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Every time I read this thread I smith out and get wistful again. My 20m vertical's still up. Think I'm gonna spin down the band some this afternoon. How are sunspots? Last time I fired up the HF station we were JUST coming off the bottom and 20m was stretching out for a few minutes in the evening. Topical: I'm teaching myself old school radio/telco style cable lacing, and I"m going to redo my studio. I have over 130 patch cords in my audio rack, and about 20-30 cables on the ham desk. Gonna be a big project but well worth the payoff. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jun 26, 2010 |
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Jun 26, 2010 19:06
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Hey, I've been stuck in the 75 meter Klan rally for the past three years, 15 sunspots is more than zero.
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Jun 27, 2010 21:13
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Start looking into the relative power needed for SSB versus PSK31 or JT65. They're incredibly efficient and those piles of FT-817's start to make sense when you realize that you can get around the continent reliably on 5 watts of PSK31. Also, having a PSK31 interface means you're already rigged up to receive weather fax and other cool digital stuff on the HF bands.
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Jun 28, 2010 17:41
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Dammit. I miss field day EVERY YEAR. Last time I went was when I was like 18. Measured in decades now. Gonna have to set a g-cal item for next year's.
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Jun 30, 2010 14:54
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that's dumb horseshit, you 'can connect to the internet' with any laptop with a sound card hooked up to a ham radio, are they going to ban laptops with sound cards
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Jul 1, 2010 15:18
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Checking in to the thread, still temporarily QRT and just waiting for the wedding. After sept. 18th I have been given FULL LICENSE to put whatever wire/antennas I want up. I just gotta keep the yard pretty for the wedding weekend. Current plan is 4x35 foot pressure treated masts, one at each corner of the back yard, for a horizontal loop. I won't be able to get much more height than that, but I think that will be a pretty good shadetree setup for HF considering I only want to goof with digital pretty much. Plus I'll have three verticals - one elevated, switchable for 15/10m one elevated, switchable for 17/20m one ground mount with buried radials, switchable for 30/40m Basically I'm just going to set up each antenna with a remote powered relay at the base of each one that switches a simple coil in and out of line. They'll be tuned up to be 1/4 wave at the higher band "naturally", then I will flip the relay on and adjust the coil so they resonate at the lower band. It's not perfect, but it'll do. Keep the hobby alive for a few more months till I can get back into it, eh?
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Jul 29, 2010 14:12
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Been a year. Radios are dusty, but still work. How's the sunspot cycle? 20 meters worth a poo poo in the evening yet? Still dreaming of the day it'll be worth it to put a 10M rig in the car. Ready to give the HF thing one more shot. Hopefully I can dodge the racists; perhaps if I stick to PSK. Funny, I stray from the ham game a lot, but every time I run out of fun money I come back to my shack. It's been a great long-term investment, entertainment wise.
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Apr 26, 2011 16:19
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If it were me, step 1 would be to find a big-rear end roll of magnet wire. That enabled more antenna projects than anything else when I was younger. You can ninja that poo poo up to treetops if you use a slingshot and monofilament, and it'll at least last till the first strong wind. Popular options are also mobile whips stuck out windows, loading up your gutters, and loading up your wire bedprings. If it's big and metal, and not grounded, it's an antenna waiting to happen.
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Apr 26, 2011 23:47
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Hah! I made a hamfest visit this morning too. Got a nice nice comet dualbander, a classic Hustler 2m 5/8 wave with mag mount, and a couple of CB's (shh) for pocket change.
