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mycomancy posted:Hi ham Goons. I've been interested in amateur radio for number of years (my uncle has a fancy-pants rig in southern Missouri), and this thread convinced me to look into reviving this interest. As my first radio/training wheels for the Tech test, I was thinking of buying this Baofeng radio (https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-BF-F8HP-Two-Way-136-174MHz-400-520MHz/dp/B00MAULSOK/). Any thoughts or issues known about this system? I've gotta recommend against Baofeng as I constantly do - yes they are ridiculously cheap compared to real (non-software) radios but still, I personally hold steady that they aren't even worth their cost due to their emulated radio nature. Some reasons why I'm not a fan - 1) Wide open front end with terrible (no real) filtering. The baofengs have wide open RX and a the computer chip decodes the frequency you're tuned to. This of course leads to interference and squelch break constantly as it's not hardware selective at all to where it's tuned. (See: RX all over the map ) 2) The power ratings are bunk and actual output is all over the map - 5w might get you 3w? 1w? 7w? Just google/youtube for this and see results all over the place - pretty indicative of very poor QC. 3) Spurious emissions - These devices do not meet part 97 requirements for stating in band - when you transmit you're spewing noise all over the RF spectrum. (See: Spurious Emissions ) 4) Antenna jack is backwards - why? Good question - but you can't take any antennas you buy to enhance this radio with any real radios in the future - Most all actual HTs take SMA or BNC - Baofeng takes Reverse SMA which will ONLY ever work with Baofeng brand radios, so if you decide to upgrade to a Yaesu or Icom or Kenwood, none of your antennas will fit. 5) Scan speed is abysmal vs. a real radio. This will be a major, major pain in your rear end when it takes you a minute to cycle through a couple dozen frequencies vs. just seconds on a real radio. You'll miss the front end of transmissions and will just give up on ever scanning with it it's that bad. (See: Look At The Scan Speed Vs. The Real Yaesu On The Far Right.. ) 6) No S meter. Real radios give you a S1-9+ power bar on a signal that lets you see visually the signal strength as received. Not on a Baofeng! If it breaks squelch it does, if it doesn't it doesn't, but no concept of a signal strength readout exists. Like I get the appeal since the cost is so, so insanely low vs. everything else on the ham market, just be aware that it comes with some compromises due to its "no real radio guts, just a computer stuck to an antenna" nature. As always I'd recommend a Yaesu FT-60R for a new ham's first radio, or hell, go up that line as far as your pocket will allow - I have a VX-8DR which is fantastic as well, but really, to start out the FT-60R is a great dual bander to break the ice with, and suffers none of the issues enumerated above.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:09
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Sniep posted:
Thanks for these radio recommendations! I put them on my wish list, for when I have a job again.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:56
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Sniep posted:I've gotta recommend against Baofeng as I constantly do - yes they are ridiculously cheap compared to real (non-software) radios but still, I personally hold steady that they aren't even worth their cost due to their emulated radio nature. De-lurking like a mofo for this to add on. 1: Sniep is 100% right on all points stated. 2: Transmit/receive turnaround time. These things have to coax their synthesizer/SDR chip to tune, very gently. This ties in with the scan speed mention above. Meaning, a: You'll almost always miss the beginning of the response, b: When you graduate to a 'better radio", your Baofeng is useless for packet. It'll be an okay RX-only APRS gateway, but for any digital transceive work, its trash. 3: Bad wiring. To PTT on a Baofeng through the speaker mic, you need to connect 'speaker ground' to 'mic ground'. TLDR; this is a horribly clunky way of toggling things, and requires a special optoisolator interface to work properly. Again, a packet/APRS killer. 4: I bought a $12 Baofeng BF-888, plugged it into a $20 name-brand FTDI adapter, and it blew up the serial adapter the first time. So, it cost me $32. Are you willing to roll that with a $27 baofeng and $20 serial cable, knowing that if it explodes and you get a Yaesu, you gotta buy all new chargers and speaker mics and antennas? Get a "big 3" (Icom/Yaesu/Kenwood) rig. The FT-60 is a juggernaut. Further ham community notes as i've been off SA for 8 months: -Picked up a vintage Heathkit SB-110 6m rig, a HW-101 and the power supply to run either one, off Craigslist. Everything's been run through ex-Heathkit techs in the past few years. The 6m rig is GORGEOUS. 100% tube all around, and even some adorable little Nuvistors up in there. I'm building a special vintage desk for these rigs and the TS-520 I picked up a while ago. no computers allowed -Working lots of 6m meteor scatter these days. Jump on pingtalk, get the latest WSJT-X and come have fun. Big guns will patiently work you all night until you get that QSO. -Hope you all are having hella fun with your radios, the sunspot cycle is making GBS threads out but a lot of 2m/70cm satellites have gone up in the past year. Get on! - Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 21:01
