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checking in. I'm not operating too too much these days, but I am getting back into it. Will probably try to hit Field Day. I'm pretty big into the satellites, I was making daily contacts before I took the work-mandated break.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2008 04:01 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:05 |
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blugu64 posted:AO-51? It's one of my goals this year to make a contact on it. Looking at picking up an Arrow II Antenna within a few months. AO-51, SO-50 and AO-16, I think? are the ones that I've made contact on. It's tremendous fun but requires attention to detail when getting your gear set up. Loss and signal level is everything.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2008 05:42 |
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McRib Sandwich posted:
Haha, I like the hamsexy crowd. They are very technically skilled and have fun with radio. I think that a few of them tend to skirt laws and they do tend to be very elitist with regard to Motorola vs Every Other Manufacturer In The World, but I will never accuse them of running janky underbuilt radios.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2008 15:18 |
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And Jose shows up Technically your 2m antenna _is_ a discone, by the way. It is just a very, very, very incomplete disc and cone. I am taking pics of my satellite and HF antennas this afternoon to show you guys what you can pull off in a 60x80 city lot. Maybe even video of the satellite array rotating, haha. God, I'm a nerd.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2008 19:05 |
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nmfree posted:Those remote controls? Yeah, they use CB channels, usually between channel 30 and 40. (At least, all the ones I've ever seen.) 49 MHz was an extremely popular band but got clogged with baby monitors....and during solar cycle peaks, propagation will get active on 50 MHz. People were getting sick of their baby monitor in the next room being blown away by somebody's 200 miles away in just the right spot.
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2008 20:49 |
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quote:That reminds me, Jonny 290 give us some pics and info of your satellite setup! Thanks for the shout, Jose! The antennas are almost ready to come down. I have been extremely busy this spring as we are taking the big step and buying our first home. This means, of course, that I will be putting up all KINDS of aluminum once I move in. So, I'll download a few pics of what I have currently tonight, and I will be sure to post in mid-June when we're in the new place. I am already in talks with several crazy redneck junk dealers around here to try to find old tower sections.
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# ¿ May 13, 2008 16:47 |
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It won't be climbed, I just want 20, 30 feet or so, doing a tilt-over setup. I won't have a big enough plot to put up a guyed tower and I can't climb freestanding towers any more, I guess they just feel too tipsy for me. Guyed ones are no biggie though, to 100ft or so. But yeah, if I were doing a climbable tower I'd absolutely buy new from Texas Towers.
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# ¿ May 13, 2008 19:03 |
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That Yaesu is pretty sweet. I'm glad to see them integrating Bluetooth - a very neat and cheap tech that I think is perfect for amateur radio integration. (And no, I don't want to see some silly amateur-designed flaky Bluetooth clone on ham bands, I'd much rather use my commodity $10 headset, we can put our energies elsewhere)
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# ¿ May 15, 2008 18:12 |
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Jose Pointero posted:And now for something completely different... Ouch. My house is directly on an extremely heavily travelled parking lot, and I left my Uniden 396 on the hood of my truck for five hours on a Saturday afternoon. Our property is so urban that people cut through our yard to shortcut to the liquor store, so I was absolutely amazed to notice it still there when I remembered and dashed outside.
