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Vir posted:Most of the Field Day events I've taken part in Norway has been with these guys: https://www.la1k.no/ and since it's the radio club of a student association, they're mostly under 30. This year I couldn't commit to a full weekend, so instead I went to a park with some friends and they got to try amateur radio for the first time. Big city club with fancy equips and hippie students *ptoo* prolly radioing communist chaina
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Sep 11, 2017 16:21
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Indeed. QRO contesting, satellites, EME and meteor scatter is the name of the game. Personally I'm still rocking an FT-817 for portable QRP operation.
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Sep 11, 2017 17:56
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Vir posted:Indeed. QRO contesting, satellites, EME and meteor scatter is the name of the game. Personally I'm still rocking an FT-817 for portable QRP operation. I concur. Talking on repeaters in the Colorado/Wyoming hinterlands holds little appeal for me, but I DESPERATELY want to build a directional RX/TX antenna with computerized tracking capability from scratch so I can link to satellites as they pass over my house.
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Sep 12, 2017 05:26
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Just gonna quote myself here:SEKCobra posted:Can anyone recommend proper sealant to use when drilling through a car roof? Planning on installing a radio antenna and maybe some other auxiliary equipment, and since my new car will probably be new, I don't wanna take any chances. Last time I used some good quality silicone, but I read several places that even the car stuff isn't really that great for the job. Sadly I can't seem to find a source for NMO stuff around here (Austria).
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Sep 26, 2017 09:20
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Just got my technician license, only got 17 right on the general. P good considering I guessed for all of it. Honestly do not know if I will ever transmit, this was more I had an interest in the science and technology behind radio but really just super enjoy loving around with SDR.
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Sep 30, 2017 18:31
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So this is actually a GMRS question. I'm thinking about Christmas presents already and one of my ideas is to get my dad a GMRS mobile for his UTV. https://midlandusa.com/product/mxt115-micromobile-2-way-radio/This Midland seems to fit the bill in terms of what I'm willing to pay. The issue I'm looking at right now is that at some point in the future we may want to hook it up to an intercom system, and it uses some sort of proprietary mic connected with an RJ-11. How easy do you suppose it would be to build a breakout box that terminates in something more usable if we decided to pursue that in the future? Their mic has channel up/down on the mic but not on the front panel, inconvenient but not a show stopper. Before anyone asks. No, I don't think HAM is a better solution for what this will be used for.
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Nov 9, 2017 02:23
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Casimir Radon posted:So this is actually a GMRS question. I'm thinking about Christmas presents already and one of my ideas is to get my dad a GMRS mobile for his UTV. https://midlandusa.com/product/mxt115-micromobile-2-way-radio/This Midland seems to fit the bill in terms of what I'm willing to pay. The issue I'm looking at right now is that at some point in the future we may want to hook it up to an intercom system, and it uses some sort of proprietary mic connected with an RJ-11. How easy do you suppose it would be to build a breakout box that terminates in something more usable if we decided to pursue that in the future? Their mic has channel up/down on the mic but not on the front panel, inconvenient but not a show stopper. Why not buy an old Kenwood/Motorola/Icom UHF LMR mobile and program it with the GMRS/FRS frequencies yourself? You can usually find the radios for a decent price on ebay or at a hamfest (you dont need anything digital, narrowband capable if you do the FRS channels, but if you only do the GRMS channels, you can use and old wideband only radio). Lots of these radio have support for existing intercom systems already. Remember, you need the license for full output GMRS (because you hear all the time about FCC action on FRS/GMRS lol).
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Nov 11, 2017 23:31
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uli2000 posted:Why not buy an old Kenwood/Motorola/Icom UHF LMR mobile and program it with the GMRS/FRS frequencies yourself? You can usually find the radios for a decent price on ebay or at a hamfest (you dont need anything digital, narrowband capable if you do the FRS channels, but if you only do the GRMS channels, you can use and old wideband only radio). Lots of these radio have support for existing intercom systems already. Remember, you need the license for full output GMRS (because you hear all the time about FCC action on FRS/GMRS lol). We all know enforcement is lax, but that’s completely illegal (with the exception of 95a-accepted radios) and not great advice for random strangers. MURS frequencies might be an option if you’re not too close to a Walmart. eddiewalker fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 00:52
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eddiewalker posted:We all know enforcement is lax, but that’s completely illegal (with the exception of 95a-accepted radios) and not great advice for random strangers. The FCC lists 1098 Part 95a certified radios. Do you have to do your research? Sure, but I think the chances of getting a non part 95a radio are much lower than getting a part 95a certified radio.
