know anything about APRS weather stations?
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Mar 14, 2010 21:50
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Ephektz posted:Without churning through the entire thread, are there any D*STAR users here? All the locals in Houston seem to be giant, elitist jerkoffs. I have yet to make a voice contact with someone using D*STAR and I've owned the radio for three years at least. I use DSTAR pretty regularly. Unfortunately, there is no repeater coverage between where I live and Huntsville, but any time I'm going down towards Conroe or Houston I always get on the Magnolia machine. I'm sorry to hear that you haven't gotten on well with the Houston group; admittedly I don't go to any of their meetings or other functions, but I haven't had problems with them at all. Also the thing that jose_pointero mentioned is called "d-rats." It uses the low-speed data portion of the protocol to send and receive text messages. The UI looks almost like an IM client. All you have to do to use it is buy (or make, I suppose) the data cable for your radio, then hook it up to a serial port on a computer. Edit: If you want to coordinate some DSTARage, send me a PM or catch me on IRC. TNLTRPB fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Mar 14, 2010 |
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Mar 14, 2010 23:35
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Can anyone recommend a ham forum (shortwave, mainly) with a high traffic volume? For some reason I keep finding semi-dead forums.
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Mar 18, 2010 06:16
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2010 07:42
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I've hit them all except for hamsexy. Thanks for the tip!
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Mar 18, 2010 17:34
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Exi7wound posted:Can anyone recommend a ham forum (shortwave, mainly) with a high traffic volume? There's also the rec.radio.amateur.* and rec.radio.shortwave USENET newsgroups. They seem to have some traffic. I actually tend to prefer newsgroups over forums since there are better thread tracking tools in newsreaders, but maybe I'm just showing my age. Soon I won't upgrade my PC and will decry people who want me to adapt to new technologies....
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Mar 18, 2010 23:10
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2010 21:44
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I think I need this shirt I found on eBay.
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Mar 21, 2010 05:51
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Jose Pointero posted:Another gem from QRZ: Weekend Web QSO Edition
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Mar 21, 2010 07:06
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NeerWas fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Aug 9, 2023 |
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Mar 21, 2010 10:21
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