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# ¿ May 17, 2008 06:41 |
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As long promised, I took pictures of the station in its current form. Pardon the mess, I haven't mowed the back or cleaned my desk in a minute. The main mast, 15 feet of metal, Alliance U-100 rotator, then 4 feet of PVC ending in a T fitting and a 4 foot crossboom. On the ends are 145.8 and 436.0 MHz Yagis using 1/4" aluminum rod stock and OWA element spacing - direct 50 ohm feed. The 2 meter antenna in particular is awesome, it has ridiculous bandwidth. They're pointed at the horizon, usually stay that way. I have experimented with tilting them up but you lose too much signal at the horizon, where path loss is highest. I can hear AO-51 over the top on high passes no problem off the sidelobes. Behind it on the fence, my 40m-10m (really 30m-10m) vertical. It's a Hy-Gain AV-18VS clamped to the fence with a bunch of radials too. It's.....meh. It would work a lot better if I got a larger lot and was able to place it away from the house. Rrrrrrrrrrradials. Looks pretty much the same on the other side of the fence. On the back fence, you can see my 40 meter inverted V dipole. The sun washes out the elements, but you can see the coax choke at the feedpoint up there. On the side of the house I have a Diamond F23 2 meter vertical on another 15 foot mast, and the little PVC mast holds a 440 Mhz vertical folded dipole (coathanger) and 4:1 balun, for my scanner and PCR100s. Around front you can see my 75 meter inverted L. The landlord chopped down the 20 foot bush so it's more of a sloper now. From the front, the setup is pretty camo. Around the side, you can see nature assaulting my feedlines. I should probably sort that. Count 'em! They of course lead.... Inside! Left to right, top row: Kenwood AT-230 tuner Old wattmeter of unknown origin, pretty accurate MFJ 2m/440 cross needle meter Alliance U-100 control box Left side: 2x Icom PCR-100 wideband receiver Bottom row: Icom 735 Icom 271 Icom 475 (my child) Compaq Armada 600 MHz P3 laptop running XP - rock solid and great for this stuff Truck rig. Icom 208H into a Larsen dual band vertical on the mirror. I love how my 102" whip makes it look like some crazy RC car. Loads up okay with my tuner on 40 meters and up on camping trips, but I have a 58 foot long piece of wire with an alligator clip that I clip on the end and throw in a tree usually, works fine on 75 and up. You can kind of see the 2 meter antenna on the driver's mirror. 240sx rig. Ancient Alinco DR-119. It has unblocked 800 MHz, kind of neat, I usually pack my 396 when I'm driving, though.
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# ¿ May 22, 2008 03:00 |
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Those ancient Kenwoods are BULLET. PROOF. I had a TR-7800 as my first radio, $75 from a hamfest, and we had to work for weeks to find a six pin mic connector, they were evidently used for approximately 42 minutes and then everybody moved to 8-pins. Fun times. That rig got beaten to hell and back, I mounted it on my Huffy mountain bike with a vertical dipole and 7 amp-hour gel cell and talked simplex from the woods. God, such a nerdy kid.
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# ¿ May 22, 2008 22:29 |
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I did that last January, went from tech +, took General and Extra. Most stressful 5 minutes I had were while they were grading the General. Hams are super stoked when people get multiple upgrades, and everybody cheers when somebody goes from no ticket to Extra in one session.
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# ¿ May 23, 2008 02:59 |
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McRib Sandwich posted:You really can't beat the TS-2000 for a do it all HF/VHF/UHF rig, though, I'll give it that. For all the features it has, that thing's a steal. I know it's really shallow, but my only problem with those is the fact that they look like somebody took the rig and left it in front of a heat gun for a little too long. I know a lot of people feel this way - I wonder if somebody will come out with a redesigned aftermarket panel to control the TS-2000X, heh.
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# ¿ May 24, 2008 07:32 |
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Epicenter posted:Are there some good (but not very expensive) PC controlled receivers/transmitters? I'd like something I can tune with a computer, view signal strength, the sort of things you can do with the 'software radio' in the OP, but locally. MixW is nothing more than an audio DSP app that decodes and encodes various modes. You only need an audio line to decode. To transmit you can either use VOX which will key your radio when there is audio, or you can do the more robust approach of using an RS232 line to key the push to talk line. There are several PC controlled receivers out there, and maybe a transceiver or two. I have a couple of PCR-100 boxes, they are fun, cheap and get you into the PC scanning world pretty easily. Their actual radio performance is nothing special, but they are very wide band and let you get a taste for many different services.
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# ¿ Jun 3, 2008 17:06 |
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Good luck! Take your time, double check your answers.
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# ¿ Jun 3, 2008 23:42 |
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Sindow posted:I think they do that so they can run their software on their horrible old junk laptops that they got for $10 at a hamfest. Hamsexy is really fun and I get along with them better than anybody else. The only problems with that site is that they're a little nationalistic/maybe a little racist at times, and they kind of condescend if you talk gear and it doesn't start with the words "My Motorola". But they are way fun and I will read a thousand posts there before I set foot on QRZ again. And yes, hams will spend 30 hours figuring out how to get 3.1 or 95 on a P200 laptop before they go spend $199 on a modern one, haha.
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# ¿ Jun 6, 2008 23:10 |
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I just bought 5000 more feet of 14 gauge aluminum electric fence wire for $5.99 at Lowe's. Ground radials much? This house closing (June 20th) cannot come soon enough. Cannot wait to get a permanent setup (including a ladder-line-fed full wave loop, that will be freakin awesome) to get back on the air! I think for the time being the satellite setup is going on one of those nice roof tripods. I scratched the used tower idea and am now talking again to the power company about buying a pole.
