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Jose Pointero posted:
The left leg is fine. Honestly I would be concerend about the other half folded back kind of on itself like that - you can get some signal cancellation if you do that too much. But experiment and see! I would suggest running this as a random wire, though, with the left leg as your 'hot' and making 1/4 wave counterpoises that go down and then alongside the house foundation (for the longer ones), and feeding it all through a balun. Your currents are going to be unbalanced in the dipole version anyways due to its wacky shape, and you will arguably get more field strength by having counterpoises going down and away than having a counterpoise (that other dipole leg) that doubles back like that. Of course, you could always see if they used aluminum edging on the edge of your roof, and fly a wire out to a tree and work it against the edging's ground plane. It may work better than you think.
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Sep 27, 2011 12:23
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2011 00:19
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Jonny 290 posted:Your currents are going to be unbalanced in the dipole version anyways due to its wacky shape Also, it would make an interesting experiment to put that shape into an antenna modelling program to see just what kind of pattern you would produce. Jose Pointero posted:I'm looking into buying the tuner right now, give me some suggestions! Needs to handle 500W or more.
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Sep 28, 2011 06:20
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I have an LDG tuner and I'm pretty happy with it. However I have the YT-450 which is designed to work only with the FT-950 (or 450) so it is radio-specific. I haven't used their generic tuners. The relays are loud but they are pretty heavy-duty so it's a trade-off. It tunes everything I've tried. Mainly I got it so I could tune up one of my dipoles on 30 meters and try screwing around with some wire verticals and loops (eventually). If you don't want an Auto tuner look at the Palstars, people seem to be very happy with those.
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Sep 28, 2011 13:22
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Sep 29, 2011 00:20
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Wait... you're not going to run 600w into the dipole stapled around your roof are you?
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Sep 29, 2011 14:18
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Sep 29, 2011 15:12
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Heh, that's what I thought but I had to ask. Although it would be a cool experiment to see what kind of kitchen appliances you could turn on/damage by operating QRO. If I ever get a house with a yard bigger than 20'x10' I'll probably have a Butternut vertical or something like that shipped to me as soon as I close on the place.
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Sep 29, 2011 17:20
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2011 01:23
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Looks like it'll be a while before my 101 gets worked on. The guy who has it broke both of his service monitors and won't be able to fix them for a month or so. After all the BS with the Skywarn group and other poo poo from a few months back, I took a break from the local repeater. I went to the quarterly meeting last weekend and the club's resident kook didn't fail to disappoint. She put forth a nomination for an addition to the club charter that would restrict the officer positions to hams who belonged to that club only. Her reason being that having membership in more than one club would be a 'conflict of interest in case of an emergency since his or her loyalties could cause an issue'. Please keep in mind that this club consists mainly of actual hobbyists. We have no affiliation with any group of any kind and anyone who does anything volunteer related with ARES/RACES/SATERN/etc. The club president called for a show of hands from anyone who was a member of other clubs, and she was the only one who had no hand in the air. A guest from one of the larger area groups (and the ARES coordinator for the county) that was giving a presentation on using Anderson Powerpole connectors just looked at her and said 'No offense, but that is the craziest idea I've ever heard'. We all got a good laugh out of it.
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Oct 1, 2011 06:27
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What kind of emergency was she thinking about? For emergency communication, you need to sort out ahead of time which agency/group you'll be turning up for. For example, I can't volunteer for the "front line" of the Norwegian RRL's emcomm work since I already have an assigned role with another agency in a disaster, but I'm a member of three clubs that do amateur radio - might be joining a fourth. It sounds like she read some good advice, but didn't actually understand it. Today I brought out the chainsaw and cut down some trees in the back yard to make room for dipoles. I'll be leaving some of the tallest ones for hanging them on. I'll be moving the dipole depending on which direction I'm trying to reach.
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Oct 1, 2011 19:10
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Vir posted:What kind of emergency was she thinking about? For emergency communication, you need to sort out ahead of time which agency/group you'll be turning up for. For example, I can't volunteer for the "front line" of the Norwegian RRL's emcomm work since I already have an assigned role with another agency in a disaster, but I'm a member of three clubs that do amateur radio - might be joining a fourth. It sounds like she read some good advice, but didn't actually understand it. See, the thing is that the emergency communications policy for the club repeaters is 'If one of the EMCOMM officials asks us for use of the repeater system in an emergency, we let them use it.' Our group isn't affiliated with any of the regional or county EMCOMM groups and we don't participate in their exercises or factor into their contingency plans in any way. If disaster were to strike, we'd be using our repeaters to talk about how lovely the situation is, not to relay tactical info. This is the same nutcase who was scared to death that the methane vents coming out of the ocean floor would ignite and burn off all the oxygen in the atmosphere. She said that the radioactive fallout from Fukushima was going to poison Missouri and nothing would be safe to eat or drink and that a Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun was going to release an EMP that would wipe out all the electronics on the planet, so you should make your house into a Faraday Cage. I don't think she understands that ham radio is a hobby, not a paramilitary organization. She also doesn't understand that not all hams are Chicken Little style nutjobs who need to be afraid of everything on the planet.
