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thanksJonny 290 posted:How much money ya got? thanks I guess current budget would be about $200 - $500. I do already have a baofeng and an MD380, which I've been using to listen to the local repeater (WW8GM) as well as an older 10m ranger that needs a couple of caps replaced.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:56
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oh psh you're way ahead. nice! i'm actually jealous of your 380, they seem cool. well, depending on living situation and your desires, 2m/dualband mobile for the residence or a used HF rig from 80s through 90s are on the menu
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Aug 18, 2016 23:59
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Jonny 290 posted:or a used HF rig from 80s through 90s are on the menu any particular rigs the Elmer lot would recommend we keep an eye out for? likely to be low priced / reasonably reliable / easy for a noob to fix and work with?
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Aug 19, 2016 00:03
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yeah i can probably rip through the rigpix list and see what i thumbs up/down, gimme a bit that reminds me HAMFEST ON SUNDAY first one ive gone to all year. i went a little crazy last year so i was good in 2016 im not shoppin for any Big Radios but we're going to take two backpacks and buy up all the random cool little parts and big air variable caps we can find. i have some Project Ideas* *first on the list is an automatic antenna switch for my IC-735. it has an analog DC output that goes from 0 to 8 volts, based on what band is selected in the radio (roughly 1 volt windows). I want to run the radio as part of a remote/semi-automated HF digital setup on 30 and 20 meters, which will have separate antennas and feeds. So i'm going to build a little op-amp comparator circuit with a trimpot to trigger a relay when it's above X voltage - that way I could use the little switch box to A/B antenna switch any arbitrary two HF bands Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 00:47
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Jonny 290 posted:oh psh you're way ahead. nice! i'm actually jealous of your 380, they seem cool. Hah, the 380 is what caused all this mess, helped my buddy patch one with the hacked firmware and next thing I know I'm getting my ticket and spending money on too many radios. There's a swap coming up in a few weeks and I want to try and pick up an HF basestation there. In the meantime though, I'm scouting for plans for a nice 2m/70cm antenna to see if I can tag a few stations in Ann Arbor from my roof, suggestions?
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Aug 20, 2016 04:51
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also, I realize that radios are a bit of an out dated technology, but does every ham site need to look like it was made in 1998?
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Aug 20, 2016 05:06
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Darkpenguin posted:Hah, the 380 is what caused all this mess, helped my buddy patch one with the hacked firmware and next thing I know I'm getting my ticket and spending money on too many radios. if you mean for an HT <10w ive had great luck with the SRH77CA if you mean for to put on your roof permanantly i've had great luck with the X-200A basically, diamond makes all the antennas that other brands try'n knick the design of and sell copies of
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Aug 20, 2016 05:22
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Darkpenguin posted:also, I realize that radios are a bit of an out dated technology, but does every ham site need to look like it was made in 1998? web design books from 1998 being passed hand to hand at hamfests "have you heard about frames, my dude?"
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Aug 20, 2016 05:37
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Darkpenguin posted:Hah, the 380 is what caused all this mess, helped my buddy patch one with the hacked firmware and next thing I know I'm getting my ticket and spending money on too many radios. there are diy plans out there for dual band copper pipe j-poles if you want something to hand make that works equally adequately on both, yagi+rotator on a mast if you wanna go down the rabbit hole, or start it off right with a quarter wave for each band so you have to get an antenna switch
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Aug 20, 2016 18:45
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haaaaamfeeest hauuuuul ok let's see Kenwood TR-7730 2m mobile - $10  Yaesu FT-770RH 70cm mobile Yaesu FT-480R 2m SSB (this is going to sniep) 2m bandpass filter   all of the above for $10 (yeah) Hilariously overbuilt homebrew tuner in a case that feels like it's a gutted Kenwood   instead of having two varicaps for tuning, it has one variable and then switches an array of HV mica caps in and out dude said he's run 600w through it for years, doesnt know what it can take, bought off the builder FIFTEEN DOLLARS lets see what else..... MFJ-219 70cm antenna analyzer $25 Icom 2GXAT in PERFECT shape except smoked battery $40. 7 watts of real rf none of this baofeng poo poo. Original box, charger, antenna, manual and even the adapter to charge a second battery. the belt clip has never been attached, the radio doesn't have a scratch on it. I think somebody bought this and put it on a shelf  Alesis NanoCompressor $5 oh and a Box 'o Stuff that had 10, count 'em, ten Communications Specialists SS-32 tone encoders, a few flats (did you know they come in flats of 100) of DB9 males and females, and some other goofy stuff. $20. I can put PL tones in every single one of these lovely 2m rigs Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Aug 21, 2016 |
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Aug 21, 2016 20:52
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so its like a telephone then!