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Sniep posted:
Minor correction/clarification, they use a standard SMA male, while most ham gear uses SMA female on the radio. A standard SMA female adapter is all you need to make it "normal". It's not a reverse [polarity] SMA, which is something basically only used with ISM band stuff like wifi routers and license free radios. Agreed on the rest, they're not good radios. The old ones also had terrible microphones and no way to adjust the deviation without a soldering iron. I'd suggest Wouxun for low cost entry level radios, my KG-UV6D was pretty ok on most points. But after that I got an Icom IC-T70 that I'm still pretty happy with.
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Jul 9, 2017 21:19
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longview posted:A standard SMA female adapter is all you need to make it "normal". Sure, but i'd rather have to use an adapter going the other direction vs. using otherwise good antennas on good radios with the adapter that makes it weaker as well as introduces loss. Jonny 290 posted:2: Transmit/receive turnaround time. These things have to coax their synthesizer/SDR chip to tune, very gently. This ties in with the scan speed mention above. Meaning, a: You'll almost always miss the beginning of the response, b: When you graduate to a 'better radio", your Baofeng is useless for packet. It'll be an okay RX-only APRS gateway, but for any digital transceive work, its trash. Here's a quick little video demo of this via using the most simple feature on the radio - squelch break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZqfCCL2MDY See what I'm talking about? (Sorry for my noisy bg in my office)
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Jul 9, 2017 22:02
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Thanks y'all for all your advice! That last YouTube video was really convincing wrt how bad BaoFang "radios" are.
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Jul 9, 2017 23:44
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The fact that my only radio is a baofeng is the biggest thing that's been keeping me from really diving into it. Someday I'll get a yaesu.
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Jul 10, 2017 00:08
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e.pilot posted:The fact that my only radio is a baofeng is the biggest thing that's been keeping me from really diving into it. Don't get me wrong, they're still good enough for repeater work as long as you keep to a single frequency and make sure the radio is transmitting after pressing the button before speaking (so you don't cut yourself off.) Turn off the roger beeps and such too. They're passable in that context, or for local walkie talkie like simplex. If anything you'll appreciate a real Yaesu/Kenwood/Icom radio when you are able to get one  They're just,.. exhausting at times to use because of the limitations and corners cut mean you have to be super aware of what it's doing or not doing. E: I like how in my video the baofeng freaked out when i hit the monitor button and turned a bright LED on... because you know when your product needs to scream quality, add in a bullshit flashlight for an extra bulletpoint! EE: Apparently there is also delay for that due to the button also controlling the flashlight as griped on just above. But it's really not an invalid display - it takes time to configure itself to TX as well as monitor even if the flashlight wasn't there. Sniep fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 10, 2017 00:32
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I gotta agree with all of this, with one exception. They are cheap as poo poo and if you lose one who cares. I picked up one at a gunshop for 5 bucks. If the battery dies I'm just gonna chuck it in the trash. edit: i forgot, the guy threw in some wacky pump action pellet pistol and the total was $20.
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Jul 10, 2017 02:38
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Pimblor posted:They are cheap as poo poo and if you lose one who cares. This is a 100% valid use case for Baofeng radios. I'd rather have one if SHTF vs. none at all, but i'd whine incessantly about it as the world was ending regardless.