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Oct 1, 2011 19:40
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Well OK, so if your repeaters are ever needed for emcomm, it would be other people using them to relay messages. All your club would do in that case is stay off the repeaters during the emergency, and go to simplex or a different repater if you want to ragchew, which just re-iterates FCC rule 97.101 point c and d. Actually, having some of those people be members of your club sounds more of an advantage than a drawback, since they might be familiar with the repeater gear, or know more people who they can ask for help with technical stuff. Jose Pointero, glad to hear that your FT-101 is working. Will you be using the digital frequency display to calibrate the FT-101's calibrator, or just using it constantly? Would this be relevant? 
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Oct 2, 2011 11:34
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Vir posted:Well OK, so if your repeaters are ever needed for emcomm, it would be other people using them to relay messages. All your club would do in that case is stay off the repeaters during the emergency, and go to simplex or a different repater if you want to ragchew, which just re-iterates FCC rule 97.101 point c and d. Actually, having some of those people be members of your club sounds more of an advantage than a drawback, since they might be familiar with the repeater gear, or know more people who they can ask for help with technical stuff. In the event of an emergency, our repeaters would either be used for club use (ragchewing) unless one of the established EMCOMM groups had a failure of their repeaters in our area, at which time we'd cease use of the repeater while they used it for emergency use. The range of our repeaters overlaps the range of both of the other groups, so we'd only be needed in an emergency. It's very beneficial for our members to belong to the other groups. Looney Tune is just a complete whackjob though, and I believe the whole situation stems from one of the area groups denying her membership application due to her Chicken Little rants and 'advertising her business' on the air. Jose, if you don't already have them, here's the owners manual and service manual for the FT-101.
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Oct 2, 2011 19:31
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Do any packet guys in here know a real difference between the Timewave PK96 and the Kantronics KPC-3+ ?
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Oct 2, 2011 20:11
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Sniep posted:Do any packet guys in here know a real difference between the Timewave PK96 and the Kantronics KPC-3+ ? I *think* the only big difference is that the Timewave will do 9600bps. If you just want a tnc for APRS I would buy whichever one you can get cheaper since it's largely 1200 and hardly anyone uses 9600 on normal packet. Be advised that a lot of people complain about Kantronic's tech support. I have a KPC3+ so if you need any help I will try to assist if I can.
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Oct 2, 2011 22:15
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Oct 3, 2011 04:31
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I'm trying to get packet going over VHF first since that's the primary mode as far as I know, but digipeating over 443 wouldn't be a stretch if I could do it - my problem is an utter lack of gear. I'm basically starting my shack with this. Currently I still just have a couple of HTs. And, my old netbook asus, which was relegated to the closet a long time ago after I got my macbook air, so, now it is a dedicated ham machine.  With a built in 7 hour UPS. (Already have a power supply on order for it to source from 12v to upvolt to the 19 that it wants.)
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Oct 3, 2011 04:34
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Jose Pointero posted:I've always been kinda interested in packet but never looked into it very much. Are y'all doing packet over HF or V/UHF? I just run an APRS Igate from my house. It's nothing fancy but there is a lot of APRS activity around here. Mainly I use it to see when there are VHF tropo openings. If I start seeing lots of nodes on my RF map in NY, PA etc. I know something is up. Sniep posted:I'm trying to get packet going over VHF first since that's the primary mode as far as I know, but digipeating over 443 wouldn't be a stretch if I could do it - my problem is an utter lack of gear. You don't even need a TNC to get an RX setup going. Just a cheap audio cable. If you you already have a radio you can use sound card packet with AGWPE. Try starting here: http://www.soundcardpacket.org/ Before you spend money on a TNC you could try to get this running so you can see what kind of activity is in your area.
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Oct 3, 2011 11:57
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I've both sent and received ARPS packets via the soundcard. My first transmission was made by holding the radio mic up to the computer speaker. I've been experimenting a bit with APRS and also IP network AX.25 at the computer club. We might ask for a 44.x.x.x (AMPRNet) allocation in the future. The sense I got from listening to the OFs is that non-APRS packet over VHF sort of died due to over-utilization?