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Aug 22, 2016 16:27
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Darkpenguin posted:also, I realize that radios are a bit of an out dated technology, but does every ham site need to look like it was made in 1998? maybe its because the equipment so often looks like it was made in 1958 (like its users L O L)  
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Aug 22, 2016 20:39
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its a hobby for old white men, who are the biggest nostalgia junkies on the planetBONGHITZ posted:so its like a telephone then! Not really, telephones are useful and socially acceptable
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Aug 22, 2016 20:43
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do antennae need to also be resonant to receive or is that mainly just an issue when sending background: tried connecting a smiley tri-band HT antenna to an airspy while indoors a few days ago, didn't see much beyond my own cellphone's LTE
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Aug 22, 2016 21:38
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Progressive JPEG posted:do antennae need to also be resonant to receive or is that mainly just an issue when sending extremely much so - i mean, you can pick up shortwave with just (as long of wire as you can get up) and it will work but it's a huge difference to tune up on a frequency as close to 1:1 as you can for RX reception
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Aug 22, 2016 21:46
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general rule of thumb is it matters more the higher frequency you're receiving at for short wave it doesn't matter much since the ambient noise floor is usually pretty high compared to the noise floor of the receiver so mismatch noise can be ignored to some extent. there's big advantages to having a narrow band matched antenna in most cases though. high band antennas can easily have shunt coils and other matching network components that swallow up other frequencies so that might be why the reception is bad outside of the standard frequency range iirc there was some article somewhere where they measured the input impedance of several HTs and found the rx ports especially on chinese rigs had as much as 4:1 SWR, this can explain why the stock antennas are usually nowhere near resonant but still seem to work ok
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Aug 22, 2016 21:50
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so is it like there's effectively an SWR (or some representation of 'less efficient') that's facing in the opposite direction from the antenna towards the receiver?
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Aug 23, 2016 03:05
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right. SWR is just a ratio of forward to reflected current. In the case of a receiver, the forward RF current is antenna to radio, and reflected is radio back to antenna. We only care about TX swr more because high swr reflects significant watts into delicate final amplifier tubes/transistors, whereas there's no harm with some RX SWR and you can maybe even just add amplification to make up the diff.
