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is an arrestor and ground rod at the feed point only good enough or should there be another at the entry point to the house? also, is grounding my shack equipment into the ac ground more or less good enough? this book has a very frightening diagram that shows lightning voltages passing through my radio in the instance that I have ground rods on both sides of the house that aren't bonded directly to each other in a perimeter ground, which I doubt my house has though I have no real idea how to determine that.
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Oct 27, 2022 19:26
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Eagle scout answer is yes, all of the ground systems should be bonded because you'll get voltage differentials on a strike. If you want to tier up, yeah, one rod/arrestor at the coax transition, another one where it goes to the house, and bond it to the panel (not the third wire on the nearest outlet!!!! !!!! !) and you're in pretty good shape. This is also somewhat region-specific. If i lived in, say, Florida, which is basically one continuous 24/7/365 lightning storm, i'd ground the living piss out of everything. Here in Denver, we get maybe like two or three strikes a year so I do not worry too much about actual lightning - but we do get a lot of really dry weather and I've had situations where my antenna tuner capacitor inside the shack was arcing just due to dry wind building static charge on the antenna, so i've got a moderately well done setup. Everything passes through my feedthrough panel which is 1/8" steel plate  and that's bonded to the house (the siding is all metal) and that is bonded to a 6' stake that i sunk. the siding is also grounded at every corner by a rod that the builders installed Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 27, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 19:28
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that makes sense for the lightning protection but does that also mean I can't ground the radio chassis ground studs to the 3rd wire?
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Oct 27, 2022 19:37
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Jonny 290 posted:an excellent question! thanks for this Jonny… I’m reading up so I can better understand it, but wanted to chime in that I appreciate the effort
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Oct 27, 2022 21:06
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lol at the idea of sinking a stake 8 feet into the ground here
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Oct 27, 2022 22:42
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andrew smash posted:that makes sense for the lightning protection but does that also mean I can't ground the radio chassis ground studs to the 3rd wire? You can but it's not strictly necessary. The negative line of the PSU's DC will go straight to the rig chassis, and the PSU will tie that to ground. Over-grounding shack gear to get rid of RFI problems is duct tape on a gunshot wound. What you want to do in that situation is install a 1:1 or 'line isolator' at the shack entrance. However if you have a good 1:1 or isolator at the feedpoint, this is rarely necessary. Achmed Jones posted:lol at the idea of sinking a stake 8 feet into the ground here rent, dont buy https://www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Makita-Roto-Hammer-2-HR5210C/316821949 A local specialized tool rental shop will have it cheaper but you just grab this (make sure it comes with a driver bit for the diameter ground rod you want to install), start out on a short ladder, and it'll just sink into the ground like a hot knife through butter. Obviously 611 or whatever call before you dig, but these make it really easy and will do it in any terrain that's not just pure granite 3 feet down Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 27, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 22:46
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whoa whoa whoa use TOOLS what do I look like, some kinda non-idiot? i think ill just keep bangin on the rod with a brick tyvm (realtalk, duh of course, thanks!)
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Oct 27, 2022 22:49
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Jonny 290 posted:You can but it's not strictly necessary. The negative line of the PSU's DC will go straight to the rig chassis, and the PSU will tie that to ground. Over-grounding shack gear to get rid of RFI problems is duct tape on a gunshot wound. What you want to do in that situation is install a 1:1 or 'line isolator' at the shack entrance. However if you have a good 1:1 or isolator at the feedpoint, this is rarely necessary. 
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Oct 27, 2022 22:52
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This is because 9 out of 10 you're going to hit limestone. But this law is not really geared towards the individual, it's really there because we had such lovely code ordinances which it was just easier to require anybody doing work to justify their work instead of actually documenting where poo poo is.
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Oct 28, 2022 04:29
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Humphreys posted:This is a really cool video of stuff I used to fantasize breaking into for 'hacker' reasons when i was a kid:
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Nov 12, 2022 17:21
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I saw that HB9BLA Wireless video where he used a MIDI console to control his transceiver. It made me think I could add MIDI to my IC7300 project, and perhaps disappoint too. Got a cheap DJ console and slapped some MIDI code together. Went surprisingly easy, except as a tone deaf rhythmless nerd I've never touched a MIDI. Thankfully MIDI is mostly reasonable to approach (7 bit signed integers tho lol) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcy9crqP1gU Proof of concept has the MIDI events hooked up in C++. Next is to add bindings to the Javascript API. Intent is users can write Javascript to make their own mappings, run macros, etc, and support different consoles, without having to recompile.
