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manero
Jan 30, 2006

Llyr posted:

The chatter was very distorted and bleeding across multiple channels.

Probably using (illegal?) amps!

Actually I don't know what the laws are like in Canada.

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Radio Nowhere
Jan 8, 2010

Llyr posted:

I was hoping that getting my CB radio working would be easier than my ham. I was messing around with an old Realistic brand handheld CB and I was picking up faint chatter from southern truckers(I live in Canada). The chatter was very distorted and bleeding across multiple channels. I was hoping that with my new CB and antenna that I would be able to pick up a clearer signal. If you ham elitists want to thumb your noses at CB then I could use some help finding a good antenna set-up for my Drake SPR-4 Receiver. Last year I tried to get a random wire antenna working but I gave up.

Was it channel 6? Those clowns bleed over a channel or two here during the day with their horrible illegal amps. Sadly some amateur frequencies are like that too ...

Bean Head
Feb 22, 2014
Illegal amps, old lovely sets or sets that have been hosed around with and the volume on the mic set to max are some of the ones I've seen that have caused drift or leak.

DrakeriderCa
Feb 3, 2005

But I'm a real cowboy!
What's the max range of CB anyways? I thought you weren't getting more than 10 miles or so, and only with line of sight.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
CB is actually HF radio. Most of the time it's just a little beyond line of sight, but when ionospheric conditions are good, you can actually work long distance with CB SSB with legal power. And then the illegal russian taxi services start showing up on amateur 10 meter band, and you hear US CB pirates in Venezuela.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Right now we're hanging out around the top of a (albeit kind of lukewarm) sunspot cycle too, so CB propagation is as good as it'll get for several years. During solar minimums, it's really quiet and local - though if you have a few guys in town on a channel, that can be an advantage.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
My SDR adapter came in and I stayed up way way too late last night playing with it.

My laptop's old so what I did was plug the dongle into my debian server in the back, follow the Raspberry Pi remote rtl_tcp howto, and hook up sdrsharp on my laptop in the living room. Works pretty well - seems to glitch out now and then but a disconnect/reconnect sorts it.

Now I really want to hook it up to a Raspi, build switchable bandpass filters controlled by the Pi's GPIO pins, and put this thing up in the air some and just run Ethernet/PoE up the line.

DrakeriderCa
Feb 3, 2005

But I'm a real cowboy!
I'm planning on getting an upgraded antenna for my UV-B5 when it arrives. The Diamond SRHF40 looks good to me, but I'll need an adapter if I understand correctly. I could do a male to female or just do an SMA to BNC and get the RHF40 instead. Anybody have a preference? The BNC is the spring loaded "collar", right? It seems like that would make swapping out or taking down the antenna much easier.

longview
Dec 25, 2006

heh.
BNC is good but finding a good adapter for the SMA-M connector on the baofeng is hard, I used this on my 5R, but that had more plastic above the SMA connector nut:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SMA-to-BNC-...=item56427c9788

For SMA-F radios use this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BNC-female-...=item3371ce400f

Usually you have to try a few adapters and put some kind of rubber washer on the radio before it will sit flush too, there's very little standardization wrt. radio SMA connectors.

My recommendation is avoid those flexible antenna types, they usually end up bent all over the place, the Comet SMA-24 is extremely flexible but uses springy steel for the whip so it springs right back. I sometimes tie a knot with the whip when I put it in my pocket, still doesn't get bent. It also has a mounting style that doesn't look weird if there's a gap near the radio unlike other SMA antennas.

For a Comet SMA-24 on a Baofeng, use this adapter:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-SMA-Femal...=item230c790833

Also beware that some people mistakenly call the connector on those radios RP-SMA, it isn't.

longview fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Mar 5, 2014

SoundMonkey
Apr 22, 2006

I just push buttons.


longview posted:

Also beware that some people mistakenly call the connector on those radios RP-SMA, it isn't.

Or eBay sellers who don't know the difference, leading to me having a useless antenna lying here. At least it was only four bucks.

