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And if he wants to keep portable, the Signal Stuff Signalstick may be overkill, but it's reletively cheap and an awesome, reliable beast of an antenna.
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Nov 7, 2023 14:39
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One of those plug-in outlet testers shows I have a good ground in the outbuilding I use for my radio shack. I sank an 8' ground rod right outside the shack next to where my feed lines come in. My power supply, transceiver, tuner, and end-fed sloper are all grounded to the ground rod. Is it cool that I have essentially two paths to ground (the ground rod outside the shack and wherever the AC outlets are grounded to)?
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Nov 8, 2023 02:20
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Curly Shuffle posted:One of those plug-in outlet testers shows I have a good ground in the outbuilding I use for my radio shack. I sank an 8' ground rod right outside the shack next to where my feed lines come in. My power supply, transceiver, tuner, and end-fed sloper are all grounded to the ground rod. Is it cool that I have essentially two paths to ground (the ground rod outside the shack and wherever the AC outlets are grounded to)? No. A network should only ever have one earth ground, with all the systems ground wires returning to that point where its also tied into the neutral. You can get a 1:1 transformer and a breaker panel to make your outbuilding its own power distribution network, tied to that new ground rod.
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Nov 8, 2023 04:10
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M_Gargantua posted:You can get a 1:1 transformer and a breaker panel to make your outbuilding its own power distribution network, tied to that new ground rod. No 1:1 transformer. A properly installed subpanel in an outbuilding will have the grounds and neutrals separated and will have it's own grounding system that is bonded to the existing grounds at the main panel or wherever the location of the one and only ground-neutral bond is in the system.
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Nov 8, 2023 13:33
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Thanks for the info. I'll just trust the outlet tester and not connect anything to the new ground rod. I just saw ground screws on the equipment and thought, "Maybe I should connect that to something."
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Nov 9, 2023 00:47
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My end fed antenna manual (MFJ-1984MP) wants a safety ground. Would connecting the new ground rod to only the antenna be ok?
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Nov 9, 2023 01:55
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Motronic posted:No 1:1 transformer. A properly installed subpanel in an outbuilding will have the grounds and neutrals separated and will have it's own grounding system that is bonded to the existing grounds at the main panel or wherever the location of the one and only ground-neutral bond is in the system. Well yeah but that's still only one earth ground. Thats how my shed is setup. The transformer is only if you for whatever reason actual need a separate earth point.
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Nov 9, 2023 02:20
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Curly Shuffle posted:My end fed antenna manual (MFJ-1984MP) wants a safety ground. Would connecting the new ground rod to only the antenna be ok? So here's the thing, there's your building electrical ground, then there's what's on this sheet, an antenna/radio ground. And never the two shall meet (except for in exceptionally specific situations that are not relevant here). If your radio is 12v and you are running it off of a power supply connected to your building electrical system it's already separate from the grounding of your building electrical (in most cases). Then you go hog wild with your antenna grounds like in that diagram and/or your buried radials, all of which are grounds. You tie all of that together to the ground on your radio and whatever else is in the path of the antenna like tuners, etc. This "ground separation unless they are properly bonded per code" is not only a safety thing, it will also keep a lot of potential noise out of your gear.
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Nov 9, 2023 14:55
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Your RF ground doesn't even have to be a DC/LF path to earth. A counterpoise can be isolated from earth, yet be completely functional. If you use a grounding rod for RF, you could use a high quality capacitor, suitable for handling RF current, to make sure you only have 1 mains safety ground. You might want to insert a choke of some sorts into your mains earth, at the transmitter side. You can use a 1M resistor to shunt static electricity to ground. Grounding transmitters is loving weird. When i was testing my Yaesu FT101 (100w) at the seller's place, we set it up on a kitchen counter, with the radio and the dummyload (with grounded metal case and a fan) both in a grounded outlet. After testing for a while, the dummyload's mains ground wire started to smoke. For that to happen, you need to run like 30-40 amps through it. The isolation of it was completely wrecked and both me and the seller were completely puzzled. At first i thought that the radio had a bad ground fault and the guy's GFCI wasn't working (and the fuse didn't pop in time). But i checked all of that stuff and it was fine. Something must have worked as a RF transformer. Years later i had a similar thing happen but with the connection between my antenna tuner ground and the central heating system's radiator/metal tubes (convenient thing to ground small transmitters to, it's a nice big mass of iron). Nothing else got even close to getting hot. Tuner cold, mains cable to the transmitter cold... So yeah, take care, especially if you run high power.