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Nov 22, 2022 16:44
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estate sale came in!  the v8000 is mine, 2100 is going to a yosham They turn on fine and make noise; a cleanup and quick checkout on the meters and they should be in prime fighting trim. I've always wanted a v8000 and one of them went for like $350 on ebay last week, lol (i got both of these for $200)
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Dec 3, 2022 00:28
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hopefully in far cry 7 there’s a dlc called jonny’s house and it’s an underground bunker and you can go down there and communicate with mfs across the globe
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Dec 3, 2022 01:21
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my ic-735 and my antenna are kickin rear end. i don't even really want an ic-7300 any more, now i'm thinking about all sorts of other things (mostly where to put antennas). depending on what kind of time i get to myself on Sunday i might try the all-frequency-transmit mod; if not i'll probably do it in a couple weeks when little and ms jones are out of town still haven't made a contact on HF though. jonny's been helpin me a lot. thanks man!
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Dec 3, 2022 03:47
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Achmed Jones posted:my ic-735 and my antenna are kickin rear end. i don't even really want an ic-7300 any more, now i'm thinking about all sorts of other things (mostly where to put antennas). depending on what kind of time i get to myself on Sunday i might try the all-frequency-transmit mod; if not i'll probably do it in a couple weeks when little and ms jones are out of town wow, it even have CI-V. edit: wow you can even use digi modes lol https://k7mem.com/IC735_Digital_Modes.html
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Dec 3, 2022 08:30
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i'll just quote my own review from 2015. I bought mine in 2002, right after my first real gf broke up with me. i got the better deal. i put nice amber LEDs in mine a couple years back.quote:My 735 is an extension of my ham radio body. I know its every quirk (it's between 36 and 44 hz low depending on temp), I've probed its innards (fix that antenna jack!), I've racked up multipliers on contests on it, used it as a camping radio, used it as a stepstool, bashed out 75 watts of PSK31 all Saturday afternoon long, left it turned on AM broadcast hooked to a non-grounded long wire for six months at a time, thrown it in a box, taken it out a year later, and it always turns on and works perfectly the first time.  37 years old.
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Dec 3, 2022 09:13
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l didnt actually do any radio tx or rx today, but i snipped the diodes and moved a jumper so now i can tx on all my rx frequencies and ci-v will be 9600 baud
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Dec 5, 2022 03:41
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Jonny 290 posted:estate sale came in! Update! So the V8000 has no tx. at all. zero RF output and the current drawn actually goes _down_ when I hit tx. Possibilities: Most likely: Dead pre-driver transistor - puts a few watts into the final. Seems like it's a common failure as it has zero heatsinking. The part is a 2SK3075. There's plenty of room in the chassis so i'll glue a little heatsink on top of the replacement to try to help it along. Less likely: Dead final. Usually you see a watt or two when this is smoked. I ordered one anyways. Part is RD70HVF1 RF Parts wanted too much for shipping so I ordered both from the Shenzhen Express. Two of the pre-drivers and one final ran me about 35 bucks. In 2-3 weeks i'll stream the attempted fix. And the IC-2100 seems to be in pretty good shape except for the tuning knob, which occasionally skips a detent or two (as in, doesn't change the freq - it still clicks). This i've dealt with before and is totally fixable with a shot of deoxit and then air through the encoder. I'll be adding star washers under all the PCB screws to improve the grounding situation as well, and putting a little heatsink on one particular chip that is known to fail, so that the next owner has a reliable rig. --- My guess is that the previous owner had the v8000, it died, he bought the 2100 to replace it, then he died. It's always sad to spend $233 after tax and shipping for two ham rigs, neither of which works right....but it's great when you file an Item Not As Described claim on ebay and they just say "gently caress it" and refund you. Which is what happened. FREE RADIOS! and a fun project. This is your regular reminder that your butt is covered when buying anything as Used on ebay, because if it is not FULLY functional you can get a full refund. You may have to return it, they may just write it off. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Dec 6, 2022 |
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Dec 6, 2022 02:25
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Montana PBS had a pretty good amateur radio documentary come out recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gc3mewa9gE
