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btw Nabokoffin if you're up for early risin' and have a few bucks in your pocket, the Denver Radio Club hamfest is sunday at 830 at the Jeffco Fairgrounds, admission 6 bucks. I'll be wandering with a backpack full of goodies in a red Fastly shirt.
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Aug 17, 2019 03:08
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Oh poo poo, I'll be there. Just uh look for the tallest guy beard and a ball cap.
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Aug 17, 2019 05:29
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Nabokoffin posted:Oh poo poo, I'll be there. Just uh look for the tallest guy beard and a ball cap. Do you have stairs in your house?
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Aug 17, 2019 05:45
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Motronic posted:Do you have stairs in your house? I'm protected
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Aug 17, 2019 05:47
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Sorry I'll stop making GBS threads up this thread after this. Just stoked about playing radio Strung up a temporary (until the wife makes me take it down) 20m dipole so I could do something besides listen. old 10m is against the house, new one is strung from the tree to the house.  Setup wspr and was able to be heard a few places across the US on 5w  Got on FT8 and made my first contact with a guy in Arkansas, Thanks AG5HC! Feels a little empty on FT8 but its a mode I cant screw up too much on right now. Second contact was made to Brazil on 5w!
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Aug 17, 2019 20:31
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Nabokoffin posted:talked to someone briefly on the 310 repeater to make sure all is good and well. was it Willem AC0KQ ? say hi for me lol i used to run traffic nets on the linked system off the .310 box before the entire lack of actual content disheartened me and i stopped
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Aug 17, 2019 21:19
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Nabokoffin posted:Sorry I'll stop making GBS threads up this thread after this. Just stoked about playing radio All good, this thread is slow and quiet. Glad to see Posts. I'll look for ya tomorrow. also, we gotta get a wire up in that tree. I got a slingshot and a spinning reel. We can make it covert and keep the spouse happy.
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Aug 17, 2019 23:23
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Content: Finished the cable for the HF rig's autotuner (rig -> 15 ft coax -> autotuner -> 1 ft coax -> 102" whip on a ball + spring mount) and rearranged the rigs on the mount. Much easier to paw at now. Tunes up quickly and well from 40 through 10 meters, which is all I ask. I'm taking a trip to Santa Fe in a couple weeks and I had a half dozen good SSB contacts last trip with my 10 watt IC-703....excited to see what 100 watts of beef and a tuner at the antenna (instead of at the radio) will net me. There's a cup holder down in the cargo pocket on the passenger door, if they are that pissy about needing a beverage on the road. since we're talking about hamfests, a reason you want to go to them is you get things like a TS-50 and the matching AT-50, still in their boxes, from a dead ham's family for $75. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Aug 17, 2019 |
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Aug 17, 2019 23:29
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Oh hey. Leixen VV-898 on the top of the center console, Uniden CMX760 hanging on the right / with the base station mounted behind the mechless head unit. Still need to get my license so I can actually transmit 
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Aug 17, 2019 23:36
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Buh, but why would you install all of that without a ticket?
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Aug 17, 2019 23:43
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A reminder to just go book a test and get it overwith every time I get in the Jeep. I had a license a long-rear end time ago and nearly solely on memory alone I think I've passed about every practice test I've run through. Also, being able to listen is better than nothing.
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Aug 17, 2019 23:46
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Jonny 290 posted:Content: drat, that's a hell of a deal for that radio. "A couple weeks" wouldn't be "September 21", would it? Because the Albuquerque hamfest is that weekend and while it's nothing incredible, it should be worth a look.
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Aug 18, 2019 00:32
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Sniep posted:was it Willem AC0KQ ? say hi for me lol haha no I don't think it was him i'll listen for him though. Most VHF traffic seems pretty low content at the moment but that's alright. Small ham fest haul. Was tempted by a few radios but I don't have space for them at the moment. Halicrafters Sky Ranger Shortwave radio from 1942. It works apparently but i'm happy just to have it on my shelf  Picked up a manual Antenna tuner as well so I can tune just about anything if needed. Current state of the shack. Meant to pick up another power supply but forgot oh well.  Also Johnny, here is that Paddle I was talking about. 
copen fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Aug 18, 2019 |
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Aug 18, 2019 18:53
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oh man that thing's groovy Evidently we're posting pics of our Denver Radio Club hamfest hauls with our Defcon 23 records in the frame  The 735 is a bit of a basketcase but was sold with "weak RX, no TX". I am not scared of these radios. The tuning encoder was going haywire, so I pulled it apart and cleaned it up - tunes perfectly now. 30 and 20 meters are dead but that's four trimmer capacitors that I already am scrounging for. Other than that it just needs a re-align and then it's going to a buddy who's getting his first station set up. (he was asking $150, I waved $100 and he bit) I also got a Rubbermaid tub full of Yaesu handhelds and mobiles, all with the tone board that runs $79 from Piexx, some Kenwood and Icom mobiles that need work but will end up great radios, and a lil manual tuner and SWR meter for aforementioned amigo. Good fest, good haul.
