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Checking in here. I've been annoying folks on the discord regularly and we're in talks to get a DMR net up and running so we can practice our DMR-ness and complain about kidney stones and "those drat kids."
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Jun 29, 2020 21:36
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| # ? May 24, 2024 22:12 |
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Or just piss off the old and take over TAC-310 again
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Jun 29, 2020 22:06
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I really need to get around to configuring the TAC channels on my hotspot zone.
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Jun 30, 2020 00:27
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Call for a DIY IK https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3930843
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Jun 30, 2020 15:54
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Walrusmaster posted:Any suggestions for an inexpensive iambic key (kit form is fine, maybe even preferred). I'm starting to learn CW, and the QRPguys kit ($15) has been discontinued. I made one a bunch of years ago out of a binder clip, some wire, and a headphone jack pulled from something.
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Jun 30, 2020 23:12
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found out a local group does walk-in exams close to me, figured I'd finally go for my HAM- anyone got a study guide recommendation for 2020?
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Jul 3, 2020 03:40
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Do I shorten or lengthen this antenna to tune it? Or do I do something else entirely? Its high on 40m, low on 20m, high on 10m, and high on 6m (~51Mhz).  The NanoVNA's VSWR is artificiality low (I think due to feedline loss?), its up over 3:1 on the IC7300's SWR meter when I Tx. I have it sloping at a 45 degree angle, and low, so one of those is probably de-tuning it. Shortening seems like the easy option, but also a one way path.... Do I shorten (or lengthen) both ends? or just 1?
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Jul 3, 2020 04:40
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:Do I shorten or lengthen this antenna to tune it? Or do I do something else entirely? IIRC, shortening dipoles tunes them toward shorter wavelengths and lengthening them tunes them toward longer wavelengths, so neither option is going to help all four of those bands if you've got a mix of high and low.
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Jul 3, 2020 05:43
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Nostalgia4Butts posted:found out a local group does walk-in exams close to me, figured I'd finally go for my HAM- anyone got a study guide recommendation for 2020? hamexam.org has the entire official question bank and will give you practice tests from the real questions.
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Jul 3, 2020 06:36
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I was reading Hackaday, when I found this little gemhttps://hackaday.com/2020/06/28/hackaday-links-june-28-2020/ posted:Amateur radio is often derided as a hobby, earning the epithet “Discord for Boomers” according to my son.
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Jul 3, 2020 07:50
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What do this thread think of YouLoop?
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Jul 3, 2020 15:17
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poeticoddity posted:IIRC, shortening dipoles tunes them toward shorter wavelengths and lengthening them tunes them toward longer wavelengths, so neither option is going to help all four of those bands if you've got a mix of high and low. So I didn't specify well enough but this is an off center fed dipole. If I trim it, do I trim both ends equally? or in proportion to their length?
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Jul 3, 2020 16:03
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Nostalgia4Butts posted:found out a local group does walk-in exams close to me, figured I'd finally go for my HAM- anyone got a study guide recommendation for 2020? i've been studying for technician and general on hamstudy.org, it's pretty good. they even have a phone app for a few bucks and it syncs your progress
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Jul 3, 2020 16:12
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:So I didn't specify well enough but this is an off center fed dipole. If I trim it, do I trim both ends equally? or in proportion to their length? Trim each equally, because you want the feed point to stay in the same relative spot Edit: Err.. am I thinking about that right, even? lol Do whatever keeps the feed point in the same relative place.
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Jul 3, 2020 16:17
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Big Mackson posted:What do this thread think of YouLoop? i don't think it's going to be any better than a standard shielded loop, and it is being sold by airspy, which is run by this weird french dude who appears to be a big maga trump guy. Possible grift
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Jul 3, 2020 19:01
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manero posted:Trim each equally, because you want the feed point to stay in the same relative spot So to keep it in the same place, if I wanted to shorten the whole thing by six inches (arbitrary number?), I'd take 4 off the long side, and 2 off the short (being its 2/3rds and 1/3rd).