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Dec 6, 2022 02:49
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oh nice! thanks for posting
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Dec 6, 2022 02:50
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i got a little rtl-sdr as an early christmas present and it's been fun so far to tune in to the local air traffic control and stuff. it came with a telescopic dipole antenna that's 1m each side (is that a 1m or a 2m antenna?) and a quite thin cable about 3m long. a lot of stuff is pretty fuzzy but i've no idea if that's because my gear is bad, i'm bad, the weather is bad, or what. there are also a lot of frequencies where i can see there's a signal at like -50dB and when i tune to it all the static vanishes but i can't hear anything else. and lots more where i hear beeps and boops any pointers on how i can hear things better, decode beeps and boops, and generally get good? i'm in norway and have space to put up bits of metal in the garden but probably quite a long cable run from there back to the computer
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Dec 19, 2022 21:31
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the spikes are unwanted a/d conversions, probably. not really there, or an image of another freq how to set an rtl sdr gain properly: turn off that fuckin automatic gain control, its awful start with gain at 0 raise it up until the 'center spike' starts to appear. this is some divide by zero thing where the a/d converter is faking poo poo at 0hz back it off a little bit you now have the gain optimally set and will get fewer images and false signals. --- as for the dipole, that's a 2m dipole but fully extended would be a half wave around 4m (low end of the FM broadcast band). 300/f in mhz is the metric wavelength formula but since you want each side to be 1/4 wavelength for 1/2 total, use 150/mhz for your total dipole length. i.e. say you want to listen around 450 mhz, 150 / 450 = 0.333... so make each side about 16-17cm long and you're tuned up 10% leeway either way is fine. you aint gotta break out the calipers for it
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Dec 19, 2022 21:57
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thanks for the antenna stuff, i was doing the maths all wrong and things sound a lot better now. i turned off the automatic gain and tried setting it as you suggested but the centre spike always seems to stay around the same level and just the floor changes, maybe there is some gain control i'm not seeing i've not had a lot of success so far finding interesting stuff to listen to other than commercial radio and air traffic. even in ranges that seem to be assigned to amateur voice, i'm mainly picking up strange fax machine and modem noises. is it typical that most communications in the frequency range i can pick up with this antenna are going to be data?
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Dec 20, 2022 02:02
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thats prrrrobably overload from really strong nearby land mobile (cops, fire, taxis, etc). also, i explained poorly - the spike will always be there, but you should indeed be bringing the gain up to raise the noise floor to get as close to that spike as possible. I'll dig my sdr stick out tonight or tomorrow and make a vid maybe
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Dec 20, 2022 02:08
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ah right. i'm visiting my folks at the moment, maybe things will look better when i'm back home and a little further away from a city. i appreciate the help with my extremely guy who just got an sdr and has no idea questions!
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Dec 20, 2022 02:20
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ive had the same sdr (same kit, even) for years and didn't know how to properly set the gain until this moment. keep asking your "dumb" questions, it's helping me out if nothing else! on that note, i think it's time for me to report what i've been up to lately to the thread. i've been having a great time with ft8, i can't recommend the xggcomms digimode 4 highly enough. it's working great. wsjtx is a breeze to set up; i've had a bit more problems with stuff like fldigi but that's largely because nobody ever expects you to be using a mac i haven't had any luck with sstv yet, but i've only tried once or twice i've loaded up my gutters. they didn't work all that well, but it was fun. i tried my hand with a terrible quarterwave vertical made out of a fishing pole, a telescoping skylight cleaning rod, a 2x4, 17 feet of wire, and some duct tape but it worked way worse than i thought it would. i'll need to try again i made a choke and a 1:1 balun and a 9:1 unun; it's not clear if i did the balun and unun correctly or if i made a mistake. i bought a fancy antenna with a bonus i got; it's a coil + longwire type, a spike with an 18' whip. it works pretty well. here are some people that could hear me the other day. i dont remember if this was on 15m or 20m though. 