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Aug 19, 2019 00:26
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I have been testing nanovna on my longwire and it turns out 20m is useless! USELESS I TELL YOU!  good at 6m tho.
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Aug 19, 2019 03:23
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meh 20m is fish in a barrel poo poo. as long as you're below 6:1 swr you'll land as many contacts as you want I talk poo poo because i'm a 40 and 6 meter dork, but 20 is eminently reliable
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Aug 19, 2019 04:33
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Jonny 290 posted:meh 20m is fish in a barrel poo poo. as long as you're below 6:1 swr you'll land as many contacts as you want hmmm, nanovna said it was 4.4 and my kx3 can only send 15w :/ I think i will adjust my radials and see what happens.
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Aug 19, 2019 14:32
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Jonny 290 posted:Defcon 23 records 
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Aug 19, 2019 17:50
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Biggest DEF CON badge ever; it was a record. (This year's badges had a huge slug of quartz on them, they rock) Bombed the Extra exam at DEF CON last weekend, but it's not like I studied.
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Aug 19, 2019 18:37
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Jonny 290 posted:oh man that thing's groovy Haha I saw the picture and thought that was an actual 12" record, I was thinking "holy poo poo that's a huge radio" I haven't posted in this thread in a while (or ever?) but I'm taking the exam to upgrade my tech license to general in a couple weeks, and Jonny's being a standup dude and helping me get a station kitted out <3 Looking forward to talking and keying on the waves~~~
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Aug 19, 2019 18:43
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helllll yes thread content: I decided to try my hand at radio alignment and with a loaner SDG2042x signal generator and my scope and DMM, I lined that 735 up as close as my old eyes could. It's now within a few tens of hertz on freq (there's this ONE TINY master PLL trimmer and i fiddled forever to get it dead on), aligned the passband tuning and RIT, set the power output low/high limits, set the AM carrier, S-meter calibration, yadda yadda. That generator has a very nice freq counter too which helped me line up all the local oscillator frequencies (it's a triple conversion rig). The generator only went down to 2 mV peak to peak and i needed a 50 uV zero to peak signal to calibrate the s9 signal level, so I built a divider with a 47 ohm and 1 ohm resistor to knock 5 mV down to 100 uV, halve that for zero to peak, worked great.
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Aug 20, 2019 05:50
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Aligning radios is always fun, I've mostly aligned FM receivers. SSB receivers are interesting but seem to be "simpler" since the processing is simpler. Most complicated SSB receiver I've done is the Mackay 3021, that requires a sweep generator to tune the IF filters (which usually aren't even adjustable on slightly newer radios). The AGC adjust in that rig was also pretty silly with all the adjustment steps needed to iterate it into working right. A lot of the radios I've adjusted have had IF filter swaps to use 12.5 kHz channels, in that case tweaking the 2nd LO frequency and then the discriminator tank is usually pretty important . Biggest thing is you need a way to measure audio distortion, a SINAD meter is usually specified but these days a PC sound card spectrum analyzer could work pretty well. The difference between fine and great tuning is too subtle to quantify using just your ears. Last set of radios I adjusted was a pile of Ericsson (/GE/MACOM) Orion VHF transceivers, picked up several on eBay for around $20 a piece (I had a bunch of control heads already). It's a really cool system radio with remote control heads and support for things like multiple radios or control heads all connected together. Also bought a 50 MHz variant of the radio unit, might pick up a 30 MHz variant if I come across it.
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Aug 20, 2019 17:11
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Jonny 290 posted:helllll yes Awesome! I only understand half of what you said but glad it's not a paper weight 
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Aug 20, 2019 22:49
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Yeah, i'm glad I was able to resurrect it and get it tuned up. I made a contact with a dude up on Squaw Mountain on 20 meters with it and he said it sounded great, so it's ready to go!
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Aug 20, 2019 23:38
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New radios and gear coming on Friday, which means obsessive tracking checking until then. 
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Aug 21, 2019 13:39
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COOL CORN posted:New radios and gear coming on Friday, which means obsessive tracking checking until then. same except 10 to 25 mhz gpsdo pll box for my LNB for es'hail 2
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Aug 22, 2019 14:05
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Big Mackson posted:same except 10 to 25 mhz gpsdo pll box for my LNB for es'hail 2 I'm picking up a signal generator that has a 10mhz input, so between that and the 9700, I think I have enough justification to deploy a 10mhz standard in the shack. Got a link?