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# ¿ Jun 9, 2008 16:52 |
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Dolemite posted:Ah, so the Field Day exercises are usually done on the extra class frequencies? Or is it that Field Day tends to attract extra class licensees? The bands will be jam-packed top to bottom. Don't worry about not getting any love in your segment. I just closed on my house Friday so Field Day is likely out for me; however I'm getting the chance to do my antenna masts RIGHT (concrete, guying, etc) and the plan is to get my 2m/70cm satellite antennas on top of 30 feet of chainlink top rail used as a mast - yay for no HOA's! It's an engineering project, for sure, and it has to wait on me buying some coax, but hopefully I'll get a breakthrough on the satellite work once I get my antennas above the trees. Question: We have chainlink fence surrounding our back yard. If I erect an HF vertical with buried radials, will the fence hurt? Do I want to investigate elevated radials?
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2008 15:52 |
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McRib Sandwich posted:I'm sure you're just being facetious, but I seriously hope that someone wasn't actually suggesting that some sort of Motorola portable / land-mobile radio would make a better trunk-tracking scanner than, oh, I dunno, a TRUNK-TRACKING SCANNER? Yep, they basically run six radios in their car, one for each service. It can get a little ridiculous. It has its advantages but only if you are a serious public services nerd or are getting paid for it (which a lot of the hamsexy guys actually are). I have a Uniden 396 and it is great, and it drat well better be for $500. It picks it all up, and has pretty good sensitivity. The batteries lasted about a year of daily use, 6-8 hours a day, recharging overnight.
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# ¿ Jun 26, 2008 04:04 |
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McRib Sandwich posted:$500 Can't justify that at all right now. How does the "close call" feature work for homing in on nearby signals? That sounds like one of the nicest upsells to the unit, being able to pick out transmissions as they're happening in front of you. Close Call on Unidens is pretty hot, it works great. While you have it on you get a little 'blip' of cut-out audio every five seconds if you are scanning, that is the scanner checking Close Call. It is annoying for about five minutes, then you block it out. There's a little beeper that goes off when Close Call grabs something, so you are aware. Tangent - my 396 has a further feature where it will beep one of ten little codes when a specific channel or talkgroup gets a transmission, it is great to hear DEEDLEE DEEDLEE when the hazardous materials or DEA talkgroups fire up.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2008 19:51 |
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Yeah, everybody takes a break after FD for a week or three. It's standard. Plus you have to rerun all the coax patches and 12v cabling that you ripped out of your shack late Thursday before FD started.... Weather nets are fired up on the regular here in NW Arkansas, it's storm season. Waiting on a paycheck so I can go buy 6 10.5 foot pieces of chainlink top rail, for two 30 foot masts - one grounded and used for the satellite antennas and verticals, the other insulated from ground and fed as a 1/4 wave 40m vertical. The Hy-Gain AV-18VS is getting a foldover mount for the back of the truck - 18 feet should make for a decent camping vertical.
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# ¿ Jul 8, 2008 21:23 |
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So, I got settled in at the house a bit and decided that the skyline was too naked. I had my old 40 meter dipole floating around, and just on a lark, I strung one end up in a tree and strung the other end pulled out horizontally, so a non-inverted L. Bottom of everything is about 20 feet off the ground and the end of the wire is right around the 50 foot level. Reception is GREAT, but I need to tune it badly. The antenna that previously hummed a nice 1.2 SWR at 7.100 is now bottoming out right around 8.4 MHz! Sounds like I need to add wire (but my efficiency has likely gone way up). I am starting to measure out and locate everything for the HF vertical - my plan right now is 100 square feet of chicken wire surrounding the base, and 4 buried bare wire radials for each band, 75/40/30/20 meters. I have 6000 feet of aluminum electric fence wire for radials. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jul 29, 2008 |
# ¿ Jul 29, 2008 18:39 |
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I'm hard at work at getting aluminum up By the end of the week I expect to have my Hy-Gain vertical up to about 30 ground radials (runnning all those is a lot of work!) for operation on 30-10m, and I will be building a tree-suspended 75 meter vertical. I have a big old tree that tickles 50, 60 feet or so, so I will be doing my best to hang a line off the top and do a wire vertical with three elevated (10 feet or so off the ground) 1/4 wave radials. I already have a sleepy little dipole for 40m, it is working FB so I am going to leave it for now. On top of this I am grabbing another 10 foot chunk of fence rail to extend my VHF/UHF mast to 30 feet as well as about 200 feet of stout line, not sure what, for guys. The mast has support around the 12 foot level so I am going to guy around 25 feet, just below the rotator and beam. That fence rail is good mast material, but you need to drill where the sections meet and lock it down with some 1/4" bolts run through it - otherwise it's kind of sketchy. I am thinking of figuring what it would take to use 3 sections each for a phased 40 meter vertical array. Again, main issue is ground plane.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2008 16:08 |
