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Sunspots have been down the last few weeks, so propagation on 10m has been hit or miss. For a while it was really doing well, and I'm sure it will pick back up again soon.
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Feb 20, 2012 04:37
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mwdan posted:Sunspots have been down the last few weeks, so propagation on 10m has been hit or miss. For a while it was really doing well, and I'm sure it will pick back up again soon. Ok, cool. I just managed to pick up some morse on 40m, so I guess it may just be the sunspots. I can't even pick up the Morse beacons which are less than 50 miles away, though, which seems odd. I don't have a proper ground, though, which may have something to do with it. Edit: also, duh, 10m doesn't propagate very well after dark, so unless I had line-of-sight to somebody (unlikely with all these hills), I guess I shouldn't expect too much. I'm getting an SWR of about 1.5 (if I'm reading the meter right), and a guy on a nearby 2m repeater said he got nice propagation at 8 a.m. today, so I'll give it a shot on 28.400 in the morning and hopefully make a contact. By the way, what do you guys think of RF exposure with an indoor dipole? One end of my dipole is basically directly over my head, so I haven't tried transmitting over 40W on 10m... but on the other hand, I've done 50W on 2m with the antenna *much* closer. Pham Nuwen fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Feb 20, 2012 |
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Feb 20, 2012 04:50
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My father-in-law is a ham (has been since his teens) and because of him I'm becoming more and more interested to get my license too. And he's really pushing me to do so. Sadly I don't have much time to study for this, much less to operate a radio (working 60 hours/week + 2 young kids at home) but this is something I will do someday when time/money allow. Anyhow, he's been featured into a recent issue of The Canadian Amateur for he and his buddy's achievement: a 75 miles line of sight laser communication using homebrew stuff. Probably a Canadian record.  Link to article on IMGUR. It's a bilingual version and it's missing part of the last paragraph in English, which explains the aiming system (in reality electric motors from an older Audi ventilation system).
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Feb 20, 2012 16:38
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EvilMoFo posted:Why not simply get a computer power supply with a single 12v rail and modify it for your needs? Just irritated me, I don't normally buy from individuals at a hamfest/swapmeet, normally just vendors.
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Feb 20, 2012 20:33
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Just got back from my first technician class. I'm really psyched for this and my local group seems really active, I think I'll enjoy this!
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Feb 21, 2012 06:42
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We got a new band! Well, WRC approved, anyways. http://www.eham.net/articles/27724 quote:At its Plenary meeting held 14 February 2012 in Geneva the World Radiocommunication Conference approved a new secondary frequency allocation to the Amateur Radio Service at 472 to 479 kHz. Having passed First and Second Readings it is normally a formality that this change be included in the WRC-12 Final Acts when the Conference concludes February 17th. The Table of Frequency Allocations would then be amended accordingly. I'm excited! 600 meters would be fun to mess with, those frequency ranges are low enough that DIY gear could be easy to build.
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Feb 21, 2012 11:05
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drat, the weather is pretty nice but this time of year, it seems that the MUF rises to 28 some time shortly after I have to leave for work in the morning, and then drops down below it before I can get home in the evening. The MUF map taunts me 
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Feb 22, 2012 02:53
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...and the com port in my 857 is still dead...Yaesu never checked it.
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Feb 22, 2012 02:54
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Just upgraded to general. Just over 50% on the extra, but it was a shot in the dark. Now for some radio purchase research.
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Feb 22, 2012 03:13
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Jeece posted:Anyhow, he's been featured into a recent issue of The Canadian Amateur for he and his buddy's achievement: a 75 miles line of sight laser communication using homebrew stuff. Probably a Canadian record.
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Feb 22, 2012 05:46
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Jose Pointero fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Feb 22, 2012 16:53
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Jose Pointero posted:WTF, see if you can get them to take it back and fix that no charge. What else did they do to it while it was there? So I send it in, wait, call, and am told I have a power supply issue. Even after explaining that my power lead ran straight to a junction block off the battery and my power cord tested properly at the radio, they still insisted that I have a power supply issue. 'We are unable to recreate the problem'. Ok, fine. Is it fixed? 'Yes, we have had it on the test bench, transmitting, everything tests out fine.' Please send it back. Plugged it straight into the old power supply, BAM, powers up immediately. Started plugging in my new toys (new tuner, comp connection cable, etc) and nothing. Tested cables against other radios. Everything's fine. Seriously, there's a ton of poo poo going on right now and my relaxation hobby isn't helping me to loving relax at this point.
