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AstroZamboni posted:Mundane story #1: You apparently haven't listened to many of the evening and late night get togethers on 75/80 meters. Those guys talk about just about everything, from politics to religion to sports to radios and so on. And, unlike a lot of the more civil discussions on the other bands (like 40m and 20m) they tend to cuss a lot and can be rather entertaining sometimes. It is especially fun to catch them in the radio version of a flame war, screaming and cussing at each other, trying to overpower each others signals... heh. But you are correct at least that in general a lot (read majority) of ham discussions on the air are technical or general (weather, hows the wife, have a good christmas, etc) and some of that comes from the FCC. They tend to keep things clean on the ham bands as much as possible, and in a lot of places certain discussions are frowned upon. It helps to keep the amateur allocations from turning into what CB turned into once the FCC removed the CB licensing requirements.
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Jun 6, 2007 22:20
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Psychlone posted:Ah shortwave. I don't have room to put up an antenna now, but I still have my trusty Realistic DX-380 with me. I can mostly pick up the American stations, but not much else these days. You dont need a lot of room, just some wire. I have about 100 feet of speaker wire that I use for an antenna on my old Lafayette receiver (AM/CW only though, it doesnt do SSB) and I have it strung around the walls of my office at home. When I lived in an apartment, it was thumb tacked to the wall around the entire bottom floor. Psychlone posted:A UK company invented a cheap, wind up shortwave radio that doesn't run on batteries and these radios are widely distributed into remote areas for the people to hear newscasts. These broadcasts are very low power and often challenging to try to pick up in North America. These are often called Tropical Band stations and are down in the 3-7 kHz range. You'll mostly hear subtropical noise down there without an extremely sensitive antenna. Actually, do a search on crystal radios. You can build one for pennies, tune it manually and pick up all sorts of stuff and needs no batteries, winding or anything. Granted it doesn't have the discrimination of something built on a circuit board, doesn't include things like preamps, noise limiters, SSB or so on, but Crystal Sets are probably the most amazing thing you'll build. Mostly because of the fact that they use no user provided electricity yet still receive radio signals and produce audio via a small headphone. Here's a couple links if anyone is interested: Science Buddies The xtal set society teh wiki and I agree, this is a great thread. I haven't had my Lafayette turned on in a while. I think I'll head home this evening and warm those tubes up a bit and see what's on the air tonight.
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Jun 6, 2007 22:37
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Epicenter posted:How exactly would the FCC 'keep HAM radio clean'? It's not like they can listen to every frequency and jam it when they think someone might be about to say something offensive. Well, OK, they could-- but it isn't practical. They dont, much. With the ham bands at least, as a general rule, we tend to police ourselves, and if enough hams complain about specific incidents or people on the frequencies, the FCC will conduct monitoring, triangulation and if necessary legal or civil actions against the person/company causing the problem. Mostly, its amateurs who report the things, and many of them record examples of the interference or otherwise improper/illegal activity. The ARRL used to publish a list of the enforcement/warning letters and such from the FCC on the ARRL website. In March the FCC started posting them on their own website: http://www.fcc.gov/eb/AmateurActions/Welcome.html Obviously they (FCC) are more active in policing the commercial bands since those are what generate revenue, but they do do a fair job (usually) of enforcing regs on the ham bands as well. There have been some pretty big cases in the past of people on ham bands interfering/pirating/being a jackass as well as bleeding that over onto other bands as well being smacked down by the FCC (up to and including jail time). Jack Gerritsen is one such asshat that is very well known in the ham community. Epicenter posted:Are there some decently thorough resources out there for building a SW radio? I'm yet to find anything very detailed after about 15 minutes of googling except a very old Geocities page with some tiny, unreadable schematics. The ARRL has them, plus you can probably ask in a Ham forum somewhere and find some. The Amateur Radio Handbook put out by the ARRL each year or so usually has some plans for receivers as well. Plus, dont search for short wave receivers specifically... any Ham receiver set will pick up SW stuff as well (as long as it is built to receive those frequencies).
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Jun 6, 2007 22:50
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grover posted:The Navy VLF site in Cutler Maine (NAA) is purported by some public sources to be 2MW and others to be 1-1.8MW, either of which makes it the most powerful radio transmitter in the world. Yeah, thats a lotta bird frying wattage there. But to counterpoint that, I have successfully taked from Virginia to Brazil on 2.5 Watts SSB. I know others in a club I belong to that have successfully transmitted from North Carolina to various places in western Europe with as little as 100mW using morse code and a radio powered by a 9V battery. While power is nice, it's all about the size and efficiency of your antenna  Another things y'all will notice is that different times of the year will give you better reception. Oh, and drive around one night and tune around the AM side of your car stereo, especially after midnight. You'd be amazed at what stations you can pull in from your car. From NC, I have tuned AM broadcast stations as far away as Boston, Miami, Cleveland, Detroit and DFW. As for Shortwave, the world is full of amazingly weird stuff. I have a nice Yaesu allmode that I use to listen to SSB around the world, and a nice Lafayette that I use for AM transmitters.
