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Partycat posted:If that’s combined with general communications failures, power outages, ice storms, etc then perhaps having personnel at shelter locations with an operator at the EOC would be a good idea. This is exactly what I used our local old men for. One at my municipal EOC, one at each shelter location. This only worked because they were trained ahead of time and the group was well run. When I asked them if they could staff X locations 24x7 indefinitely and perform Y function they knew the answer. Sometimes that answer was "no", and honestly that's way more important to me than getting a "yes." Partycat posted:Not being familiar with ARES/RACES in your area, but in mine, the number of available personnel with the equipment ready to go wouldn’t be very large. Most of the guys have poo poo all for battery power, and the amount of time it would take for them to all get their windows XP laptops running to send e-mail over VHF , well, it may be easier to just send smoke signals. The only reason this was feasible is because we were supplying power and PAPER FORMS AND PENS to perform the shelter reporting functions. I was always glad to have their help, but again, that's because this was a well run group and I knew their limitations and what I could expect. There is no reality in which I would put a member of the public in a life safety critical position, such as
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Dec 30, 2018 21:49
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Thanks both for all the details.
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Dec 31, 2018 15:49
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Yeah I don’t mean to curtail your enthusiasm, just I guess for hams in the US to serve a broader public service we need to continue to train and do our part - however small it may be - at any opportunity .
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Jan 1, 2019 07:41
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Is there a recommended Raspberry Pi image for a Pi3B and a dualband DVMega board, preferably with a touchscreen? I've seen Pi-Star mentioned, but that doesn't really have a native GUI. I've also seen Western D-Star mentioned, and that seems like it may be my best bet so far. Ideally, I'd like to use all of the following: * https://www.gigaparts.com/raspberry-pi-7-touchscreen-display.html -- 7" Touchscreen * Pi 3B * https://www.gigaparts.com/dv-mega-dual-band-radio-raspberry-pi.html -- DV Mega * https://www.gigaparts.com/maldol-mh-209sma.html -- Stubby Antenna * SMA extension and 90 degree SMA to angle the antenna * https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HKWAJ6K -- 7" Touchscreen case And I'd mainly be using this for D-Star with an ID51A+, but I also have a fusion radio (FTM400DR), and likely DMR in the near future as well.
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Jan 1, 2019 08:23
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Partycat posted:Yeah I don’t mean to curtail your enthusiasm, just I guess for hams in the US to serve a broader public service we need to continue to train and do our part - however small it may be - at any opportunity . If you want to do some sort of service work as a ham your best bet is events. Running races, bike races, other large community events often have radio operators. Car races, especially stage rally racing heavily depends on radio operators for coordination, safety and telemetry because they are often run in places with no cell coverage. In fact, even though I was running sweep (I was the guy who ran last with a green light on top to indicate the course was closed) I was also signed up as a radio operator and just got radio op schwag from comms coordinator of last year's New England Forest Rally:  It's kinda cool to hear the radio op at each checkpoint radio in to stage control that their segment of the course is closed as you blow past them.
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Jan 1, 2019 19:09
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In Seattle, we did talk about the 911 outage on the local net, so people knew. We even passed out the non-emergency alternate numbers to be used, that were originally spread on Twitter by the Seattle Police Dept. So, there was *some* activity, but not a huge coordinated effort.
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Jan 2, 2019 01:09
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Thanks to longview i now have COMPLETE ISOLATION on my rasp pi/airspy hf+ rig. It is in fact so isolated that i now notice several NEW sources of noise that was drowned out before. My pc monitor is causing the noise floor to go up when increasing brightness or putting it on game mode. My cheap universal laptop charger is in fact so noisy that my long wire antenna picks it up even from my bedroom lol. And my old router (that also use a universal power adapter) is also radiating noise. I am gonna replace the power supplies and router with something less noisy, but its already INSANELY GOOD* receiving conditions with airspyhf+, i can even see signals from 1mhz to 4mhz. *your definition of IG may vary depending on user experience and FULL IQ LEATHER BELT? AUGHH! 660khz bandwidth? Ughaughhh. Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jan 10, 2019 |
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Jan 10, 2019 06:50
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Passed my Technician and General exam today. Due to the government shutdown it could be "awhile" before I get my callsign though  Got a Yaesu ft-60r in the mail this week but can't really hear anybody in my somewhat remote location from Denver. Will probably work on getting on HF sooner rather than later.
