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While we're on the subject of emergency communications, I've discovered in recent years that really two things need to happen for amateurs to be of much use in the future:
Regarding the ICS training, as was touched upon briefly earlier, I mainly recommend it so that there is some level of familiarity with how the public safety guys Regarding encryption: more and more, public safety agencies are utilizing encryption for anything remotely related to privacy issues or law-enforcement sensitive information. Hospitals and other healthcare personnel have been almost universally preached to about HIPAA for years now, and may very well believe that providing some random radio guy with any sort of information regarding a patient is a violation of HIPAA. As an interesting note, the county I work for will have every public safety agency except the fire departments (which do not do medical responses) on encrypted digital (conventional) VHF systems within the next six months. I'd tentatively estimate that over 75% of the traffic will be encrypted. We also have access to two different regional communications trailers that can provide multi-band patching (VHF, UHF, 700/800 MHz) and mobile repeater capabilities. This doesn't even touch on State assets.
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May 31, 2011 14:46
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I agree they should allow encryption in emergencies and emergency drills, provided the identification of the station and the emergency is appended in the clear, and that they don't drill 24/7. It could be argued that you already can break the FCC rules in an emergency and send encrypted information because of necessity - but it should be made more clear. Perhaps by designating emergency stations as federal government stations? I don't think they should allow encryption outside emergencies and emergency drills though. There's too much potential for commercial use, which would both fill up the bands and anger commercial licensees who paid millions of dollars for a license and are being undercut.
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May 31, 2011 17:15
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6 meter opening... Just worked Turks & Caicos Islands from Northern VA. Hop on if you can. Edit: David is still banging away on 50.130 Dijkstra fucked around with this message at 23:30 on May 31, 2011 |
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May 31, 2011 23:25
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BigHustle posted:One of those might be just the thing to get me back out on the campsite. I have sleep apnea and need a CPAP to sleep, so I can't camp out without getting no sleep and waking up half the site with my snoring. That was one application that people mentioned using the Nomad device for! However, it would probably be a good idea to have some sort of alarm (unless the CPAP machine already has this) in case there was a failure in the inverter.
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Jun 2, 2011 03:52
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Went to a hamfest and picked up some hustler thing... with 4 resonators on it for 15/20/40/75 for 60$ . Still blows rear end on a small hitch mount, not bonded, and still a few feet from the building, but, I'm on the air. I can pick up the higher-powered stations, and grabbed EG1DN and NA5DV on 20.
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Jun 5, 2011 00:17
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Hah! I made a hamfest visit this morning too. Got a nice nice comet dualbander, a classic Hustler 2m 5/8 wave with mag mount, and a couple of CB's (shh) for pocket change.
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Jun 5, 2011 04:34
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Was considering going to my local hamfest, ended up going to a flea market and picked up a CB for pocket change as well.
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Jun 5, 2011 19:25
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It looks like we have another few hamfests coming up next month. Any MO hamgoons going to the Washington, MO ZeroBeaters hamfest in June or the Egyptian ARC hamfest in IL next weekend?
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Jun 6, 2011 03:12
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Congressman King - sponsor of H.R. 607 - has promised to help get the poorly constructed auction section removed from the bill. That should save the 70cm secondary amateur allocation - especially the satellite segment. http://www.eham.net/articles/26062
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Jun 6, 2011 10:53
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Got my Ic-7000 mounted in the truck, and the new comet csb-790a mounted on the roof, and re-did my power for the radio,battery direct, along with a 30a toggle switch. And, my mobile HF antenna should be here the beginning of next week.
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Jun 8, 2011 03:46
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Sweet. Planning to take some pictures when it's done?
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Jun 8, 2011 08:41
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oh yeah. That comet antenna is huge, its like 62" so mounted on the roof I'm at like 11'2" to the top of it.
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Jun 8, 2011 17:38
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mwdan posted:oh yeah. That comet antenna is huge, its like 62" so mounted on the roof I'm at like 11'2" to the top of it. Sexy, hamsexy! Or at least it would be on my small car, it probably works well on a truck.
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Jun 9, 2011 19:01
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It still looks huge, but 5.1db gain on 2m and 7.7db on 70cm is nice. I'll get pics up once I get my HF antenna, and mount it too.
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Jun 10, 2011 16:36
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Sniep posted:So, the other night I was playing around in the business bands and found the taco bell right across the street from me, easy enough right? I wonder if other restaurants use this same thing? I don't remember hearing it on the local frequencies but I have yet to find Taco Bell here. There's a nice spread between the restaurants here. McD's is around 469, Wendy's is up in 900mhz somewhere and BK is 33.4mhz. I've never once found Taco Bell though.