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Jul 10, 2017 02:44
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Yeah they're cheap and suck, but mine has been great for my Raspberry Pi APRS tracker. I built a custom relay circuit for the PTT and interfaced to a USB sound card. Works well, 100% copy on the packets from digipeaters 75 miles out. I even checked for spurious/oob emissions with my sdr kit and everything was where it should be.. maybe I lucked out on that. Sure was great to do the RF stage for $35 instead of $100s. You can tune the squelch settings in Chirp, which solved that issue but I run it wide open for packet anyway. The built in mic definitely sucks for voice, though. You pretty much have to eat the thing for the mic to pick up your voice.
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Jul 10, 2017 04:21
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Took my General exam on Saturday and new privileges were in ULS by Monday 0930. The Mount Vernon Amateur Radio Club VE team really has their poo poo together. Check them out if you need an exam in Northern VA.
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Jul 10, 2017 23:41
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Pimblor posted:I gotta agree with all of this, with one exception. They are cheap as poo poo and if you lose one who cares. I picked up one at a gunshop for 5 bucks. If the battery dies I'm just gonna chuck it in the trash. And today the UV5R5 is only $20 on Amazon for Prime Day. They may not be great, but gently caress it's only $20 e: they're already waitlisted now, but I was able to grab one at like 0730 this morning
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Jul 11, 2017 15:44
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Hi goons.. I"m tater and I'm about to delve into a black hole of amateur radio. I have orderd 2 lovely radios off of amazon prime day and radio transmission and receiving have been a thing in my life for many many years My history 1. Old school radio shack crystal police scaner (Like by crystals and insert for spesific frequencies) 2. Handheld CB radios in my tree fort talkign to truckers and in car rides. 2.a FRS radios with a friend or two in the neighborhood. 3. Mobile CB radio run through a DC power supply 4. Multiple different police scanners throughout my life and still use scanner radio and radio reference streams 5. Shortwave radio that didn't get much even with an attic antenna cobbled together from various wires. 6. today 2 Baofeng 5 watt portable radios (I fear this is the beginning of a hole) Currently reading up on what I need for my technicians licence.. I can get an ~70 on practice exams without even looking at any of the test prep so I'll read the study guides a few times and go from there. One thing I Find striking is the amount of basic electronics and elec calcs you need to know for the test, it's like were' stuck in the 50's and everyone is buiding stuff in their garage and the FCC doesn't watn you to kill your self. I also see a lot of AM people all in arms about unlicenced use of radios on GMRS frequencies.. talking about how the FCC will smoke your rear end, but most of what I see is 2-3 people on forums lighting their hair on fire while everyone else says.. it's fine the FCC isnt' going to hunt you down unless you are operating a business consistently on the frequencies (GMRS and MURS) and some old chrochety man on win 95 is going to report you. Maybe it's a banned subject in this thread (Didn't see it in the OP) but I do plan on using my radios on FRS frequencies at times unless this is a huge no no and is going to get me fined a lot.. I'd like to not have to buy new radios for when I take my kids to the themepark or hiking (Hiking I can see this less of an issue). Goons tell me if this is a terrible idea and I'd be better off buying a $25 pair of midland FRS radios. Anyway next local test is in early august so I'm going to read up on the thread and read up on a few test prep PDF and sites and be ready to be a legally licenced HAM person.. then I can talk to motherfucking satellites (Maybe not with my lovely radios) edit: Without digging into through the full thread. thread if I decide to dig into this hobby and keep the boafeng for bad mens FRS use / use as a police scanner for when I feel like it what are some recommendations in the ~$150 range I should be digging into? tater_salad fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 12, 2017 15:56
