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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Jun 21, 2010 05:51
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I just renewed my licence (o dear god I got my licensed in the 8th grade and I'm still a tech!) I've just started to get back into ham radio and I've discovered that I love echolink and now I want to get my general licence this year, but thats a different story for a different post. For today I am looking to get some QSL cards made, does anyone have some ideas on what I should make? I want it to be fairly goon-tastic in order to better confuse the other hams around the world
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Jun 22, 2010 06:12
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I got my no-code tech license in either 93 or 94... I just upgraded to General this year. I know how you feel.
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Jun 22, 2010 17:20
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Rev Quackers posted:I just renewed my licence (o dear god I got my licensed in the 8th grade and I'm still a tech!) I've just started to get back into ham radio and I've discovered that I love echolink and now I want to get my general licence this year, but thats a different story for a different post. You could always throw in some emoticons for that goon look. Are you making the QSL cards yourself or getting them done by a company? Edit: TC the Giant posted:Do like I plan to do: LtDan fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Jun 23, 2010 |
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Jun 23, 2010 01:26
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Rev Quackers posted:I just renewed my licence (o dear god I got my licensed in the 8th grade and I'm still a tech!) I've just started to get back into ham radio and I've discovered that I love echolink and now I want to get my general licence this year, but thats a different story for a different post. Do like I plan to do: 
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Jun 23, 2010 02:09
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I'm browsing through frequency lists through my area and I see a bunch of repeaters on 2M, but not much on 70cm. What goes on on the 70cm band? Is it widely used?
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Jun 23, 2010 19:43
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there are a few repeaters near here on 70cm, but I have never once heard anyone use them.
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Jun 23, 2010 20:13
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Jacob posted:I'm browsing through frequency lists through my area and I see a bunch of repeaters on 2M, but not much on 70cm. What goes on on the 70cm band? Is it widely used? AtomicMonsters posted:there are a few repeaters near here on 70cm, but I have never once heard anyone use them. That's odd. When I first got my radio, I was shocked at how much 70cm activity there was here. I found local repeater lists and added them all to my radio and also scanned around the bands often to see if there was anything else out there. I added anything I found through scanning to my memories too. Surprisingly, almost all of the activity was on the 70cm band. Some occasional chatter on 2m. I have never once heard a single person on any of the 6m repeaters or chatting simplex on 6m or... ANYTHING on 6m. A friend of mine said he always uses AM SSB on the 50MHz band and never uses FM, though. Maybe that's where I've gone wrong.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:36
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BigHustle posted:I have an FT-60R. It's a great little handheld. Take my advice and get the data cable and download FT Commander in order to program in your repeaters and such. Edit: Apparently I can't read Google search results very well. Looks like the program I want is at http://www.kc8unj.com/ Jacob fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 03:10
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Catastrophe posted:That's odd. When I first got my radio, I was shocked at how much 70cm activity there was here. I found local repeater lists and added them all to my radio and also scanned around the bands often to see if there was anything else out there. I added anything I found through scanning to my memories too. Surprisingly, almost all of the activity was on the 70cm band. Some occasional chatter on 2m. I have never once heard a single person on any of the 6m repeaters or chatting simplex on 6m or... ANYTHING on 6m. I thought that moving to MO would increase the amount of chatter I heard, but I've found plenty of repeaters in the area but no one talking unless there's a storm brewing or a weekly net going on. I'm mildly disappointed, but it is motivating me to get off my rear end and make an HF antenna to get on the air with. I've heard that there's a lot of 6m activity out here, but the main group of people doing it are on AM. Maybe it's one of those things, like 160m being the 'gentleman's band' or something.
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Jun 24, 2010 07:36
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BigHustle posted:I thought that moving to MO would increase the amount of chatter I heard, but I've found plenty of repeaters in the area but no one talking unless there's a storm brewing or a weekly net going on. I'm mildly disappointed, but it is motivating me to get off my rear end and make an HF antenna to get on the air with. What part of MO? Here in KC it's the same story, everything's quiet until a cloud pops up in the sky and then everyone wants to activate the storm spotting network.