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Oct 3, 2011 13:46
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We have a couple of guys who are big into packet via enthusiasm, and there are a couple of flexnet nodes here still. What I got from them was , just like the phone patch , the internet sort of killed off the ham bbs and the idea you could send text and mail bullshit all over the place wirelessly with the radio. The problem as I see it, is that it is exponential. Once the network starts to decay, and you can't get to places conveniently without going through 5 other nodes, then it stops being reasonable, and people shut down. VHF packet is slow as molasses most of the time I use it, especially anything nodal. If you can build a local network up then it would be reasonable, but, for what purpose do you want to use it? Packet cluster is one, Winlink is another if you want to give people the ability to shoot off mail messages. Sending files over it takes forever as 1200. If you can get 9600 baud going at UHF then you will be in good shape. I have a PK232 which will do that, as well as all sort of other goofy crap like baudot, morse, paktor, etc. Those things can be had cheap since they're old. It will also serve as a TNC even at 9600 baud. It's just large. AMPRNet would be cool especially if you were going to set up clustering or spotting for rovers for your club or something
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Oct 4, 2011 13:48
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How do you guys talk about the Czech Republic or the Czech language?
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Oct 4, 2011 23:17
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I don't get your meaning. I hope to get some contacts with the Czech Republic, if that's what you ask. Next weekend, it's time for this year's Jamborees on the Air. Thousands of scouts/guides will be talking to each other on the air, and there's a small emergency test included as well. JOTA is a significant recruiting area for new hams, so get on the air and talk to them if you can. http://scout.org/en/information_events/events/jota/the_54th_jota_2011 Also next weekend, a couple of guys will be doing parachute mobile at Pacificon 2011 http://parachutemobile.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/parchute-mobile-will-be-at-pacificon-2011/ Today I ran some PSK31 and SSB on 12 and 15 meters; I think I heard some US stations but I only worked European ones. There's Scandianvian/Nordic contest going on this weekend too.
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Oct 8, 2011 17:58
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Welp, time for a "What did you just buy" post - As I am working towards my goal of my packet station. Existing gear: The Asus EeePC netbook that will run the JNOS station, nothing else though except my couple HTs which won't even TX on the wall power. Just ordered: 1) Yaesu FT-7900R Dual-Band 2M/440Mhz Radio (With 1200/9600 rate TNC interface jack for packet on the back)  2) Alinco DM-330MV 30 Amp PSU  3) Diamond X-50 Dual-Band 4.5/7.2 dB gain on 2m/440 respectively antenna  Now all I need is the power distribution / power pole stuff, as well as the TNC its self. But at least a place to start! Sniep fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Oct 11, 2011 |
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Oct 11, 2011 02:03
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2011 13:11
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Jose Pointero posted:Good stuff. I've been meaning to buy that exact antenna for a couple years now and never have gotten around to it. What's JNOS? It's a BBS for packet stations that runs in linux, AX-25 and a ton of protocols including a lot of ancient ones that are deprecated but it still is a shade more flexible than a built-in BBS on a TNC itself, more just a project.
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Oct 12, 2011 15:46
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On one of the amateur radio list-servs I subscribe to I caught someone asking for radio volunteers at the occupy wallstreet protests for coordination . Of course it led to a back/forth between users but my reaction was how great to have this backbone when cellphones and wifi get overloaded. I don't see any difference between having volunteers there or another bike marathon, minus the political angle I suppose.
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Oct 12, 2011 18:02
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Radio Nowhere posted:On one of the amateur radio list-servs I subscribe to I caught someone asking for radio volunteers at the occupy wallstreet protests for coordination . Of course it led to a back/forth between users but my reaction was how great to have this backbone when cellphones and wifi get overloaded. I don't see any difference between having volunteers there or another bike marathon, minus the political angle I suppose. I can see where having an info relay there would be good practice for possible relief work since it's noisy/crowded/etc and would make for good training in working with distractions, but I'm wondering exactly what kind of coordination the OWS protesters would need that couldn't be handled with a handful of people with walkie-talkies or just using a verbal 'pass it on' relay.