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The main opposition to running potatofengs on FRS or out of band is that unless you have a $15,000 spectrum analyzer*, you do not know where in the spectrum your particular rig is making GBS threads out RF. If you're up in FRS, you're around 462-467 MHz. Guess what's there? Public service radio systems. <soapbox> Look, it's not about the hard facts of only 0.0002% of people ever get caught, or i did math and my illegal radio will only go 3.2 miles and the nearest airport is 4.3 miles so i'm good. It's a deeper issue, one regarding respect for the Amateur Radio Service and its rules and gentlemen's agreements. I'm not trying to come down too hard or moralize here, but we are the Model T Fan Club as far as radio goes. One that the Federal government not only allows to exist, but puts energy into to keep alive and regulated. There are almost no other Federally licensed services that are as _useless_ to the common good of society as ham radio, yet they let us continue to play. With one drop of a "POTUS: 'this costs too much, nuke it'" mention, our service is gone, baofengs are illegal, as are $3k Icoms that peole buy. That argument will be strengthened a great deal if we keep putting Baofengs out of band, especially if they are perceived as interfering with 'law-abiding' operations. My summary note is this: There seems to be a growing sentiment that people think that just because they go through the licensing process, that they have some sort of "right", whether through experience or sheer licensing, to do quasi-illegal poo poo with their radios, "as long as one of those old bastards doesn't hear me." I'm not trying to single you out - believe that - this is a huge growing trend on Reddit and other communities. That's not a healthy attitude and with very few exceptions is incorrect. Have I ever transmitted on an FRS frequency with a hot rig? Sure. It sucks anyways, because unless you have a big rear end radio and antenna on the OTHER end, there's no point to it - you become an alligator, all mouth, no ears. I now have a high quality 4-set of FRS radios that I can loan out to fellow campers or whatever if we need to go down that road, I know they're legal, and when my buddies bitch about them fading out after 1/4 mile, I can then sell them on the ham ticket. Final note: that baofeng is going to be nearly worthless for general purpose scanning after you get a good rig. its scan speed is about 1.2 channels a second (compare to ~10-15/second for name brand radios, or 60-100 channels a second for a Uniden scanner), and doesn't decode any digital services. It'd be ok for parking on the local small town sheriff, but in a big city, it's a brick. I'm not trying to kill your excitement or joy here - more hams is always good - but i want to take efforts to promote the healthier, more law-abiding side of ham radio and the radio hobby in general. I only spend about 30% of my time on the ham bands proper, but whether I'm messing around with 1090 mhz ADSB, 12 MHz weatherfax or 137 MHz radar maps, i follow the same rules as I do on the ham bands - only transmit where licensed, ID as appropriate, etc. * a rtl-sdr stick is not a spectrum analyzer Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 12, 2017 19:54
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I'm good with what you are saying.. I just started looking into it and there's a lot of conflicting data.. I don't want to poo poo on anyone else frequencies, or go off band etc. and no worries about using it as a scanner and it being slow as a snail.. I just want my local PD because no one streams it. My local PD isnt' digital AFAIK and isn't trunking.. I had $200+ scanner but sold it because i found myself streaming from my phone or just listening to my 2 local town PD's which have like 5 channels (so Not concerned entirely about scanning speed really). I don't even know if my closest city uses digital/trunking. I may end up setting up an SDR with an rpi once I look further into that hole and then I'll just stream my local stuff. This is how I get into hobbies I pick stuff that's cheap and decide if I want to continue. I'll probably dump the 2nd one I bought on someone interested in getting into being a HAM or I'll ship it back to amazon.. and use the $22 for a pair cheap midland FRS radios so I'm compliant. Thanks for the well thought out reply, the so far what I've seen is the ham internet is a cesspool of opinions and no one has much to say. I can't wait to get into picking up a sat when it comes by after I get a decent atenna. I loved getting WX faxes and sticking my sony SW radio's output into my PC's laptop and getting grey grainy shifting maritime maps. tater_salad fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 12, 2017 20:58
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RadioReference.com should tell you exactly what your local public services are using. Around here even the smallest suburbs have gone P25, so you can't even justify a chinese HT as a listening device.
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Jul 12, 2017 21:16
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tater_salad posted:Currently reading up on what I need for my technicians licence.. I can get an ~70 on practice exams without even looking at any of the test prep so I'll read the study guides a few times and go from there. I am reading up on what i need to know for the norwegian license test (CEPT,SHARE,HAREC equivalent) and there is a lot of math and its dreadful. joule ampere watt coloumbus ohm I Q R blablabla. I dont need to build things from scratch as some kind of irradiated fallout survivor. 
Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 12, 2017 21:27
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eddiewalker posted:RadioReference.com should tell you exactly what your local public services are using. And if you want to listen to P25, rtl-sdr is the cheapest way to listen and those units are $20 for the fancy SMA connector version that supports limited hf listening in addition to the usual rtl receiver range.
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Jul 12, 2017 21:32
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This does raise a question for me - what happens when a ham relocates to another country, either permanently, or for a long-term temporary basis? I'm licensed in the USA. If I take a job and move to, say, Australia, would I still be able to transmit using my US license (within legal bounds of my actual license class), or would I have to test and get an Australian license? I don't have any plans to move yet, but it's been on my mind. Also I only have a Technician, but am studying for the General.
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Jul 12, 2017 21:32
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eddiewalker posted:RadioReference.com should tell you exactly what your local public services are using. all my locals are FMN which I believe are just standard FM if I remember correctly (haven't used an actual scanner or radioreference's frequency charts in probably 8 years) some of the public works and one ambulance company use P25 but I don't care that the leaf blower on truck 57 needs a bearing.. or that the water main broke 10 streets over. Michael Jackson most of the calculations I've seen are pretty simple I=V/R can solve them and mostly in your head on the US tests from what I've seen.. if you aren't a moron you can figure it out by elimination. there aren't 2 answers that are that close. tater_salad fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 12, 2017 21:55
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Michael Jackson posted:I am reading up on what i need to know for the norwegian license test (CEPT,SHARE,HAREC equivalent) and there is a lot of math and its dreadful. joule ampere watt coloumbus ohm I Q R blablabla. The amateur in amateur radio is about building and experimenting with radio gear; the concept wasn't so much to create a radio service for local chatting like Citizens Band or the like. So they expect you'll need to know basic electronics and formulas for antenna length and other things that are useful for people who are looking to build or modify radios. Plus general radio concepts like maximum usable frequency, relationship between frequency and wavelength, etc. The upside is that you can communicate worldwide and use a lot more power than people who are only using radios for local communication can use. Qu Appelle posted:This does raise a question for me - what happens when a ham relocates to another country, either permanently, or for a long-term temporary basis? "It depends." It depends on the various countries' rules and regulations and the international agreements they have (like CEPT or individually negotiated between states). For people with US callsigns, the ARRL has as part of its website documentation on US calls operating overseas here and specifics per country here. It looks like in the case of Australia you'd be fine using your US call under a free Class license for 90 days, after 90 days you'd need to get an Apparatus License from the Australian government and pay the license fee, but they'd accept your US license as proof of qualification. Different countries, different rules of course. In most cases either the ARRL or the destination country's amateur radio society would be able to help you through the process. edit: Getting the Apparatus License would grant you a VK callsign in addition to your US callsign. When in Australia you would use the VK call, in the US use your N/W/K/A(A-L) callsign. fordan fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 12, 2017 21:55
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Qu Appelle posted:This does raise a question for me - what happens when a ham relocates to another country, either permanently, or for a long-term temporary basis? Study harder! Like, I'm pretty sure this is covered in some of the test questions.
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Jul 12, 2017 22:03
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Jonny 290 posted:* a rtl-sdr stick is not a spectrum analyzer gently caress. you. 100% correct though, like yeah we've all done a COUPLE cheeky things once in a while but just repeatedly and flagrantly not giving a poo poo if your gear is screwing up other people's business or safety is not really all that cool.
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Jul 13, 2017 08:14
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not amateur but... so my job for this week is to take an RSS feed of emergency alert messages from Pelmorex, download the MP3 files therein, then fire up a streaming server to cut in a priority RTP stream on the studio link exstreamer. i wish i was dead.
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Jul 20, 2017 09:45
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Why is it that when i connect a 5 meter metal wire to random places on connectors (sma,usb,BNC(?)) the noise from usb(?) is almost eliminated in 20m ham band????
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Jul 23, 2017 00:29
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Michael Jackson posted:Why is it that when i connect a 5 meter metal wire to random places on connectors (sma,usb,BNC(?)) the noise from usb(?) is almost eliminated in 20m ham band???? did nobody mention that radio is largely witchcraft?