Dijkstra
May 21, 2002

So is anyone following the drama with the new Uniden scanners that were released? (we talked about them a few pages back)

It's getting close to being a total train wreck.

Summary:
  • People buy the new scanner models then notice they have problems with decoding multi-site simulcast trunking systems, and also decoding some non-simulcast P25 systems.

  • People bitch.

  • Uniden comes up with a work-around (setting the scanner to WFM when decoding these systems)

  • It helps on some systems but not all. The work-around actually makes some systems worse, or causes the decoding of formerly functioning systems to stop working.

  • People bitch some more.

  • Other people notice a horrible squelch problem where radios won't squelch at the end of some P25 transmissions and just sit there and go "SCCHHHHHHHHHHERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

  • People bitch some more, start returning/selling scanners.

  • Uniden releases a firmware update to fix the squelch problem but the decoding problems are still there.

  • Still other people notice that the 536's (new desktop scanner) have a problem with the headphone audio. There is an extremely loud hiss in the background when headphones are plugged in.

  • People go goddamn crazy and Uniden is forced to setup an exchange process. Turns out that in a production run the wrong components (probably a capacitor or two) were installed somewhere in the audio chain on over 2500 scanners (uniden won't confirm how many were affected but internet detectives seem to have figured it out.)

  • Uniden sets up a factory RMA process for the affected scanners and extends the warranty (but only on returned scanners with certain serial numbers) as compensation.

  • However, rather than just recalling the products from dealer inventory and shipping them new stock, they force the dealers to go through basically the same exchange/RMA process that customers do.

  • Dealers join the Bitching Nerd Chorus.

  • People start exchanging their scanners but realize they are getting refurbished scanners back instead of new ones.

  • People lose their loving minds and start contacting their credit card companies, the BBB, their congressman, Vladimir Putin, etc. and posting 3479.97094 x 10400 rant threads on RadioReference.com.

  • RadioReference.com starts deleting posts/threads and in a couple cases banning people.

  • Some folks claim that the Uniden project manager started threatening them with lawsuits etc. (These claims are unverified)

I bagged on Uniden earlier but I kind of feel for them here. And to be fair quite a few people are reporting that their systems decode fine. Uniden made their own bed and have to lie in it but it's got to be really drat hard to get a < $600 scanner to properly decode all these trunking systems 100%, even if they are "standardized." GRE managed to do it pretty well but still... When your beta testers seem to be just a bunch of fanboys who want free poo poo to play with it's probably hard to get good testing and feedback.

Really you have no other options unless you want to send engineers out all over the continent testing how well the scanners decode various systems in various places.

Also caught in the middle is RadioReference who has gotten all cozy with manufacturers by selling them access to their database... so they are deleting posts/threads (some say) at the behest of the Uniden product manager.

It's a complete clown show.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Thanks a lot for the rundown. I haven't been to RR lately, but I know UPMan is a powerful presence there so I figured that the site would...err on the side of their businessfriend. Seems to be that's the exact way it's rolling out.

Off to read some threads :)

Dijkstra
May 21, 2002

Honestly RadioReference has been a great resource for a long time but they really are getting too cozy with Uniden. RR's made a small fortune basically crowd sourcing frequency information and selling it. Which is fine and all but they're turning into a Uniden shop now that they are the only commercial customer for their database.

I'm starting to think RR is getting paid by uniden based on the number of scanners sold with the pre-loaded database. It's gotten to the point where the RR admins are openly referring to Whistler in a derogatory manner and calling their scanners "vaporware." Nevermind that Whistler only acquired the GRE intellectual property 5 months ago.

Can't acquire a bankrupt company and spin up new production of high-end wide band scanning receivers in less than 5 months?? VAPORWARE! :rolleyes:

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Waaaaaaait, so RR sells the frequency database that I contribute Arkansas entries to? to Uniden? Holy poo poo, I did not know that. Yeah, I appreciate their fun little forum, but that's kind of skeezy. Curious about the Whistler side now.

