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thanks. I figure that's not too bad for only looking at the book for a total of maybe 8 hours.
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Oct 3, 2009 20:30
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thegreatcodfish posted:Well, I made my first HF contact today. Today was Jamboree on the Air so it was lit up like a christmas tree most of the afternoon. I tried for about an hour to get in at a couple stations, but gave up. Figured I just couldn't get through on a ham stick. Got back on a few hours later when it had quieted down a bit and got through to a station in NY on my first try. Quite exciting. Oh, it was on 20m @ 100w. GA to NY. I use N1MM logger, it seems the most functional of the ones I looked at. I never heard of that logger32 program before, so I don't know anything about it. As far as paper goes, why log twice? Unless you're writing 'em down while operating at a buddy's place or something, just log electronically while you're going, since you're going to be putting them in LOTW anyway.
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Oct 18, 2009 14:00
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I still laugh every time I see that thing.
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Dec 19, 2009 15:05
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Is the January QST out now? I haven't gotten mine yet if it is, and my Dec issue didnt have a fold out  I want to drool too
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Dec 22, 2009 00:09
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Just got my new QST today.. I want it. Now. I don't care if I don't necessarily need it, it'd just look so cool sitting on my desk.
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Dec 23, 2009 00:34
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It's been a busy few weeks for me. Had a windstorm knock my 2m antenna down, so I took my tower down and moved it to the opposite side is the house. When I re-strung my dipole it wasn't tuning for poo poo so I took it down and built a w5gi mystery antenna. I love this thing. It's 1.2 to 1.7 swr on 20m without a tuner and under 3 on most others. With the tuner I can get it to around 1.3 on all bands. I also made a desk for my equipment, will add pics when I can. can't figure out how to do it from the phone
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May 28, 2010 01:12
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Speaking of Field Day, did anyone participate? I'm always interested to see what other clubs or individuals did during the weekend. Our club ran our usual CW, Phone, and Digital stations this year. Our CW crew made 646 contacts, Phone 738, and Digital 218 - which I think is the best we've ever done there. I brought my rig and laptop out for the digital station and ended up working it most of the weekend. There were a few other guys that were interested that operated intermittently, but I ended up doing most of it. We all had a great deal of fun, which is the main thing, but I was pretty wiped out by the end of it. Couldn't get to sleep Friday night, then woke up about 5:00 am Saturday and couldn't get back to sleep, and then ended up being up for the entire weekend. Finally went to bed at 5:00 Sunday night. If anyone did do Field Day, did anyone work N0GF? That's our club callsign.
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Jun 30, 2010 05:06
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Hah. Yeah, I put everyting in there since I got my Droid. It's so handy to have my phone squawk at me when I have an appointment upcoming.
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Jun 30, 2010 18:43
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I think they're thinking of something along the lines of a wide area wireless system being set up using the D-star as a modem? Or being used for file sharing bypassing the internet,and thus being unable to be busted by government agents for torrents? I guess france doesn't plan on having a disaster of some sort where internet access is horribly limited and maybe some radio file sharing would be necessary? That is some real smart emergency planning there. Our state ARES has protocols in place to do almost exactly what the French want to outlaw; set up a radio network to disseminate files, mostly text files of contacts or something, but files, as opposed to radiograms or other things that would need to be read over the air and then hand written on the other end. I think the example given in the state SOP is sending a list of medicines and supplies needed by a hospital after a tornado or something and all the phones and internet don't work.
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Jul 1, 2010 22:53
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Just work on polar co-ordinates , phase angles, and the more math involved parts of the question pool and you should do fine. I took mine back in October and borrowed my father-in-law's 3 year old Extra book to study from. They didn't change too much from the pool, so if you have a current book, you'll really be golden. E:Oh, I just remembered too, I only started studying it about a week before the test, so if you still have 16 days, that's plenty of time to get it.
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Jul 2, 2010 05:45
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Nice, maybe I'll actually use echolink now. Just downloaded the android app. have to check it out later.