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Jul 23, 2017 00:45
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SoundMonkey posted:did nobody mention that radio is largely witchcraft? "yes i knew that wrapping sheep skin around connectors would propagate clean noise waves throughout my setup because S/C=AM correlates with F*O/O+L equation. please believe me."
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Jul 23, 2017 00:53
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Something something common mode noise By adding a quarter wave stub to the (nominally, kind of) ground you're coupling the system to the æther better, getting rid of noise I guess  I got a couple of Icom H16T VHF radio bricks, they're pretty cool square brick radios from the 80s designed for 5-tone selcal systems, a lot floating around in Europe, these models were used for public service and commercial radio systems alike (ambulance crews were still using these as late as 2014). They also include CTCSS encoders, making them fairly useful today as well. Also got a V200T which is actually electrically/SW wise the same radio, just packaged into a 10-25W mobile VHF (T variant had 5-tone and was used by EMS, while the toneless version was a common taxi radio). The only CPU pinout difference between them is the power save output isn't used in the mobile rig, otherwise they can be programmed with the same software. The catastrophically annoying feature with these is that if the memory backup battery goes, the radio turns into a brick because the built in EPROM software can't/won't initialize the RAM on its own. In these cases a working unit must be used as a master and a special cable lets you clone the channel programming assuming you have a working spare. I also got a binder full of original dealer documentation from my grandpa, apparently you could also use a PC program to load fresh units with the correct programming. But, with later software revisions they had more nice UI features and didn't need to be cloned if the battery ran out, everything could be keyed in manually if desired. A variant of this software is available online (known as "Super H16" and "Super 150") for the V200T that we made a PROM for and tested, worked pretty well and much easier to use for ham radio. For V200Ts some EPROM address lines have to be modded to let the CPU address a larger ROM, for my H16Ts that's already dealt with. So plan is to try a) record the clone sequence using my logic analyzer, it's a one-way serial dump so should be easy. With that recorded I can always get a MCU to play back the sequence, letting me recover the programming in all cases. b) Try to burn a PROM with the later V200T firmware and see what it does in the H16T. The EPROM in the H16Ts is a PLCC32 package though, so I'll have to wait for adapters before I can attempt any programming. The original Icom PROMs are windowed, so I can always erase those (grandpa gave me his old eraser as well, still works!), but annoyingly they only seem to make OTP versions today unlike the DIP version of the same EPROM.
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Jul 23, 2017 21:26
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I ordered a discone antenna (N-type) and put it up outside but i dont have any N-plug for my rg213 coax so it is just decorative
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Jul 30, 2017 19:27
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Michael Jackson posted:I ordered a discone antenna (N-type) and put it up outside but i dont have any N-plug for my rg213 coax so it is just decorative You're doing better than I am. My lovely cotton rope holding up the dipole broke about 6 months ago. Yeah.....it's still broken. I really need to buy some not "this is totally temporary!" rope and climb that loving tree to get it back through the pulley.
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Jul 30, 2017 19:58
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I am using a 5 meter mast right outside my apartment.  Notice the active antenna in a bottle duct taped to the mast. Real Pro.