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Nov 24, 2017 20:22
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I'd make sure he got a GRMS license. That's an extremely negligible cost. This would be for Christmas so I don't want to give him something used. Are there any Part 95 compliant mobiles that can be had for $300 or less?
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Nov 25, 2017 06:17
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not an expert but most part 95 FRS/GMRS radios are going to be under that $300 mark. No clue on quality but here's a mobile part 95 for a hundred bux. It looks like the radio you linked is also Part 95 compliant as well. http://www.cabelas.com/product/Midland-Watt-Micro-Mobile-GMRS-Radio/2488434.uts Here's a question though.. with 20/40 watts in a UTV.. who's talking to him? If someone is sitting at home with a 5W they may not be able to reach out to him if he's beyond their range.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:30
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tater_salad posted:not an expert but most part 95 FRS/GMRS radios are going to be under that $300 mark. I like the Midland mobiles for price and for being GMRS. The issue is that if he ever buys an intercom system the dumb proprietary RJ11 microphone might be an issue.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:43
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I got real into SDR a couple years ago, and just rediscovered it with the RTL-SDRs last month. Today I went to the post office to get my PO Box, then directly to the exam. Passed technician today! Didn't try for general. ~15 people taking exams, I was the only one in my 20s. They recruited real hard for their club... Planning on getting Sniep's FT-60R & Diamond SRH77CA for my first rig. Years ago when I did SDR Ettus Research's USRP was the only real name in the game, so I bought one. Very fancy radio, and I have all of the rx/tx cards necessary to do everything I'm permitted as a tech (I think?). I'm mostly interested in digital modes, but I'd like to do voice as well. Is there decent software for Rx and Tx with a software radio? GNURadio works, but doesn't really fit the role of a traditional rig. Basically if I don't have to buy a $1500+ ICOM that would be swell. Edit: Been doing a bunch of research, seems like my USRP SDR is obsolete! LimeSDR way outperforms and is real cheap. It also looks like SDRs can't really replace a traditional rig yet? horse_ebookmarklet fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jan 6, 2018 |
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Jan 6, 2018 19:34
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:Edit: Been doing a bunch of research, seems like my USRP SDR is obsolete! LimeSDR way outperforms and is real cheap. It also looks like SDRs can't really replace a traditional rig yet? Not quite yet, though there are some higher priced SDR kits that would cost you more than the traditional boat anchors that are making headway. Mostly SDR seems to be making its way into the internals of more traditional hardware as a hybrid of superhet and SDR which is pretty cool for doing digital filters and waterfall displays. I really like my Elecraft KX3 which is basically a portable faceplate of a more traditional rig with SDR guts. I think once somebody comes out with a sub $200 SDR based RX/TX kit with HF to UHF coverage there will be an acceleration of the computer as a rig setup you’re envisioning, not unlike the flood of interest in SDR RX that came with the RTL-SDR sticks.
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Jan 7, 2018 00:36
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:Edit: Been doing a bunch of research, seems like my USRP SDR is obsolete! LimeSDR way outperforms and is real cheap. It also looks like SDRs can't really replace a traditional rig yet? Unless you absolutely need the agile RF front-end, MIMO, or the higher bandwidth then the original USRP still holds its own, particularly if you already have RF boards covering your bands of interest. The DAC/ADC specs are pretty similar, and I’ve always liked the replaceable RF boards in the Ettus SDRs.
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Jan 8, 2018 06:57
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Got a decent little scanning setup going to listen to my local fire and police using just a single dongle. Even with horrible antenna placement and heavy rain I was able to get pretty consistent decoding, but could be a lot better. Got another dongle on order, but I really just need to install a decent antenna on the roof.