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Jun 18, 2007 22:17
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I started listening to shortwave again recently and wanted to see if anyone here had any suggestions regarding my receiver. I've been using my boat anchor Lafayette HE-10. It's AM/CW only and it seems to have started drifting pretty badly. I was thinking maybe one of the tubes is going bad (as far as I know, these are the original tubes that came with the rig). My setup is basically just the HE-10 hooked up to a 200ft run of 18ga speaker wire. I DO have two Yaesu HF radios that I can use to listen to shortwave stuff, and I do use them when I want to troll USB and LSB, but for just general listening and such, I prefer my old tube driven lump of steel. I think I am just attracted to the warm soft glow of the tubes... Anyway, I digress. The problem I am having now is pretty rapid drift. Faster than I would associate with changing atmospheric conditions. I can tune in a broadcast, then within a minute or two, I have to hunt a bit up or down the given band to find it again, or at least bring it back in more clearly... So as I said, I am thinking maybe a weak tube or something... but not too sure. Any thoughts?
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Apr 2, 2008 17:58
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AstroZamboni posted:New addition to Eton/Grundig's product lineup, the "G6 Buzz Aldrin Edition." Because of this: http://youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=mQKxAqpjroo You do not gently caress with Buzz Aldrin  Edit: Either way, it looks like the regular E6 and the Buzz Aldrin special are both the same price on Amazon, so at least they aren't trying to charge you extra money for some screen printing on the case 
bladernr fucked around with this message at 16:41 on May 28, 2008 |
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May 28, 2008 16:33
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The G5 gets brought up a lot and I've looked at it and it seems pretty nice... I was wondering though, if there were any suggestions for a relatively inexpensive full coverage receiver that differentiates between USB and LSB. I noticed that the G5 does SSB, but no way to switch from USB to LSB. I realize that's not an issue considering it only covers the broadcast SW frequencies, but I'd like to find one that covers that and the ham bands, and allows both USB and LSB distinction. I have a couple ham TXceivers, but I'd like to find a receiver that is relatively inexpensive, full frequency coverage and portable.
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Aug 22, 2008 20:20
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w_hat posted:The G5 has a dedicated dial on the side under the tuning knob, up is USB and down is LSB. It's not the best but it certainly gets the job done. Oh... crap. I picked one up at the local Rat Shack the other day and didn't even notice that... I'll just have to stop in and have a second look... and maybe this time they'll even put batteries in it so I can actually try the damned thing out. Thanks for the info though... I really didn't even notice any USB tuning knob...
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Aug 25, 2008 21:42
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McRib Sandwich posted:Perhaps this is a dumb question, but given that I've never sent for a QSL card before, how do you know how much postage to use for something like that? First of all, do a google search for QSL etiquette. Learn all about sending, receiving, and bureaus... More specifically, it's usually pretty polite to include a SASE with your QSL when you send it. I never assume a contact will send me one, so I send mine out first. In fact, while I've only collected about 40 or 50 cards, I have only gotten ONE without sending mine and SASE out first. Also, if you look the HAM up on something like QSL.net, they will often have their QSL info/requirements listed in the profile (buro only, SASE, etc...) I've not send any international ones first, but most of those that I've looked up so far require either a self addressed envelope and a post coupon or require you to use the bureau to send/receive. So that's the quick and dirty of QSL, and that doesn't even get into things like special event stations, certificates, and so forth... Ugh... forgot to add... for SWL stations, if they have a website, you can at least get a contact e-mail to send queries to. Some, if not most of those, I think still send QSL out on their own dime, but they may be starting to request SASE or SAE and post coupon as well. Most of what I said is Ham specific, but it can/does somewhat apply to SWL listening as well... Also, SASE or SAE may not work if you send to someone like Radio Vietnam, who, IIRC likes to send small gifts back to you in addition to a card. bladernr fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Nov 14, 2008 |
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Nov 14, 2008 17:32
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I heart bacon posted:I put a long wire up over the roof. So far today I grabbed RS-15's beacon at 29352 USB, and spanish numbers on 5883. Freakin sweet... I think I need to string out a longer wire for this and see what I get on my next night off. Random bits of wire can be fun. I had about 200 ft of speaker wire strung out of my radio room and along the fence in my back yard... picked up all sorts of stuff that way until birds decided sitting on my wire was fun and they broke it 
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Apr 2, 2009 17:17
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