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Jun 24, 2010 14:32
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Prince of Dicks posted:What part of MO? Here in KC it's the same story, everything's quiet until a cloud pops up in the sky and then everyone wants to activate the storm spotting network. I'm across the state just outside of St. Louis. I did get in on one small net on Sunday, but I don't know that they'll be the kind of people I want to talk to. The woman running the net was a few tacos short of a full Mexican meal. Her 'discussion topic' was 'Do you have your equipment in a Faraday cage to protect against the impending coronal mass ejection that will wipe out all electrical devices on the planet?' Most of the responses were from the dude who owns the repeaters telling her she's a retard. The only other activity I've heard was during a 'storm' as well. Apparently 15 seconds of light drizzle from a mostly sunny sky is one of the signs of an impending F5 tornado.
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Jun 24, 2010 18:43
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Yeah most other hams are greybeards who are wayyyyyy too into antiquated electronics/weather wacking. I consider nets the radio equivalent of Yahoo Groups, outmoded and overall boring, so I seldom get on them. VHF in general is pretty much the same boring crap, the same few people talking about radios every single day. I don't really know if upgrading to HF is worth it--do HF contacts sit around talk about their rig and the weather the whole time?
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Jun 24, 2010 20:36
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Prince of Dicks posted:Yeah most other hams are greybeards who are wayyyyyy too into antiquated electronics/weather wacking. I consider nets the radio equivalent of Yahoo Groups, outmoded and overall boring, so I seldom get on them. VHF in general is pretty much the same boring crap, the same few people talking about radios every single day. I don't really know if upgrading to HF is worth it--do HF contacts sit around talk about their rig and the weather the whole time? Chatting with others is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ham radio. Hook it up to a laptop and send PSK, decode some SSTV, learn morse code and work CW, etc. Most of what I run into on HF seems to be data or CW.
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Jun 24, 2010 21:14
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Catastrophe posted:Chatting with others is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ham radio. Hook it up to a laptop and send PSK, decode some SSTV, learn morse code and work CW, etc. Yeah that's the only reason I'm working on my general right now, I want to do data on HF. Right now I'm trying to set up a 6 meter beacon, just got to find a good 6 meter AM transmitter on ebay and I should be set.
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Jun 24, 2010 23:09
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Rev Quackers posted:Right now I'm trying to set up a 6 meter beacon, just got to find a good 6 meter AM transmitter on ebay and I should be set. It's still worth it to get an AM-capable 6M rig, though; you can find some of the older Cleggs, Heathkits, etc. on eBay for not much money.
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Jun 26, 2010 09:12
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Every time I read this thread I smith out and get wistful again. My 20m vertical's still up. Think I'm gonna spin down the band some this afternoon. How are sunspots? Last time I fired up the HF station we were JUST coming off the bottom and 20m was stretching out for a few minutes in the evening. Topical: I'm teaching myself old school radio/telco style cable lacing, and I"m going to redo my studio. I have over 130 patch cords in my audio rack, and about 20-30 cables on the ham desk. Gonna be a big project but well worth the payoff. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jun 26, 2010 |
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Jun 26, 2010 19:06
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Jonny 290 posted:How are sunspots? Last time I fired up the HF station we were JUST coming off the bottom and 20m was stretching out for a few minutes in the evening. I think all 15 of them are doing well.
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Jun 26, 2010 21:37
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Hey, I've been stuck in the 75 meter Klan rally for the past three years, 15 sunspots is more than zero.
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Jun 27, 2010 21:13
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Rev Quackers posted:Yeah that's the only reason I'm working on my general right now, I want to do data on HF.
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Jun 27, 2010 21:40
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Start looking into the relative power needed for SSB versus PSK31 or JT65. They're incredibly efficient and those piles of FT-817's start to make sense when you realize that you can get around the continent reliably on 5 watts of PSK31. Also, having a PSK31 interface means you're already rigged up to receive weather fax and other cool digital stuff on the HF bands.
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Jun 28, 2010 17:41
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Jonny 290 posted:Start looking into the relative power needed for SSB versus PSK31 or JT65. They're incredibly efficient and those piles of FT-817's start to make sense when you realize that you can get around the continent reliably on 5 watts of PSK31. Except I can't receive crap because all I currently have is a Miracle Whip antenna since I live in a cramped Philly apartment. What it IS great at picking up is massive amounts of QRM. I get S9 to S+ signals on... everything. If there's anyone broadcasting out there, it's masked by a giant wall of hissing, snarling background noise for me. I'm hoping my new living location I'll be at in a few weeks will be better for this. I'll also have more space and a yard out back so I can put up a proper antenna once I'm in Portland. I have yet to run across anyone sending PSK. I catch CW here and there. I run into LOTS of spots that just sound like a continuous high pitched tone. No modulation or anything.. just sounds like a sine wave or something. It's all over most of the HF bands. Don't know what to make of that.