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Nov 9, 2023 17:39
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Motronic posted:So here's the thing, there's your building electrical ground, then there's what's on this sheet, an antenna/radio ground. And never the two shall meet (except for in exceptionally specific situations that are not relevant here). Thanks for this explanation. 
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Nov 10, 2023 01:30
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After a lot of studying to get from zero to general, tinkering, finding a radio, figuring out how to plug in the drat radio, and now finally finishing a simple EFHW antenna, I was able to make FT8 contacts and do my first actual QSO. Amazing how bootleg my setup feels, with my antenna tied to a tree on the other side of my property, but still gets me a "5-9" from many states away. And FT8 got me all the way to deep into the EU. I've been positively buzzing all day. Really excited to keep going from here, and now starting to feel envious of the extra slices of bandwidth I could get if I got my Extra...
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Dec 4, 2023 17:20
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BONESAWWWWWW posted:After a lot of studying to get from zero to general, tinkering, finding a radio, figuring out how to plug in the drat radio, and now finally finishing a simple EFHW antenna, I was able to make FT8 contacts and do my first actual QSO. Amazing how bootleg my setup feels, with my antenna tied to a tree on the other side of my property, but still gets me a "5-9" from many states away. And FT8 got me all the way to deep into the EU. I've been positively buzzing all day. Really excited to keep going from here, and now starting to feel envious of the extra slices of bandwidth I could get if I got my Extra... Congrats on your first contacts! My furthest CW QSO contact was with some wire wrapped around a fishing pole and leaned against a parking sign, ad-hoc antennas are great.
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Dec 4, 2023 23:29
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So, I spent the last week doing practice tests on Hamstudy.org for an hour or so a night. I took one of the online VE Exams over Zoom on Sunday and PASSED my General upgrade, 34/35. It cost $15 and was pretty darn easy to set up. All I had to do was go on Zoom with 3 VE's, pan my laptop over the room to show my test area was clean, and take the test on exam.tools while they watched me on cam. 30 minutes later and they emailed me my CSCE form as a PDF. I'm pumped! I'm probably going to upgrade to Extra soon.
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Dec 13, 2023 11:33
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MullardEL34 posted:So, I spent the last week doing practice tests on Hamstudy.org for an hour or so a night. I took one of the online VE Exams over Zoom on Sunday and PASSED my General upgrade, 34/35. It cost $15 and was pretty darn easy to set up. All I had to do was go on Zoom with 3 VE's, pan my laptop over the room to show my test area was clean, and take the test on exam.tools while they watched me on cam. 30 minutes later and they emailed me my CSCE form as a PDF. I'm pumped! I'm probably going to upgrade to Extra soon. Congrats on passing! Time to get some HF contacts
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Dec 13, 2023 16:36
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Radio ground take: having multiple independent grounds is bad and potentially dangerous. For safety reasons all grounds used must be bonded somehow to ensure they can't ever have a meaningful voltage difference between them, exact same reason we bond metal water pipes and cable TV coaxes to local ground. So your external antenna ground rod should really be (DC) connected to your house ground somehow. Let's say you're floating your radio vs. mains ground and the power supply develops a line-output short. In that case touching the radio ground and mains ground could be deadly. You'd be relying on the antenna's ground rod to conduct back to the house ground rod and tripping a fuse or GFCI, if the antenna ground goes bad you're completely unprotected. That being said you may find that making that connection between the house ground and the external ground rod for the antenna causes a bunch of noise due to making a big ground loop. Putting a bunch of ferrites on the connection between the radio and house grounding system will probably fix that, the bonding only has to work at 50/60 Hz and lower after all. You may also want a bunch of ferrites around the feedline (i.e. a balun driving the antenna).
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Dec 30, 2023 14:45
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If you do have an independent ground it should never be floating, it should be earthed. And this if there is a voltage fault to ground it will ground it and trip the protection circuits. Grounding an external wire antenna is more like doing a lightning rod, and you definitely don't want that tied into your residential ground. You can put a big 100k power resistor between the two to prevent the few volts they may drift if you really want.
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Dec 30, 2023 18:03
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I once had a sweet ground system consisting of three ground rods spanning two sides of the house, with the rods bonded to each other with a solid copper strap that itself was slightly buried. The circuit breaker panel and water service pipe were connected to this. Antennas were grounded against this system at a wall panel where the feed lines went into the house. So everything was tied together into a single overkill system. It worked well, for example a few months after this was all set up, a tree limb had fallen in a storm on the overhead electrical cable to the house and the service neutral was disconnected. The only symptom over the following few weeks was that the microwave wasn't working right, everything else was the same. Was about to get a new microwave until when on a hunch I found that an outlet on the same circuit had a ~15v voltage drop when the seemingly faulty microwave was running, at which point I found the dangling connection out by the street.