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Jun 5, 2011 04:34
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Sniep posted:Well, you'd likely want a scanner for this, not a ham radio per-se.. The FT-60r does not handle trunking (I own one) and I don't think many do (if any?) It's pretty easy: 290's Scanner Shopping Guide: Look on radioreference if you need P25. If true, buy Bearcat 396 or 996. If false, buy Bearcat 346 or BCT15. For lack of a better term there are 'old world' and 'new world' Unidens. The old ones have 20 banks of 50 channels each blah blah, all that crap is fixed and alpha tags are an afterthought. The new style doesn't stick with banks/channels as much; you program a system and as many channels as it has; that 'bank' then only has that number of channels. The old style is clunky and crap; the new style is smooth, fast and makes more sense from a design standpoint to Computer Guys. If you just want a radio on in the background that hits the local PD and fire depts, I guess one of the old style ones would work. Be aware that the cheapie $100 Unidens, even though they do 800, will probably not play nicely with trunked systems; you'll have to kind of kludge it and program all the trunked systems' channels, then change which one is locked out whenever the data channel changes (usually midnight). I really can't recommend Uniden's newer scanners enough; they are built well and work great. My 396t turns 5 in November, and it works exactly like it did on day one, and I've dropped it on pavement, left it sit in a 130F car for a weekend, etc etc. Only thing to watch are the rotary encoders, which seem to crap out after 2-3 years from what I hear - mine's still fine. e: Dijkstra very nice post, I wasn't aware p25 phaseii was rolled out yet. CMON UNIDEN Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Sep 11, 2011 |
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Sep 11, 2011 08:25
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Ho lee poo poo, Jose. That is beautiful. Great find. I cut my teeth on a borrowed 101 for a while back in the day. Now I want to get wire up so we can try to finally have a qso  my 80/40 dipole took a dive in ice and I haven't put it back up yet.
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Sep 22, 2011 07:52
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Jose Pointero posted:
The left leg is fine. Honestly I would be concerend about the other half folded back kind of on itself like that - you can get some signal cancellation if you do that too much. But experiment and see! I would suggest running this as a random wire, though, with the left leg as your 'hot' and making 1/4 wave counterpoises that go down and then alongside the house foundation (for the longer ones), and feeding it all through a balun. Your currents are going to be unbalanced in the dipole version anyways due to its wacky shape, and you will arguably get more field strength by having counterpoises going down and away than having a counterpoise (that other dipole leg) that doubles back like that. Of course, you could always see if they used aluminum edging on the edge of your roof, and fly a wire out to a tree and work it against the edging's ground plane. It may work better than you think.
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Sep 27, 2011 12:23
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Vir posted:I'll be moving the dipole depending on which direction I'm trying to reach. This'll last about a month, then you'll get sick of it. :P I thought the same thing when I got my little 18 foot Hy-gain vertical. "Oh I'll just run outside and change taps when I want to change bands." Even after installing a 4-way switch in a box at the coil, it was still an annoying pain. Relegated that pole to 20M duty at the top of a couple lengths of chainlink top rail. I haven't installed it yet, but I am building a box that uses two relays and a two-conductor control cable to give me three-band remote switching capability:  The relays will be powered off the same cable, using opposite polarity blocking diodes. No Volts: 30M Positive Volts: bottom relay trips, 20M Negative Volts: top relay trips, 15m (and yes when I am on, i'm on 30 a lot) I thought about a four-band setup using AC voltage as an option and a couple of caps in the box to keep both relays energized, but can't sort out the relay logic at this hour. One cool thing about HF is that you can generally sketch by using ordinary meant-for-120V relays up to a couple of hundred watts. RF relays chap my rear end and are slow. Ugh. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Oct 15, 2011 |
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Oct 15, 2011 12:54