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Jun 28, 2010 23:00
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Catastrophe posted:Except I can't receive crap because all I currently have is a Miracle Whip antenna since I live in a cramped Philly apartment. What it IS great at picking up is massive amounts of QRM. I get S9 to S+ signals on... everything. If there's anyone broadcasting out there, it's masked by a giant wall of hissing, snarling background noise for me. I'm hoping my new living location I'll be at in a few weeks will be better for this. I'll also have more space and a yard out back so I can put up a proper antenna once I'm in Portland. Sounds like open carriers, though you could try listening to the sounds of digital modes and see if anything sounds similar. Also, I've sent PSK31. It carries pretty far; I showed up in PSKReporter logs from Ohio and Connecticut, both pretty far from suburban Maryland.
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Jun 28, 2010 23:27
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I have to get this software tweaked in properly. Oh well. At least it's kind of working. One laptop controlling the FT-817, one listening in and decoding the CW. I only do this because HRD keeps crashing the one I'm decoding with so I put its duties off onto another laptop but that one doesn't support listening to the line-in input so I'd rather use the one that hates HRD for that purpose so I can hear what I'm tuning in to. Needlessly complex for listening to CW... I know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLoEtNf9Jt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLoEtNf9Jt0 I tried some weather fax receiving earlier and that just simply did not work out at all. I've been searching for hours but have been unable to find a single PSK broadcast today.
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Jun 29, 2010 02:52
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Catastrophe posted:I tried some weather fax receiving earlier and that just simply did not work out at all. I've been searching for hours but have been unable to find a single PSK broadcast today.
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Jun 29, 2010 03:04
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Jose Pointero posted:
Perish the thought! I've just been busy as heck in the real world. I didn't even notice that Field Day passed by this year... oops. I haven't been on the air much lately, sorry to say. On another note, though, whoever ended up moving this into DIY made a great decision. It definitely seems like the thread is getting updated more frequently, which is always a good thing.
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Jun 30, 2010 01:06
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He's back! Where ya been man? Glad to see you're not an SK!
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Speaking of Field Day, did anyone participate? I'm always interested to see what other clubs or individuals did during the weekend. Our club ran our usual CW, Phone, and Digital stations this year. Our CW crew made 646 contacts, Phone 738, and Digital 218 - which I think is the best we've ever done there. I brought my rig and laptop out for the digital station and ended up working it most of the weekend. There were a few other guys that were interested that operated intermittently, but I ended up doing most of it. We all had a great deal of fun, which is the main thing, but I was pretty wiped out by the end of it. Couldn't get to sleep Friday night, then woke up about 5:00 am Saturday and couldn't get back to sleep, and then ended up being up for the entire weekend. Finally went to bed at 5:00 Sunday night. If anyone did do Field Day, did anyone work N0GF? That's our club callsign.
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Jun 30, 2010 05:06
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Dammit. I miss field day EVERY YEAR. Last time I went was when I was like 18. Measured in decades now. Gonna have to set a g-cal item for next year's.
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Jun 30, 2010 14:54
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Hah. Yeah, I put everyting in there since I got my Droid. It's so handy to have my phone squawk at me when I have an appointment upcoming.
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Jun 30, 2010 18:43
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France Says D-Star Ham Radio Mode Is Illegalquote:"Citing 'national security concerns,' the French Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes (ARCEP, France's equivalent of the US's FCC) has ruled that D-Star, a amateur radio digital signal mode used world-wide, is illegal because it could allow operators to connect to the Internet.The ARCEP also cites alleged concerns regarding cryptography and national security as well as the use of a proprietary codec. While it's true that the D-Star codec is proprietary, its owner has openly licensed it (for a fee, of course) to any manufacturer who wants to build it into their equipment. Any licensed amateur radio operator who lives within the EU can sign an online petition protesting this decision."