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Feb 22, 2012 18:40
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nmfree posted:The thing that amazes me the most about this is that they were able to repeat the contacts with 5mW lasers after initially using 100mW. IIRC 5mW is the output power of a standard laser pointer. I know there's a law for lasers over 5mW in the US, but I'm pretty sure the regular kind of pointers are less powerful than that. I can ask him more details about this project if anyone is interested. The lasers came from DealExtreme.com (back when they were selling them) so the quality/ratings may be less than advertised. 
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Feb 22, 2012 19:42
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Yaesu FT-857D or Icom Ic-7000? Is there any must have features of the 7000 that the 857 does not have? Help a noob out...
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Feb 25, 2012 07:39
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IC-7000. At the very least the difference in price covers the filters you'd have to buy for the 857d (and I LOVE the 857d). I recently did a side by side comparison at HRO and I'm strongly considering selling mine to fund a 7000 when it gets back. It's not an 'OMG this is in another class' kind of thing, but the features are much more refined on the 7000 (like the lack of AGC 'pumping').
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Feb 25, 2012 16:23
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I chose an ft-897d as my first HF radio because I found one with about 6 months of use plus an LDG external meter, powerwerx 30 amp supply, Yaesu programming software/USB cable and LDG at-100pro antenna tuner for about the price of just the radio new. It should all come Thursday. I hope I did OK eddiewalker fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Feb 25, 2012 |
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Feb 25, 2012 19:18
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IC-7000 on the way with an IT-100 LDG tuner.
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Mar 1, 2012 07:09
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My license upgrade and address change showed up on the ULS yesterday, but it still shows an expiration of later this year. Did I not renew it for another 10 years by upgrading?
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Mar 2, 2012 20:24
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No, unless you specifically tell the VE's you want to renew at the same time, they just code the 605 as a regular modification. You can renew it yourself online though. http://wireless.fcc.gov/services/index.htm?job=cft&id=amateur&page=cft_renew_amateur
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Mar 3, 2012 00:22
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Has anyone ever seen someone OBVIOUSLY selling pirated software at a hamfest? I went to a small one here in VA last week, and there was a guy with a table selling nothing but used computer parts, and obviously pirated copies of (mainly MS) software. He had several stacks of CDRs with "Microsoft Office", "Publisher" etc. written in sharpie marker on the labels. I don't want to start a warez discussion or anything, just wondering if anyone has seen someone so blatantly doing this at a hamfest before. It cracked me up. I don't go to many hamfests but I don't remember seeing someone doing that.
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Mar 5, 2012 22:37
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Dijkstra posted:Has anyone ever seen someone OBVIOUSLY selling pirated software at a hamfest? Ha, yeah, I believe it. Seems a remnant of the old computer fares of the mid-late 90s. Same with gun shows - that might be a better approximation to ham fests. But yeah, the computer conventions that were held in the little local Hilton event rooms all opened up together - they were fun, but every other table had stacks of warezed discs. Never knew how that flew under the radar but it was extremely common.
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Mar 6, 2012 01:51
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IC-7000 and tuner has shown up, I built a 6m-30m fan dipole for the attic, ill be installing it Saturday morning. This is quite the rig! Used it a bit on VHF/UHF for now.
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Mar 8, 2012 05:04
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SiB posted:IC-7000 and tuner has shown up, I built a 6m-30m fan dipole for the attic, ill be installing it Saturday morning. This is quite the rig! Used it a bit on VHF/UHF for now. Which bands did you pick for the fan? I've just got a 40 and a 20 up so far. The 40 seems to work well on 17 too (third harmonic?) I've got enough wire and insulators for 2 more so I'm trying to pick wisely. I'm loving PSK31 on 40 meter. The signals are easy to spot by ear or on the waterfall, and I don't have to use a mic.
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Mar 8, 2012 05:16
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Which bands? All of them! 6, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30..... the whole mess seemed to tune up not bad. Just a big experiment, hopefully I can get some action out of it!