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Jul 4, 2020 01:04
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:So to keep it in the same place, if I wanted to shorten the whole thing by six inches (arbitrary number?), I'd take 4 off the long side, and 2 off the short (being its 2/3rds and 1/3rd). That's my understanding, but it'd be nice if someone else chimed in to confirm or correct before you go cutting.
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Jul 4, 2020 03:02
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yeah, cut the same % of each leg off proportionally. 4 inches long 2 inches short etc.
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Jul 4, 2020 06:23
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My understanding is that you can also tune an antenna by sharply folding the end of the wire back on itself instead of cutting it, which would allow your wine wiggle room. Maybe somebody more experienced than me can confirm that.
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Jul 4, 2020 17:53
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yeah that is correct!
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Jul 4, 2020 20:46
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I just moved to a place where I'll be both driving and hiking into remote mountains more often and I did a signal check from not even that far into the mountains into a nearby (well, nearby in a relative sense) repeater and I was apparently just barely readable. So I'm looking to upgrade from my VX-3r, which I got forever ago as babby's first radio, to a better HT with 5W of power. (I also plan on getting a magmount antenna for the HT, but I'm not really interested in a dedicated car rig). The VX-6r seems like the natural choice, but I don't really care about the 220 band. I do plan to take it on hiking trips too, so weight and ruggedness are an issue, but I think fully submersible like the VX-6r might be a bit overkill. Is there any reason not to get, say, the much cheaper FT-4xr? Or any other recommendations?
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Jul 11, 2020 00:44
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Do you want to stick with analog or play around with digital modes at all?
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Jul 11, 2020 00:50
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Probably analog, APRS could be cool but not really necessary.
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Jul 11, 2020 01:16
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Judging from the Amazon reviews I'd probably spend a bit more and get a FT-60 over the FT-4xr. I got the FT-60 as my first real HT and have zero complaints.
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Jul 11, 2020 20:26
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ft60r is what you want, yep. reliable, common, easy to use, sounds great
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Jul 11, 2020 20:32
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Does the FT-60R do 1.25 meters?
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Jul 13, 2020 00:58
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The Hambulance posted:Does the FT-60R do 1.25 meters? No, and make sure there’s actually anyone nearby using 222 before you invest in a triband radio. It’s a very quiet band band in most areas.
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Jul 13, 2020 01:27
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The FT-60r is the quintessential 2m + 70cm built-like-a-brick superheterodyne HT that's still for sale It may be an older model, but all the new poo poo sucks rear end unless you are into the digital modes, which granted, digital is fine i love DMR myself.. But for getting into the hobby as a tech or new general level doing repeaters or car top magmount where you live, the FT-60R remains the best option IMO. I still use mine here and again despite the VX-8DR, is my main goto. VX8's not a cheap radio tho and not even made anymore, which sucks rear end.
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Jul 13, 2020 01:39
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Thanks all, I'll probably get the FT-60r then.Sniep posted:i love DMR myself I'm curious. I haven't done much digital radio, other than a little APRS GPS and some teletype, but for APRS I used a little external module that generated the packet audio as input to a radio's mic port, and for teletype I used FLdigi - both allow you to do digital on an analog radio. So I'm just curious what an HT designed for digital modes lets you do. Does it have more of those things built in so you don't need an external encoder? I remember reading about digital audio repeaters long ago too but I forget most of what I learned about them - are digital-ready HTs better for those / will an analog HT be incapable of talking on those?
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Jul 13, 2020 19:32
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it's confusing these days because "digital" is used to describe both digital data keyboard chat modes and digital voice. DMR is a digital voice protocol; on an FM radio it sounds like squawk buzz data, but on a DMR rig it's slightly watery voice. If a repeater is in a digital only mode, only a DMR or D-star or Fusion radio (depending on which one they have set up - they're all incompatible with each other) will work on them.
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Jul 13, 2020 19:34
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alnilam posted:I just moved to a place where I'll be both driving and hiking into remote mountains more often and I did a signal check from not even that far into the mountains into a nearby (well, nearby in a relative sense) repeater and I was apparently just barely readable.