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Jun 10, 2011 20:37
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Nullsmack posted:I wonder if other restaurants use this same thing? I don't remember hearing it on the local frequencies but I have yet to find Taco Bell here. There's a nice spread between the restaurants here. McD's is around 469, Wendy's is up in 900mhz somewhere and BK is 33.4mhz. I've never once found Taco Bell though. List of drive thru frequencies Also, while Googling for that link, I found this video with instructions on how to modify a CB radio to gently caress with the drive thru customers. Obviously this is illegal, but i found it funny anyway.
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Jun 10, 2011 21:20
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drat, just tossed out a toaster not to long ago.
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Jun 10, 2011 21:49
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The Elecraft KX3 looks like a really cool radio kit. You can use it as an HT, use it as an SDR reciever, and has built-in CW, RTTY and PSK-31. http://www.elecraft.com/KX3/kx3.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbtyRyEEADo
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Jun 12, 2011 00:00
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Vir posted:The Elecraft KX3 looks like a really cool radio kit. You can use it as an HT, use it as an SDR reciever, and has built-in CW, RTTY and PSK-31. I may have to hold off on getting an HF rig until this comes out. That looks pretty sweet.
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Jun 13, 2011 04:43
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I'm not waiting to pick up a 2m/440 rig though. I'm tired of having to charge my HT up after every net meeting. I just pulled the trigger on a Yaesu FTM-10R dual-band rig, the external speaker, a cheapie magmount antenna and a JTMINI 15 power supply. I plan to mount it in a box since I plan to haul it back and forth between the car and the house, so I'll post pics once everything gets here and I decide how I'm gonna work out the details.
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Jun 13, 2011 20:36
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Well, my mobile HF antenna came in this afternoon, but I have to figure out how to mount it. It has a bracket that mounts to a flange on the under side of a car, but I didn't see anything that looked anything like that under my truck, so I may be making a new hole for that, and I have to come up with a different way to get it connected to the radio. Probably going to have to run a longer wire from the antenna into a chassis mount SO-239 into the cab, as I'm not using the Icom tuner that they 'recommend'. The sparse documentation shows it mounted on a car, with the tuner mounted in the trunk, fed by this little 3ft wire that they sent with. If it wasn't starting to rain now, I'd be all over getting that installed.
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Jun 14, 2011 01:34
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That KX3 looks sweet. Since I basically run my FT-817ND entirely off the computer now, a radio that has both a ton of buttons and dials AND the ability to control it entirely off a PC would be perfect for me. Now I just need money. And a better antenna. Has anyone had any experience with MFJ's antenna offerings? I'm thinking of picking up an MFJ-1622, so I can mount it on the railing of my deck, without having to nail it in. More importantly, what other crap would I need to have on hand to make that work with my 817? Is an antenna tuner necessary? EDIT: BigHustle, that video ruled, and now I'm looking into basically everything Phone Losers of America. Their pranks are genius, especially some of the stories on their website about gaining access to store-wide loudspeaker systems and abusing deaf relay operators for fun and profit The Muffinlord fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jun 14, 2011 |
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Jun 14, 2011 02:58
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TC the Giant posted:Has anyone had any experience with MFJ's antenna offerings? I'm thinking of picking up an MFJ-1622, so I can mount it on the railing of my deck, without having to nail it in. I've seen that antenna before, but I've never used it. I don't think a tuner would be necessary if you have a way to check SWR. You adjust it by moving a jumper wire on the coil and adjusting the counterpoise, I believe. The overall rating on eham.net is a 3.7 out of 5. Browsing the first page of reviews, it seems that the OFs are rating it compared to a full sized dipole or beam, which is really stupid of them since this isn't meant for that kind of work. quote:EDIT: BigHustle, that video ruled, and now I'm looking into basically everything Phone Losers of America. Their pranks are genius, especially some of the stories on their website about gaining access to store-wide loudspeaker systems and abusing deaf relay operators for fun and profit I've got a CB sitting idle in my trunk and I have to force myself not to pick up a toaster every time I go into the thrift stores. I don't want to gently caress with anyone, but my friend's brother manages a lovely McD in town and I wouldn't mind griefing him a bit. Hearing people gently caress around over the PA system at WalMart is hilarious though.