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Jan 12, 2019 18:36
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Nabokoffin posted:Passed my Technician and General exam today. Due to the government shutdown it could be "awhile" before I get my callsign though oh poo poo Denver crew? I'm in lakewood with a pretty competent station. Let me know your call once you get it, and we'll give it a shot. I also have too much gear and a bit of knowledge so if you need station build help i'm pretty available. Don't worry if you don't hear much: we have 11 billion repeaters on 2m and 440 here, but only like four of them are really active. 145.145 and 145.310 are the big hitters.
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Jan 12, 2019 18:53
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Awesome! good to hear. I will definitely hit you up when I get my callsign. Probably work on learning CW in the meantime because it seems like fun. I have the alphabet down but not automatic enough to where I can copy messages coming quickly.
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Jan 12, 2019 19:01
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I recently moved from Longmont, CO, and I would routinely hit the 310 repeater sitting in my kitchen with my Yaesu HT. That fucker was always popping.
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Jan 12, 2019 20:15
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I'm a high school teacher and brought my gear to work to occupy myself before an open house earlier in the week. Apparently one of my kiddos has a tech license and wants to work toward his general now 'cause of me. 
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Jan 13, 2019 01:23
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Pebble and the Penguin posted:I'm a high school teacher and brought my gear to work to occupy myself before an open house earlier in the week. Apparently one of my kiddos has a tech license and wants to work toward his general now 'cause of me. Aww that’s awesome! I went to Ham Radio Outlet today and may have bought a radio. Hopefully I didn’t do too bad. A kenwood ts-590s for 700. Looks like I could get my money back pretty easy if it doesn’t work out. copen fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jan 16, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 22:55
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Nabokoffin posted:Aww that’s awesome! solid price, good radio
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Jan 16, 2019 03:27
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UK gang got their mitts on an IC-9700. Not a super exciting video, but the fact that it's a real box and not vaporware is very awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tXoqPbTrUM
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Jan 17, 2019 23:36
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Welp, the recent snows caused a huge tree limb to fall and take out my 150ft End-Fed Half Wave dipole. It happened once last year but I was able to fix it with a Lineman's splice soldered with a cigar torch and heatshrinked. Of course, the splice held up fine. I'd fix it now but it's about 8 degrees F outside and most of it is lost under two feet of snow. I really should have went for the heavier gauge radiator, or ran the antenna out of the drop zone of my lovely Tulip Poplar that loses limbs like an untreated leper every time the wind blows. Doing so wasn't really practical because the tree is like 130ft tall and towers over my entire yard. Oh well.
MullardEL34 fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Jan 23, 2019 |
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Jan 23, 2019 07:51
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MullardEL34 posted:Welp, the recent snows caused a huge tree limb to fall and take out my 150ft End-Fed Half Wave dipole. It happened once last year but I was able to fix it with a Lineman's splice soldered with a cigar torch and heatshrinked. Of course, the splice held up fine. I'd fix it now but it's about 8 degrees F outside and most of it is lost under two feet of snow. I really should have went for the heavier gauge radiator, or ran the antenna out of the drop zone of my lovely Tulip Poplar that loses limbs like an untreated leper every time the wind blows. Doing so wasn't really practical because the tree is like 130ft tall and towers over my entire yard. Oh well. That reminds me of my radio mast that i bought 2 years ago. It was the cheapest one i could find and now the screws are rusty and the plastic rings holding the telescopic elements are degrading fast. It collapse slowly. I should have bought a more sturdy mast considering i live in northern norway.
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Jan 24, 2019 16:33
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Michael Jackson posted:That reminds me of my radio mast that i bought 2 years ago. It was the cheapest one i could find and now the screws are rusty and the plastic rings holding the telescopic elements are degrading fast. It collapse slowly. I should have bought a more sturdy mast considering i live in northern norway. A couple of local hams I know and have gone on field day with have used US military surplus Camo Net Poles/antenna masts in the past. They're all over ebay here in the US, I'm not so sure if something similar is available in Norway though. They are usually aluminum, so you would need to isolate the antenna electrically, but the US army does make a longwire insulator for them as well.  
MullardEL34 fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Jan 25, 2019 09:15
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That looks like a good idea. Once its no longer cold and windy and lots of snow i will see if there is metal long pieces to get. i write excellent.
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Feb 7, 2019 18:57
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I'm taking the plunge and learning CW, doing it in a 3 pronged approach: - Downloaded the "Morse Toad" app on iPhone to teach me letters - Signed up with the Long Island CW Club for small group teachings over video conferencing (https://longislandcwclub.org) - Signed up for the May CW Ops Academy (https://cwops.org) A couple of guys in my area are pretty big in SOTA and after watching them get after it on the paddles I wanted in. It will be exciting to dust off the log book and hear more than what's buzzing on the local repeaters.