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Sniep, your condobucket for the antenna is pro. We did one of those a few years ago, but instead stuck one of those old 19 foot Radio Shack push up masts in the wet concrete. We actually hung a little TV rotor and a 4 element 2M beam on the top; we put the bucket where we wanted it, marked its position, then ran 3 eyebolts into the deck and pushed the mast up, then ran guy ropes. It held through the tail end of several Carolina hurricanes - the guy ropes were key. I'm sure the 100 pounds of concrete didn't hurt either, of course.Partycat posted:Sounds neat. Neat side note, not really related but...in summer 2008 I laid 16 ground radials (8x 10meter, 4x 15 meter, 4x 20 meter) around an iron pipe I sunk in the back yard for that vertical I just talked about. I used medium gauge electric fence wire and made 6" U-shaped 'staples' out of lengths of the wire to push into the ground and hold it down every few feet. Well, that vertical doesn't live there any more, but I never removed the pipe or radials. I went out the other day on a lark and the radials are _completely_ one with the earth now. Most of the area they are under about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of soil. I bet it's a pretty fair ground for the higher HF bands now with all that bare buried wire. Pretty neat to see that over time. Also, watch that magnet wire - it's made of soft copper and in an antenna application will stretch over time. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Oct 17, 2011 |
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Oct 17, 2011 11:01
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Haha 6 pin mic plug! That was a dark era in ham rigs - after the 4 pin but before the 8's. Those KDK's are solid as they come. Unfortunately running older V/UHF gear is really hard on repeaters because ERRYBODY runs CTCSS* now, but for simplex they are great. I had a Kenwood TR-7800 for my first radio, roughly the same era. Also the same goblins with tone boards and the backup battery. I still miss it. If nothing else, that KDK would make for a splendid packet rig. *as a Motorola Solutions employee I would like to take this opportunity to remind you all that the terms "PL", "Private Line" and "PL tone" are registered trademarks of my company and that CTCSS is the proper way to refer to a non vendor specific subaudible tone system :P
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Oct 20, 2011 10:07
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I confess to using those little set screw PL259's now and then, especially when paired with lovely rat shack RG58 that would just melt to pieces if you actually tried to solder one on. They're okay if you carefully install them. They're so not weatherproof but you got it indoors, you'll be fine.
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Oct 21, 2011 08:48
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Catastrophe posted:Yep. I'm in Portland OR using a 5W FT-817ND with my "antenna" simply being a length of wire strung up about horizontally about 6ft off the ground (TERRIBLE antenna options here at this apartment). I've been able to hit Japan with RTTY, eastern Minnesota with PSK31 and New Hampshire with JT65, all with good signal responses. No telling what I'd be able to do with a decent antenna. And keep in mind, this is a 5W radio with the TX adjusted lower for a good signal that isn't overdriven, not max power. Maybe 2 or 3W of actual output. 30 meters is fun as hell and sounds right up your alley. Check it out. Still no radioin' here, saving for Christmas and the tree for one end of my 75m dipole came down this year so I have to figure that out. On the hilarious upside, I know this is not in any way shape or form certified but OH DEAR LORD DO I WANT ONE. This is the epitome of swiss army knife Asian shitphones. Throw in a prepaid SIM and this is pretty much the ultimate "hurricane coming and you can grab ONE electronic device" candidate. http://www.409shop.com/409shop_product.php?id=105986 
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Nov 10, 2011 11:59
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RIP AO-51.  Sucks! AO-51 was a great bird and I had several dozen QSOs on it. Time to break out the all-mode rigs and start humping VO-52 again...
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Nov 30, 2011 09:15
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Weird. So you're spitting audio CW, and converting it back into keying? Have you played around with keying via a serial port DTR line? That's how I've always done it. Neat approach, I wonder what the speed ceiling on that is though. Also your charger is cool! I too love putting things in tins. You mentioned Powerpoles, I strongly suggest them for everything DC! I use red/black for high current 12VDC, yellow/black for switched 12VDC (think relay control), white/black for 9VDC with the white pin rotated one way, blue/black for 5/6VDC with the blue pin rotated the other way.