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Jun 14, 2011 04:56
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BigHustle posted:I've got a CB sitting idle in my trunk and I have to force myself not to pick up a toaster every time I go into the thrift stores. I don't want to gently caress with anyone, but my friend's brother manages a lovely McD in town and I wouldn't mind griefing him a bit. Hearing people gently caress around over the PA system at WalMart is hilarious though. I really want to try this. I use to look around for things on the business band on my Wouxun. Recently, I discovered I can get down a bit lower. Whoever owned my FT-817 before me or before the last guy performed the extended TC mod on it. I pretty much have TX coverage from 1.8-56MHz and some more openings on VHF/UHF. He apparently used them too, I was editing memories to take advantage of this and was about to put all the CB, FRS, and GMRS frequencies in the 817 and found that all the CB channels were already there.
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Jun 14, 2011 06:34
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I've done the McD drive-thru thing before, though I never intentionally hosed with customers or anything. Walmart is also a fun one (they usually run on the business band channel shared with MURS 5, CSQ). Just a word of advice for the drive-thru stuff, they may be using multiple bands and different PL tones for internal vs external communications. I know the Taco Bell near where one of my buddies used to live used a UHF channel for talking to the drive-thru speaker and internal stuff, and something in the 30 MHz band for customers talking to the person taking the order. These days, if I'm not on DSTAR, I'm usually hanging out on one or more of the MURS channels BSing with friends on encrypted P25 digital voice. As a side note, for those goons with DSTAR radios (assuming you've registered with any gateway on the network), we should come up with a (unofficial) goon reflector. I'm thinking that 4C would work, as it usually doesn't have any stations connected to it. Thoughts? The reflector list is here: http://www.dstarinfo.com/reflectors.aspx
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Jun 14, 2011 12:36
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BigHustle posted:I've seen that antenna before, but I've never used it. I don't think a tuner would be necessary if you have a way to check SWR. You adjust it by moving a jumper wire on the coil and adjusting the counterpoise, I believe. Yeah, anyone who's comparing it to a full-sized vertical or dipole is an idiot. I need an antenna that I can mount and take down at will, since building regs prohibit me from mounting anything permanent on the porch or drilling anything into the concrete. But the whole building is reinforced concrete, so I need to mount something outside. Just another lazy Sunday at the Faraday Estates. Hey Big, how come we never see you on #hamradio any more?
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Jun 14, 2011 17:00
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TC the Giant posted:Hey Big, how come we never see you on #hamradio any more? Been dealing with medical issues, doing a poo poo ton of concert reviews for the radio station, and never remember to fire up LeafChat. Mostly the latter.
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Jun 14, 2011 20:55
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Got the HF Antenna installed, so it's picture time!     
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Jun 14, 2011 22:31
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I've having a little bit of a problem and I'm beginning to suspect that I might have to start looking into the DIY method. I've been looking for some sort of software where I can create a virtual serial port, receive a command, then spit out a different command on another line. The problem I'm having is that I have a CAT interface for my FT-817 and most software (older software at least) only supports using the DTR line on a serial port for PTT. Or if someone knows of some soundcard packet software that actually supports CAT commands. That would certainly help too.
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Jun 15, 2011 01:36
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xergm posted:I've having a little bit of a problem and I'm beginning to suspect that I might have to start looking into the DIY method. Have you tried Ham Radio Deluxe yet? I think it might do it for you. If you don't want the full suite of programs with it, the same guy wrote FT-817 Commander which is an older program that he integrated into HRD.
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Jun 15, 2011 02:31
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BigHustle posted:Have you tried Ham Radio Deluxe yet? I think it might do it for you. If you don't want the full suite of programs with it, the same guy wrote FT-817 Commander which is an older program that he integrated into HRD. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking to do some soundcard packet stuff. Unfortunately, most of the programs that support this are ancient and don't support CAT cables. Edit: I'm not sure if I was clear, but essentially older programs (such as everything dealing with soundcard packet) rely on raising the voltage on either the DTR or the RTS pin to key your radio. This causes problems with a CAT cable because I actually need to send a command to the FT-817 to key it. Essentially what I'm looking for (or looking to do if I have to do it myself) is finding a program where I can make a virtual serial port to handle the translation. For example, say COM1 is my CAT cable, and COM2 is the virtual interface. What the program would do is act like a serial port. Whenever my legacy ham radio software tells COM2 to raise either the DTR or RTS voltage, the program would translate this into the corresponding FT-817 PTT command and send it down COM1. It's really kind of half-assed, but I really don't want to spend money on a TNC or another cable for my radio. I figure someone out there has come across this problem already, or can point me in the right direction to develop it myself. Or, as I mentioned before, if anyone knows of any actual software that supports CAT cables and does soundcard packet. I think MixW might be able to decode packet, but I don't think it sends. Double Edit: Looks like a combination of com0com and MixW might actually work for me. I'm going to play with it tonight. Anyone know whether the FCC lets you talk to yourself? Once I get packet up and running, I'm not sure I'll have anyone to talk to and might just have to send messages to myself to make sure they're sending right. I guess I could just put the word 'test' somewhere in the message. xergm fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Jun 15, 2011 |
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Jun 15, 2011 05:25
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Check 6 meters today if you can. Just worked a two-hop Es contact into Martinique. That's about 2000 miles.