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Feb 8, 2019 16:09
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LCWO took me from rusty 5 words a minute to 13 words copy, 20 words send too. Great practice site - you do need network access to use it though. Good luck! --- In related news, i've started a ham / electronics Twitch stream. two days a week we fire up the cameras and radios and point the cameras at the radios - or at the bench (the last session we built a Tecsun 2P3 AM radio kit) https://twitch.tv/mattyzcast saturday at 2200 UTC, thursday at 0200 UTC (3pm sat and 7pm weds Mountain time, to allow us to explore different propagation day and evening) with impromptu streams as i feel like it. come hang out - we've had tons of fun so far. i've got the VODs of past streams up and there's a link to the youtube archive down at the bottom of my page, too.
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Feb 8, 2019 17:55
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eshail satelitte is up and it is intruiging.
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Feb 21, 2019 21:47
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Michael Jackson posted:eshail satelitte is up and it is intruiging. holy poo poo there are so many hams on my TL talking about completing contacts, including digital tv, with super modest setups. i've got hemisphere jealousy
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Feb 23, 2019 16:03
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Jonny 290 posted:holy poo poo there are so many hams on my TL talking about completing contacts, including digital tv, with super modest setups. i've got hemisphere jealousy i am barely in range of eshail (northern norway) so idk if its worth investing money into gigahertz equipment.
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Feb 23, 2019 20:51
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There's an old mom and pop electronics store in my hood that has a mountain of old, good stuff and I stumbled across a Heathkit HW-16 yesterday. I've never had a vintage radio but I'm (still) learning CW and this radio intrigued me. It was $39 and I'm trying to decide if I have enough experience to get it back online. That same electronics store actually has a ton of vaccum tubes, all types of capacitors and resistors so I'm sure I could find replacement parts there. I built a QCX and I planned on that being my QRP rig. This could be more of a home station. I found a recap kit made by Hayseed Hamfest that looks like a good upgrade: https://hayseedhamfest.com/collections/heathkit/products/hw-16-re-cap-kit dumb question: From what I read online it appears that a power supply is inside the unit? That can't be right can it? If it does have a busted power supply can I just use my Aston-35 power supply to power it?
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Mar 1, 2019 16:45
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johnnyonetime posted:There's an old mom and pop electronics store in my hood that has a mountain of old, good stuff and I stumbled across a Heathkit HW-16 yesterday. I've never had a vintage radio but I'm (still) learning CW and this radio intrigued me. It was $39 and I'm trying to decide if I have enough experience to get it back online. That same electronics store actually has a ton of vaccum tubes, all types of capacitors and resistors so I'm sure I could find replacement parts there. I built a QCX and I planned on that being my QRP rig. This could be more of a home station. It most likely does have a ps. Remember tube gear has voltages that are ridiculously high by todays standards. 700v and higher for grid or plate (I forget which) is common so be careful and make sure all the caps are discharged before you fool with it. Just know that anything heathkit is a crapshoot on it’s assembly quality but the old install instructions will help you go through it and troubleshoot it.
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Mar 5, 2019 02:07
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Mr. Carlson’s Lab on YouTube does a good job reminding you about the HV stuff in tube gear. That being said he also covers what some of it does and what you’re looking at - confidence can be a killer here but it helps to know what you’re dealing with.
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Mar 6, 2019 00:35
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Partycat posted:Mr. Carlson’s Lab on YouTube does a good job reminding you about the HV stuff in tube gear. That being said he also covers what some of it does and what you’re looking at - confidence can be a killer here but it helps to know what you’re dealing with. Hey! Thanks mr. Cat. I like this guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHjZs0bNwEs
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Mar 7, 2019 03:24
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 whyyyyyy
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Mar 7, 2019 16:28
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Pimblor posted:It most likely does have a ps. Remember tube gear has voltages that are ridiculously high by todays standards. 700v and higher for grid or plate (I forget which) is common so be careful and make sure all the caps are discharged before you fool with it. Partycat posted:Mr. Carlson’s Lab on YouTube does a good job reminding you about the HV stuff in tube gear. That being said he also covers what some of it does and what you’re looking at - confidence can be a killer here but it helps to know what you’re dealing with. Thanks guys, that might be too much of a project for me right now. I probably should focus on learning CW for now and worry about gear after I'm comfortable with the code.