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Jul 16, 2020 16:13
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N9TAX makes a ladder line j-pole that seems to be pretty ok
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Jul 17, 2020 02:59
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WSJTX, 40m FT8. Made my first two HF contacts tonight. I'm hearing "when the bands are open, they're open, so QRP!!!". With psk reporter rx 20w, I'm hitting mostly continental US and Cuba. 100w I'm hitting Antarctica, eastward as Poland. Not totally sure my feedline loss (~40 ft RG8U), sloped dipole SWR of 1.6:1 Is it bad practice (rude?) to 100w on FT8? Obviously way different results...
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Jul 17, 2020 05:10
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FT8 is a weak signal mode, not a QRP mode. If anybody more than a half mile away from you gets their receiver blown out by 100w of FT8 they should put the $20 SDR stick away and get a real radio. almost all of the 'joe taylor modes' (ft8, jt65, jt9) were first used to blast 300-1500 watts of RF at the moon. High power is fine if conditions necessitate it. They're also the reason you can get into EME with a single long 2m yagi and a 100-150 watt output power.
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Jul 17, 2020 05:46
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Jonny coming in strong. I still try to keep it minimal, and love that I hit russia from east coast US on 10 watts. I don't think I've gotten Aus on less than 20. But meh.
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Jul 17, 2020 05:54
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I'm having a brain-fart and don't know what to google: What can you put between the antenna connection on your radio and the connector on your antenna to reduce the TX power (and I assume RX strength, though that's not necessarily desirable) without tanking your SWR? I'm basically looking for the opposite of an amplifier, but everything I've found while googling is about either improving antennas or using amplifiers. I want to try sending VHF packets between two radios that would be a few dozen feet apart at most to do some testing. The packet radio demonstrations I've seen where people do this usually involve setting two HTs to 1W on opposite sides of the room and hoping you don't fry either of them. I've got two mobile 2m radios that both have a lowest output of 5W, and would really prefer to try this with less than 10% of that power. Is there some standard method to turn a non-QRP radio into a QRP radio without having to open it up?
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Jul 17, 2020 06:42
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You want a power attenuator, generally a step attenuator so you can control how much.
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Jul 17, 2020 06:50
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motoh posted:You want a power attenuator, generally a step attenuator so you can control how much. Thank you! I knew there was a search term I was forgetting.
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Jul 17, 2020 14:02
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Hey radio weirdo goons. Some people over in TFR The Take A Hike subforum is currently kind of dead so we’re doing what amounts to a relaunch. It was in DIY which is kind of bizarre. It’s basically getting turned back into an RSF for a bit and I’m going to do a bunch of drumming up attention for it. Here's the moved forum, bumped to be top level for the time being like all RSFs are. I suspect it will find a new home besides DIY in the future, since it was always kind of a weird fit as a sub there. The new name of the forum is The Great Outdoors. Anyways forums live or die by having specialist, niche threads. A lot of other subs have outdoors-y threads that are general purpose subject chat things which is good and fine. We don’t need to fill the forum with ten different camping/chat threads with different crews. TFR can have a video game thread even though Games is a forum, for example, because a general chat thread for gun nerds to talk about what they're playing today can't replicate the dozens upon dozens of unique threads that delve much deeper into specific subjects that a dedicated Games forum has. So, we are going to need some threads on the sort of niche outdoorsy poo poo that an actually goony outdoors forum would talk about. So if any of you ever wanted to have an OP of a thread about what hiking boots are good or how to make your own fishing lures or UrbEx or what the gently caress ever here’s your chance. Some people mentioned that some of you have strong opinions about radios etc for the outdoors. If you've ever wanted to be the glamorous OP of a thread about walkie talkies in the "going outside" forum of a web 1.0 comedy website, well, now's your chance tiger. I've already started what amounts to a soft launch of the reinvigorated forum. It's now a top level forum and we'll see where it goes from there. We've press ganged a couple of current mods into keeping an eye on it and, in true RSF fashion, if it takes off again we'll pull some people as mods from within that community.
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Jul 17, 2020 14:27
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i am a ham now
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Jul 17, 2020 18:37
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