|
Finally done with drivers. only small adjustments to them and sealing holes is left.   edit: snipe edit: its super easy to get in contact with ISS. Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 14:44 on May 24, 2023 |
#
?
May 24, 2023 14:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 03:50 |
|
|
Big Mackson posted:Finally done with drivers. only small adjustments to them and sealing holes is left. i enjoy looking at your antenna pics, sdruno screenshots, and silly mspaint illustrations -- very inspiring reposting a funny one from last year: lol
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 15:42
|
|
|
BTW, if you ever do operation in any sort of bad weather, run it in an X pattern instead of a + pattern, if you can. With the latter, you'll get more rain buildup on the horizontal elements than vertical and one will detune more than the other. With an X, it's roughly equal. Very well done!
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 16:47
|
|
|
Jonny 290 posted:BTW, if you ever do operation in any sort of bad weather, run it in an X pattern instead of a + pattern, if you can. With the latter, you'll get more rain buildup on the horizontal elements than vertical and one will detune more than the other. With an X, it's roughly equal. if it rains very much then the vertical element will have water flow and it will function as a water cooler when i transmit 5kw /jk I bought a ic-910h so it will be fun when it arrives.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 17:42
|
|
|
Oh those are very nice radios. Till the 9700 came out i was gonna get one. I got to operate one at a Field Day a few years back. It's smaller than one would think!
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 17:54
|
|
|
Big Mackson posted:edit: its super easy to get in contact with ISS. Does this mean we could try a voice QSO on a bird!? Have you tried any others?
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 20:17
|
|
|
Try ISS. They have a full honkin' 45 watt Kenwood dual bander rigged up, iirc. It's probably the most receive-able radio transmitter on or around Earth. The LEO microsats have, at best, a 100mw radio so they're much more of a challenge. But any HT with a stock rubber duck should be able to get ISS full quieting when it's above the horizon.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 20:27
|
|
|
I've never tried the ISS as it only gets around 35 deg in Scotland. So I usually go for the others. SO50, UVSQ, etc. Just thinking we may be in the same footprint
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 21:00
|
|
|
35 degrees is fine for ISS. Hell, I got full quieting while receiving SSTV when it was already below the horizon. With a log periodic antenna pointed down because my hand was tired from holding it.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 23:06
|
|
|
i got all my cool satellite-talkin' stuff (th-d72a and an arrow yagi) and haven't used it at all  i never seem to get ISS passes when i have the ability to point stuff at it
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 23:27
|
|
|
The Claptain posted:35 degrees is fine for ISS. Hell, I got full quieting while receiving SSTV when it was already below the horizon. With a log periodic antenna pointed down because my hand was tired from holding it. Yeah, I have Rx of SSTV from it before so I should stop worrying. Just worry about making the trip up but I have an arrow so I'm sure it's okay. Also the Tevel sats seem to be on lately a lot. They've turned into a zoo like SO-50.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2023 23:34
|
|
|
thehustler posted:Does this mean we could try a voice QSO on a bird!? Have you tried any others? car in the background lol edit: and loss in the eyes edit2: space station is sadly only like 2-3 degrees and that is blocked by mountains i think. Northern norway is bad for hf and sats :/ edit 3: it is worse. 25 May 23 16:50:47 00:04:44 2 16:55:31 25 May 23 18:25:59 00:04:19 2 18:30:18 26 May 23 16:02:59 00:04:01 1 16:07:00 26 May 23 17:37:40 00:04:44 2 17:42:24 27 May 23 15:15:18 00:03:07 1 15:18:25 27 May 23 16:49:28 00:04:43 2 16:54:11 27 May 23 18:25:34 00:02:22 1 18:27:56 28 May 23 16:01:18 00:04:43 2 16:06:01 28 May 23 17:36:50 00:03:32 1 17:40:22 29 May 23 15:13:17 00:04:43 2 15:18:00 SO-50 is much better wow 26 May 23 09:05:12 00:13:57 41 09:19:09 26 May 23 10:45:00 00:13:54 44 10:58:54 Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 15:35 on May 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 25, 2023 15:26
|
|
|
Thought so. We're so trying this. I need to figure out if we're in the same footprint Edit: assuming those times are UTC then the first pass tomorrow is 86 deg for me, niiice. Can't do tomorrow, maybe weekend? thehustler fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 25, 2023 18:06
|
|
|
Was looking for a panadapter solution like the one i have for ic-7300. is there any solutions?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2023 15:42
|
|
|
QRZ.com gave me a pretty cheap solution, but alas, it involves soldering, my nemesis. Here is my current idea for my vhf/uhf station.  I am changing from data main to ACC port instead due to various interface reasons. I almost soldered all the bridges on the digirig board when converting it into ci-v mode lol. also shoutout to people who contribute to hamlib development so full duplex transceive is smooth and crispy.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 15:32
|
|
|
the panadapter on a vhf/uhf rig is gonna be of pretty minimal use i would think, even here in denver most of the contest traffic is all on 144.200 or 432.100 . Rest looks great tho!