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Jul 30, 2017 20:07
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I likewise got an N-connection discone put up this weekend. It's on a pole that's mounted onto the side of the house. I put up the mast/mount a few weeks ago and I'm only just now getting around to doing the actual antenna. In order to get the mast up, I ended up crawling up into the attic a couple times to measure and then add horizontal boards where the mount was going to be screwed into the wall, so that it wouldn't just be hanging off the wood siding. It was a real pain, but on the plus side the mount is now so solid that I can use it as a handle when climbing up onto the roof. When terminating the cable I discovered that none of the heat shrink I had was quiiite thick enough to fit the connectors. I ended up going to the nearest hardware store (an Ace hardware 20 mins away), where I was able to find that as well as some coax wall clips (like the kind frequently used for TV cable) that would be suitable for running the feedline under the roof eaves. Overall, I took way longer terminating the cable than actually putting up the antenna itself. It was my first time terminating a cable and it was 1. a thick cable with a solid conductor, 2. a soldered N connector. On the upside I got to practice making the line cuts several times due to getting the proportions wrong (and the dimensions in the connector documentation being wrong as well), so future ones should be much faster... From front. You may be able to see a vertical black rope hanging in front of the third tree from the left; that's going to a pulley that's 90 ft up. There's another two of those in the yard, making roughly a 50ft triangle to be used for hanging wire antennas:  From side. May shorten the drip loop a bit with another connection further up the eave, but it started getting hard to reach at that point so I left it alone for now:  And the incomplete part. I've got an entry panel already purchased that I'm planning on putting under this window. The grounding system has also been worked out and is mostly finished, I may post about that later:  Parts: - Antenna: Diamond D130NJ (alternate: D130J with UHF connector) - Mount: Rohn WM12D - Mast: 10 ft galvanized fence top rail ($12.50 at home depot) - Feedline: LMR-400 type with solid center conductor (planning on doing some higher-freq scanning, in addition to hooking up a dual-band mobile) - Weatherproofing: 3M Temflex tape (would normally also need UV protection with e.g. Super 88 electrical tape, but with this antenna the connector is covered by a long metal tube)
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Jul 31, 2017 21:08
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Do you live in the wilderness? I hate the EMI noise here in the city and i wonder how much improvement one would get in no mans land. Here is my useless royal scanking discone 2000 securely fastened to solid wood mass.  It will go to a lightning surge protector in the white box then to the ventilation to my living room where i have my PC/SDR.  
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Jul 31, 2017 21:41
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Michael Jackson posted:Do you live in the wilderness? I hate the EMI noise here in the city and i wonder how much improvement one would get in no mans land. Sorta, it's in a locally rural area but it's 20 minutes from 7 million people (hosed up bay area zoning in a nutshell). There's a hill ridge that separates me from there so I don't get too much noise here. However I'm also in a valley so desirable stuff frequently gets blocked as well.
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Aug 1, 2017 03:51
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Progressive JPEG posted:Sorta, it's in a locally rural area but it's 20 minutes from 7 million people (hosed up bay area zoning in a nutshell). Hmm... I live in a city of about 19000 so i guess i dont have as much emi as big city folks.
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Aug 2, 2017 00:35
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Motronic posted:You're doing better than I am. My lovely cotton rope holding up the dipole broke about 6 months ago. Yeah.....it's still broken. I really need to buy some not "this is totally temporary!" rope and climb that loving tree to get it back through the pulley. This reminds me that I need to do the same, the weather has been about right, so maybe this weekend I'll go out. I just really hate trying to get that initial throw of fishing line up over the tree.
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Aug 2, 2017 14:07
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xergm posted:I just really hate trying to get that initial throw of fishing line up over the tree. says the guy who lives in a world where crossbows exist
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Aug 3, 2017 05:23
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So at my work we have this 35-40 foot tower begging for some type of antenna. <insert mast joke here> I got permission from my boss to put up an antenna and operate nights and weekends. The only reason we have the tower is for a site to site backup wireless link. I've only operated HF with wire antennas strung from trees. I'm paralyzed by the amount of choice when it comes to HF antenna options. What do you guys suggest would work well on this tower that wouldn't break the bank? I looked at the Cushcraft A-3S but I'm not sure I'm ready to drop $600 for an HF antenna. Then I start thinking I would need a rotator, then I get overwhelmed and shelve the project for a couple of months. Is a vertical HF antenna advisable from that high up? I can start with one band or multi-band, really price is my main concern. I am capable of following instructions and constructing an HF antenna, again there's just too many howto's online and my eyes glass over. Can you guys offer some suggestions? I've got power, internet and an air-conditioned room I can operate from if I can get just settle on a antenna to get me started. johnnyonetime fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 22:11
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| # ? May 9, 2024 12:51 |
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Does anyone know how this software and setup work? I think this is how you put voices in peoples heads and torture them. My dad found it and I literally think we solved the problem of Targeted Individuals. My voices used to say they tracked me with a program that had a star on it.
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Aug 4, 2017 17:21
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