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Dec 30, 2023 19:47
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Progressive JPEG posted:I once had a sweet ground system consisting of three ground rods spanning two sides of the house, with the rods bonded to each other with a solid copper strap that itself was slightly buried. The circuit breaker panel and water service pipe were connected to this. Antennas were grounded against this system at a wall panel where the feed lines went into the house. So everything was tied together into a single overkill system. I have been looking for a while for a metal box that i could centralize all ground and plug connections. I am looking for something a little bigger since i want to install filters etc. Not having to grovel on the ground outside in -15 celsius under the porch trying to put ground cables and switch out coax plugs and cables would be lovely.
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Jan 1, 2024 15:03
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M_Gargantua posted:If you do have an independent ground it should never be floating, it should be earthed. And this if there is a voltage fault to ground it will ground it and trip the protection circuits. IEC standards are very clear that having multiple independent "earthed" grounding systems is not allowed within one installation, this includes lightning rod grounds (which is a specific example given, bonding is mandatory). There is no guarantee that two ground rods will have the same potential in fault situations, especially since actually measuring and maintaining consistent ground impedance is pretty tricky to guarantee and will likely vary with the ground humidity. Again I will note that this applies to low frequency bonding, you're not meant to run your lightning rod ground through the breaker panel, but you are required to put a suitable gauge wire between the lightning rod ground and house grounding rod (i.e. a stub, likely with high inductance, hell you could make it a coil if you want). Connection to earth ground is not the primary purpose of mains protective earth in many cases, the purpose is to ensure that all exposed conductive surfaces are at the same potential. Earthing in that context is only relevant to ensure that e.g. appliance housings, wet concrete, showers, and plumbing all have the same potential. My final take: you can put in a radio ground, but I would take a separate wire directly off the radio rod and back into the house ground thus making it technically part of the house grounding system. As far as I know this would be a legal and safe way to accomplish this.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:37
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Walrusmaster posted:Congrats on passing! Time to get some HF contacts Christmas came a few days late. I bought an Icom IC-730 off of a seller in Japan for $180 shipped. It arrived the day after Christmas in perfect Condition..  I've been having tons of fun Hunting POTA stations on 20 and 40M during the day, and rag-chewing with old dudes on 80 meters at night...  Also has anyone here here played around with RM Noise? It's an AI filter for ssb and CW. It works insanely well here in my suburban QTH https://ournetplace.com/rm-noise/
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Jan 10, 2024 10:29
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any way it can be offline or running own server? i dabble in sambandstjenesten so i try to keep everything functional offline.
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Jan 10, 2024 14:48
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i've got GPUs everywhere and i have played with running HF RX audio through Nvidia Broadcast. It's really good at background noise reduction, way better than anything built in to a rig. to the point that if i had too much money and the room for it, i would consider building a mini itx pc and JUST using its audio in/out for that
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Jan 10, 2024 21:09
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Jonny 290 posted:i've got GPUs everywhere and i have played with running HF RX audio through Nvidia Broadcast. It's really good at background noise reduction, way better than anything built in to a rig. Tell me more.
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Jan 13, 2024 06:58
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drunk mutt posted:Tell me more.
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Jan 13, 2024 19:48
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I'll grab some clips this afternoon. It's pretty straightforward
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Jan 15, 2024 19:01
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Buried under snow here in East TN, so I've been monitoring local 2 m repeaters to hear what's going on. Been entertaining hearing all the bugfuck nonsense these hillfolk get up to.
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Jan 17, 2024 00:54
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Jonny 290 posted:I'll grab some clips this afternoon. It's pretty straightforward did you grab the wrong kind of clip and unalive yourself? 