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 17:12
|
|
|
Jonny 290 posted:the panadapter on a vhf/uhf rig is gonna be of pretty minimal use i would think, even here in denver most of the contest traffic is all on 144.200 or 432.100 . Rest looks great tho! It is mostly so i can see how much i need to adjust for sats since i never seem to get doppler correction 100% correctly. edit: + a lot of freedom regarding modulation and bandwidth and sound levels etc etc. Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Jun 3, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 17:37
|
|
|
I gotcha. Do note that orbitron will do the doppler for you tho, so if you can get that set up, it'll keep it dead fuckin' on
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 19:34
|
|
|
This is new placement of antennas. Sadly the coax plug that lead into 75 ohms coax fell off when i adjusted the coax for the "photoshoot". skill issue. Only thing left is a rotor and it is a good a go a mario a yahoo! Jonny 290 posted:I gotcha. Do note that orbitron will do the doppler for you tho, so if you can get that set up, it'll keep it dead fuckin' on I tried ham radio deluxe trial version and the sat tracking worked great. SSB voice sounded like real SSB voice if you know what i mean lol. It also had a GUI for controlling pretty much everything in the radio which is a ultra +++. Only drawback is that on most sats i had to input and save up and downlink the first time i tracked the sat. Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Jun 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2023 13:26
|
|
|
I did see that we were in the "around the forums" round-up this weekend, so I thought I better post a welcome. So hello if anyone arrived here via that. Fingers crossed...
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2023 23:58
|
|
|
I'm in my "I should get a HAM license phase" and was looking at antennae and from my situation of being in a town house with window screens that don't open and no balcony a loop antennae seems to be the best option in a theoretical set up. Is there a go to guide for building one?
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2023 16:16
|
|
|
doomisland posted:I'm in my "I should get a HAM license phase" and was looking at antennae and from my situation of being in a town house with window screens that don't open and no balcony a loop antennae seems to be the best option in a theoretical set up. Is there a go to guide for building one? Guessing with the "should get licensed" statement, are you planning to start out and just get tech? If so, I'd just look at getting an n9tax https://n9taxlabs.com/shop and hang that somewhere. I have one literally hanging off the side of my desk and it "works".
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2023 16:49
|
|
|
Well, I've read that its worth it to get tech and general at the same time since its not a huge step in info to test on so when I test I'll try for that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2023 17:10
|
|
|
doomisland posted:Well, I've read that its worth it to get tech and general at the same time since its not a huge step in info to test on so when I test I'll try for that. 100% correct. I did tech+general when i got my ticket, the two tests are basically the same material. I don't even remember the general being much of any more difficult, just like, an expanded question pool beyond the technician one. Flash card one might as well flash card both. Extra on the other hand has actual Math and Theory that requires actual study. (Or just heavy cramming memorization, but, it's notably more difficult than tech/general)
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2023 22:03
|
|
|
+1 to the go ahead and get general argument. Extra's a special boy, as Sniep has alluded to. I passed first shot, but i also studied a looooot
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2023 22:27
|
|
|
Jonny 290 posted:+1 to the go ahead and get general argument. Extra's a special boy, as Sniep has alluded to. I passed first shot, but i also studied a looooot Agreed. Even though I took them very far apart, general was still very FCC rules memorization kind of stuff. Extra (which I took after general without studying) kicked my rear end handily. That's a whole 'nother thing. In adjacent to ham radio content, I would like you all to enjoy the almost flippant and extremely competent (for all the right reasons) way this guy talks about methods for contacting a spacecraft that is over 12 billion miles from the receiver/transmitter - through an atmosphere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA Motronic fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jun 6, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2023 22:29
|
|
|
N9TAX Slim Jims are absolutely superb, but a flowerpot antenna made from coax is also quite a good thing to start with and is fairly easy to make.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2023 22:46
|
|
|
I made a mistake while making a 8 pin DIN to TRS and shorted ic-910h. The fuse inside saved the radio. And i learned not to follow random wire color diagrams without reading carefully. Someone gave me the galaxy brain solution to use multimeter to see what pin is what color.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 14:02
|
|
|
had one of those “woah” moments you get with ham radio every once in a while. Something about a line of thunderstorms or the cold front they rode on let me carry on a conversation with a 2 meter repeater thats about 105 air miles from my place. Normally I cant hear it all. maybe occasionally I can kerchunk it. then barely make out the station ID. This time it came up in the scan list nice and strong. I thought I’d give it a shot since it was coming in so well and yep, other side heard me fine. lasted about twenty minutes before i fell back into the static.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
Oh that's tropospheric ducting and it's very fun! When I was a wee ham in NC, we'd get massive tropo openings that could stretch all the way up to NY or down to FL, sometimes both. In the era before repeaters all ran different CTCSS tones, you could kerchunk a repeater input and hear like seven machines all ID'ing over each other Dedicated 2 meter hams would leave a broadcast FM receiver tuned to a frequency with no local stations and leave it in muting mode. When you hear music come in, tropo's up
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 22:45
|
|
|
Not sure if anyone can help but I'm trying to get nrsc5 / HD_Radio working with soapyRemote. I was running rtl_tcp for a while, but it crashes randomly and I was annoyed at having to restart it, so I'm trying soapyRemote-server instead. It works fine for GQRX with a soapy remote device string remote=192.168.1.x,driver=remote,remote:driver=rtlsdr,soapy=0,remote:prot=tcp It seems to get stuck when I try udp but otherwise just as good as rtl_tcp but when I try nrsc5 with the same string after recompiling it for SoapySDR I get sudo nrsc5 -d remote=192.168.1.x,driver=remote,remote:driver=rtlsdr,rtl=0,serial=00000001,remote:prot=tcp <stationInMHz> 1 11:34:00 Unable to open audio device. d'oh I was using the originator's repository/[url] who won't support anything except rtl_tcp. I was reading a [url=https://github.com/fventuri/nrsc5]different repository where someone had added the required nrsc5 sample rates to Soapy, but it doesn't build. ah well, back to rtl_tcp I guess, this is way too into the weeds. if I wanted to do that I can just build a GNUradio chain to feed into nrsc5
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 17:54
|
|
|
Jonny 290 posted:Oh that's tropospheric ducting and it's very fun! What is muting mode and how does it lead to music?
