|
d0s posted:Built my TNC-X and hooked it up only to find out that I'm in a kinda dead zone for APRS and Winlink, at least with my ghetto antenna setup (mobile antenna indoors on file cabinet). I can send packets but have only decoded once, from some guy a few miles south talking to a Winlink node I can't reach. I hear APRS packets occasionally on 144.390 and they trigger the TNC but never fully decode, from what I understand the signal needs to be perfect. I think this will change once I set up my outdoor antenna, a Comet GP-3 (waiting on coax+free time). Once you hook it in to an outdoor antenna you will get a whole lot more for sure. My setup went from being completely deaf to picking up multiple packets per minute just by sticking the antenna out of the nearest window.
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2019 18:34
|
|
COMMS SHELF
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 05:52 |
|
|
Yeah get something up outside. I like vertical dipoles a whole lot, they're easy to build and lend themselves to mounting part of the way up a mast, so I build them a lot for secondary/auxiliary 2m antennas.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2019 18:59
|
|
|
Tonight’s lesson in RF: Antennas are really complex but also they aren’t? These are both extremely expensive enterprise-grade WiFi antennas. I took them apart to see if there was any logic on them that might need to be powered for them to work. Nope      At least the BelAir one helpfully came with SMA to N adapters
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 02:59
|
|
|
Jim Silly-Balls posted:Tonight’s lesson in RF: Antennas are really complex but also they aren’t? Do you have a before disassembly picture for us?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 04:48
|
|
|
The first one is before disassembly of the second one. The 3rd and 4th just had an ABS case around them Also, what is up with there being a ton of what sounds like terrestrial radio showing up around 20-30 MHZ? I ran into a boatload of it tonight
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 06:25
|
|
|
Jim Silly-Balls posted:Also, what is up with there being a ton of what sounds like terrestrial radio showing up around 20-30 MHZ? I ran into a boatload of it tonight Huh weird I ran into what I thought was TV audio around 450MHz last night e: Probably a dumb question but (on a TM-V71A) does the volume/squelch set on the front panel affect the audio levels coming out of the "data" port? I would think it doesn't for convenience so you don't have to actually listen to all the static and modem sounds but I only notice flickering from my TNC when I have the volume for that side of the radio turned up. That could be confirmation bias though since I'm hearing it then looking at the TNC while I'm just ignoring it if the volume is down. d0s fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Sep 30, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 07:38
|
|
|
Yeah it was weird. I listened for a while and one of them identified as KISS FM, although they didn’t say which one, which doesn’t help because every major city in the US has a KISS FM It might be rebroadcast? Any real KISS station would have RDS in the sideband and I don’t see that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 12:59
|
|
|
It’s a harmonic of the original freq that your SDR is picking up. Get a filter and it’ll clear up most of that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 14:24
|
|
|
What type of filter handles that?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 15:30
|
|
|
Either an FM or AM trap. SDRs are notorious for making GBS threads broadcast RF all over the waterfall. Common problem so you can buy them off the shelf for a few bucks. Any sort of antenna tuner should knock it down, too.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 16:41
|
|
|
Content: WW0WWV (god i'm sick of whiskey and victor right now - all talked out) special event station! The WWVB antenna. It's hard to see, but the towers support a giant capacitance hat, and there's a vertical wire feeder in the middle.  Very cozy operating site, tbh.  Flex loaned the operation some 6600's and Elecraft loaned K3's and KPA500s. FIRE IN THE WIRE (this was running into a 2el beam at 40 feet)  Shirt!
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 16:47
|
|
|
Jonny 290 posted:Content: WW0WWV (god i'm sick of whiskey and victor right now - all talked out) special event station! NICE. I heard them on 40m yesterday morning, but had some other stuff going on, and didn't get a chance to make a contact.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 16:48
|
|
|
Got my callsign today AND my comet antenna came in for my crappy baofeng! Watch out Portland, KJ7JFT is going to say hi this week!
