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longview posted:Question for the thread: I need to route a coax bit or two through a door and drilling is not an option. I hear this very often, and I always have to ask: WHY? If this is a rental or something, filling a properly drilled hole is both cheap and easy and can be done in a way that no one will every know it was there to begin with. You don't even need to be particularly handy to patch a 1/2" hole through drywall or a wood door frame.
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Oct 21, 2013 22:46
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poeticoddity posted:Out of curiosity, has anyone been able to pick up transmissions from the Philippines or any of the other regions hit by the recent typhoon? I haven't been able to find too much online regarding communications in impacted areas. Just got this: ARES Email posted:ARRL has successfully sent faxes and email to Philippine Amateur Radio Association members in Manilla. 7.095 MHz remains PARA's primary operating frequency into and out of the affected area; please keep that frequency clear and ask your friends worldwide to do the same. I'm gonna leave my radio on and see if I can hear anything.
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Nov 12, 2013 16:32
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SoundMonkey posted:The answer may be obvious, but this has sorta been picking at me for a while and I gotta ask. The problem with that is......drivers. Now you need to support drivers. Everyone know what serial and line level audio is. Serial is not gonna change. It's simple. And when your USB to serial adapter doesn't survive an OS upgrade because there are no updated drivers for it you simply buy a new one, rather than have a radio/scanner that you can't control without keeping an old laptop around.
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Nov 16, 2013 16:11
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wolrah posted:but for PC interface purposes the reasons you give against USB just don't make sense. While the methods you describe may be possible or even plausible, it's not what I'm seeing in the industry. Common rigs I've seen with USB ports on them have drivers. Drivers that are not included in Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8 (which is likely to comprise the bulk of the usage) or even available from the manufacturer for anything else.. I'm talking about things like the Icom 9100 which is some composite device, or the Kenwood TS-990s which uses a CP-210x. If we agree that good radios should be outlasting computers and operating system by a very long margin (I'm still running a 70s hybrid rig on occasion) this type of thing would seem to be problematic to me.
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Nov 16, 2013 17:13
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wolrah posted:That's not an argument against USB though, just that those manufacturers are doing it wrong. It's like someone saying USB gamepads are worse compared to gameport because they're looking at an Xbox 360 pad that for whatever reason doesn't use the standard HID class. Ahhh, I see. You are talking about theory while I'm talking about the realities of the market as it is right now. And while I agree to some extent (there still really isn't a "universal" USB to serial driver, but C Media audio and HID certainly are), I'm not sold on the idea.
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Nov 16, 2013 19:01
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wolrah posted:The audio bit I just like and see as a feature because it would eliminate ground loops and allow a cheaper old laptop to be used while benefiting from a high-res ADC/DAC in the radio itself. To me this would be the best part. Imagine a scanner/radio with a stereo 192kHz C-Media compatible sound output set to I/Q: Instant wide band SDR output in a well understood format. Add additional channels for the specific setting of each VFO. It would kick rear end. What I'm not clear on/why I'm not sold is how do you control the radio (a-la-CAT-control)? Serial is super well understood. HID is also well understood, but how do you use that in a generic enough way for sending what amounts to AT commands. I've never done any HID device programming, so maybe there is something obvious I'm missing. But I sure as poo poo know I can do something as simple as cu things back and forth to a serial device on the CLI if I need/want to.
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Nov 17, 2013 02:48
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SoundMonkey posted:Just using this as an example, since it's gigantic overkill for this application, but an Arduino Leonardo can pretend to be either a keyboard or mouse with pre-existing libraries, costs $25 (again, it's super overkill and that's for a consumer dev board), and also has an onboard largely-driver-free USB-serial interface in case you don't want to use HID for some reason. Go ahead and tell me I'm wrong. But when you plug two USB keyboards or two mice into a box running Winders, OSX or Linux it doesn't discriminate at all. Either and both will work. Unless I'm missing something where it's easy and customary to grab a HID and "jail" it to a specific process/group of processes it would seem you're fighting at an OS level to deal with this.
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Nov 17, 2013 03:49
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It would seem that one of the big deals is that is support P25 Phase II. While I don't regularly pay attention to new scanners, I couldn't find anything that did phase II the last time I checked several months ago (my county is upgrading to a 700mHz P25 Phase II system).
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Nov 19, 2013 16:24
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Dijkstra posted:Phase 2 is nice, but the PSR-800 was released around 3 years ago and supported it. ??? Motorola hasn't even been shipping Phase 2 gear for 3 years. I supposed they designed it to the published standard. I'm surprised I didn't come across that one when I was looking. Apparently Radio Shack rebranded it as the PRO-18 iScan, which they don't appear to carry anymore.