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Dec 3, 2011 10:23
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josiahgould posted:My VFO dial isn't copper, it's plastic with little windows, so I'm guessing it's optical. I cleaned it as well as I could though, and it seems to be working decently at the moment. Next up is figuring out why it won't work without a plug stuck in the accessory port... And then wiring up a plug so I can hook it up to my computer for APRS. I bet you're going to love the FT-227R manual without any mods.dk BS then. Based on your description, I suspected and was correct that the accessory plug has a loop in it to pass the "audio out" on one accessory pin right back into the "audio in" accessory pin. Lots of HF radios do this with a receive antenna jack and plug - my 735 has RX OUT and RX IN and a short factory-installed jumper cable between the two. Based on the schematic, you want pin 1 for your audio out (to computer), pin 2 for audio in (from computer) and pin 3 for PTT. Pin 4 is your "speaker in" which is what pin 1 is jumpered to normally, if you connect this to pin 1 on your cable you'll be able to hear the packet radio audio coming in. --- I found a hot deal on Craigslist this week and got excited, then disappointed. Tower: 52 foot Hy-gain crank-up, with base ready to install. $300. *whips out checkbook* Concrete: 2.5 yards at $80/yard plus $100 delivery fee. *pauses, keeps writing* Permits and surveys: WELP *puts away checkbook with sad look on face* It's really hard to get a tower permit here. The city planner seemed very annoyed that I had taken her away from her Words with Friends round and had the audacity to ask for anything less than a $10k construction permit for a new apartment building. So, not much help from them at all. Fortunately I don't think they're giving a poo poo about my 30 foot chainlink top-rail masts, so I'll keep right on with that. Would have been really nice to get a tower, but honestly I want a guyed climb-up that I can hang satellite beams with az/el rotors off of, cranks and hinges are janky. Think I'll save the tower for the someday farm. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Dec 10, 2011 |
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Dec 10, 2011 10:52
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Hummer Driving Faggo posted:What would happen if someone were transmitting FM on an HF frequency? Would it sound strange or would it sound normal but just be a poor use of bandwidth? This sort of counts? Heh. I have a 10.7 MHz IF tap on one of my PCR-100's and my IC-735 will literally tune any mode any frequency, so I can hook a cable from the IF out to the IC-735's RX antenan in, tune the 100 to 93.3 MHz and tune the 735 to 10.7 MHz give or take a few, set it to FM and listen to classic rock hits from The Eagle. It sounds pretty good, actually.
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Jan 28, 2012 19:09
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Hey you, off page two. The Hilberling PT8000 is now type approved and in production. I have zero idea who the hell is going to buy this thing.  Crystal filters and barely any DSP. No spectrum scope or sweep, though it does have dual RX. For the privilege of using this ugly box with 1980's tech, you can expect to pay: quote:13290 euros = 17376.6750 US dollars I know the upmarket needs a new radio now and then, but this appears to be a terrible, terrible deal.
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Feb 1, 2012 12:52
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*sigh* verticals. I have a couple and have probably done a half-dozen over the years. The grounding/radial thing is almost a deal breaker. I got a hot deal on electric fence wire once, so I had radial wire out the wazoo, but it did take a long time to lay the radials. I can't say that I've ever been impressed with any ground mounted verticals I've done. However, I have never really gone the full nine yards and done a 120 radial setup or anything crazy like the OF's recommend. That being said, I really like my 20 meter vertical. It's a Hy Gain AV-18VS with the coil off; basically it's just seventeen feet of pipe at this point. I have it on a 22' mast, and have three guys holding it up. They're made of 1/8" steel cable and are 1/4 wave long. From the ends of those we have strong insulators, then guy ropes to the actual anchors. It works pretty well and this year I'm adding another chunk of fence rail to take it to 33' elevation, assuming that I can still get the radial angle right. I would absolutely try goofing with verts for the higher HF bands right now, though - sunspots are up, verticals have low angles of radiation, these two factors combine to deliver DX. Oh, and iostream.h posted:You can laugh, but I've always wanted one of those based strictly on how it looks. Like something out of my childhood in the '80's that I'd use to reach some Spielberg aliens or something. I am now at 20 years of lusting after an ic-781, even though I know it's not that good of a radio. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Feb 2, 2012 |
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Feb 2, 2012 09:38
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Why, oh why, do I have it in my head to build an ultrasonic communication device that uses a PSK31 audio carrier at like 30 KHz? Whatcha think? It's just phase reversals, right? I think that might be decodable over a speaker -> mic path. You could just diode mix it with an x-1 KHz carrier and get a nice 1000hz in and out, so you don't have to actually work with ultrasonic frequencies. poo poo, I didn't just invent a new way for kids to text each other in class, did i....
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Feb 4, 2012 11:49
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Yeah, that's basically what it would be. I may goof off with audio PSK, see if it works through air at least.
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Feb 6, 2012 10:15
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The Copper Cactus is legendary. Got one bouncing around the backyard myself. And yeah, tuning is rough if you don't have a VHF SWR meter. I got the little MFJ cross needle one and it seems to work well enough.
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Feb 8, 2012 09:57
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It's a lifelong goal for me to go open-water maritime mobile at least once. I'm very, very jealous.
