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PuTTY riot posted:So I got permission from the wife to do an Eave mounted dual band vertical so I can hit the local repeaters from inside the house. 290 has been helping me out in the yospos thread a little but I wanted to get some more thoughts. My big concern is lightning protection. I need to ground the mast (10' 1-1.5"emt conduit probably) and the coax. Do y'all typically buy one big length of rg8x or whatever kind of coax and then add your own pl-259 connectors where you need them, or do you buy short cables that match? Can I somehow combine the ground wires for the mast and arrestor so that there's only one ugly copper wire coming down the side of my house? Is 30' (or 50', or 100') of rg8x going to cause too much loss for 70cm and a baofeng? I usually buy cable in pre-cut sections as I need them. I'm moving to a new house in a week, so I may actually need to figure out how to attach my own PL-259 ends. The biggest advantage is that the cable is going to be a little cheaper, and you'll always have the exact length you need for your runs. Do you already have cable, or are you looking to pick some up? RG-8X is fine for HF work, but at VHF/UHF frequencies you do begin to pick up some loss. On 70cm you'll get about 7.9dB of loss per 100ft section, according to this chart. Either keeping your run as short as possible or picking up a little less lossy cable will be key to getting as much power out as possible at those frequencies, especially when limited to the 4W of the BaoFeng. RG-8X is cheap, so you can always run it and see what happens and either upgrade the cable later, or get a rig that puts out more power to overcome the attenuation loss. I can't speak to your grounding question, hopefully someone else will be able to chime in on that.
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Feb 20, 2015 18:52
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Also keep in mind that those PL-259 connectors are only 50 Ohm until around 300MHz, above that impedance dips and your SWR will suffer. Consider using type N or BNC connectors for UHF work. As far as grounding is concerned, it's good practice to ground everything at the same point. Bonding your coax ground and your mast ground together is the right thing to do, just make sure it's a solid connection between the two. Edit to add that I'm 99% sure the NEC requires that all grounds are connected together, so you'll want to tie these into your house ground system in some manner. colonel tom fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 00:08
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colonel tom posted:Also keep in mind that those PL-259 connectors are only 50 Ohm until around 300MHz, above that impedance dips and your SWR will suffer. Consider using type N or BNC connectors for UHF work. Thanks. The antenna I'm looking at is a tram 1480 which has a so-239 connector at the bottom. I guess I could do n connectors everywhere else for future proofing. I am currently not able to hit the UHF repeater on top of the hospital a few miles away from my nmo hood mount whip, but I can drive a block away to the other side of a hill and hit it fine. The mounting location should put me 30+ feet above that. That's really my main goal for this antenna. Obviously if I can get more out of it then great, but I don't want to spend a ton either. Goal #1 is not destroying my house, goal #2 is for it to actually work so I can check in to nets from inside my house.
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Feb 21, 2015 01:40
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Don't worry about N's at this point. if you're not doing weak signal the 0.17 dB loss from UHF connectors isn't going to be make or break. better to invest that in better coax, i'd rather have RG-8 class coax with UHF connectors than RG-8X with N You're going to be amazed when you hook this thing up by the way. don't forget, if you get the 1480, it needs a bit of sealant at the joint where the two fiberglass pieces screw together. it is *not* waterproof from the factory and this is why 80% of the 1-stars on eham are bitching about their antenna breaking after a year. other than that it's great, I get every machine within 70 miles full quieting and even checked into the SSB net once, guys an hour away copied me even with the cross polarization loss
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Feb 21, 2015 05:54
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You'll want some kind of sealant on the UHF connector too, they're not even light moisture resistant.
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Feb 21, 2015 11:03
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These seem to be the most popular style of uhf lightning arrestor with a so-239 on one side and a pl-259 the other. They make them with a so-239 female on each side, I'm just trying to figure out where you'd use one of the pictured ones...