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Jan 9, 2018 19:36
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well I got my 2nd sdr, it's still poo poo... I don't get it, I went on a ride along with a few police and their radios work perfectly even in concrete projects. What makes their HT work so consistently? Seems like I shouldn't need a tuned rooftop yagi to get a clear enough signal.
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Jan 10, 2018 03:17
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soy posted:well I got my 2nd sdr, it's still poo poo... Very narrow filtering. Their radios aren't capable of scanning hundreds or thousands of mhz. Your dongle has basically no filtering so harmonics up and down the spectrum muddy your signal. eddiewalker fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 03:21
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also some p25 decoding pipelines are better than others, so you might try different combos of SDRs, p25 decoders and method to connect them. I know I a get considerably better decode rate using rtl_fm over gqrx, but this on linux so less helpful for your setup.
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Jan 10, 2018 03:33
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eddiewalker posted:Very narrow filtering. Their radios aren't capable of scanning hundreds or thousands of mhz. Your dongle has basically no filtering. Yep, cheaper SDRs tend to have wide open frontends and not much dynamic range. If used without external bandpass filtering their LNAs can be driven into compression (or even power-division), mixers go nonlinear, etc.
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Jan 10, 2018 03:36
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Greetings hamgoons! I passed my General exam on December 1, so now I can play with the big kids on HF and get away from this repeater-hogging smoothbrains. I may build a small 80/40m rig to tide me over until I save up to build my shack and buy something proper. I have my eyes set on a Yaesu FT-991A, it looks baller.
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Jan 10, 2018 04:22
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eddiewalker posted:Very narrow filtering. Their radios aren't capable of scanning hundreds or thousands of mhz. Your dongle has basically no filtering so harmonics up and down the spectrum muddy your signal. 100% this. Front end filtering is super important. RTL-SDR sticks are great for a general survey of the local spectrum. Kits kits like the SDRPlay are good for narrowing down on bits of it but ultimately dedicated hardware that is filtered to that one range is going to be better even with a lovely antenna.
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Jan 10, 2018 04:29
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Glad to see some life in this thread again. Passed Technician back in November. Got a Baofeng to start. Planning to take General and Extra in March.
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Jan 10, 2018 04:53
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mycomancy posted:Greetings hamgoons! I passed my General exam on December 1, so now I can play with the big kids on HF and get away from this repeater-hogging smoothbrains. I may build a small 80/40m rig to tide me over until I save up to build my shack and buy something proper. I have my eyes set on a Yaesu FT-991A, it looks baller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyphxUs7O1A Here's a good A-B comparison video between the 991A and the IC-7300. If you skip to about 13 minutes in there's a pretty good explanation and comparison of the differences between the 991A's heterodyne-based system vs the IC-7300's SDR-based system, and how they result in noticeably different behavior between those two models particularly when it comes to displaying and navigating the waterfall. More specifically it points out the limitations of the 991A's system while giving a pretty good explanation of why it ends up that way.
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Jan 10, 2018 07:42
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ickna posted:100% this. Front end filtering is super important. RTL-SDR sticks are great for a general survey of the local spectrum. Kits kits like the SDRPlay are good for narrowing down on bits of it but ultimately dedicated hardware that is filtered to that one range is going to be better even with a lovely antenna. In short, drop 600 on a uniden scanner 
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Jan 10, 2018 16:53
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well loving with various crap and stuff for many hours I got it working somewhat well https://www.twitch.tv/videos/217294572 set this twitch stream up mostly for myself so that I can pipe it to my phone while I'm out walking my dog or taking kid to park, but some others may find interesting will be on/off live doing this more, this is fun.  I looked on radio reference to figure where the transmitter probably is and put my poo poo as close to an unobstructed place in the house as I could given the length of usb extenders that I currently have. really helps.. also following the principle that the voice decode will get hosed by being blown out on data, reduced sample rates on both and put the voice on the duckbill hoping that it would be less noisy... soy fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 21:05
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soy posted:I looked on radio reference to figure where the transmitter probably is and put my poo poo as close to an unobstructed place in the house as I could given the length of usb extenders that I currently have. You can get a active 32' USB extension on amazon for like 15 bucks to run it out a window or something. I use one when I put my stick on top of a 25' telescoping mic stand in the back yard and it works great.