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Feb 15, 2012 14:04
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Off center fed dipoles are the biggest pile of snake oil, I swear. Many of them just use the feedline as an additional radiator, which means all kinds of RF in the shack unless you run chokes or baluns. Insulated wire is fine but has slightly lower velocity factor so you will need to cut the antenna about 2-3% shorter. Don't worry too much about factoring this in till you do final tuning/trimming. Keep in mind that unless you get any sort of dipole or long wire at least 1/2 wavelength off the ground, you're going to be pretty much burning sky (have a high angle of radiation) - this will make most low dipoles roughly omnidirectional. So don't worry about directionality. --- I know you're kind of starting out, and don't want to lose you here, but I pulled off a great trick at my last rent house. I had a setup that was not dissimilar to your yard there. If I were to copy and paste my setup to your yard, here's what we'd have: --Put a bunch of ground radials down around where the base of the chimney, snaking along edge of house and concrete pad where needed. -Put up 40+30 meter inverted V antenna by throwing a rope up that tree you have the pulley on, use that to support the apex of the inverted V. Dual band is given just by cutting a 40m and 30m element for each side, and trimming to tune. Investigate "fan dipoles" to get the idea. This V would be parallel to that fence there, with the apex around 35 feet and the ends about 15-20. -Run RG-58 coax cable to the inverted V. String this coax perpendicular to the antenna and parallel to the ground, then straight down the chimney. At the bottom of the chimney, where the ground radials meet, I installed a switch:  What does this do? In one position, it passes the signal through to the dipole untouched. In the other position, it shorts the antenna hot and ground connectors together, disconnects the antenna ground from the radio ground, and connects the radio side coax ground to the radials. What was just a second ago a coax-fed balanced dipole for a high HF band is now an inverted-L long wire antenna for a low HF band! Not only that, but your inverted V is now acting as a capacitance hat, making your longwire more efficient. beware when investing too much in 75 meter setups, though. Listen to the band for a month and then decide if it's something you want to be associated with. I consider it one step up the foodchain from FreeRepublic, personally, and no longer waste my time trying to get 130 foot dipoles up just so I can get drowned out by retirees with 1500 watts and curtain arrays yelling about Nobama. 30 meters is by far the coolest band anyways. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Feb 18, 2012 |
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Feb 18, 2012 09:58
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eddiewalker posted:If orientation isn't as big a deal as the graybeards make it out to be, that opens up a lot more possibilities between my three tall, identically spaced old trees along the fence. I could just put up a simple fan dipole and be good to go, I think. Yeah skip all my mumbo jumbo about the radials, that was more of a blogpost than direct answers, sorry about that. A fan dipole above the fence on the trees will be great. 30 meters is great because it's digital only, a WARC band (so there's no power) and it's at the perfect spot in my opinion on the HF band - high enough frequencies that the antennas aren't HUGE, but low enough frequencies that you can get some really good propagation going. That being said, if you want to /talk/ to guys, 30m is obviously out. what i'm really getting at is, if you can only put up a 66 foot dipole for 40 meters and higher, don't weep, in my opinion you are not missing much 'fun' on 80. But a 40 dipole will let you listen enough on 80 meters to decide if you want to put up a proper antenna and try to make some contacts on there.
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Feb 19, 2012 07:25
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We got a new band! Well, WRC approved, anyways. http://www.eham.net/articles/27724 quote:At its Plenary meeting held 14 February 2012 in Geneva the World Radiocommunication Conference approved a new secondary frequency allocation to the Amateur Radio Service at 472 to 479 kHz. Having passed First and Second Readings it is normally a formality that this change be included in the WRC-12 Final Acts when the Conference concludes February 17th. The Table of Frequency Allocations would then be amended accordingly. I'm excited! 600 meters would be fun to mess with, those frequency ranges are low enough that DIY gear could be easy to build.
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Feb 21, 2012 11:05
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Yeah, I dabbled in 136 KHz a little bit a couple years ago. Unless you have a hundred acre farm and a few miles of copper, the antennas are just unworkable, heh. Fun to build gear for though, low frequencies are pretty forgiving. Very cool post, and yeah my first thought was to the surplus of old AM transmitters that can probably be retuned very easily. Thanks for the brand suggestions, now I got another eBay search feed to add....