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Feb 21, 2015 22:07
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PuTTY riot posted:These seem to be the most popular style of uhf lightning arrestor some dudes get those long 12" F-F feedthroughs and drill holes in either their wall, or a plate set in the wall. these are good for hanging off the outside of that Thats my stage 2 hausbus plan - currently I just have 3 50' runs of RG8x and miscellaneous stuff around; I want to get eight feedthroughs and make a panel from inside to outside, up by the radio desk.
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Feb 22, 2015 01:05
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That sounds cool. Do you think I could just buy that style, connect it directly to the antenna, and then run the ground wire up from the utility ground, *through* this ground clamp attached to the antenna mast, and then into the lightning arrestor directly at the antenna? It seems like it should work well, probably better than most people's setups honestly, but I think it might not technically be 100% code compliant. To keep my coax run short (and inexpensive) I think I just want to come through a gable vent into my 'bonus room' above the garage. I'm hoping I can get away with just one ground wire for aesthetic reasons, but if it's a terrible idea then I won't do it that way.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:17
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actually it's good you ask, because no. the coax for the antenna runs up through the bottom mast part that the antenna bolts to, and i don't think that the arrestor would fit in the tube. get a run of coax to get you to the ground (25 feet maybe?), and another to run in the house, run a F-F arrestor where it goes in the house. Use one of the above clamps you posted on the mast, and sink one of the eight foot ground rods. Honestly can't comment on tying it to the house ground, as our house was 2-wire (madface) so I didn't worry about it. e: at the point where it goes into the gable is fine. just make sure to use awg 6 or heavier wire, keep your runs straight or gently bending, think like lightning
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Feb 22, 2015 04:25
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Do yall solder/crimp rg8x? Looks like it'd cost about the same to buy a few pl-259 connectors vs a jumper to get down the mast to the arrestor. But if I didn't go that route I could drill a much smaller hole in my wall, and make my outside jumper exactly as long as I need it, and even have a wall plate inside with the coax coming through it. But I guess I'd have to buy a soldering iron that wasn't $5 at radio shack. Maybe I'll ask tonight during my club's net if anyone would let me borrow their crimpers or soldering iron. Sorry for 20 questions I just want to have every detail figured out before I get up on a ladder. PuTTY riot fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Feb 22, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 18:05
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PuTTY riot posted:Do yall solder/crimp rg8x? I've always soldered. The right PL259s will have a collar/reducer for that size cable. And as far as a soldering iron, your biggest problem isn't precision, it's getting enough heat into the connector to make it work. So one of those cheap soldering GUNS is a better plan. In fact, mine is a crappy radio shack gun.
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Feb 22, 2015 18:18
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Crimp connectors tend to be cheaper in the long run, but non crimp types can usually be reused if you want. Standard crimp and solder connectors tend to be hard to weatherproof properly, for outside use I prefer this type of connector:  eBay keyword is clamp connector, the center conductor is soldered and the shield is pushed against the connector body by that rubber piece like in a cable gland. These are easier to weatherproof with self vulcanizing tape and can still be reused. Assembly is uncomplicated and no need to heat up the entire connector to cable melting temperatures.
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Feb 22, 2015 18:48
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yep. Worst: crimp. OK: solder. Best: clamp. I hate soldering PL-259's. Jesus Christ.
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Feb 22, 2015 21:03
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Crimps still have a place, but I didn't order a crimp tool until a few weeks ago. Spent the last weekend making a bunch of RG-58 patch cables with variations of SMA, BNC and N plugs, it's much quicker and easier than clamp types. Outside cabling is all N clamp type with some tape on the back, 6 months and no problems dealing with the winter here. The soldered PL-259 is an abomination, especially since it's almost always used with plastic dielectric cables that are guaranteed to partially melt during assembly.
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Feb 22, 2015 21:36
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Thanks everyone, I think I'm going to go the clamp connector route, reminds me of my compression rg-6 stuff. Just ordered antenna + a bunch of crap + not 89 cent electrical tape off of amazon. Gonna hit up home depot tmw and look at EMT conduit and grounding wire. Not sure if 1" or 1.5" would be better. Weather + shipping means I probably won't finish everything, but we'll see.