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Aug 23, 2016 04:08
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(newest) rtl sdr came in  the v3 rtl-sdr.com dongle does rrrrrrrreal good direct sampling HF with no mods Caveat: you NEEEEEED an antenna tuner or preselector or else AM broadcast just repeats itself over and over every 10khz 50 feet of wire into an old HF tuner gave me hours of joy last night, armchair copy on Radio New Zealand and Radio Aus, tons of hams on 40 and 75 meters, WLO weatherfaxes, the whole 9 yards. Not quite as hot as a ham rig but it is reeeeal close. Very susceptible to local RFI - if you think it's deaf and stupid, take your laptop outside or to the park and throw a wire in a tree, it'll wake up oh and with the antenna tuner it is even a monster at AM broadcast receive. i seriously had stations in every spot from 560 to 1700
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Aug 23, 2016 14:44
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Jonny 290 posted:(newest) rtl sdr came in Cool! I just got one of the NooElec RTLs, but I couldn't get GQRX down the HF bands... I wanted to try some shortwave DX-ing edit: 2 seconds of googling later i realize I need an upconverter. d'oh. QuantumPotato fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 03:38
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playing with the SDR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCfAqNd35_w 7x20khz USB decoders all stacked up every beep and chirp is a different wireless thermometer or power line sensor or whatever constantly surrounding you in the air you breathe
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Aug 25, 2016 12:37
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Jonny 290 posted:playing with the SDR and then Jonny bought a flex, and then Jonny made his own custom fpga based board for websdr from DC to microwave, and then he got arrested for decoding pagers at 900mhz and jamming taxis for overloading his SDRs a tale as old as time srsly though i really need to get an hf antenna in the air and get my softrock online somehow
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Aug 26, 2016 13:44
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felt like building an antenna so i figured id try my hand at a gamma match. built a 2m copper pipe loop for ssb. looks like this but i dont have adjusting screws b/c i dont need them like a scrub i used 1/4" copper pipe for the gamma and LMR240 center for the capacitor after a little bit of tweaking it's super smooth <1.5:1 between 144 and 147 and dead flat for most of it, plenty of room. thinking of building another and trying my hand at a stack as it seems 2 of these is the effort/reward sweet spot
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Aug 28, 2016 07:28
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Saw my old technician license manual and decided to blitz it and give it a shot again this coming Thursday. I am somewhat smarter than my 11th grade self, so I will hopefully be coming back here looking for which thing to get as my hello world radio.
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Aug 28, 2016 21:26
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Gildiss posted:Saw my old technician license manual and decided to blitz it and give it a shot again this coming Thursday. I am somewhat smarter than my 11th grade self, so I will hopefully be coming back here looking for which thing to get as my hello world radio. the question pool has most likely changed since you were 11, by the way, so you might want to cross-reference against something more modern, but if the book is just explaining the various high level concepts it should be fine
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Aug 28, 2016 21:36
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Storysmith posted:the question pool has most likely changed since you were 11, by the way, so you might want to cross-reference against something more modern, but if the book is just explaining the various high level concepts it should be fine Yes, I am reading through the book and then doing the practice questions on the arrl site.
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Aug 28, 2016 21:57
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Gildiss posted:Yes, I am reading through the book and then doing the practice questions on the arrl site. hamstudy.org recommended
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Aug 28, 2016 22:08
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Iridium posted:hamstudy.org recommended This site is great. It is also far too modern, I don't trust that it was made by a HAM.
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Aug 28, 2016 23:42
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I still haven't done anything with my technician license. I mostly wanted to figure out what antenna I could reasonably get (and what I could do with my lovely RTL-SDR from over a year ago), but I've really fallen out of the loop. Apparently the latest RTLSDR doesn't need an upconverter? I live in an apartment, too, so it's not like I have the freedom to hang up anything extravagant. It was nice listening around the 400mhz areas and hearing the local school bus system, though.  "No matter what I do, it won't go over 25mph!"
Zamujasa fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Aug 30, 2016 |
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Aug 30, 2016 02:46
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What do you want to do with your radio? You only need an upconverter if you want to listen to HF using your sdr, if all you care about is VHF/UHF you don't need one. There are lots of things you can listen to within those frequencies. Have you looked through the ham frequencies or just public service stuff? You may find an active club repeater with some good operators. You can also look around for digital modes, at the very least you can find some pager systems and decode some POCSAG but maybe theres a neat SSTV repeater near you or something. As for an antenna do you have a balcony or any way to get something outside? edit: if you want to do the upconverter thing and listen to the lower frequencies you can pick up some good stuff with an indoor active loop antenna.
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Aug 30, 2016 10:14
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A little of both; the main reason I got into the radio hobby at all is because of my interest in pirate/spy broadcasts. I know the outlook for those isn't too good, being land-locked in Las Vegas (which is probably an interference hellscape), but I'd still like to be able to putz around and listen to conversations.  I have a pretty decent balcony, at least. I've looked over a few lists of frequencies for this town but it seems to be out of date, with a lot of them never becoming active over hours of watching. Some other ones did work, though. I'm not sure if my RTL-SDR is even tuned properly because I think I was picking up the local weather service a few mhz off of where it should've been, but I haven't messed with it in a while.