Dammit, Unidens are built so fuckin' solid, too. That's really disappointing.

Dijkstra
May 21, 2002

Uniden has been buying the RR database ever since the HP-1 was released (if not before. )

It's how you can just put in your zip code and start scanning immediately.

MisterOblivious
Mar 17, 2010

by sebmojo

Jonny 290 posted:

Waaaaaaait, so RR sells the frequency database that I contribute Arkansas entries to? to Uniden? Holy poo poo, I did not know that. Yeah, I appreciate their fun little forum, but that's kind of skeezy. Curious about the Whistler side now.

Dammit, Unidens are built so fuckin' solid, too. That's really disappointing.

It sucks when you think your effort ends up commercialized, but on the other hand, automagic scanner programming. It's not much different than all of those repeater database apps.

I used to contribute the track listings of my rare oddball cds to the Compact Disc Database which was a free project at the time. It changed names and ownership a couple of times and became Gracenote, was property of Sony for a while and is now owned the the Tribune Company. It seemed shady at first but the ability to stick (nearly) any cd into SoundJam MP (iTunes) and have it show up with the track listing thanks to other volunteers was worth it.

PuTTY riot
Nov 16, 2002
RR also charges for a premium account if you want CSVs, web service or even a printable PDF. There's a 14 day membership available, but only by mail.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp

PuTTY riot posted:

RR also charges for a premium account if you want CSVs, web service or even a printable PDF. There's a 14 day membership available, but only by mail.

That reminds me to put my Perl RR scraper to CSV program on github :) haha

Bean Head
Feb 22, 2014
We don't really have P25 here in the UK bar the USAF bases, visiting USN ships and Customs so those sort of things are non-issues here (we instead have MPT1327 and Tetra). It's disappointing to hear about RR getting in bed with manufacturers and allegedly covering up at their behest. When I first got in to scanners before getting licensed as an amateur I used to post to a database called PROMA UK which I later found out was being sold as the UK Scan Directory without being disclosed as such so I can understand the disappointment.

Moving on, I visited a friend today who had assembled a WSPR rapsberry pi transmitter which was quite interesting, anyone else hosed with that sort of thing?

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

Bean Head posted:

Moving on, I visited a friend today who had assembled a WSPR rapsberry pi transmitter which was quite interesting, anyone else hosed with that sort of thing?

Hopefully he's just controlling a proper transmitter with a Pi or has heavily filtered his output, otherwise it's just a splatterfest.

SoundMonkey
Apr 22, 2006

I just push buttons.


Motronic posted:

Hopefully he's just controlling a proper transmitter with a Pi or has heavily filtered his output, otherwise it's just a splatterfest.

Judging by the various projects I found while searching for this, no, he is probably not controlling a proper transmitter with it.

Although if that's to be believed, 7800km at 10mW, how in the gently caress would that even work.

EDIT: He is, apparently, putting some effort into filtering at least though.

EDIT 2: Once I find some toroidal cores and some wire I am doing the living hell out of this.

SoundMonkey fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Mar 12, 2014

Bitchkrieg
Mar 10, 2014

Ham radio's been one of my oldest hobbies (got started when my uncle, who's been an Extra since 1965ish, got me to drink the radio KooleAde when I was 8 or 9 years old). Got news just now that my vanity callsign was approved - K1LEA (add me to the list, maybe?), and now's as good a time as any to come say hello.

I'm sitting for my general class license in the next few weeks, and have been brushing up with the ARRL study guide. Very excited to finally have the energy and time (and capital!) to pursue the interest more seriously. Grad school did an efficient job beating me out of any non-academic passion for a while.

Bean Head
Feb 22, 2014

Motronic posted:

Hopefully he's just controlling a proper transmitter with a Pi or has heavily filtered his output, otherwise it's just a splatterfest.

Basic filtering, nothing too fanciful he was looking to expand on the filters rather than some quick hackjob he'd take his time and do it right. I'm going to look over his notes and have a go at building it myself, my construction skills are not professional grade but they're coming along nicely.