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Feb 22, 2015 22:04
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Take a look at the 10ft chunks of chain link fence top rail at Home Depot or whatever, too. It's cheap and has swaged ends so it just slips right into the end of the next piece. I like to run a hole through and secure with a 1/4" bolt as it's just a friction fit I had two of these for my 2m vertical mast back in AR, five and a half years with zero troubles, notable ice storms and wind.
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Feb 22, 2015 22:14
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Jonny 290 posted:Take a look at the 10ft chunks of chain link fence top rail at Home Depot or whatever, too. It's cheap and has swaged ends so it just slips right into the end of the next piece. I like to run a hole through and secure with a 1/4" bolt as it's just a friction fit Why didn't you post this before I went to Home Depot today? That's an awesome idea, and I was contemplating pulling down my 2m antenna to I can get it running again. It's a home built j-pole that I made real quick and dirty a few years back and now I want to put a proper chassis mount N connector on it and run the length of 9913 I bought for it........5 months ago....so I can actually hook it up to where my radios now live which is the opposite side of the barn from where they were and where that antenna is. Since it's so far away (probably 65 cable feet) I'll need to do it properly this time, but getting it up a bit higher sure wouldn't hurt at all.
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Feb 22, 2015 22:20
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Jonny 290 posted:Take a look at the 10ft chunks of chain link fence top rail at Home Depot or whatever, too. It's cheap and has swaged ends so it just slips right into the end of the next piece. I like to run a hole through and secure with a 1/4" bolt as it's just a friction fit Nice I'll check these out. I'm not sure if the wife will approve of 2 of those connected together though... Maybe I'll just do it and ask for forgiveness  I'm not having much luck finding those compression connectors for rg8x, and the rg8 ones I'm finding that aren't an arm and a leg will be here sometime between easter and christmas.
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Feb 22, 2015 22:41
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Hang a US flag off the top. Then she's not a patriot if she protests. I'll see if I can dig up a stateside source for connectors. K1CRA is my usual connector shop, but he's a bit light on those.
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Feb 22, 2015 22:47
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RG8x is the same thickness as RG-59 right? I just tried it on one of my RG-58 plugs and I think I could make that fit if I had to, but it's tight. Standard RG-8 has the same thickness as 213, shouldn't be hard to find...
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Feb 22, 2015 22:58
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Jonny 290 posted:Don't worry about N's at this point. if you're not doing weak signal the 0.17 dB loss from UHF connectors isn't going to be make or break. better to invest that in better coax, i'd rather have RG-8 class coax with UHF connectors than RG-8X with N You're right about investing the connector money in coax, I like to use N connectors and decent cable to future proof things. I want to run the cable once and hopefully never have to touch it again. PuTTY riot posted:That sounds cool. Do you think I could just buy that style, connect it directly to the antenna, and then run the ground wire up from the utility ground, *through* this ground clamp attached to the antenna mast, and then into the lightning arrestor directly at the antenna? It seems like it should work well, probably better than most people's setups honestly, but I think it might not technically be 100% code compliant. To keep my coax run short (and inexpensive) I think I just want to come through a gable vent into my 'bonus room' above the garage. I'm hoping I can get away with just one ground wire for aesthetic reasons, but if it's a terrible idea then I won't do it that way. Idk about the specifics of your situation, but grounding your antenna & coax directly to the utility ground is the perfect way to do it. Some people will tell you to drive another stake at double it's length (so 16 feet usually) away from the utility and then tie them together, but I don't know how necessary that is. Maybe if you had a 200 foot tower or something. I had a completely ungrounded tv antenna in the sky for years and it survived many a storm without getting hit. colonel tom fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 19:37
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While I'm waiting for everything to come in, I've decided to build a 769 mhz 8 element coaxial collinear for monitoring various state agencies on the MSWIN p25 system. It's a really cool setup but I've had trouble decoding audio and I think it's because the little stock antennas are poo poo. Anyway I'm just making it out of some extra RG-6 I have lying around since apparently those dongles are 75 ohm anyway, I have connectors to go from F to SMA to MCX. I'm not sure how to finish this thing off at the top though. Also, i hope my crappy cutting/measuring job (a couple mm off on a few elements probably) doesn't come back to bite me in the rear end.