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 19:18
|
|
|
SEKCobra posted:What is muting mode and how does it lead to music? Commercial FM radio is close enough to 2 meters that it can be carried far away by the same tropospheric ducting conditions. OP is parking his tuner on a station that’s usually too far to hear. When the squelch opens, he might also hear distant repeaters.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 19:30
|
|
|
 Cat like warm radio.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 17:59
|
|
|
More specifically, muting mode is a mode that nicer FM broadcast tuners have, where if they aren't getting sufficient signal voltage on the input, they just shut up instead of trying to demodulate static and a scrubby signal. Nice tuners have a switch for it, because sometimes if you disable the muting it'll let you tune into a faint signal that's only demodulating mono but you're okay with that. Those hams using FM stations as a tropo propagation indicator turned it on intentionally, because when you get down to it it's a squelch control.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2023 07:16
|
|
|
Alright, got it. I guess I've never had any interactions with fancy WFM receivers, but basically you are putting a faint/unreceivable FM radio station on squelch, and when the squelch opens you know that conditions are good because you are suddenly getting that radio station in.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2023 12:46
|
|
|
i installed an if tap in ic-910h. what are the offsets for usb and fm so that i tx and rx correctly? edit: i eyeballed (tcc lol) it and it seems -1575 hz for USB is the correct offset. Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Jun 30, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2023 14:03
|
|
|
I had a lot of fun messing with my sdr radios in my apartment over the past few months, so I decided to get my general license again after my previous one expired. My station situation is a lot more interesting than before though. I live in a high-rise, about 280ft up. I have big windows that go across the south and west side of the building a bit, so that part is pretty cool. The annoying part is that, well it's the middle of the city so it's noisy, and what I think are multipath effects from "behind" me are rough. I heard a conversation on 2m this morning, where one station was very weak but had stable power, explaining that he was taking advantage of ducting conditions. The other station went in and out from being very strong to unreadable every few seconds or so, but the far station seemed to be copying him well. I was listening on my old baofeng ht with a 1/4 wavelength whip on it, and I remember it being pretty lovely compared to my friend's yaesu ht before, but I was surprised the effect was that pronounced. I can receive a pretty steady signal from a 10w 2m CW beacon ~20mi to the north of me with my finely clocked and filtered hackrf though, so that's what leads me to believe the stronger station was behind me to the east, but I couldn't catch either of their callsigns. I would've asked, but I'm still waiting on the FCC. I was considering getting an IC-705, because it seems to be the best fit for my situation, and I've been considering dipping into HF. I could always bring it somewhere else or to the roof. Also it'd be nice to have a normal human radio to check if my silly sdr setup is coming across. So as far as I know, the best way to accommodate this is to combine multiple receiving antennas. Trying to rig that up with a shared antenna connection seems like it'd be difficult, or at least I don't know how to approach it. My other thought was to get two sdr receivers, process the reception on a computer, and switch one of them for transmitting (and the other off). I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but I'd be interested in how this is usually solved. I'm also directly under a 200ft antenna tower on the roof, but that's probably insanely expensive and I'd really have to have my poo poo in order before even thinking about it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2023 02:08
|
|
|
Does moisture wick through coax cable shields? Kinda sucks, but I think I have a 25 and 50 foot cables that are gonna be a loss. I am moving to a new house and pulled down my antennas. A couple coax cables have chews in them from I think squirrels. I chopped the damaged portions out with the intention of putting new pl259s on, but I noticed the braid is corroded like 6+ inches from the chews.  Also I scored a screaming deal, an IC730 and an Astron RS-35A for $800. My current supply is a switching one, this linear one is absolutely enormous. They guy selling didn't want to bother with shipping, so I did the 2 hour haul out to the boonies to pick it up which is why it was so cheap It'll be nice to have a IC7300 that I have all the parts for and will remain assembled.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2023 02:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 03:50 |
|
|
horse_ebookmarklet posted:Does moisture wick through coax cable shields? Kinda sucks, but I think I have a 25 and 50 foot cables that are gonna be a loss. 100% absolutely, yes. Consider that coax toast
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2023 02:53
|
|