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Jun 16, 2011 18:08
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So I'm stuck over here in Columbia, MO for field day and I was considering joining the local club until I saw this glorious vehicle from their field day photo album...  I have no doubt it would be fun, but it seems like it would be a mixture of old farts, the spergity emcomms people, and guys like this lovely fellow.. 
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Jun 20, 2011 21:01
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xergm posted:a mixture of old farts, the spergity emcomms people, and guys like this lovely fellow.. This is the lifeblood of ham radio. I haven't been on the air much lately, I've been so busy with other stuff. I've scanned through 2m a few times, but it seems like it's died down a lot, I guess for the summer.
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Jun 21, 2011 13:17
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BigHustle posted:List of drive thru frequencies Thanks for the frequencies, I'll have to sit outside of one and scan through them. I've seen that PLA video before and I don't believe their modding instructions. Why would a toaster have a crystal in it? I bet they have a Maxtrac or something. I've seen a video along similar lines where someone had a Yeasu VX-7R with the extended transmit enabled to mess with people. I'm still surprised I've never seen a video of someone crossbanding the drive-thru frequencies between two places.
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Jun 21, 2011 14:47
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Nullsmack posted:Thanks for the frequencies, I'll have to sit outside of one and scan through them. If I could ever find the local frequencies, I might try that. I could probably get away with feeding the headphone output from my FT-817 to my Wouxun Mic input and just run the Wouxun on VOX. Also, in a tight space situation, has anyone had experience hooking something like a cheap CB antenna or one of those cheap hamstick clones to a tuner? I'm not expecting miracles, I really just want to be able to operate without having to make a trip to a local park each time I want to get on the air.
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Jun 21, 2011 15:48
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Nullsmack posted:Thanks for the frequencies, I'll have to sit outside of one and scan through them. Some toasters use the crystals to act as a time base for the electronic timing circuit, as seen in this patent. I think the rest use them as a voltage regulator of some sort, but that's just a guess because I'm too lazy to look it up. That VX-7R video was the original one the PLA put together, I bet. The original video was them loving with a Taco Bell from a mile away using a Yaesu handheld.
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Jun 21, 2011 15:58
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Actually, I listened to the PLA podcasts, apparently the drive-through thing is an elaborate prank, at least the part about getting a timing crystal out of a toaster and shoving it into a CB. That is, unless one of you guys tries it and it works. Who knows?
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Jun 22, 2011 00:58
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TC the Giant posted:Actually, I listened to the PLA podcasts, apparently the drive-through thing is an elaborate prank, at least the part about getting a timing crystal out of a toaster and shoving it into a CB. Ah, makes sense. I did find that patent I listed when running a quick Google search, but tried searching elsewhere for more info and found nothing on crystals in toasters or hair dryers. In other news, I got the FT-101 in the hands of a guy who will hopefully have it running again in a few weeks. I also got my new 2m/440 rig in the mail today.  I snagged a Yaesu FTM-10R radio and Jetstream JTMINI 15 power supply from Universal Radio. The special they had running was for the radio and basic hand mic, but one was already in the box, so I have two mics. I also picked up a Diamond mag mount antenna and the external speaker for the radio as well. I have yet to use it in the car, but in the house I'm able to hit repeaters on the other side of STL using a discone antenna 10 feet of the ground. I still can't hit the repeaters south of me, but that's because the antenna is literally right up against the back of the house, which is blocking the line of sight to those machines. Programming it isn't as bad as I expected, but it is a pain in the rear end. There's no programming software or cables available. Everything has to be entered manually, but it's all done by scroll wheel and two buttons, so it's pretty simple. You can clone the rig via bluetooth though, so if I end up picking up another radio it'll be easy to configure.
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Jun 22, 2011 02:03
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mwdan posted:Got the HF Antenna installed, so it's picture time! The power setup sounds reasonable - going directly to the battery with a fuse is what they recommend. As for the csb-790a, I was going to ask about directivity because it's a non-square roof and slightly off center, but I noticed that this is actually a colinear vertical antenna, right? Thus the gain over a regular vertical? BigHustle posted:There's no programming software or cables available xergm posted:So I'm stuck over here in Columbia, MO for field day and I was considering joining the local club until I saw this glorious vehicle from their field day photo album...
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Jun 22, 2011 13:21
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