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Jan 18, 2024 16:46
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Anyone have experience using one of those ninety-dollar mag loops off Amazon? I got a new Xiegu X6100 to play with and it hates my old 817's Miracle Whip, at least as far as reception's concerned. I'm not quite ready to put together the whole-rear end PowerPoint I would need to sell the wife on letting me plunk $600 on a name-brand loop, and believe me when I say it's safer I do not try to manufacture one myself. No trees suitable for a wire and nowhere to mount a vertical that's not going to look comically out of place in our neighborhood, either. EDIT: the antenna in question The Muffinlord fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jan 24, 2024 |
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Jan 24, 2024 21:50
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The Muffinlord posted:Anyone have experience using one of those ninety-dollar mag loops off Amazon? I got a new Xiegu X6100 to play with and it hates my old 817's Miracle Whip, at least as far as reception's concerned. I'm not quite ready to put together the whole-rear end PowerPoint I would need to sell the wife on letting me plunk $600 on a name-brand loop, and believe me when I say it's safer I do not try to manufacture one myself. No trees suitable for a wire and nowhere to mount a vertical that's not going to look comically out of place in our neighborhood, either. never used a loop antenna, but super interested. i threw an end fed wire antenna into a nearby tree. thought about using a different antenna for RX? maybe a large ground loop antenna?
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Jan 25, 2024 03:32
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If it would have to be outside, not sure I can make it work. But I know for a fact that a magloop works well in my noisy environment; I use a Youloop and a LNA hooked up to an RTL-SDR v4 for reception and I can hear amazingly far despite being maybe six feet off the ground floor.
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Jan 25, 2024 21:21
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Shortwave radio: It's a bit hard to photograph but I made a big antenna out of a long piece of wire, some bungee cord and a rock:   Rock picture:   Flat Earth Christian Radio Channel:  My assistant got pretty bored:  North Korean Radio:  According to my notes I picked up: A K-Pop program from South Korea. A christian Radio station from Palau (near Guam) KCBS Pyongyang from North Korea Voice of Mongolia from Mongolia. A Persian station transmitting from Germany. Vatican Radio in Russian transmitting from Vatican City. Radio Saudi Arabia in Indonesian.
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Jan 29, 2024 04:02
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The Muffinlord posted:Anyone have experience using one of those ninety-dollar mag loops off Amazon? I got a new Xiegu X6100 to play with and it hates my old 817's Miracle Whip, at least as far as reception's concerned. I'm not quite ready to put together the whole-rear end PowerPoint I would need to sell the wife on letting me plunk $600 on a name-brand loop, and believe me when I say it's safer I do not try to manufacture one myself. No trees suitable for a wire and nowhere to mount a vertical that's not going to look comically out of place in our neighborhood, either. I've seen a few reviews on these since they first popped up on AliExpress a year of so ago. The 20 watt rating is VERY optimistic, mainly because the two variable caps in the tuning network are the same types that have been used in pocket transistor radios since the mid 60's.  These caps aren't meant to handle ANY kind of RF load. 5 Watts PEP is probably even pushing it. It's absolutely a QRP only Antenna as delivered, if that. If someone could come up with a replacement tuning network using a readily available, higher rated Air-Variable cap It might be a great starting point for a cheap DIY portable loop. I just wouldn't trust it with your brand new $600 Transceiver. This guy is a CB'er but his review series might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7rsHpa35EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDguyHlSOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31ZrkYN0VSs BTW: There are great plans for stealth antennas out there (as long as you have a tuner) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y473hOmif-E MullardEL34 fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Jan 29, 2024 |
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Jan 29, 2024 09:43
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I wasn't planning to use much more than 5 on it; I mostly just want to hear as well as I can be heard without having to use my RTL-SDR for receive audio. But as it turns out, the screw it has for a tripod mount doesn't match the cheap camera tripod I've had lying around for ages, so this may be a wash if I can't get the drat thing mounted properly.
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Jan 29, 2024 17:40
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mind sharing the frequencies?
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Jan 29, 2024 19:25
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Achmed Jones posted:mind sharing the frequencies? Which frequencies?
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Jan 30, 2024 00:30
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SWBC frequencies are not hard to get at, there's sites like https://www.short-wave.info that make it super easy to search or ID an unknown station.
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Jan 30, 2024 08:40
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:Which frequencies? quote:A K-Pop program from South Korea.
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Jan 30, 2024 17:23
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Kenneth!!! 
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Jan 30, 2024 20:36
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Whoops sorry, that should have been obvious: A K-Pop program from South Korea: 9770KHZ KBS World Radio A christian Radio station from Palau (near Guam): Hope Radio 9965KHZ KCBS Pyongyang from North Korea: 11680KHZ Voice of Mongolia from Mongolia: 12085khz A Persian station transmitting from Germany: Radio Farda 15690KHZ Vatican Radio in Russian transmitting from Vatican City: 17790KHZ Radio Saudi Arabia in Indonesian: 21670KHZ
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Jan 31, 2024 04:14
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Passed my basic with honors today. A bit awkward writing a test with a stranger watching TikTok videos across the table from me. VE3BHQ
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Feb 4, 2024 17:07
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