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Nov 19, 2013 16:58
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e.pie posted:So I bought a Baofeng UV-5RA a couple months ago. I've found the frequencies I can use without a license but I kind of want to do more. Absolutely. They are cheap little radios, but they do nearly all the same things that a $200+ HT would do. Don't feel like that's a limitation.
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Nov 25, 2013 03:05
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e.pie posted:Cool, guess I'll have to find a local testing place. It's not common sense, but it's not all that advanced. If you have any sort of technical background you'll find getting your technician (or even general) to be quite easy. Next exam lookup: http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-session Study materials: http://www.kb6nu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/2010_Tech_Study_Guide.pdf Practice tests: http://hamexam.org/ If the study materials or practice tests don't suit your liking there are many other options available for free online.
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Nov 25, 2013 03:24
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manero posted:could my antenna being roughly the same height and parallel to the power line drop to my house be causing the hum? It's perhaps 20 feet away. It may not be the cause of these particular issues if they are new, but that's really, really bad antenna placement. No chance of getting one end even 10 or 20 feet in another direction so it's not paralleling the lines? Dropping one or both sides into an inverted vee? At 20 feet away I wouldn't be surprised if you are drat near close enough to be coupling to the power lines.
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Nov 25, 2013 05:03
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But there is something to be said about an an antenna so big people want to base jump off of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvp_NMaskds
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Dec 6, 2013 02:42
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poeticoddity posted:I finally found my call sign listed on the FCC ULS today ( It should catch up tonight when they do their daily ULS download. Get your LOTW and Echolink stuff set up too. You'll need time for those to process/get things mailed to you/etc. In fact, LoTW is the important one, as you can use that to auth most of the other stuff. And you'll have to wait to get a card in the mail from them. http://www.arrl.org/instructions
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Dec 11, 2013 19:26
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), so I used that to make a QRZ account. Unfortunately, my call sign's not in their data base yet (understandably), so I get a little message that says, "You are not registered as a Ham Member. In order to be a Ham Member, your user name must match a listed callsign in our database."
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I know this isn't helpful but.....boooooooo D-Star. Why are you doing this? Do you have a large local user base? If not I'd suggest promoting an open technology (and don't start on me with "D-Star is open! You can do everything except....oh, right....voice...because the codec is licensed").
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Dec 28, 2013 01:35
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eddiewalker posted:On the topic of "maintenance purchases," I've been thinking about adding APRS to the second side of the TM-V71A in my car. Am I just going to get it set up, look at my route on a map once then get bored of it? That's exactly what's going to happen, isnt it. Pretty much. APRS is a really cool technology with severely limited practical purpose.
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Jan 13, 2014 05:59
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Dijkstra posted:So how many radios can you have in your vehicle before you are considered a whacker? I have a TM-71A dual bander and a TYT-9000 220 radio in my truck (which thanks to a cascaded duplexer/triplexer setup use the same antenna,) but I am thinking of adding 900mhz and another antenna. You're right at the line. Which side depends on interior mounting and antennas.
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Jan 13, 2014 23:45
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infrared35 posted:I've been out of it so long I don't remember if that even gets me anything besides 2m. CW privs on a bunch of bands, voice and CW on a small portion of 10.
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Jan 21, 2014 01:42
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Vir posted:Then there's the guy who thinks having anything less than 20 watts of power will make communication impossible, while exactly 20 watts will give you 100% global link reliability with quality of service. Of course, that's just based on postcounts and not representative of the actual readership. The whiner's post counts are probably that high because they can't figure out how to make their radio work and/or are saving up for that 1.5k linear because their antenna sucks and they don't know it. This leaves them plenty of time to bitch on the internet about a hobby they barely understand.
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Jan 21, 2014 17:24
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manero posted:This weekend I worked RX0AK in Siberia on 20m around 9pm local time: SSB or digital? I pretty routinely work that part of the world at 30-40 watts PSK31 and my antenna (ZS6BKW) is definitely not oriented in an efficient way to do so.
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Feb 24, 2014 20:00
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manero posted:SSB, I had to crank up to 95w. NICE, that's a good contact for the direction your antenna was facing. I was having all kinda of noise on 20 and 75 last night. I did manage to make some decent contacts on 40, but the band was coming and going. You probably weren't getting auroral propagation unless the signal was fluttery and raspy sounding.
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Feb 24, 2014 21:40
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josiahgould posted:Talk to me about antennas? It'll be here Wednesday and all I have is my 2M quarter-wave and an old CB antenna I've got rigged up to my SDR stick. Any discussion of antennas start with: how much space do you have, do you have any trees you can hang one from, and how much money do you have? Easy answer is that you have a couple of tall trees 100 yards apart and we send you off to make some manner of dipole, g5rv, or zs6bkw.
