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CQ CONTEST!

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Chad Scanning

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I’ve got a Cobra 148 GTL mobile setup, with a spare coax. Say I wanna buy an antenna to put on the side of my house and do a base station setup to get the most range I can possibly get. What kind of money am I looking at?

wow you guys are really going ham

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Epstein files proved it: antenna jews want you to waste your money on DXing. Don't give them your money to do it.

>>2974189
so... I'm not supposed to give my money to the "antennajooos", but I am supposed to give it to the "wirejoooos"? you don't make any sense,

>>2974214
You don't get scrap wire? I got thousands of feet just from cutting off cords from vacuums people are throwing away. And it's all free.

>>2974159
How would I find out if anyone in my area had ham radios that I could talk to without first buying a ham radios to listen in first?

>>2974280
Buy a cheap RTL-SDR and start listening in.

>>2974159
I read these threads and watch S2 underground and everything looks too complicated. What would I need, why would I need it, when would I use it?

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How long is the 'really long wire', is there a specific ratio to run from the cuck shack, or just as long as possible? Does the tree interfere with the signal?

>>2974280
See >>2974281 and https://haminfo.tetranz.com/map

Also look at repeater book and program put in the frequencies into memory on your sdr.

>>2974293
A long wire antenna is a really crappy antenna. It does the job, but it's terrible at it. Depending on the length, it'll be better at certain bands. Go with a half wave with the band you want to work the most. The long wire meme I fell for when I first started (all you need is 100 watts and a wire.) I couldn't get anything on 10-17 meters. 20m was a pain to get any contacts but I got them. It wasn't until 40m when I got some decent results. Got better results on 80m. 160m I did have minimal results with ft8, but they were terrible. I don't remember the length I had it.

That image is wrong on the unun. What you want on that one is a 49:1 since i. You go 9:1 if you have a counterpoise which makes it a random wire instead. Also, unless you have it up in the open, you're going to have an object interfering. Even then, things can interfere with it still like someone's charge controller for their solar panels on their house since almost all of them spit out dirty RF. You just do what you need to do to minimize it like, again, putting it out in the open.

what is cheaper to run a cb radio with without problems? (at home)
charger -> car battery -> radio
dedicated radio supply -> radio

>>2974215
so you are stingyjooo.

>>2974322
A dedicated power supply. Chargers are RF noisy. If you're running legal power CB, all you need is a 3 amp PS.

>>2974331
ok. as i understand, a linear power supply is best.

now i think this cb is txing 21w with ssb (president grant export, 120ch(3x40), roger beep version)
so, if i count correctly i'd need at least 2 amps on 13.8 volts which gives about 27 watts
would this work?

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>>2974322
This is standard.

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I know nothing about base stations for a CB.
I’ve got a spare coax, but when it comes to antennas, and dipoles and whatever- I have no clue what I’m doing. Like if I wanted to reach out as far as possible, would I be fine mounting a 102” whip in a tree or something?

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It's dangerously freezing outside. Stop starting fires and making people homeless just to make yourself feel relevant.

Got my first coms, some old uniden UHV handhelds.

Still not really sure how to use them. Push to talk is easy enough and I can set the Channels on the general use bands without much issue. It's squelch just to dial out interference?

These things can do far more then I expected, so I'm not really sure what to do with all these extra features.

i finally managed to receive some 1200 baud POCSAG here in France. with my trusty QuanChang uv k5.

anyone knows more about this shit?

for example:
there is a message which repeats every minute between 35 seconds to about 45 seconds of the minute.
"TONE ONLY" and its in the numeric type.

then you have a few messages around the minute 56 seconds or 02 that said 946 but these came about only 4 times and they use the alphabetic mode (alpha)

assuming i'm decoding them correctly it seems like no one is even using this shit so the "TONE ONLY" is like a heartbeat.

nonetheless the IJV firmware includes a BYP (bypass mode) which outputs discriminator type audio (disables de-emphasis so decoders can interpret the messages correctly) and the messages seem to be captured.

since the "TONE ONLY" message sounds the same all the time (same length and as far as i can tell, same thing) and that it comes in at around the same time. i suspect no one is using this anymore.

anyway i'm glad that i can finally decode some digital stuff with this radio.
firmware version: IJV MOD 3.60

>>2974483
cont:

i think the problem is i was monitoring only one frequency.
there are 6 and they don't behave the same it seems.

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>>2974387
this is standard

>>2974415
If you’re excited now, wait till you find the “on” switch after putting in batteries!

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>>2974498
How?

>>2974508
me know how... me want chance.

so, should i just build a collinear coax antenna?
it has fat omni-directional gain and is cheap for a poorfag like me.

the antenna jew wants me to pay probably 300 when i can make it for 15
whats the catch?

btw. put this in the sticky

>https://www.eznec.com/
>FREE - EZNEC Pro+ v. 7.0 is now available! - FREE

https://youtu.be/oIv9oW2KK6A

>>2974557
Labor: building, testing, and tuning. Also, owning the equipment to build and test.

>>2974634
of course.
i still have to get an swr meter and an antenna tuner, other than that i have almost everything.

anyways, why is this "coco" coax collinear antenna not shilled more?
apparently many repeaters use more advanced variations of the collinear antenna (folded dipoles etc) because of strong horizontal omni-directional gain.
it seems like a no-brainer no?