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Nov 14, 2010 05:52
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I'll have to ask my Mother In Law for sure, since shes an apple-head, but I am fairly positive she has an echolink client on her mac. E: yeah, its called EchoMac. http://echomac.sourceforge.net/ mwdan fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Nov 16, 2010 |
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Nov 16, 2010 04:15
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Heh. that's the same thing. I'm pretty sure that's *the* mac version of echolink.
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Nov 16, 2010 04:32
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nmfree posted:On a lighter note, I got this month's issue of QST today, and there's a Lego straight key featured on page 20. I don't remember who here built it, but congrats on the mention+picture! I saw that too, it was pretty sweet. You find the fake in this one, being as it's the April Issue? I had to look through three times to find it this year. It wasn't as glaringly obvious as the 'use squirrels to take your dipole end up into the tree' they did last year or the year before.
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Mar 10, 2011 03:07
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Most if not all of those things are already online and free to download, and the FEMA NIMS stuff is on their site, and is an online only course. Basic Spotting Guide (pdf) Advanced Spotting Guide (pdf) FEMA NIMS site IS-100.b; IS-200.b; IS-700.a; and IS-800.b are the courses you'd want to go through for ARES. Thunderstorms, Tornadoes, Lightning (pdf) Are You Ready? (pdf) Cloud Chart (pdf) NOAA/NWS Brochures These are all handy things to have for weather related stuff, and there's a ton on the FEMA site for more ARES related things like Natural disasters/Terrists/All hell breaks loose kind of poo poo. The NIMS stuff is what government agencies use, so it's good to go through the courses and take the 'tests', in case you ever have to help run comms for some large-ish scale disaster/accident/whatever. I wish I could get more people involved in ARES locally, since the majority of Hams here are concentrated in the two largest cities in the county, and the rest of the county has maybe 10 total. It's a fairly large county, as well, almost 2,000 sq. miles in area, and from where I live to the town on the opposite edge of the county is almost 80 miles, so if there's ever a need to rely on 2m simplex there's not really anyone out past 30 miles of me that's even active..
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Apr 5, 2011 22:29
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Haha. They should add those, along with smoke, rain and fog, and put them in the "THESE ARE NOT CLOUDS" portion. I wish I could get ahold of the video the lead meteorologist at the local NWS has, of some guys at a Minneapolis TV station showing a live traffic cam of a "forming tornado" that suddenly "dissipated" They were calling the exhaust from a factory or power plant off on the horizon a tornado, and were amazed at how fast it was dissipating. It brings many laughs at the various weather seminars he puts on.
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Apr 6, 2011 00:24
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Vir posted:
I think RACES may be going by the wayside, as I'm pretty sure I read somewhere a while ago that the FCC wasn't going to renew RACES licenses anymore. Or, am I just misinterpreting that?
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May 26, 2011 14:07
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Bighustle, may I ask what group is REQUIRING the FEMA courses? I don't have anything against them, but depending on how far up the EMCOMM tree you want to climb, they really aren't necessary. It's great in theory to know how the mighty Homeland Security "INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM" works, but when you get down to the level that 99.9% of any ham would get involved with it at, it gets down to: Local Emergency Services lose comms for whatever reason, or need some extra help with non-emergency comms. Joe ham goes to the local EOC after getting called out and someone is going to say 'sit in this chair and talk to Bob Ham over at the Hospital and if they send you a message give it to me.' Maybe it's a more urban thing or something, but out in the hinterlands nobody gives a poo poo if you havent done ICS training or whatever. I'm an Emergency Coordinator for whatever that's worth, and I'd be happy as hell if I could get people to just say "if something really really major goes down and there needs to be comms, I'm down." , and very few say that. It's not like you're being asked to give up every weekend or most nights or something. It's just in case that freak storm cuts all the power to half the county or a couple counties and you'd be needed for a few hours MAYBE in the next 25 years.