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Oct 13, 2011 03:34
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Vir posted:I'll be moving the dipole depending on which direction I'm trying to reach. This'll last about a month, then you'll get sick of it. :P I thought the same thing when I got my little 18 foot Hy-gain vertical. "Oh I'll just run outside and change taps when I want to change bands." Even after installing a 4-way switch in a box at the coil, it was still an annoying pain. Relegated that pole to 20M duty at the top of a couple lengths of chainlink top rail. I haven't installed it yet, but I am building a box that uses two relays and a two-conductor control cable to give me three-band remote switching capability:  The relays will be powered off the same cable, using opposite polarity blocking diodes. No Volts: 30M Positive Volts: bottom relay trips, 20M Negative Volts: top relay trips, 15m (and yes when I am on, i'm on 30 a lot) I thought about a four-band setup using AC voltage as an option and a couple of caps in the box to keep both relays energized, but can't sort out the relay logic at this hour. One cool thing about HF is that you can generally sketch by using ordinary meant-for-120V relays up to a couple of hundred watts. RF relays chap my rear end and are slow. Ugh. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Oct 15, 2011 |
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Oct 15, 2011 12:54
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Sounds neat. I converted my whatchafukit speaker wire mess into a bunch of ground radials, and threw them out my window this weekend. I went to rat shack and grabbed their $8 collection of magnet wire spools, took the 100' one, stripped one end, put it on the tuner, and ran the wire out the window about 45 feet to a trash can in the parking lot. I doubled the wire back on itself, and, I'm figuring even with the enamel, with it wrapped around the insulator it terminated the antenna versus attempting to radiate through the rest of the spool. It worked enough to make some SSB contacts on 40M this weekend for the NYQP. High wind warning was in effect and nothing happened with any of the wire I put out there, surprisingly. I just gave up because the window was open and it got drat cold in here quickly. But, I"m putting that wire mess into my "portable antenna" pile, because it seems relatively easy to huck that spool over a tree and tune it up. E: So I want to look into building a VHF Go-Kit. I'm looking at some examples, and one thing I don't want to do, if I can avoid it, is shelling out major cash off to west mountain radio for "rig runners" and more power poles. I used the power poles on my E-Bike and with a bunch of Lithium batteries, and they're a huge pain in the rear end (to me anyways) as well as unnecessary for things which are not likely to be disconnected. Screw clamps and terminals seem like they would be far less expensive, and easy to work with. I did get into a debate with another ham about the "interoperability" of things like that at EOCs and other rapid-deployment scenarios. The majority of events are drills or things you know about well ahead of time, so, "I have to stop home and pick up my ____" is plausable. When I read articles about disasters, they often mention operators who are running with their equipment, and their homes are in the affected area and destroyed, so you'd want to have everything possible. In a stressful situation, clamp terminals and even "twist two wires together here" have to be infinately more 'interoperable', especially when you don't know what you're going to run into. Not everyone is a hamsexy baller with a ton of purpose-built retail items. I advocated having a set of powerpole pigtails ready made with some screw terminals and, of course, a set of electrical tape, for when you show up and there's a battery but it doesn't have PP's on it already. Partycat fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Oct 16, 2011 |
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Oct 16, 2011 14:57
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Sniep posted:It's a BBS for packet stations that runs in linux, AX-25 and a ton of protocols including a lot of ancient ones that are deprecated but it still is a shade more flexible than a built-in BBS on a TNC itself, more just a project. I'm going to check this out. A TNC is pretty flexible for an easy-to-use package, that you plug in and turn on, and it (well the latest Kamtronics units anyways) is not much bigger than a deck of UNO cards so you can set it and forget it. I should take a picture of the OEM that we're working with , as well as a couple of the guys who are all into packet there , they usually have 3 or 4 of those along with FT-1500's for running APRS, Packet, simplex, the works, right out of a box. I'd almost figure for small-scale deployment situations that you could pick a frequency to use for data traffic, and have all of your stations running both APRS and packet on the same frequency, if you can enforce that users are not using any 'dumb' APRS devices. I'd have to look to see what an estimated channel capacity is for AX.25 given NO digipeaters. A properly developed system could set up a tiered network, wherein a listening node would listen on a general frequency, and selectively retransmit those stations onto a "master" backhaul frequency, to elminate clutter. A radio with a custom split memory could accomplish that pretty well just by setting up a software to digi everything that met such-and-such a criteria, although it would not be able to listen for the channel being busy. Hmm.
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Oct 16, 2011 15:06
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How did you feed the magnet wire out the window? I've got the same pack and I've been thinking about throwing it out my dorm room window. Not sure if the screen's going to cause a problem though. Other alternatives might be putting up a horizontal loop around the perimeter of the room. The green spool fits a little more than once around the room.
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Oct 17, 2011 02:42
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Apartment porch-friendly antenna mount completed. (Antenna = Diamond X-50a) Please pardon my lil work area looking like crap and using boxes for desks temporarily while I'm just building out the station.  