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Jun 30, 2010 23:20
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that's dumb horseshit, you 'can connect to the internet' with any laptop with a sound card hooked up to a ham radio, are they going to ban laptops with sound cards
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Jul 1, 2010 15:18
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Reading comments from French people on Slashdot, it seems one of the guys in the regulatory authority is one of those from the "morse code should be the only code" crowd. While raising objections to D-Star might be understandable, it being patent-encumbered and in practice locked in to a single vendor, the reason given is BS. I've heard before that you're not supposed to connect Ham radio to the internet, but I think that's more like a re-statement of the rule that business and regular phone traffic should not be carried by Ham radio - it shouldn't compete with the commercial services.
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Jul 1, 2010 15:35
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Jul 1, 2010 22:03
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I think they're thinking of something along the lines of a wide area wireless system being set up using the D-star as a modem? Or being used for file sharing bypassing the internet,and thus being unable to be busted by government agents for torrents? I guess france doesn't plan on having a disaster of some sort where internet access is horribly limited and maybe some radio file sharing would be necessary? That is some real smart emergency planning there. Our state ARES has protocols in place to do almost exactly what the French want to outlaw; set up a radio network to disseminate files, mostly text files of contacts or something, but files, as opposed to radiograms or other things that would need to be read over the air and then hand written on the other end. I think the example given in the state SOP is sending a list of medicines and supplies needed by a hospital after a tornado or something and all the phones and internet don't work.
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Jul 1, 2010 22:53
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I passed my "Technician" exam this past Saturday! Yay me! I'm currently studying for the General.
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Jul 1, 2010 23:47
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dv6speed posted:I passed my "Technician" exam this past Saturday! Yay me! Congratulations! I'm studying for my Extra now. I was hoping to take the test by the hamfest on the 17th, but I don't see that happening. There's a lot of technical stuff I've forgotten over the years that isn't coming back to me like I hoped it would.
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Jul 2, 2010 03:49
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Just work on polar co-ordinates , phase angles, and the more math involved parts of the question pool and you should do fine. I took mine back in October and borrowed my father-in-law's 3 year old Extra book to study from. They didn't change too much from the pool, so if you have a current book, you'll really be golden. E:Oh, I just remembered too, I only started studying it about a week before the test, so if you still have 16 days, that's plenty of time to get it.
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Jul 2, 2010 05:45
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This is amazing. My dipole center insulator and some coax showed up today so I strung up 66ft of old speaker wire as a dipole antenna here, plugged into my antenna tuner, started scanning through the bands and one of the first things I picked up was a CW beacon from Milwaukee, WI. The beacon is saying it's a 1W transmitter. 1W of CW at 7PM and I'm picking it up clearly in Philadelphia. WHY have I been using that crappy Miracle Whip antenna?? EDIT: It's W9EFJ's beacon. EDIT2: As a PS, I was really on the fence about whether or not this 300Hz Collins filter would be worth it for my FT-817ND. I finally just dove in and purchased it. While it was in transit, I read things people posted online about how it's a waste of money unless you absolutely NEED it for some reason and that just using the standard filter was good enough. haha yeah RIGHT. For CW, you wait until you pick up a signal, engage the narrow filter, use the radio's IF shift to dial in the 300Hz band of audio you want to hear (easy for CW) and, bam... all you hear is the morse code. Nothing else. It's superb. If you have an FT-817ND and want to do CW or PSK work, it seems like a no-brainer to drop the $115 for it from W4RT's site. Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Jul 3, 2010 |
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Jul 3, 2010 00:11
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My call sign showed up in the ULS! Now it's time to get a radio... I'm currently trying to decide between the Yaesu VX6-R or VX7-R.
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Jul 3, 2010 14:21
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I've got a question that I'm pretty sure I know the answer to, but want to get some opinions before I go through the trouble of setting a shack up. I'm currently crashing with my folks and residing in the basement (hurr, goon) where the only outside access points are a walkout glass sliding door and a small hole in the side of the house where the power lines come in. I could build a pass-through for the glass door, but that's really not very feasible since I'm using that door to get in and out of the house. I assume that running my feedline into the house alongside the power lines entering the house is going to cause massive interference, not to mention that I'd end up having to run the ground back out the same channel in order to make things safe. Am I just asking for disappointment going this route, or have any of you had luck with it?
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Jul 4, 2010 22:14
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