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Mar 8, 2012 05:35
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I was worried about interaction between the elements. My plan was 40 20 15 10 for now. I'm really hoping to barrow an MFJ analyzer because trying to trim this thing by whistling into the mic sucks.
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Mar 8, 2012 05:40
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Jonny 290 posted:We got a new band! Well, WRC approved, anyways. As someone who has built an AM broadcast antenna for a small college radio station on 640KHZ, the transmitters may be simple, but the antennas are not. You're talking radiating elements in the hundreds of feet and lots of ground radials. I ended up building a vertical that had a massive hand wound loading coil and used the steel frame of the building as a ground radial. Works pretty well, actually. Actually, speaking of college radio, there are tons of surplus, crystal controlled 30-150 watt MW broadcast transmitters floating around that used to be used in campus carrier current broadcast systems. They could probably be tuned down to 600 meters, and modified for AM Phone or CW use, without much effort. Look for units made by LPB Inc. and Radio Systems Inc. They pop up on ebay and craigslist once in a while. I'm a senior at a small rural liberal arts college in Northeast Ohio. I discovered the remnants of such a system when I was a freshman. They started out with small, homebrew 10 watt tube transmitters in the 1940's, which were installed in every dorm and campus building, the 50 ohm antenna output capacitor-coupled to the main 120V service. In the 70's, the homebrew transmitters were replaced with LPB Units. Each Transmitter was fed audio from the studio over the campus telephone network, one twisted pair in each building reserved for the purpose, tied in to a main distribution panel near the studio. Line level audio from the studio's mixer was sent to an ancient Tube-based Western Electric telephone line amplifier that fed the distribution panel. Crude, but it worked. I grabbed six of these 25 watt transmitters when they ripped them out in 2009, unfortunately, all but one had fried final transistors, due to the 60 year old paper capacitors in the homebrew antenna coupling networks shorting and putting 120VAC across the antenna terminals. 
MullardEL34 fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 08:57
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Yeah, I dabbled in 136 KHz a little bit a couple years ago. Unless you have a hundred acre farm and a few miles of copper, the antennas are just unworkable, heh. Fun to build gear for though, low frequencies are pretty forgiving. Very cool post, and yeah my first thought was to the surplus of old AM transmitters that can probably be retuned very easily. Thanks for the brand suggestions, now I got another eBay search feed to add....
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Mar 8, 2012 09:41
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Jonny 290 posted:Yeah, I dabbled in 136 KHz a little bit a couple years ago. Unless you have a hundred acre farm and a few miles of copper, the antennas are just unworkable, heh. Fun to build gear for though, low frequencies are pretty forgiving. Basically, I made a crude copy of this antenna: http://www.radiosystems.com/PDF/atinstructions.pdf The college purchased an AT series antenna in the early 90's, but it was destroyed when a tree limb fell on it 2006. This marked the end of our station until I got involved in 2010. I made a crude approximation of it from the schematic in the manual, using copper tubing as the vertical and a 200-something foot loading coil of 18 gauge solid copper wire. The three story steel-framed brick building acts as a ground radial. 15-20 watts covers our 2 square mile campus without issue. We're technically an unlicensed FCC approved "free radiate" station, Free Radiate being that we can use an open antenna system only if it covers our campus and nothing more. Usually this is the case, but once in a great while, at night, when the conditions are just right, we can be heard by listeners located 30-60 miles away. It has something to do with our antenna being mounted on a building that sits at the very top of one of the tallest hills in the county, on top of the fact that the foundation of the building actually sits below the water table. We have the QSL emails to prove it. It always seems to happen during the 2-4AM indie rock/pop on vinyl show. MullardEL34 fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Jun 19, 2019 |
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Mar 8, 2012 09:53
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EvilMoFo posted:Why not simply get a computer power supply with a single 12v rail and modify it for your needs? You can buy server power supplies instead for much cheaper if you only need 12V (~$15 on ebay for a 500W 12V@47A or even ~$30 for a 1300W 12V@100A . Additionally, they'll be much better regulated than the 12V on your standard atx power supply. Dropping in to say I got licensed today. Studied for about three days and went from unlicensed to general, scoring most of the test points from my EE background. I would've gone for extra but that means I'd actually have to go review my microwave/antennas course notes .I haven't played with antennas too much before, so I have no sense of scale when it comes to tx power and such. I got licensed because I read that I needed it for transmitting analog video. My plan is to use a 900MHz video link at 800mW to pilot a quadrocopter that I'm building via a video link. Since anything that resembles legalese terrifies me, I've been avoiding a thorough readthrough of the FCC rules. Am I correct in assuming that I'll mostly be interested in Part 15 and Part 97? Part 15 being information about what kind of power requirements are necessary to get away with unlicensed radio use and part 97 being about priveleges granted to amateur operators?