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Oct 17, 2011 05:08
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Oct 17, 2011 07:04
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Jose Pointero posted:Good idea on the cement bucket. How many floors up are you? 3rd floor (top) Also no shame in any of that except the CRT Empty beer cans simply show that there was progress made.But seriously, that X-50a antenna is the bees knees if you need a non-ugly dual band decent gain single stick to just throw out there, I love it so far  Also do not worry no kitties were harmed in the taking of this following pic (I am not TXing right now, when I do the door is shut, and this will move outdoors as soon as possible) 
Sniep fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Oct 17, 2011 |
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Oct 17, 2011 07:18
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Oct 17, 2011 07:22
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Jose Pointero posted:That thing is gonna work awesome on the 3rd floor. Diamond rocks, I've used their antennas on many of my HT's with great results; and everyone that I've spoken to running one of the X-series always had good things to say about them (great signal from those guys too). For my HT I use a Smiley telescopic tunable dualie, you take it down two notches for 440 and fully extended for 2m, and it's a saint. I get into the repeater on the mountain at low power which I believe is 100mw and am clear as daylight. But this is to run my packet station  so I want to be able to beacon and really push some watts out there as well as have ears, so that's what I've settled on.
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Oct 17, 2011 07:27
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Sniep, your condobucket for the antenna is pro. We did one of those a few years ago, but instead stuck one of those old 19 foot Radio Shack push up masts in the wet concrete. We actually hung a little TV rotor and a 4 element 2M beam on the top; we put the bucket where we wanted it, marked its position, then ran 3 eyebolts into the deck and pushed the mast up, then ran guy ropes. It held through the tail end of several Carolina hurricanes - the guy ropes were key. I'm sure the 100 pounds of concrete didn't hurt either, of course.Partycat posted:Sounds neat. Neat side note, not really related but...in summer 2008 I laid 16 ground radials (8x 10meter, 4x 15 meter, 4x 20 meter) around an iron pipe I sunk in the back yard for that vertical I just talked about. I used medium gauge electric fence wire and made 6" U-shaped 'staples' out of lengths of the wire to push into the ground and hold it down every few feet. Well, that vertical doesn't live there any more, but I never removed the pipe or radials. I went out the other day on a lark and the radials are _completely_ one with the earth now. Most of the area they are under about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of soil. I bet it's a pretty fair ground for the higher HF bands now with all that bare buried wire. Pretty neat to see that over time. Also, watch that magnet wire - it's made of soft copper and in an antenna application will stretch over time. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Oct 17, 2011 |
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Oct 17, 2011 11:01
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I got sick of pretending my radios don't exist because my signal is horrible at my apartment since my antennas are garbage. I've been trying to use whip antennas indoors since I have no elegant way of putting up an antenna outside (cramped apartment area, first floor). Yesterday, I strung up a 10m 1/2 wave horizontal random-wire antenna about 6ft off the ground with a bunch of ground radial wire. I expected an increase in RX and TX but not much. What happened actually shocked me. First thing I did was load up cocoaModem on my laptop once I had the Signalink USB, radio and antenna tuner all hooked up. I immediately saw tons of RTTY activity on 10m so I responded to an especially strong signal, hoping some local guy would hear me. I got a response back seconds later. It was a guy ~1500 miles away in St Paul, MN. Said my RST was 599. Decided to switch it up and camp out on a frequency full of PSK. Again, I picked an especially strong CQ and responded back. This time, I got another "599" response back immediately but the location blew my mind. Kawasaki, Kanagawa in Japan. How a short length of wire 6ft off the ground out of a 5W FT-817 got a hot signal into Japan is beyond me. I camped on the band for hours, picking out signals from all over the USA and Japan (was a JARTS RTTY contest weekend). Fantastic fun. I really want to find a better 10m antenna solution ASAP now. Something that will work from ground level but be halfway decent. Maybe a couple 10m Hamsticks with a dipole adapter up on a fairly tall pole I can take down quickly.. maybe using the bucket + concrete idea above. hmm...
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Oct 18, 2011 04:34
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Catastrophe posted:I got sick of pretending my radios don't exist because my signal is horrible at my apartment since my antennas are garbage. I've been trying to use whip antennas indoors since I have no elegant way of putting up an antenna outside (cramped apartment area, first floor). Yesterday, I strung up a 10m 1/2 wave horizontal random-wire antenna about 6ft off the ground with a bunch of ground radial wire. I expected an increase in RX and TX but not much. What happened actually shocked me. You'd be surprised how well things work when the bands open up. Here in St. Louis we had a mobile station from San Jose, CA check into our 10m net this past Wednesday. Take a look at the W3FF homemade Buddipole. It might be what you're looking for.
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Oct 18, 2011 05:02
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