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Feb 24, 2015 02:12
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 the 'laying on the couch' couch test 
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Feb 24, 2015 03:21
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I've never done contesting before but this was an interesting look into the Amateur Radio "Olympics" https://vimeo.com/119947598 I saw several Windows 7 machines as their logging computers but sadly no die-hards rocking Win95
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Mar 5, 2015 05:27
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win7's the 'windows 95' for pragmatic hams today, I think. You get a new enough OS that you can take advantage of low latency audio cards and modern hardware, but you can still wrangle in drivers for surprisingly old poo poo. I managed to get a 25-pin narrow SCSI adapter humming in 7 for my music samplers. honestly i struggle a lot trying to run ham stuff on my MBP, there is not a lot of OS X stuff out there and not much of the older stuff runs right through things like WINE. SDR apps in a VM aren't much better, the audio is pretty stuttery and bad, lots of other bugs and crashes too. Thinking of either building up a rackmount PC with a ton of serial ports, or getting an old beater Dell from the pawn shop.
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Mar 5, 2015 06:02
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johnnyonetime posted:I've never done contesting before but this was an interesting look into the Amateur Radio "Olympics" That was pretty neat. I had heard of the event but the video is a helluva lot more interesting than reading about some contest. The DXpedition videos are interesting too. When I think "Windows 95" I don't think "top contesters on the planet", I think "80/75/2m." Jonny 290 posted:Thinking of either building up a rackmount PC with a ton of serial ports, or getting an old beater Dell from the pawn shop. It annoys me to no end that ham gear isn't easily rackable and stations default to either "boxes upon boxes upon boxes" or upgrade to "custom wooden cubbyholes for each piece of gear."
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Mar 5, 2015 09:48
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Jonny 290 posted:win7's the 'windows 95' for pragmatic hams today, I think. You get a new enough OS that you can take advantage of low latency audio cards and modern hardware, but you can still wrangle in drivers for surprisingly old poo poo. I managed to get a 25-pin narrow SCSI adapter humming in 7 for my music samplers. We're not in yospos so I'm not worried about being stoned to death, but you know you can run boot camp and all this stuff will work, right? I don't touch OSX on my MBA except once a year or so to see if there are any firmware updates. On another note, one day there won't be snow/ice on the ground and I'll be able to put this fukken antenna up. agggg
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Mar 5, 2015 16:38
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PuTTY riot posted:We're not in yospos so I'm not worried about being stoned to death, but you know you can run boot camp and all this stuff will work, right? I don't touch OSX on my MBA except once a year or so to see if there are any firmware updates. Yea, I can't stand osx. I run linux on my ancient macbook. But I run all sorts of windows software with virturalbox, it works great, audio and everything. Virturalbox is free, then just got a copy of win XP or win 7 and go hog wild.
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Mar 5, 2015 17:16
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Received and noted, but I don't wanna f up a work machine with bootcampery even though it's relatively safe. Anyways part of the reason I want to do the real PC route is: real serial ports. Prolifics don't swing enough voltage on the RS232 side to work right with either my Uniden cable or the programming bus on my IC-208 and it drives me crazy. i'm not programming every trunked system in the Front Range in by hand - the frequencies aren't too bad, but gently caress entering 1200 talkgroups
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Mar 5, 2015 17:29
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I got a new radio this week:.JPG) .JPG) .JPG) .JPG) .jpg) Yaesu FTM 400DR Then a Diamond SG7500 dualband antenna And then the ARRL Extra License manual; I had been trying to use the No Nonsense PDF among other PDFs... but I've gotten tired of reading that and various other PDFs on a computer and went with a paper book. I'm currently a technician, but I started studying for my General a little over a month ago. It took maybe 2 weeks to get mid 90s on all my practice exams, so I figured I'd try to go all the way. I'm averaging 60 to 80 on the practice extra exams now; and I go for the test Saturday. I did mount the control head in a different spot; the one in the pictures wasn't getting a good GPS lock for APRS, so I finally screwed it down to the dash board; it helped that the spot I used was already 'damaged' from a suction cup mount. I eventually want to mount the transceiver in my trunk, but the cabling isn't long though for the mic or control head. I'll also have to extend the power cables even longer; I already had to solder an extension in since it wasn't long enough to reach my backseat.