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Feb 26, 2014 01:24
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Bean Head posted:Moving on, I visited a friend today who had assembled a WSPR rapsberry pi transmitter which was quite interesting, anyone else hosed with that sort of thing? Hopefully he's just controlling a proper transmitter with a Pi or has heavily filtered his output, otherwise it's just a splatterfest.
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Mar 8, 2014 20:07
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Magugu posted:Im interested in hearing what others feel what ham "culture" is. Look at the thread title. That pretty much sums up a lot of it. Then you have the rest of us: we're here or in other similar places.
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Mar 16, 2014 01:29
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SoundMonkey posted:I mean I get that obviously radios are an important part of radio communication and you're likely to find a lot of knowledge from old-timer radio guys, but radios are also good for like, talking about things and being social. I'm pretty sure the problem here is that a lot of these guy who dominate the airwaves have little to nothing else in their life other than radios and health problems. Jonny 290 posted:I would suggest that a good approach to freshening the voices on the air is to come from it from a _non_ ham-radio-centric attitude. Don't hang out with a bunch of guys that talk on ham radios. Hang out with your cycling or offroad club, or a few guys you like to fish with, or your car buddies. Then figure out how you can work amateur radio into that lifestyle. Get your tickets, get some radios, start talking. Hopefully find a repeater with a receptive owner and join their club. Boom, invaded. Now be good hams. HELL YES. One of the things I've taken a shine to is SOTA activations. Combine hiking or off roading with a bit of radio at the summit, move on back to your chosen other activity.
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Mar 16, 2014 23:56
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Bitchkrieg posted:PS -- is there an SA net or sked that any of y'all participate in? I'd be down to try to talk to some of you, even if just for awkward mouth breathing before announcing callsigns, if it means getting practice on the air. Every Sunday night at 1:30 GMT (well, that makes it monday morning - so 9:30 eastern Sun night) I'm on a Reddit net. Yeah, I know....lots of SA rightfully has issues with "reddit", but a lot of the smaller subreddits are really good. This one is http://reddit.com/r/amateurradio I'm usually the one who posts about it. There are still whiners and my default text for the weekly posts will pretty much bear that out. It's not a traditional net. There are starting frequencies for each band, and we all get on IRC to figure out where to go based on who shows up. It's totally informal. No check-ins.....it's really not a net. It's just a bunch of people getting together to dick with radios. It's been everything from a night where most everyone could easily talk on 75m and we just bullshitted to nights where we end up playing with ridiculous digital modes....poo poo no one really uses just to see if we can make them work.....to night where we break off into a bunch of different groups, so people trying to help others get their rigs on the air, others just ragchewing, others hunting down DX. It's basically my go-to radio meetup. So join up with that "net"? Or do we have enough people here to start our own thing? Because I'd be down for either. I'd even attempt to do some coordination to make it happen.
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Mar 17, 2014 04:15
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Unfortunately, that's too typical of some clubs. It's an HOA for people who are too batshit insane to either ot both own a home or get elected to their HOA. Also unfortunately, this hobby attracts crazies. The latest bulk seem to be preppers. I just side step all of that bullshit. I don't need to be in their clubs and my radio has a VFO. I just twist it and move on.
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Mar 17, 2014 04:26
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manero posted:40m goonnet. Let's do this. Absolutely. And what happened to the guy who had the club callsign AG0ON?
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Mar 17, 2014 05:07
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BigHustle posted:We were in the process of transferring the club trustee status of AG0ON to me when I dropped out of hamdom. I'm not sure if he transferred it to someone else or what. Are you N2KGO? If so, it's in your name. If not....welp....it's in his.
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Mar 17, 2014 20:57
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OK, well that's good. But to begin with, the "club" is supposed to have 4 members and some official organization. I'm guessing you don't have that. If not, I'm willing to pitch in and do up goonclub paperwork/structure/act as president to make it all correct (as long as others want to help as club officers - hell, if someone else wants to be the president I'm good with that I don't care - I've just been down that path a lot with small nonprofits so I know what's up). Then comes an official club roster, for which we would obviously need to have an official membership process and of course membership benefits. I'm thinking some appropriate club artwork/shield/logo could be made by someone on here who is crafty so we can use it on QRZ pages, QSL cards, etc. With a bit of organization we can have a "virtual club" off the ground pretty quick, including some basic software to help net control deal with what will certainly be a disaster of trying to hear people and relay for them (at least to start). The stuff OMISS is using (Netlogger) is pretty good for that, but kinda lame as far as typical ancient windows only ham radio software goes. I'm gonna guess we have enough people with enough relevant skill sets to make this happen reasonably quickly. Of course, that's up to you as sole trustee at this point, fordan.
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Mar 18, 2014 02:37
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Dijkstra posted:The Elecraft linear is designed to be used with the KX3 but it can probably be easily used with other radios. At $700 for 100 watts, the smart money is on picking up a 100w rig new or used rather than that amp. It's pricing puts it in a very specific market segment.