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Aug 30, 2016 18:24
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Having a balcony and railing to attach things too is really good. You can do quite a lot. radioreference.com is where you go if you want to find the public service stuff, I'm not sure if you already have checked there or not. You have a lot of options for antennas because you can get them outside, unfortunately I'm not really good with those kinds of recommendations. But imagine you could get away with as much of a vhf/uhf dual band antenna as you can strap to the balcony, a Diamond x30 is only 4 feet tall. ( or even make your own dual band j-pole) Maybe for HF you can get one of those mfj apartment antennas to listen down to 40 meters (i am not sure if these are good or not).You could also experiment with just hooking the sdr up to a really long wire. Surely someone will have some better options for you, but just being able to get something outside gives you a lot of possibilities.
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Aug 30, 2016 20:18
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i got my audio poo poo working well mostly. Turns out that horrible bag on ebay sold me a dead EQ. Blown on both channels. Anyways. sm57 copy (it's so good for $10 lmao) -> Art studio MP -> alesis nanocomp -> MX882 mixer -> isolation transformer -> radio. I'm learning how to tweak it all and so far it sounds best with the gain pretty much cranked on the preamp, average about -10db on the VU and the (soft-ish) limiter seems to come in about -3. Then I shoot that through the comp, settings that sound good are looking like about -15 to -20 db threshold, 2-3:1 ratio and fast attack, medium release. just enough for some squeeze. makeup gain to get it back to where it should be and then MX882 fader up until ALC ticks up on voice peaks. i'll hook up the sdr and record some samples later but spoiler it sounds rrrrreal good. once i get a functioning eq it's on like donkey kong. tbh i am thinking of replacing the compressor with one that has a: xlr's so i can make this poo poo 100% balanced - i mean i have a fuckin xlr dangling off the back of my radio now and the comp is the only unbalanced component, and b: has a noise gate. so far i've seemed to wrangle the noise ok but i can hear it Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Sep 2, 2016 |
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Sep 2, 2016 13:08
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oh, no: someone poo poo on the bands
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Sep 2, 2016 15:57
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i'm doing something similar for the marine rig. lack of compression was the biggest complaint on the air, so i'm adding a preamp near the mic inside the operator console i made output is balanced which will run into one channel on a behringer FBQ1502HD 15 band eq., output from that will go to a synq DLC-1 compressor-limiter-gate for processing, balanced out from that goes to the exciter. rx audio will follow the same chain since both the eq. and dlc are dual mono/stereo units, the eq. will be a nice feature there already have a test setup using one of the handsets (600 ohm dynamic mic) directly wired in and the output from the dlc back to the speaker. still haven't gotten the pcbs for the preamp yet... nice thing is the two units will fill a 2U gap where a battery inverter is supposed to go for pure 48V battery operation
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Sep 2, 2016 16:17
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 vox box its oogly but it works my goal was to get it done in time for the colorado qso party tomorrow and by god i did ...gently caress you its my first manhattan attempt
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Sep 3, 2016 12:59
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Jonny 290 posted:
What's the advantage of that method? It looks cool, but i don't follow why you wouldn't do a normal etched board, aside from 'don't have etchant'
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Sep 3, 2016 14:49
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is QST (the arrl mag) good/worth getting a membership for?
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Sep 3, 2016 22:13
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maniacdevnull posted:What's the advantage of that method? It looks cool, but i don't follow why you wouldn't do a normal etched board, aside from 'don't have etchant' i was able to do this on the kitchen table at 3am with a joint hanging out of my mouth after ruminating over the schematic for 20 mins Oh also because the pads are affixed with a (sloppy in my case) dot of super glue, a knife edge or twisting torque pops them right off, allowing you to tweak stuff. also i don't have room for poo poo like a laser printer for toner transfer
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Sep 4, 2016 00:06
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Jonny 290 posted:i was able to do this on the kitchen table at 3am with a joint hanging out of my mouth after ruminating over the schematic for 20 mins Toner transfer? Man i had a paint marker and some press transfer sticker things
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Sep 4, 2016 00:39
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