SoundMonkey posted:

Judging by the various projects I found while searching for this, no, he is probably not controlling a proper transmitter with it.

Although if that's to be believed, 7800km at 10mW, how in the gently caress would that even work.

EDIT: He is, apparently, putting some effort into filtering at least though.

EDIT 2: Once I find some toroidal cores and some wire I am doing the living hell out of this.

I've seen reports of UK to Australia using an FT-857, my friends furthest signal to date with the raspi build when I last looked is east coast USA from the UK.

SoundMonkey
Apr 22, 2006

I just push buttons.


Bitchkrieg posted:

(add me to the list, maybe?)

Did that thing.

Magugu
Mar 30, 2013

I came to drink, fight, and f@ck. And im fresh outta beer, so what will it be?
A couple years back i thought it would be "fun" to get involved in ham radio. At the time i was in the military, and there were two active ham clubs in the area where i was stationed. So i picked one, shot them an email, and was invited to come out to their next meeting. It wasn't a pleasant experience. The general banter in the room prior to the meeting staring was how Obama was going to take all the amateur spectrum and give it to the leftist/communist/socialist propaganda machine, and use it to turn America into a sharia law Muslim country. (seriously not kidding)

Once the meeting started it was a floor to shame some of the members for using the opposing clubs repeater. 5 or 6 call signs were given out and admonished for there "treason". Most of the time was spent talking about how the other club was terrible, and the other part was talking about raising money for a new repeater to cover the area so the members weren't tempted to use the other clubs.

Mind you no one had come up to me and said hello, no one gave me a "how you are doing". I was just a random dude seeming to invade their close knit group. At the end of it the club president came up to me and did the hard sell to pay my dues and join the club. Never asking what my interest was or even my name.

Needless to say i was turned off by the whole ordeal. And naturally i didn't pursue ham any further.

So now im out of the military, moved back home. I was at a weather spotters conference and the hams were out in force with a booth set up. I started talking with one, and told him the story above. And he was kinda shocked (but not very surprised) he said "hams can be an opinionated group......" He introduced me to a gentleman that lived near me, a very nice and helpful guy. He invited me to my local clubs meeting, and it was a complete 180 from my previous experience. Everyone was helpful, nice, and genuinely interested in me succeeding in ham. So now i have a mentor, using hamstudy.org to study. And hopefully will be taking my test next month.

Bitchkrieg
Mar 10, 2014


Ugh, I wish I could say something about how this is an unusual experience and never happens, but I've heard it essentially repeated between a ton of people I know -- and have experienced it. I briefly dated a guy also into amateur radio, very involved in his club, and half the conversation was always about how much he hated the other amateur radio club in his town. The meetings were the same. It's was a bunch of vengeful neckbeards with a collective memory of being pushed into lockers, creating a Jets vs Sharks situation with the other ham club. Weird, toxic, little enclaves of angry old nerds.

That said, finding a university club or hackerspace has been a godsend. That's where young (i.e., under 50) hams hang out, and they're usually super knowledgeable and creative types. That demographic is what saved the hobby for me, and reinvigorated my interest.

Magugu
Mar 30, 2013

I came to drink, fight, and f@ck. And im fresh outta beer, so what will it be?
Im interested in hearing what others feel what ham "culture" is.


Bitchkrieg posted:



That said, finding a university club or hackerspace has been a godsend. That's where young (i.e., under 50) hams hang out, and they're usually super knowledgeable and creative types. That demographic is what saved the hobby for me, and reinvigorated my interest.

My university doesn't have a club unfortunately, and considering im in a major metropolitan area with no hackerspace its a bit :ughh:

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

Magugu posted:

Im interested in hearing what others feel what ham "culture" is.

Look at the thread title. That pretty much sums up a lot of it. Then you have the rest of us: we're here or in other similar places.

SoundMonkey
Apr 22, 2006

I just push buttons.


Motronic posted:

Look at the thread title. That pretty much sums up a lot of it. Then you have the rest of us: we're here or in other similar places.