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Mar 6, 2015 03:24
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I went to the local Hamfest yesterday and went and took the tests to upgrade my license. I missed 3 questions on General. And only 8 on Extra. I'm seriously considering becoming a VEC. During the exams at one point there were a little over 20 people in line waiting for their exams to be graded.
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Mar 9, 2015 01:45
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I'd be interested to see a year over year and month over month graph of new memberships. Also a ratio of pass to fail and how many passed more than one exam.
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Mar 9, 2015 02:36
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PuTTY riot posted:I'd be interested to see a year over year and month over month graph of new memberships. Also a ratio of pass to fail and how many passed more than one exam. http://qrz.com/i/census.html http://www.arrl.org/news/us-amateur-radio-numbers-reach-an-all-time-high This one will probably answer your question best: http://www.hamdata.com/fccinfo.html
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Mar 9, 2015 06:26
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uapyro posted:http://qrz.com/i/census.html Good stuff. Thanks.
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Mar 9, 2015 13:57
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I wouldn't be surprised if the availability of cheap receive-only devices like an RTL-SDR stick caused more than a few of those licenses. I wonder how many of those new licensees grabbed vanity calls. Just took a look over at AE7Q and it looks like 2x1s are as hard to get as 1x2s now. When I grabbed mine, there were still a handful readily available. I'm glad I applied when I did.
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Mar 9, 2015 15:08
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So vanity call signs don't have a geographic region attached to them right? So then why does someone like 290, who moved, need to (or if he doesn't need to, suggested to) throw a 'slash number' at the end of his callsign? I feel like this is a stupid question.
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Mar 9, 2015 16:17
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PuTTY riot posted:So vanity call signs don't have a geographic region attached to them right? So then why does someone like 290, who moved, need to (or if he doesn't need to, suggested to) throw a 'slash number' at the end of his callsign? I feel like this is a stupid question. Vanity call signs do not have a geographic component REQUIRED to be attached to the licensee address. Mine is in my correct region for the same reason you SHOULD use a slash number with any call when you are out of the region: it helps everyone else out with DX stuff. Obviously this doesn't really matter for anything other than HF, and probably not even really so much for 75m.
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Mar 9, 2015 16:35
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PuTTY riot posted:So vanity call signs don't have a geographic region attached to them right? So then why does someone like 290, who moved, need to (or if he doesn't need to, suggested to) throw a 'slash number' at the end of his callsign? I feel like this is a stupid question. You don't need to at all as far as I'm aware. I keep my original 4-land 2x3 callsign because I'm a cantankerous assbag and dislike how they opened up the vanity system to everybody cause Tradition Blah Blah The Old Days, and I put /0 at the end to let people know where I'm transmitting from and that I do it on the reg. Keeps the "Just passing through?"'s down on the repeaters somewhat.
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Mar 9, 2015 17:07
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I moved from 9-land to 0-land, and I don't plan on changing mine. It's not like I'm seriously out of place either, I went from IL just across the river from STL to KCMO. Anyone reasonably far away would probably be swinging their antenna in roughly the same direction.  There used to be a requirement though. If you changed regions you were supposed to apply for a matching call.
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Mar 9, 2015 17:46
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xergm posted:I moved from 9-land to 0-land, and I don't plan on changing mine. (Sup fellow KC ham)
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Mar 9, 2015 17:55
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