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May 26, 2011 23:47
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Ahh big city. It must be proportional to size. I think we might have one or two hamsexy poster children here, but they don't come around all that often. To be honest, I wouldn't even have people like that involved. That type does nothing but scare off sane people who would actually be a benefit in an actual emergency. E: I remember the stories of the guys in tactical gear, it still hurts my head. mwdan fucked around with this message at 02:53 on May 27, 2011 |
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May 27, 2011 02:51
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Like I said, it's good to know the ICS, but the last time we had a drill, the hams were the only ones that seemed to know it. Hopefully, the last drill lead to some changes in the county emergency management system. I'm waiting on a 401k disbursement to show up, so I can get some new toys. got my eye on an ic-7000, and a new HT.
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May 27, 2011 15:25
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Vir, one of my ham buddies got one a few weeks ago, and it's slick. I just ordered it and a bunch of other toys from HRO  I'm gonna treat myself now, since it's probably going to be the last big radio purchase I'm gonna be making for a while I think.
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May 29, 2011 21:06
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Got my Ic-7000 mounted in the truck, and the new comet csb-790a mounted on the roof, and re-did my power for the radio,battery direct, along with a 30a toggle switch. And, my mobile HF antenna should be here the beginning of next week.
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Jun 8, 2011 03:46
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oh yeah. That comet antenna is huge, its like 62" so mounted on the roof I'm at like 11'2" to the top of it.
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Jun 8, 2011 17:38
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It still looks huge, but 5.1db gain on 2m and 7.7db on 70cm is nice. I'll get pics up once I get my HF antenna, and mount it too.
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Jun 10, 2011 16:36
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Well, my mobile HF antenna came in this afternoon, but I have to figure out how to mount it. It has a bracket that mounts to a flange on the under side of a car, but I didn't see anything that looked anything like that under my truck, so I may be making a new hole for that, and I have to come up with a different way to get it connected to the radio. Probably going to have to run a longer wire from the antenna into a chassis mount SO-239 into the cab, as I'm not using the Icom tuner that they 'recommend'. The sparse documentation shows it mounted on a car, with the tuner mounted in the trunk, fed by this little 3ft wire that they sent with. If it wasn't starting to rain now, I'd be all over getting that installed.
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Jun 14, 2011 01:34
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Got the HF Antenna installed, so it's picture time!     
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Jun 14, 2011 22:31
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Vir posted:Cool color. Did you put some velcro on the tuner? Velcro? No, that's attached to the mounting bracket, which is screwed to the underside of the dash. The gain values for the antenna were given dBi, so that's over isotropic (i.e. perfect conditions) but, it seems to be performing quite well. As for being off center, I was making sure I didn't drill through the spot where my dome light is.
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Jun 22, 2011 19:17
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rant/ I helped out with our digital station at Field Day this year. I hadn't planned on being able to spend as much time as I did this year, so I opted out of supplying the station this year, and between the guy who supplied the radio and computer not knowing how to set the thing up right, some antenna issues (mostly related to the type of 'tuner' used vs. the coax run to the antenna), and not knowing how the antenna/tuning system we had planned on having as primary worked, we only made around 65 contacts on psk31. Last year we did over 200, and it's been noted that we should really try RTTY next year. The very little bit that I've seen of it, it is a faster mode to use; I.e. it decodes at a higher rate than the PSK does. I know field day isn't a contest, but when you know that a mode of communication can perform 3-4 times better than what you end up with is very frustrating. It's made more frustrating by the fact that the said supplier of equipment, who brought very well-maintained and higher end stuff, really has no idea how it is supposed to work together, and ignored a few of us with more experience in the settings and such, basically just cranked up the output power of the radio, got nowhere with it, and left the rest of us to do it. On the plus side, once he left us to our own devices, and we figured out what on his interface controlled various things, we got our signals and power outputs where the were efficient and clean, and finally started making contacts. Unfortunately, that took us nearly five hours, and then a thunderstorm rolled in, shutting things down for the night, and we didn't fire the station back up until nearly 14:00 UTC on sunday. I think we also learned a good lesson: The ham with all the expensive, shiny equipment doesn't mean he has the brains to use it. We made 4 times as many contacts last year using my 25 year old rig, a 6 year old laptop , and a RigBlaster Nomic than we did this year with an IC-706mkIIg, a fairly new netbook, and a US Interface Navigator. /rant For the most part It was a fun weekend as usual, but it gets tiresome listening to the excuses for why poo poo isn't working the way it could or should, and having your suggestions ignored. The phone station made over 600 contacts, and the main op was bitching that 'the bands were lovely' most of saturday, yet when I was listening in my truck several times going back and forth to the FD site, I barely found a frequency without a QSO, and the ones that were clear had a noise floor of no greater than S1, and mostly S0. I might have to do FD on my own, or find a few other people to do it with and go somewhere else. The last few years have been getting more and more tiresome due to the urgency some people have been placing on it, and it's not supposed to be a contest, yet some in our group treat it like its sweepstakes or a QSO party.