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I worked Venezuela yesterday! PSK31 at 50 watts, 599 copy both ways, on 30m in the early evening. I was running my new 40 meter ground plane with a tuner, this new antenna is sweet. Full quarter wave height (32 feet) and it the feedpoint is about 10 feet off the ground. I have three quarter-wave radials coming out at 120 degree spacing. I am still tuning it, as this is my first foray with an elevated vertical on HF, and the radials are off length. My current plan is to figure out a choke or trap at the top and add 3 30m radials in between the current one, to make a no-tune 40/30 meter vertical. Then I am going to roof mount my 17 foot vertical with a bunch of radials and run it through a tuner for 20-10 meters, and put up a full wave loop for 40-10m, feed it with ladder line. That will be the horizontal antenna for all bands I care about, and I will have verticals for those same bands too. It sounds lofty but keep in mind it's centered around an $89 vertical (that is actually a ripoff), 300 feet or so of wire, some rope and a roof mount.
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# ¿ Aug 12, 2008 00:56 |
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Update - been moved into the new house for about 4 months now. Here is what I've got up so far. Pride and joy is a 20m vertical with elevated feed. Right now it's only 10 feet off the ground but I'm going tomorrow to get another piece of top rail to bring it up to 20. The guy wires are 1/8" wire rope cut to 1/4 wavelength, and I'm using 1/8" poly rope from then on - when I go to 20 feet I'm replacing those ropes with 1/4" lines. It works really well, PSK is awesome with just a few watts. Kind of a cool picture. Also have a 40m wire vertical with 3 horizontal radials. I like this one a lot, but it needs some polishing. Not much to look at - total cost, $9.99 for a 100 foot roll of speaker wire I split. The center of my not-buried radial system. It's just a shitload of electric fence wire. 12 radials right now, 4x 30meters, 4x 20meters, 4x 10meters. It's where my vertical used to live. I'm going to keep it and probably use it as the feed point for an 80 meter inverted L wire. For 2 meters, off the back of the house I have two lengths of top rail holding a Diamond vertical. Adding another section and guy lines tomorrow, taking it to 30 feet. Later I'll put my rotator up there and build a new 2m beam - my current one would be way too heavy to put on top of 30 feet of top rail, it's PVC and solid 1/4" aluminum. Sorry for the poo poo pic on this one =/ I still have about 3000 feet of fence wire, so I'm thinking about splurging for a balun and some ladder line and putting up a full wave 80 meter loop around my back yard. I have trees to string it from and can probably get it about 30 feet up which won't be too bad. Shack looks the same as my old pics, same desk and rigs. Nothing new in that department - I'm broke as poo poo and the only indulgence in radio I can have right now is a few bucks here and there for masts and antenna materials. Can't even buy more coax right now
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# ¿ Oct 4, 2008 23:18 |
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nmfree posted:Loop as in vertical loop or as in rhombic? More rhombic style I guess. Horizontal loop, about 60 feet on a side, 30 feet off the ground. Feed it at the middle of one side. Mainly it'll be to scratch my 75 meter itch - I don't have a 135 foot run for a dipole, and I can't deploy a 75m vert in my back yard - enough back there as it is.
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# ¿ Oct 6, 2008 14:29 |
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I'm actually in a TERRIBLE location for radio, but this was our first home purchase, so I had to prioritize. I have a big (300 foot) hill/slope to my southeast, and a gentle slope to my northwest - it's much more shallow, but still gains 50 feet or so over a mile. Plus, we are in 50-year old burbs and the trees are all big and tall, so getting over the treeline is critical for my VHF and satellite work. the RFI situation here isn't too bad, it is decently quiet - 40m on my full size 1/4 wave vertical gives me about an S7 noise level, par for the course. I don't have any 75m antennas up but my last joint was surrounded by neons and I had S9+ noise across the whole band - it was awful. I got the vertical up to 15 feet feedpoint elevation, every bit is helping - I really can tell. I bagged Italy on PSK with 30 watts yesterday, and am getting more and more Euro traffic. The "guy wire radial The antenna is a Hy-Gain AV-18VS but I'll tell you right now, do not blow $89 on it, go to Texas Towers and buy four 6-foot lengths of tubing, it's perfectly sized to telescope. Slit and hose-clamp the ends, and bolt it to a chunk of PVC or something. It'll cost you about $50 or so and will be better constructed than this. And Gnomad, I feel your pain up there in KL7 land, but I will encourage you by stating that I do hear Alaskans every day almost on 20m down here in Arkansas. Get some wire up there before it's too cold to throw ropes in trees!