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2019 05:09
|
|
|
Huge rear end lighting storm rolling through Wisconsin. Kind of cool to watch it live http://en.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php?map=30
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2019 19:32
|
|
|
seems liek it's rolling east.. which is why I'll be getting some rain tonight I guess
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2019 21:14
|
|
|
Maybe this thread already knows about that page but it’s extra cool if you turn the stations on and watch stations in western Canada pick up lightning strikes in Cuba. Really cool RF nerdery
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2019 22:59
|
|
|
d0s posted:Huh weird I ran into what I thought was TV audio around 450MHz last night Local UHF back haul from TV trucks I think showed up here ? Or someone just turned some poo poo on by accident .
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2019 23:04
|
|
|
Jim Silly-Balls posted:Maybe this thread already knows about that page but it’s extra cool if you turn the stations on and watch stations in western Canada pick up lightning strikes in Cuba. I wanna say that some scientists figured out if we had literally zero lightning storms anywhere on the entire planet for uh, 90 seconds or so, the ionosphere would dissipate forever
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 00:20
|
|
|
Partycat posted:Local UHF back haul from TV trucks I think showed up here ? Or someone just turned some poo poo on by accident . Yeah right around 450 we have some studio to transmitter links and stuff. One time I was driving around and randomly searching the high VHF band and heard the KOA helicopter traffic report around 160 MHz. Figured it was a glitch but i kept listening, and turns out they keep an open mic the whole time and just cut the audio over when it's time for the report; the pilot was talking mad poo poo during the downtime lmao
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 00:21
|
|
|
Where do you guys find is the best frequency to hear actual voice? Or maybe I should be asking where is the best place to go to find out for your location? 99% of the spectrum is tones and digital data these days it seems
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 01:10
|
|
|
Jim Silly-Balls posted:Where do you guys find is the best frequency to hear actual voice? Or maybe I should be asking where is the best place to go to find out for your location? 99% of the spectrum is tones and digital data these days it seems Then I jumped on my club's weekly net and hooray people! That's when I also found that there's a buncha nets going on on Tuesday night, including one that takes them like 20 minutes just to check everyone in. Listening to the nets from the repeater and switching over to the repeater inbound frequency to hear the station's actual transmission gave me a lot of experience in messing with my setup and getting the antenna in the right place to get good reception. So I guess my answer is to look for clubs in your area, see if they have a website, then check out their net. It is a good time to find other people too-- when a lot of people are idling around waiting for their nets. Other than that, I have a hard time finding people talking on 2m/70cm but other than net o'clock the highest traffic I see is during morning commutes and Saturday morning. 70cm being more active. I've never heard anyone on 146.520 and I sat on that frequency for days after my Technician's class told me that's where conversations start. The other option if you have transmit ability is to just call CQ and see if anyone answers. HF is full of life if you can get down there. There's always a few people talking on 40m although my reception is still pretty hit or miss. I'm not sure how people find other people to talk to without an SDR or some sort of waterfall though.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 02:23
|
|
|
Quick noob question, I am getting stuff together to install my GP-3 probably this weekend and I notice that on many installs of this type of antenna the coax is looped a few times at the base: It's even in the manual illustration, but they never explicitly state to do this:  It's in Diamond's manual too:  Is there a purpose to this or is it just the normal way to deal with excess cable?
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 02:51
|
|
|
d0s posted:Quick noob question, I am getting stuff together to install my GP-3 probably this weekend and I notice that on many installs of this type of antenna the coax is looped a few times at the base: Strain relief for the coax connector.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 03:05
|
|
|
ickna posted:Strain relief for the coax connector. Makes sense, thanks!