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Jan 10, 2018 21:28
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Dang using twitch for that purpose is perfect, I may have to try something like that unless I get the icecast poo poo set up right.
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Jan 10, 2018 21:32
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Trabisnikof posted:Dang using twitch for that purpose is perfect, I may have to try something like that unless I get the icecast poo poo set up right. ya I figure I got it all rigged up anyways for gaming poo poo. scaling/placing the windows and stuff in OBS is a no brainer maybe someone will donate one day and I can afford a big boy radio
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Jan 10, 2018 22:02
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Ha well I left my scanner stream running overnight and it seems twitch has shadow-muted my audio. Not surprised at all. But hey at least I got a subscription out of it  Might put it back up on twitch if support unblocks or maybe it's just broken somehow on my end, although nothing changed and it was working fine for many hours while I was using it. Thinking about building a dedicated box for this with a spare mini-pc I have laying around and leaving the scanner running all the time with video somehow, I really like being able to actually see the channel/decoder when watching the stream as it helps with context and knowing when people are cutting out because of scanner flipping channels or decode failing. e- nm just running every SDR app ever with every memory leak ever was loving up my pc, rebooting fixed twitch. soy fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Jan 12, 2018 |
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Jan 11, 2018 18:56
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I got a Lime SDR and I've been trying to figure out how to watch ATSC with it, but so far no luck. Has anyone managed to do this? I've been using GNU Radio, and I can't seem to get anywhere near acquiring the signal. It's not even clear how you're supposed to playback what you decode. Also, no matter what radio program I use, there's a huge DC spike on this thing. Calibration doesn't get rid of it. Surely DC bias would be the easiest thing for calibration to remove? It's unfortunate because nothing decodes if you center it, which means you get two spaces of half bandwidth rather than being able to use the full spectrum. I can't tell if mine's just defective or if this is a SDR thing.
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Jan 29, 2018 00:37
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blorpy posted:I got a Lime SDR and I've been trying to figure out how to watch ATSC with it, but so far no luck. Has anyone managed to do this? https://medium.com/@rxseger/receiving-atsc-digital-television-with-an-sdr-76b03a863fea This should help you out. Down at the bottom they get to feeding it straight off the air in to VLC. I recall ATSC decoding being the first thing I ever heard about someone doing with GNU Radio, back before ATSC tuners for PCs were even widely available, but back then SDRs cost thousands. Somehow a lot of that early documentation seems to have fallen off Google's radar.
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Jan 29, 2018 01:54
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Passed my General 
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Jan 29, 2018 02:36
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Qu Appelle posted:Passed my General Gratz on that ticket friend!
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Jan 29, 2018 03:06
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mycomancy posted:Gratz on that ticket friend! Ty! I may go for the AE in a few months, before all the knowledge seeps outvof my head.
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Jan 29, 2018 03:19
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Qu Appelle posted:Ty! I may go for the AE in a few months, before all the knowledge seeps outvof my head. You can do it!
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Jan 29, 2018 03:21
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Today i got Airspy HF+ from CHYNA. AGC is p. nifty in sdr#
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Feb 8, 2018 22:46
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I got one recently as well, lol at the $10 customs declaration they went with Need to figure out how to have 2 antennas (1 discone, 1 wire) go 4.5 places: VHF/UHF mobile, HF base, OG airspy w/ spyverter (the .5), and now the HF+
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Feb 9, 2018 21:37
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Progressive JPEG posted:I got one recently as well, lol at the $10 customs declaration they went with Gumball machine parts in a shoddy casing?
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Feb 9, 2018 21:54
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peep my sick rear end hamfest grab  NIB never used! still has the 3.5" and cd software
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Feb 9, 2018 22:13
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