It really does - bear in mind this is not necessarily a bad thing at all times, I can attest to the fact that listening to two old men talk about their lawnmower ownership history for 45 solid minutes while drunk and high is in fact hilarious.

I tried to get them to argue about gas vs. electric but considering 7pm was rapidly approaching I think they were getting tired.

longview
Dec 25, 2006

heh.
The one time I went to the neighbor ham club they charged money for coffee and while I was there a woman from a local TX group came by to ask one of their senior members to stop e-stalking her and insulting them on their facebook page and ask if the rest of the club supported him. Several people then yelled at her and eventually left the room in protest. Turns out the guy doing the stalking has insinuated that everyone there hated them, and that he was using his groups logo as his profile picture.
It was pretty much like monty python with people calling this other group splitters and to go back to her dingy little trailer group.

I didn't go back.

My local group is pretty good though, coffee is free and people are pretty friendly, there's also some activity both with construction projects and repeater upgrades coming up.

I've never heard anyone talking about politics or religion on the air here though, when I took the classes our instructor was very clear that this wasn't something that they tolerated, same thing with talking poo poo about other people on air.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
I've done a 180 regarding my opinion of the ham culture/scene/whatever. Note that I'm going to overly generalize the situation as 'younger = more pleasant' but I fully recognize that there are older hams that are great fellows, and I am not talking about those guys.

I've been in the game for about 22 years now and can tell you that the average population on the bands seemed to be aging for a long time. I too got the dudes-with-oxygen-tanks-ignoring-you treatment when I went to a couple local club meetings to introduce myself before I went there to take my General/Extra. Interaction was pretty much inversely proportional to age difference, and I was the youngest one there by roughly 25-30 years.

So up until a couple years ago I had a very grim, "gently caress, ham radio is dying and there's nothing to be done because INTERNET AND CELL PHONES" attitude. But then, I got to thinking. If we let the old beards scare everybody off, we're going to lose the spectrum when they die, because there aren't going to be any hams. And there is so much spectrum available to us that it is not really a reason for good interested people to stay off the radio. I have lately started a big "IF YOU'RE INTO IT JUST GET YOUR LICENSE AND START TALKIN DONT WORRY ABOUT THE OLD CODGERS" self-attitude-change. If we get fresh faces on the radio, guess what, interested people will hear fresh faces and good conversation instead of goutchat and a bunch of guys using $500 wattmeters to make sure their $5000 amplifier is properly juicing up the signal from their $8000 radio to broadcast their two cents about Obama.

RTL-SDR sticks. Baofeng handhelds. Interesting and easy kits to complete. Any obscure RF part or connector from Shenzhen to your door via ebay in two weeks. Perfect double-sided finished PCB's via OSHPark. The new DTV transmitter on the ISS. PSK31 on a cheap Android device. Fistfuls of CubeSats going up every couple of months. There's eight reasons why ham radio is better today than ten years ago.

I would suggest that a good approach to freshening the voices on the air is to come from it from a _non_ ham-radio-centric attitude. Don't hang out with a bunch of guys that talk on ham radios. Hang out with your cycling or offroad club, or a few guys you like to fish with, or your car buddies. Then figure out how you can work amateur radio into that lifestyle. Get your tickets, get some radios, start talking. Hopefully find a repeater with a receptive owner and join their club. Boom, invaded. Now be good hams.

parting shot: Even more than the gap between young and old, we need to make sure to talk about other things on the airwaves besides the obvious. And i'm not talking about obama. I'm talking about radios. The most boring fuckin' thing in the world is to tune into a couple of guys talking about how tweaking their antenna gave them 3 db more gain and now blah blah talked to Belgium blah blah. Talk about your garden, or your car, or hell, even your kids. Obvious a little tech discussion now and then is cool, but when you talk to a new person that you haven't before, bring up something interesting besides RIG HERE IS for twenty minutes.

Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Mar 16, 2014

Pimblor
Sep 13, 2003
bob
Grimey Drawer
That toxic old codgers club on 160 isn't a new phenomenon, I remember that back when I was a kid in the mid 80's. It's what happens when you get a good ol' boys club going. I'd guess maybe someone in the VFW or Masons or whatever may have a story to tell (I don't know though, maybe it is specific to ham radio).

That being said, at least 4 years ago when I was commuting and active on the local club repeater and being active and such I never encountered any of that locally. Everyone was polite and friendly, and we had lots of great rag chews on tons of topics. Steering the conversation away from politics and religion seems to be the best way to keep it healthy.

Never seen a club charge for coffee at a meeting, that's like heresy or something.

Magugu
Mar 30, 2013

I came to drink, fight, and f@ck. And im fresh outta beer, so what will it be?

Thanks for the serious posting, couldn't agree with you more. The toxic side almost made me not get involved in the hobby at all, luckily i met up with some people that are decent and are showing me the right way to do things. Hopefully younger generation can change things for the better.

Now onto radio talk, anyone have any experience with the icom ic2820. There is a used one available for a decent price and im thinking of picking it up.

Bitchkrieg
Mar 10, 2014

Advice needed on equipment. My uncle and I have been exchanging emails, and he's a lifelong ham (I took my callsign as K1 _ _ _, because he's got a K1 designation and I wanted to give a little nod to him). I'm scouting around for some equipment to setup my first rig, and will be taking my General class license in late April/early May.

He's going to offload some of his old rigs/gear/equipment on me. I think most of it will be free, but he also offered this in the email --

quote:

[I was asked to sell a] Kenwood TS-440s. It is sitting in my basement so I can test it. I would guess that the family wants about $300 for the radio.

Would this be a good buy? Should I jump on it?



His current setup includes:

quote:

... an Elecraft K3, an Elecraft KX-3, and a FlexRadio 5000a. Antennas are a 240 foot-long doublet fed with open wire line at 15 meters height, a SteppIR 3 element Yagi at 18 meters with the 30-40 meter driven element, and an Inverted L for 160 meters.

:allears:

SoundMonkey
Apr 22, 2006

I just push buttons.


Jonny 290 posted:

parting shot: Even more than the gap between young and old, we need to make sure to talk about other things on the airwaves besides the obvious. And i'm not talking about obama. I'm talking about radios. The most boring fuckin' thing in the world is to tune into a couple of guys talking about how tweaking their antenna gave them 3 db more gain and now blah blah talked to Belgium blah blah. Talk about your garden, or your car, or hell, even your kids. Obvious a little tech discussion now and then is cool, but when you talk to a new person that you haven't before, bring up something interesting besides RIG HERE IS for twenty minutes.

Holy poo poo is this ever the truth. Lawnmowerchat night was probably top-3 conversations I've had on that repeater because it wasn't about goddamn radios. Why yes, guy I talk to all the time, my rig is still a UV-5R, why yes, those are quite cheap. I am quite glad you're receiving me clearly, although I bet that has more to do with the repeater than with my rig! And oh yeah, these do use that wacky antenna connector. Ok cool, yeah it's getting to be dinner time, catch you next week to repeat this conversation word for word!

I mean I get that obviously radios are an important part of radio communication and you're likely to find a lot of knowledge from old-timer radio guys, but radios are also good for like, talking about things and being social.

It would be different if it was some dude halfway across the world and I actually really did want to find out what his antenna setup was such that he was able to hear me, but on local repeaters, seriously who cares. Everyone's using 5-watt HTs unless they're in their car, and there's only so many times I need to hear about the new 10m antenna you're going to be setting up when it arrives when work quiets down over the summer once family isn't visiting never.

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004

Arrrr ye landlubber
Bring up some of Hackaday stuff that literally every techy kid on the Internet knows about.

Arduinos and Raspberry Pis are magic to old repeater grumps.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

SoundMonkey posted:

I mean I get that obviously radios are an important part of radio communication and you're likely to find a lot of knowledge from old-timer radio guys, but radios are also good for like, talking about things and being social.