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Apr 14, 2014 19:29
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Yep, that's the segment I was referring to.
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Apr 14, 2014 20:47
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I haven't run into any Elecraft guys who are snobs about their equipment, just really really into the brand to the point of spending huge amounts of money on what ends up being very nice equipment, but subpar compared with other offerings for the same money and often buggy as poo poo in the first few releases with lots of promised (hugely expensive) add-ons that don't materialize for years (2m module for the KX3....where are you?) I really, really like the KX3 for the fact that it's an honest to goodness quality portable SDR. It's just too expensive and has some brain dead design problems (I/Q out only - no digial stream...really?) Motronic fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 20:59
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Do you only care about 10m? If not, some sort of multiband vertical on the house or in the yard would be nice and easy. A dipole of some sort (even multiband would be cheap and nearly invisible if done right. Otherwise for just 10 it depends on what you want to get into. Do you want something directional with a rotator (awesome, but expensive) or do you just want to toss some wire in a tree? Either will work. In fact, both or more than two is a great idea just to futz around with antennas/antenna design/antenna placement. It's likely that the coax from your radio to the antenna will cost you more than a home brew dipole.
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Apr 19, 2014 15:26
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SoundMonkey posted:Hello, autists! You're probably going to be best served with a used 100w all mode rig. There are plenty to choose from in that price range. The Chinese stuff is interesting, but low power at this point. All of them are likely to be 12v. Very few are 120, other than old hybrid and tube rigs. Antennas - yes, you can build your own, so the most expensive part is likely to be the coax to get it from your radio to the feed point of the antenna. What do you have to work with for a yard? The easiest/cheapest answer here is: I have lots of tall trees that I can stretch a wire between, and at least two of them are 100 feet or so apart with a spot that I can get the wire up at least 20 feet. Unfortunately, with coax, a power supply and possibly an antenna tuner (depending on whether the radio you get has one built in or not) you're likely to be a couple hundred shy of getting on the air. Unless you have some stuff around to get creative with.
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May 3, 2014 17:30
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SoundMonkey posted:I can deal with using a switching power supply from a PC as the other dude mentioned, so 12V stuff wouldn't be a big deal. Oddly, coax is the free part, since I have about eighty feet of brand new coax that nobody's gonna need for years. It has N connectors, is there some kind of general standard for certain bands / power levels, or am I just going to need to buy some adapters? What kind of coax (should be printed on the side)? Generally you need to worry about that more in the higher bands, so as long as it's 50 ohm coax you're good, especially at 80 feet. You need the big stuff as you get into VHF/UHF over longer distances. Chances are that your radio will have a PL-259 on it, so you'll need a PL259 female to N male adapter for that side. A commercial HF antenna would also most likely have a PL-259, but if you're building your own just buy an N-male for it and use what's already on your coax. So that means you're a radio, an adapter, a N male, some wire, and some hardware store junk to use as insulators and to hang it away from being on the air. Your budget sounds pretty doable to me with those things in mind. That's exactly what I meant by "unless you have some stuff around to get creative with."
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May 6, 2014 15:11
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SoundMonkey posted:can I just run the radio off a goddamn battery and not deal with power supplies at all, then just charge it when I'm done (assuming a pretty low duty cycle and decent sized battery)? Admittedly not hugely convenient long-term, but easy and cheap short-term. Absolutely! This is what field day is all about, and you can have field day every day.
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May 11, 2014 04:09
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SoundMonkey posted:So as I understand it, I COULD put this coax to better use, but using it as a temporary thing for an HF antenna wouldn't actually be bad in any way? I ask because this is pretty much the only coax I'm likely to have for free, and I don't really have any big UHF/VHF plans right now beyond loving around on local repeaters with my HT. Yes again. There is nothing at all wrong with using the for HF, but if there comes a time when you need to put up a VHF antenna and need a similar amount of coax and want to save some cash, buying something cheaper and swapping it to the HF antenna would be a reasonable choice.
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May 11, 2014 23:52
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Dijkstra posted:So some of you may remember the Ten Tec open source ChipKit-based QRP CW rig I was hacking on with some folks. Well, Ten Tec has a new one coming out called the Patriot that includes a sound board so you can also do digital modes and SSB: That looks really awesome and like something I might decide I need very very badly once some real reviews come out.
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May 16, 2014 16:54
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BigHustle posted:Here's some Helldump action on Karol: http://www.ve7kfm.com/ That page is approaching as bad as he in, just in the other direction and (or maybe somewhat the same) just not on air. It's people like this and emcomm whackers that give the bulk of the rest of us a bad name and reason for embarrassment.
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Jul 4, 2014 01:33
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