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 03:08
|
|
|
I've never heard about strain relief, but I've heard it referred to as a "drip loop" and it's mainly to give water a place to run that isn't into your antenna or all the way down your coax into the other end.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 03:32
|
|
|
CapnBry posted:I think I asked the same thing a few pages back since I had a hard time finding people talking as well. I tried looking up repeater lists and scrolling endlessly around only to hear the (blaring low baudrate sound) of DMR everywhere I went. I even installed DSDPlus and Virtual Audio Cable to decode it only to find it was just the repeater letting me know it was out there. Thanks for the tip! I got DSDPlus up and running last night, didn’t find anything decodable, but I only had about 15 minutes to look around the spectrum. I’ll look around more tonight.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 12:56
|
|
|
So 146.520 is a call channel, maybe like CB 19. But, in practice people call on repeaters or frequencies they know the other party is on. You can get on a repeater or 52 and call listening which works sometimes - but if people are scanning you may have to do that a few times. Locally we’ve used 52 to ragchew which prompts some kilocycle kop to get on there and tell us it’s for calling but hey now he’s part of the conversation. I also will occasionally emit a QST about some poo poo I’ve seen driving or a bad road or whatever really which also stops scanners and solicits conversations. I’ve driven from Niagara Falls across through to mid state Wisconsin multiple times , through Chicago , and have heard nothing on 52 every time. If everyone is waiting for a call, no one is talking. Go drum up some noise.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 22:24
|
|
|
d0s posted:
Yes, it forms an air core inductor aka an 'ugly balun'. it helps force energy into the antenna instead of it taking the easy way out back up the coax shield. Here's the one at the feedpoint of my 40m vertical:  and the lil guy at the feedpoint of my 6m beam:  (you'll notice that I just used ferrites on my 70cm beam at the bottom there)
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 23:22
|
|
|
Jonny 290 posted:Yes, it forms an air core inductor aka an 'ugly balun'. it helps force energy into the antenna instead of it taking the easy way out back up the coax shield. The pictures/diagrams he showed only have a single loop... wouldn't that make it more likely to just be a drip loop, rather than an ugly balun?
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 23:45
|
|
|
A drip loop generally won’t have cable below it, that defeats the purpose and transforms it into just a general loop
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2019 23:48
|
|
|
Jim Silly-Balls posted:A drip loop generally won’t have cable below it, that defeats the purpose and transforms it into just a general loop Oh yeah, derp. Ignore me, I'm a lid
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 00:26
|
|
|
manero posted:Oh yeah, derp. Ignore me, I'm a lid No, I'm a lid because I didn't know about any of this poo poo. Jonny 290, is there a way to determine how many loops/how large it should be or is just making sure it loops a couple times fine? This is for VHF/UHF.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 00:55
|
|
|
Air core baluns are tricky up at those freqs. Generally I like between 3 and 5 turns, generally around 2" diameter, seems to be relatively functional.Pham Nuwen posted:The pictures/diagrams he showed only have a single loop... wouldn't that make it more likely to just be a drip loop, rather than an ugly balun? Possible, but also the docs for that were likely written years ago, when they thought that just one or two turns was sufficient.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 17:00
|
|
|
I was taught to do it just as a strain relief thing with a single or double loop. Didn’t even think about it working as a balun until now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 17:15
|
|
|
Picked up a cool old radio today. It works! It needs some TLC. All the knobs are staticky as hell and the ball on top of the antenna is snapped. But otherwise doesn’t look too bad.  The best part 
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 21:41
|
|
|
That owns incredible quantities of bones.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 22:01
|
|
|
oh gently caress OFF. i've been wanting one of those for years. Love the form factor so much
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 22:01
|
|
|
It is a cool formfactor, it stuck out to me on the shelf and triggered the "thats something cool" section of my brain. I'm probably gonna try to restore it. The tuning meter and light dont work, which according to the internet are both common problems for this model
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 22:13
|
|
|
Just passed my extra test, 46/50 correct  Mainly did it to get a shorter callsign because I plan to learn code, for some reason
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2019 18:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 05:52 |
|
|
CW's a lot of fun and chill. 7100-7125 is the slow code / straight key subband and there are many patient and very chill operators that play around up there.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2019 19:29
|
|