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Aug 22, 2019 19:37
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Jonny 290 posted:I'm picking up a signal generator that has a 10mhz input, so between that and the 9700, I think I have enough justification to deploy a 10mhz standard in the shack. Got a link? ah, its a box that gets in 10 mhz gpsdo signal and then converts it to 25 mhz (i use a thunderbolt e) to use in LNB (modded for external reference signal) This man do make a lot of other things tho http://www.df9np.de/page4.html
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Aug 23, 2019 17:07
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Lots of great GPSDOs on eBay, most of them give 10 MHz out but some do weirder clocks like 15 or 30.72 (mostly newer gear). Some Chinese designers have also upcycled GPSDO modules into new products like the BG7TBL clocks. What's actually used varies a lot, used to be Trimble but recently there are a lot of Symmetricom modules. For a slightly DIY approach the Lucent RFTG-u (KS-24361/Z3812A) Ref 0 module can be converted to a standalone GPSDO by changing some resistor straps and adding a OnCore UT+ receiver. The old UT+ receiver is hot garbage compared to newer generations though, and the lock time can be several hours from cold start. I suspect the flood of new module types on the market this year is related to the recent GPS week rollover, a lot of mid 2000s hardware uses GPS receivers that can or will have issues with rollover so it was probably preemptively replaced.
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Aug 23, 2019 17:56
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Some neat short videos produced by the boards of canada in 1959 about antennas. Pretty entertaining and I learned stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F7KYLO4Bkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md7GjQQ2YA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iV_YICgifA
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Aug 23, 2019 22:27
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I didn’t realize that band had been around so long.
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Aug 23, 2019 22:31
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eddiewalker posted:I didn’t realize that band had been around so long. It is what they named themselves after. Also most of their music uses sound clips from said videos. Also I think I need a new Antenna 
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Aug 23, 2019 22:35
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Nabokoffin posted:It is what they named themselves after. Also most of their music uses sound clips from said videos. I was trying to make a joke, but I worried the dual meaning of “band” in the radio thread wouldn’t work.
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Aug 23, 2019 23:11
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 MEGA good mail day! Now that's what I call a starter kit. Thanks Jonny for helping a fellow ham out, you're a good elmer
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Aug 23, 2019 23:44
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Woah....nice haul. Jonny you're pretty awesome.
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Aug 23, 2019 23:52
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So, Uh. Anyone remember Net-44 / AMPRNET ? The 44.0.0.0/8 dedicated to hams? Whoever was in charge of that IP block just sold off a quarter of it to AWS for EC2 servers. I hope that boomer's ham club that was in charge of the IPs makes him a nice retirement and buys the club a super awesome communications trailer! maybe they can tour the US to spread awareness for ARES. Great job! This is the remainder of the block here: pre:NetRange: 44.0.0.0 - 44.191.255.255 CIDR: 44.0.0.0/9, 44.128.0.0/10 NetName: AMPRNET NetHandle: NET-44-0-0-0-1 Parent: NET44 (NET-44-0-0-0-0) NetType: Direct Assignment OriginAS: Organization: Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) I only discovered it, because i was stealing part of that block (just internally on my LAN, not advertising any prefixes publically) within the sold portion and just very recently, my iMac's terminal prompt went from "James-iMac" to "ec2-44-219-69-20" and i thought i got hacked for a minute. However, upon investigation: pre:ec2-44-219-69-20:~ James$ dig PTR @8.8.8.8 20.69.219.44.in-addr.arpa. +short ec2-44-219-69-20.compute-1.amazonaws.com.
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Aug 24, 2019 03:43
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Motronic posted:Woah....nice haul. He peaked & tuned it too before shipped. Calibrated it using a signal generator I lent for the project. That rig is spot-on.
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Aug 24, 2019 03:53
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Sniep posted:So, Uh. Anyone remember Net-44 / AMPRNET ? The whole thing seems fishy. Here's the announcement: https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/ How is such a small unelected committee responsible for a whole class A? And who gets to decide where these million(s) go? edit: it also sounds like they're gonna dump a lot more Pimblor fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Aug 24, 2019 |
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Aug 24, 2019 11:38
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Pimblor posted:The whole thing seems fishy. Meh. If they're correct and that massive block of IP addys are largely unused, then sure sell them to AWS who cares. It doesn't seem that they're pocketing the money but rather using the funds to run a non-profit and to set up scholarships and grants for amateurs. Sounds on the level to me.
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Aug 24, 2019 13:51
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Playing around with my setup this morning - you can kinda see my little 40m hamstick out the window. On the CW portions I can get 1:1-2:1, and on the phone portions 2:1-2.5:1. Not ideal, but not bad for just throwing a stick up. And in another great news, my vanity callsign application finally went through after waiting a month!  Good news all around.
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Aug 24, 2019 14:33
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