I'm pretty sure the problem here is that a lot of these guy who dominate the airwaves have little to nothing else in their life other than radios and health problems.

Jonny 290 posted:

I would suggest that a good approach to freshening the voices on the air is to come from it from a _non_ ham-radio-centric attitude. Don't hang out with a bunch of guys that talk on ham radios. Hang out with your cycling or offroad club, or a few guys you like to fish with, or your car buddies. Then figure out how you can work amateur radio into that lifestyle. Get your tickets, get some radios, start talking. Hopefully find a repeater with a receptive owner and join their club. Boom, invaded. Now be good hams.

HELL YES.

One of the things I've taken a shine to is SOTA activations. Combine hiking or off roading with a bit of radio at the summit, move on back to your chosen other activity.

Bitchkrieg
Mar 10, 2014

I would love to talk about hiking and adventures and outdoorsy stuff and cooking and Battlestar and powerlifting and anything else under the sun, but especially so if someone could tell me (because I don't know such things!) if dumping $300 into the aforementioned Kenwood transceiver is a good call. Otherwise I'm stuck with my POS Baofeng.

Or: CQ CQ CQ ham goonygoons, tell me how to spend my money. 73 DE K1LEA


PS -- is there an SA net or sked that any of y'all participate in? I'd be down to try to talk to some of you, even if just for awkward mouth breathing before announcing callsigns, if it means getting practice on the air.

Bitchkrieg fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Mar 17, 2014

Pimblor
Sep 13, 2003
bob
Grimey Drawer

Bitchkrieg posted:

Advice needed on equipment. My uncle and I have been exchanging emails, and he's a lifelong ham (I took my callsign as K1 _ _ _, because he's got a K1 designation and I wanted to give a little nod to him). I'm scouting around for some equipment to setup my first rig, and will be taking my General class license in late April/early May.

He's going to offload some of his old rigs/gear/equipment on me. I think most of it will be free, but he also offered this in the email --


Would this be a good buy? Should I jump on it?



His current setup includes:


:allears:

I have had two TS-440 (one got stolen) and they both have the same drat problem. The potting material rots out the guts of the rig and the front panel keybounces like hell. I just don't have enough time and effort anymore to gut them and clean them up. If you do, they're great rigs. If you don't just get a 706MKIIG or something. $300 seems about right for a TS-440AT but I don't know about the 440S.

If it comes with a bunch of free toys and you're willing to put the effort in... Maybe?

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SoundMonkey
Apr 22, 2006

I just push buttons.


Bitchkrieg posted:

I would love to talk about hiking and adventures and outdoorsy stuff and cooking and Battlestar and powerlifting and anything else under the sun, but especially so if someone could tell me (because I don't know such things!) if dumping $300 into the aforementioned Kenwood transceiver is a good call. Otherwise I'm stuck with my POS Baofeng.

Or: CQ CQ CQ ham goonygoons, tell me how to spend my money. 73 DE K1LEA


PS -- is there an SA net or sked that any of y'all participate in? I'd be down to try to talk to some of you, even if just for awkward mouth breathing before announcing callsigns, if it means getting practice on the air.

I could fire up EchoLink again or something but since the old men here don't even know what that is, it always feels vaguely inauthentic saying my callsign into an iPhone.

EDIT: ...as I catch myself doing the exact same poo poo johnny290 rightly bitched about a few posts above, just complaining about the old men instead of trying to actually improve the community and make it more accessible.

EDIT2: ...and as I plan to start doing just this on the net that I think usually happens tonight, either my radio's broken or the repeater's broken (it's not even responding with code when I call it), or they moved it to a different time and didn't tell anyone (or all of the above).

I'm CRAZY for EDITS: Oh the repeater is working, it just did its half-hourly call, it's just absolutely deserted. If anyone wants to know what the ham radio community is like where I live, watch the part of Gravity after they lose contact with Houston. Can someone convince me not to spend a bunch of money on a 10m rig just to actually talk to people?

SoundMonkey fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Mar 17, 2014

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