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Mar 11, 2012 04:22
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Does anyone know anything about the frequency counter feature in the MFJ-259b antenna analyzer? The manual is pretty vague on that front. Can you just hook a BNC rubber-duck antenna up and go? Is it limited to the same 1.8-170mhz range as the antenna analyzing parts of the unit? I'm thinking about ordering one, but it would be a lot easier to swallow the price if I could also use it to quickly check frequencies on the random, unlabeled UHF rental walkie-talkies I get at work. (I prefer using my ham HT to monitor because its much less bulky and I always know I'll have the right hookups for an earpiece.)
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Mar 11, 2012 20:36
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I just made contact with someone who participates in something called "Summits On The Air". Its a program that started in Europe in 2009 and has worked its way here. Basically climb a mountain with portable radio equipment and make contacts for points, seems pretty cool. It strikes me as a anytime extreme field day, at least it gets ops outside. My contact was someone on a 5 watt HT about 80 miles away, not bad. http://www.sota.org.uk/
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Mar 11, 2012 22:27
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Is anyone interested in an 857d with the remote mic that works perfectly except there is no CAT port functionality?
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Mar 12, 2012 03:55
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Just passed my Technician exam yesterday! Hopefully I can see my call sign online in the next week or two. Looking forward to messing around with antenna designs.
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Mar 12, 2012 21:22
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I figured this was the right thread (and yes, my greybearded dad still runs, well, windows 98) to voice this: I'll be at the timonium/maryland state fairgrounds hamboree~ hamfest thing march 31st - april 1st selling my jewelry, dad'll be there selling train capacitors. also I plan on taking my technician's test soon, dunno when. I need to study.
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Mar 18, 2012 03:58
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And I am finally back on the air! I got in my new power supply today, a Pyramid PS4KX. Hooked it up to my Yaesu Memorizer, and I called the local repeater. And someone can hear me! Works much better than trying to use a battery charger... Now if I only had something to talk with the old men about. My tuner still doesn't work without spraying it liberally with contact cleaner though, need to get that fixed when I get a bit more money.
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Mar 19, 2012 23:44
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Has anyone built any large loop antennas? Any pointers? I'm moving to a house with a large lot soon and was thinking about putting up a window line-fed 40 meter loop. Probably either a vertical delta loop or a horizontal skywire. (leaning towards skywire)
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Mar 20, 2012 13:50
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My 2 week old Icom IC-7000 has developed an issue, the internal speaker stopped working, but you get audio if you plug in an external speaker or headphones.
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Mar 21, 2012 03:51
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Hey guys, I'm not a ham, but interested in SDR, having listened to random websdr sites. Anyway, I ordered a 2.5MSPS 8-bit I+Q 70MHz-1700MHz tunable USB SDR receiver. Bonus: it decodes digital TV. More info here. I posted about it in the GBS dealextreme thread and, remembering seeing this thread some months ago, thought some of you might be interested in slurping 2.5Mhz of random spectrums.
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Mar 23, 2012 23:07
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If that gives the sort of performance people are claiming, that will be a loving STEAL. Higher performance than the FunCube and 1/10th the cost? Too good. I finally finished constructing my SoftRock SDR and it doesn't work. I don't have the heart to debug it right now 
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Mar 24, 2012 03:25
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karoshi posted:Hey guys, I'm not a ham, but interested in SDR, having listened to random websdr sites. Anyway, I ordered a 2.5MSPS 8-bit I+Q 70MHz-1700MHz tunable USB SDR receiver. Bonus: it decodes digital TV. More info here. I'm awaiting mine, hopefully it'll come before the end of summer.
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Mar 24, 2012 18:08
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