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Mar 7, 2019 16:51
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Michael Jackson posted:
What is happening here?
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Mar 7, 2019 17:50
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that's freedv digivoice on 14.236 i think? with some hella overload or something making harmonics
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Mar 7, 2019 19:11
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Looks a little bit like STANAG 4197, but could be anything with digital coding + fading too. Those signals are pretty strong in parts of Norway since the military seems to operate a HF network at several sites with very powerful transmitters that could cause intermod. But if it's intermod they should move around based on the SDR tuning so that's pretty easy to test for (unless the receiver is single band only).
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Mar 8, 2019 20:24
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longview posted:Looks a little bit like STANAG 4197, but could be anything with digital coding + fading too. Sometimes military traffic is so strong it just destroys the entire band i am listening to. It was particulary bad during the joint military exercise recently. Pilots here are annoyed with the russian gps jamming so radio amateurs are not the only ones complaining.
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Mar 9, 2019 11:56
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lets get on that motherfucking satellite! my circular yagi for 2m is done  5x5 elements. i bought two Hy-Gain VB25FM's and hacked them into one antenna and built a phasing/matching harness. done and done for $140 shipped versus the only alternative which was paying M2 $400 for a similar antenna (i'm sure the M2 is built tougher but i will survive fine with this) it works GREAT here's a twitchclip of us listening to az <-> bc on one of the linear transponder birds https://clips.twitch.tv/InquisitiveVastCasetteArgieB8 bonus: my 40m folded monopole is visible on the left there. one of the best vertical hf antennas i've ever built
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Mar 11, 2019 03:28
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I am trying to influence the local ham club to set up similar things for ham satellite use so i also can get on that MFer satellite!
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Mar 16, 2019 16:25
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Jonny 290 posted:lets get on that motherfucking satellite! Sweet! Is that tv antenna rotator attaching the antenna to the mast? Also do you use the pan/tilt controls in Orbitron? I was interested in building a SATNOGS v3 [https://satnogs.org] and using that to track satellites.
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Mar 18, 2019 15:54
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Yeah. that's actually the elevation rotator (an Alliance U100), but i'm using it temporarily for testing. Last night I actually built up the tracker box https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXHrcq18xDY this is still in manual mode but you can definitely see it work. later, after that vid, i hooked up my LSM303 accelerometer and watched gleefully as my rotator blipped a few degrees every 10-30 seconds to stay aimed at the satellite I was tracking in Orbitron. Scared the hell out of me when I opened up the Orbitron rotator tracker plugin and it just started spinning right away. i'm using a $20-off-craigslist Radio Shack rotator for azimuth, an Alliance U100 for elevation, and the K3NG tracker arduino firmware with an LSM303 sensor for az/el sensing.
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Mar 18, 2019 17:17
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I've been working on a project for one of the larger linked repeater networks in the country, they use GPS clocks to run a simulcast VHF system. Trouble is the Tait radios they use require 12.8 MHz but no common GPS clock provides that, so the original system used converters supplied by Tait. The old converters are pretty touchy about the crystal adjustment, and they have been failing randomly. They also tend to lose lock if they aren't perfectly aligned and then that causes a lot of problems for people who can hear a bad station + a good one. So I made a new one with more modern tech that fits inside the T836 VHF transmitter.  This thing uses a VCTCXO + a ADF4001 PLL IC (excellent for low-ish frequency low noise applications) with 5 Hz loop bandwidth (to remove as much phase noise as possible from the external clock source). All adjustments are automatic and self aligning, including the 16-bit DAC that's used to set the VCXO when the external reference is unavailable. A STM32F030 MCU controls the sequencing, handles automatic frequency detection on the external reference (not all clocks give you 10 MHz), and regulates the various DACs I use to avoid manual adjustment pots. This is a prototype so there are some mods, the final boards will hopefully be mod free and use connectors instead of soldered coaxes for easier service. Took around a weeks worth of evenings to get the software code working right, but now it can handle everything I've thought to throw at it.
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Mar 19, 2019 13:51
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longview posted:I've been working on a project for one of the larger linked repeater networks in the country, they use GPS clocks to run a simulcast VHF system. Trouble is the Tait radios they use require 12.8 MHz but no common GPS clock provides that, so the original system used converters supplied by Tait. Very nice! Does it (need to?) take into account the upcoming GPS date rollover on 6th April? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/12/current_gps_epoch_ends/
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Mar 20, 2019 09:26
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