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Dec 24, 2022 02:27
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hey what causes the distinctive khkhkhkhk bloop when keying a handheld radio
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Dec 26, 2022 21:05
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the krrrrrsh is a 'squelch tail'. the radio's squelch stays open for a fraction of a second before it realizes there's no more signal the bloop is known as a 'roger beep' and is a tone generated by the radio. and you will be run up a flagpole if you have it enabled on a ham radio, but all other types of radios use em
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Dec 26, 2022 21:21
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i thought a roger beep was what happened when hbag said okay to their dad
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Dec 26, 2022 22:09
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heads up there's a HAARP asteroid experiment tomorrow: https://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-operators-invited-to-participate-in-asteroid-bounce-experimentquote:he High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) will be conducting a research campaign/experiment on December 27, 2022, with transmissions between 1100 - 2300 UTC (0200 - 1400 AKST). there's a bit more detail on the science objective at the uni site: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/news/haarp-bounce-signal-asteroid-nasa-experiment
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Dec 27, 2022 04:47
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"asteroid"
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Dec 27, 2022 04:48
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Dec 27, 2022 04:54
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we did a stream session a couple years back where an artist got permission to blast out slow-scan tv via HAARP and it owned
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Dec 27, 2022 05:06
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got me a ham rig. sniped an auction nicely icom ic-208h dual bander. i had one of these a while back and theyre great  the faceplate is removable and TINY which is why i wanted this  tiny faceplate for TINY CAR the miata has this sirius/xm antenna that i will never, ever use  and it just so looks like the hole in the trunk will be perfect for an NMO mount  i'll get a little shorty Diamond dual bander, install the rig in the trunk, run good power back there, faceplate/mic/speaker up front and we'll be good to go.
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Jan 21, 2023 20:52
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I've been playing with radio poo poo for a long time but never posted it in the 'pos. Roughly a year ago I set up a bunch of RTL-SDRs to be a full time scanner for the trunked radio systems of my county and a few surrounding counties. Fortunately they haven't gone encrypted (mostly) as has been the trend. I'm no fan of the cops so its nice to be able to more or less openly listen to what they're up to, though I spend most of my time listening to the fire dept.   Four SDRs plugged into a mini PC outside in a cabinet where the antennas are to reduce the coax run. Combined with a brilliant piece of software called SDR Trunk (https://github.com/DSheirer/sdrtrunk) I can receive all the traffic on the local trunked systems.  It has been pulling just about 100% of every single transmission over these systems for about a year now. 
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Jan 22, 2023 06:03
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mayhem on the hackrf portpack+= crew re%
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Jan 26, 2023 18:19
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Michaeldim posted:I've been playing with radio poo poo for a long time but never posted it in the 'pos. post stream
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Jan 26, 2023 18:22
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Miata Incorporates Amateur Transciever Always    Took about 3 weeks to find and win an IC-208h (was going to be either that or an ID-4100a, both have the smallest control heads you can get) but i got a minty one with paperwork and original screws etc. Antenna is mounted in the hole previously inhabited by the lovely XM sharkfin that i'll never, ever use. Near perfect fit for an NMO 8 gauge oxygen free copper all the way back from the battery. So uh if i ever want to put like 1000w of subs in this im good too.
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Feb 8, 2023 00:31
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nice thread Jonny thanks 👍🏻
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Mar 6, 2023 12:04
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my dad and I used to mess around on CB bands with his Kenwood, but shortly after that the BBS scene came online and we went that direction instead recently I've been reading the Hardy Boys to my 5 year old and he's fascinated by their wireless, so I thought about getting back into it as if I had something like this as a kid I would have never left my room https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qsap5r1OXs I plan on starting with a handheld and getting my license, I think it would be a cool move to contact local hams and clubs only once I have my callsign but in the meantime I thought I'd ask you guys about antenna options - my ground station will certainly make use of an SDR so antennae will be my big concern, I live in the city but have a lot of land and mature trees, I could easily run wires for dipoles or put up a flagpole  is there a cheap and easy way I can get us started and being able to contact a) an active part of the spectrum b) with as much range as possible? like I don't think I could do 80m but 40m might be possible and 20m be easily doable, although a vertical wire dipole will have a much higher WAF/NAF than some big fan job, but I don't have a clue where active hams are hanging out these days
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Mar 6, 2023 15:51
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