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Jun 29, 2011 05:22
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Hah, if we'd been using a 7000, I don't think we'd have had as many problems. We were using a 706, and the menus are completely different to get into between the two.
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Jun 29, 2011 18:03
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BigHustle posted:PROTIP: Expect some backlash from your local OFs if you call one of the 'elected club officials' a lid and an EMCOMMunist over the air. Come on, do your best Paul Harvey, and give us "The Rest of the Story".
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Jul 8, 2011 01:48
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It depends on the vehicle really. I finally got around to doing a "proper" install in my truck, and found a rubber plug in a hole under the passenger side carpet that when I pulled it out covering a cavity that seperated the cabin from the underside of the truck. There was a hole in the outside facing plate that came out in the lower right side of the engine bay that I had to enlarge a little bit to get the power wire through, but that was minor, and was on the same side as the battery, so I didn't need to route the wire very much to keep it out of the way.
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Jul 14, 2011 15:59
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Depending on how 'correct' you want to be, you could always just hook it up on the ACC portion of your ignition. Before I ran the wires direct to the battery, I had it connected on the same circuit as the stereo, so it would turn on and off with the key. It was kind of nice, since you didn't have to remember to shut the radio off when the vehicle was off, and might be an option if you're only running a 2m rig. I decided to go battery direct when I got the mobile HF rig, just to make sure I eliminated any possible alternator whine, which isn't so much of a factor on 2m FM.
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Jul 14, 2011 17:08
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Ok. Anyone on Google Plus needs to get in here and post. We're starting an AG0ON circle there. Not on G+ yet, I can give invites.
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Jul 21, 2011 02:23
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poo poo. maybe you have to be in a circle already to see that post. So far there are only 4 of us, but we need to expand this. If you are already on G+ post the link to your profile here, like this: https://plus.google.com/107094906142194517888 Maybe if you add me to a circle, then you can see that post? otherwise, I may have to add you first before you can see it.
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Jul 21, 2011 15:28
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Gotcha
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Jul 26, 2011 16:16
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so sore.... Saturday, we took down a tower for a lady, and I spent about 7 hours tied off to the thing from 50ft down to 10.. I think I'll be on ground crew next time.
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Aug 2, 2011 00:52
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HAHA ! That guy should be the mascot for Hamsexy.
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Aug 2, 2011 14:03
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This Saturday, August 20 from 1300Z to 2100Z, our local Ham Club will be running a special event station for the Heritage Days Festival in East Grand Forks, MN. The Heritage Days has reenactments and displays of old time technology and such, more info can be found here http://www.egfheritage.com/ (I have nothing to do with that abortion of a site, or the heritage village, BTW) We are going to be issuing certificates of some sort for QSO's; I haven't seen what they have come up with yet, if anything, but that's what I've been told. Anyone interested listen for N0GF special event station.
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Aug 18, 2011 15:29
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That might be fun, if I could figure out what quit working on the old tube radio I do have. I just haven't had the ambition to fix it. I'll be running an Icom IC-7000, most likely on 20m.
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Aug 18, 2011 20:28
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:24 |
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Around 0100Z Last night was probably a good opening somewhere. A buddy of mine who was out on the road trucking called to tell me he was getting a lot of skip on his CB. I turned my rig on and spun across 10m for about 5 mins, and didn't hear anything, but 27.185 was jam packed. My guess is nobody was calling on 10m so they didn't know the opening was there, since he told me it was absolutely quiet right before he called me.
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Sep 23, 2011 15:44
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