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Mar 8, 2012 09:41
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Sniep posted:Or, have fun with it. Oh, man, I had to get a hamhat at the last hamfest. It's bright blue with my call and has a mesh back and has an embroidery rope thingy along the edge of the bill. Pure, unadulterated hamclass. ^5 callsign-from-another-zone buddy. 2x3 4-land call in 5-land confuses the hicks. "When'd ya move here?" "Bout 19 years ago" Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 09:18
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It's not a design decision, it's a technical limitation. Transistor gain goes down as the frequency goes up. It's called the 'gain-bandwidth product'. Also, in general it's harder to engineer a radio/circuit at a higher frequency than a low one. Go see the hoops that microwave hams have to go through to get a couple watts of RF at 10 GHz.
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Apr 7, 2012 04:46
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I've had my Icom 208H for about four years now and still love it. Dual bands, wide receive, PC programmable, remote head. It doesn't do dual receive but you can always run a scanner or HT on the side for an additional RX. CAT5 extensions work fine for the microphone. I've got the head mounted in the sunglass holder of my 325i, and the radio itself in the trunk. It's nice to have a three foot antenna cable.  Plus my battery is trunk mount, so wiring it was a very simple matter.
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Apr 14, 2012 12:25
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Sammus posted:I went out to the garage today to clear a space, and low and behold I stumbled upon some of my dad's old ham radio stuff. Could you guys tell me what I've got here? There might be more stashed in the garage that I need to look for. You got a bunch of vintage boatanchor poo poo that will work until the heat death of the universe, that's what you got. Super cool, i'm jealous. My antenna tuner is the only Kenwood thing I own, it's an AT-230. I think it was meant to be paired either with that generation or the one after. Please don't let some wheeler and dealer tell you "oh it's old, i'll give you $50 for the pile."
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Apr 25, 2012 10:12
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All of my radios are busted wide open. My 735 can transmit (albeit inefficiently and probably blowing up the output filters) anywhere between 0.1 and 30 MHz, and I actually have a Jurassic-era Alinco that receives unblocked 800 though nothing's been up there for ten years. It's up to you to do the right thing and not be a shithead with the powers you have.
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May 12, 2012 09:25
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I built a mobile 10 meter antenna yesterday! It's built out of a section of fiberglass tent pole, the whip+ferrule off an old 2 meter 5/8 wave, a 3/8"x24 bolt and a 1/2" NPT brass fitting. It will tune as low as 12 meters but right now I have it centered on 28.3-ish MHz. Heard a couple freebanders, no legit hams though. I hear 10's still on the way up, however.
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May 17, 2012 10:57
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AntennaGeek posted:I've been giving some serious thought to changing my callsign, now that I've upgraded from General, and I've been in 8-land for 12 years now, barely active at all. I've lived in Arkansas for eighteen years and still carry my original 2x3 4-land callsign. Now that you can just vanity up whatever callsign is available, I consider an old sequential call to be a mark of distinction.
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May 24, 2012 09:00
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Partycat posted:Tuners usually or near-half-wave (coil) elements. They radiate more vertically than horizontally I would imagine, but, they do work. Anything works. Half waves are good. It's just that end-fed half waves have stupid high impedance and are tricky to feed. IIRC .64 wavelength or so is the longest Marconi antenna you can run and keep your main lobe low, hence the popularity of 5/8 wave antennas - they've got a bit of gain like a half wave but have an easier feedpoint impedance to deal with. E: Most AM broadcasters shoot for a .64 wave antenna. Doing the math on this is fun. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 11:35 on May 30, 2012 |
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May 30, 2012 07:43
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Auto tuners are okay but they usually have a narrower matching range and are pricey. I still like my old manual tuner, it has never failed me once and has let me load up some stupid poo poo before; I was out camping at a site that had an old long barbed wire fence nearby, and I fed it via single wire with a counterpoise for ground, tuned it on 5 bands well enough to get contacts.
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Jun 1, 2012 08:39
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