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# ¿ Oct 9, 2008 17:12 |
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Protip: Gardeners use chunks of pantyhose to affix plants to non-organic structures. You can secure the wires with strips, get an old ripped pair from the lady and go nuts. It will stretch and let the tree grow. As far as lightning protection, I have a patented plan which I have dubbed "Dear God, It'd Better Strike the 60 foot Oak Tree" plan. I have a 400 foot FM broadcast antenna less than 1/4 mile away from me down here in the valley, so I am banking on lightning hitting hilltops nearby or the tower first. In all actuality, though, I disconnect my antennas when I'm not operating and hang the cables outside. The ends of my feedlines hang in free air, about six feet from anything, in this mode. Since I run exclusively verticals at this time, I am careful to unhook as static and lightning can show up with no warning.
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2008 20:13 |
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Par End feds are not dipoles. These are end fed half wave antennas. Instead of feeding at the current max, you feed at the voltage max (the end). Current max is in the middle still, and these antennas can and will use the coax feedline as the counterpoise. A simple analogy would be that your antenna is a lever, and the counterpoise is the fulcrum of that lever. If you use a pry bar to work something loose, you need something good to apply the force against. If there isn't anything solid there, you can still move things, but it will be less efficient and your lever (the antenna) will find whatever natural fulcrum it can find (counterpoise or if that is not present, your coax) to work against. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Oct 14, 2008 |
# ¿ Oct 14, 2008 21:11 |
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I got a 75m full sized dipole up finally about 30 feet above ground and in the clear, not hung up over trees or anything. Pain in the rear end to put up, but completely worth it. I used 14ga aluminum fence wire and stainless hardware in between it and the coax. LOTS of tension on the wire, but it is plenty strong, and I trimmed it a little high so as it stretches, it should go dead on where I want it (centered around 3650). I've decided that about $1000 of my tax credit next year (I bought a house) is going towards a 40 foot tower. Hopefully, anyways. That should pay for the tower and shipping, then I just need to get the foundation and buy a buttload of coax. Bad news: I have RF ground issues when the laptop is hooked up. I think I may need to get a couple of transformers and optoisolators for my PSK31 interface.
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# ¿ Nov 2, 2008 23:37 |
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Gnomad posted:What kind of power are you running? One of the great wonders of PSK is the low power capabilites of that mode. The full travel, from like 0.5 watt when i can get through, all the way up to the most this old Icom can spit before I hit ALC, which tends to be right around 90 watts with PSK. The situation remains the same no matter what power level I use.
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# ¿ Nov 8, 2008 06:08 |
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I finally got enough wire up high enough that 75m ragchew is somewhat doable... Last night, landed my first checkin with the Hi Fivers on 3908, very nice group of fellas who welcomed me with open arms (mics?). I was pushing good signal all across the midwest with no real nulls, which is exactly what I wanted this low dipole to do.
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# ¿ Nov 10, 2008 23:28 |
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Sniep posted:Well, I don't have my license yet, but I did finish reading this thread! I've been interested in amateur radio for a couple of months now - just recently found this thread and have been reading it. Study a bit and take the Extra if you pass Tech and General (note that you'll have to wait till they grade your Tech test to take the General, and grade the General before you take Extra). You don't pay any more money, and you will be the hit of the test session if you go zero to Extra in one sitting. It's worth a shot! Plus, then, you don't have to sit there with the band chart saying "can I talk to this dude?"
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# ¿ Nov 13, 2008 16:37 |
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Nah, that radio's likely program-only - not many handhelds can be _operated_ via computer, just programmed. It kind of sucks (though I can control my 396, it is neat but completely redundant) Packet/APRS can be decoded with a very simple mono 1/8" cable from the earphone jack to your sound card line in, and a package like AGW Packet Engine (warning, programmed by idiots). Two-way with push to talk is a little more complex, but still less than $20 in parts from rat shack.
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# ¿ Nov 16, 2008 19:11 |
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Great! I worked W1AW yesterday on 20 meters. Took me about 10 minutes and 15-20 tries to bust the pileup. Not bad for barefoot and only a 1/4 wave vertical.
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# ¿ Dec 26, 2008 15:19 |
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Gnomad posted:Good news-I finally got around to connecting wires to various orfices in my pawn shop DX70 and powered up-heard some activity on 20 meters! That's pretty awesome for Alaska. Don't get disheartened. What time of day were you listening? Just keep improving your antenna. Since you are so far north, having a low angle of radiation will be critical in getting anything. My suggestion would be to get a vertical antenna up. For that, you need two things: 1: 17 feet of metal sticking up in the air - this can be aluminum tubing, speaker wire hanging from a tree, whatever you can manage, and 2: a ground for the antenna to 'work' against. If you have a tree or something you can hang wire from, try this. For a quick-and-dirty 20m vertical that will get you started, collect your materials first: 4 pieces of wire approximately 17 feet in length Coax cable to radio with one end having a connector to match your radio - since you are just receiving, don't worry about impedance TOO much. TV coax will work OK but I recommend something 50 ohms impedance. A local CB or "land mobile" shop should be able to sell you some RG-58, which is plenty good enough for 20 meters as long as it's shorter than 100 feet or so. 1: Cut and strip the last 2-3 inches off the coax and separate the braid on the end, then twist it back up to form a wire lead sticking out the side. Then strip an inch or two off the center conductor. 2: Take one length of wire and splice/solder it to the center conductor you just stripped. Tape it up with electrical tape to prevent corrosion. 3: Take the other three lengths of wire and splice/solder all three to the braid you separated off. Again, tape this up well all the way to the coax - copper braid sucks up water as well as it conducts electricity! 4: Throw a rope over a tree limb 20+ feet up and use the rope to pull the center conductor wire up to the tree. Keep it straight and vertical. Only pull it up high enough to pull the coax/wire splice up in the air a couple of inches. 5: Take the other three wires and just stretch them out on the ground about 120 degrees apart. 6: Plug the other end of the coax into your radio and see what you get. Best time for 20m is daytime, starting about 10, 11am here. Don't worry about signal levels - S-meter readings are largely dickwaving. The IMPORTANT spec is the signal to noise ratio. If you can hear 'em well, that's all that matters. I talk on 20 all the time to hams whose signals don't even make the S-meter move. My noise levels on 20 are low enough that it's not a problem.
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2009 06:14 |
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Sort of back, mainly listening. I took several months to a year off. Looks like the MUF is starting to climb. 20 stays open a fair bit later than it did same time last year.
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# ¿ Feb 19, 2010 05:03 |
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I just wanted to pop in and say hi, I had a bit of presence earlier in the thread. Radio is taking a back seat this year. We're getting married (at our house) in September and I have agreed to take all the antennas down until late fall. It's kind of pretty, actually. The flip side of the bargain, however, is that after the wedding, I can go hog wild. Current plan is 35 foot masts on each of the four corners of the yard. Should be interesting. I'll be watching for the new Uniden stuff coming out soon - my 396 is getting long in the tooth, though it still works swimmingly.
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# ¿ May 18, 2010 16:30 |
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Yeah, the front end of that radio is BLOWING UP due to RF overload. That's one of the downsides to these wide-coverage reciever radios - they have to have wide coverage, so they can't use the old selective filters. Go ask any older ham what they think of the Radio Shack HTX-202 HT and they will universally say "it's one of the best most bulletproof radios ever made". Radio Shack. $199 handheld. Why? They DIDN'T add the 138-174 wide FM reception capability, letting them use a rock-solid filter that only lets 144-148 through, as a result the HTX-202 will camp happily in an area that brings any icom or yaesu to its intermod-filled knees.
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2010 16:33 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:05 |
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I went to go help some friends clean up some rural Ozark hilltops and in an old refrigerator on a mountaintop I found a Radio Shack Pro-94 scanner. No lie. It looked like it had been there less than a year; I stripped it, cleaned it out (the only corrosion was LOTS of rust around the LCD) and it works perfectly. LOL. Landowner said I could have it as payment for helping clean up.
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# ¿ Jun 17, 2010 15:43 |