So all these guys on CB that’s coming in from halfway to across the other side of the US- do they all have like really expensive base station setups or something?
I’ve got a 102 whip with a Cobra mobile setup, and nobody can hear me clearly,

>>2974697
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daKDu6FT2Xs

>>2974697
They run 10 meter amps into beams. Either 100 watts or a low thousands of watts. This is not allowed by the Part 95 rules but nobody is coming for the keydown crowd.

>>2974697
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb-Q_1izYQE

>>2974697
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOIjPLl7e0w

>>2974697
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYfhckRikfQ

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I thought the conditions for FM DXing seemed decent enough today but the real test is being failed. Only a faint trace of this station from 137KM away.

>>2974738
Neat. I've experienced meteor scatter in the FM band but no enhanced condx.

>>2974742
I wanted to get set up to do long term lossy compressed recordings of empty FM frequencies to look for meteor scatter. I saw a guy on YouTube doing it with Cool Edit or something and I figured it could be way more efficient with a SDR and compression. Combing through in an audio editor like he did would be just as easy with 96k opus files or whatever. Trying to actually ID anything would be insanely difficult though. It's hard enough during Sporadic E when I can get extended recordings of stations from stations in China, Thailand, Vietnam etc.

>>2974701
>They run 10 meter amps into beams
What are beams? So if I grab a little 100w amp, how far would that put me out with say a whip?

>>2974649
It's a lot of work stripping and soldering all that. You need to waterproof all of it to, because water ingress will cause all sorts of swr problems.

Here's an example/build instructions:
https://k5frc.org/training/coliner%20antenna.pdf

I came across one at a garage sale once, but didn't buy it. The guy must have spent a week on it, but it was well made.

Has anyone actually tested the frequency range on which you can transmit on the quansheng radios? I know they're designed for 2 meters and 70 centimeters and people say if you go too far outside those the transmit power drops to unusable levels but has anyone actually tested? FRS/GMRS, MURS, Business band, Marine VHF?

>>2975016
I’ve seen a YouTube video on the topic before. A quick search brings up a video by Ben M7FRS, but I don’t know if that’s the one I saw.

>>2975016
>>2975032
Power drops aren't really what you should be worried about as much as spurious transmissions on other frequencies while you are doing it. Be careful.

a transmitter is just a giant flashlight
a receiver is just a giant camera sensor

>>2975082
Oh yeah, you’d definitely want to add a filter to that, considering you’d probably need an amplifier anyhow. But it’s odd, the chip itself is fully capable of transmitting at a wide range of frequencies, so the only source of those harmonics is the amplifier. I guess wide-band RF amplifiers are hard to make? I wonder if any (cheap) handheld radios are actually usable at arbitrary frequencies?

>>2975092
Thinking about it some more, class-C and class-D RF amplifiers are resonant and low-loss, so are better for where efficiency matters (battery powered radios especially of varying power levels) but are inherently narrow-band. On the other hand, class-A and class-B RF amplifiers are linear, and so less efficient, especially when transmitting at less than full power, but are inherently able to be wideband. I doubt any handheld radio uses a linear amplifier for this reason, rather they just tune their resonant amplifiers to work at the 70cm/2m bands or whatever it is they operate on.

Ideally you’d have a switching amplifier like an audio class-D, but they need to be able to switch at much higher than your maximum transmit frequency. Maybe this is possible for some HF bands, but the high switching speed might make its efficiency comparable to a linear amp anyhow. Pushing into the hundreds of MHz with power switches of any kind seems unreasonable, though with GaN HEMTs with their sub-nC gate charges it looks almost feasible, at least for HF.

Anyone have any other thoughts on the matter? Is my conception of the amplifier topologies about right?

>>2975116
This is the basis for truSDX and some kit from the QRPguys.

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>>2975221
Huh, it's called a class-E amplifier, and is apparently high efficiency (85% plus). Seems like it's still a resonant type of antenna, and while it can sorta adjust its output frequency, the harmonic content is pretty awful so it requires an output filter tuned to each band it's used on. So as with the trusdx, you need a bulky array of relays and LC elements to cover multiple bands.
Class-B amplifiers are supposed to be able to get close to 78% efficiency, I wonder how hard it is to get close to that? I wonder if anyone's done an RF class-G or class-H amplifier? Even just having a class-B amplifier with a variable supply rail to efficiently adjust output power might be worthwhile. Be nice to have a dirt-simple handheld radio with a linear amplifier that can transmit on arbitrary frequencies without worrying about a filter for every band.

Switched capacitor amplifiers are also looking interesting.

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>>2975271
>the harmonic content is pretty awful so it requires an output filter tuned to each band it's used on.
It is a square wave, so yes, plenty of harmonics. Seems some prefer band pass filters that also block specific harmonics.

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I don't know nuffin about radios. I have a radio controlled watch. Couldn't someone emulate the signal and mess up the time?

>>2975297
Well the LC circuit means it’s not a square wave but a rounded and uneven wave, despite the square wave into the transistor gate, I think. But maybe I’m getting it confused with class-C. I don’t think it’s PWM’d but they might be messing with duty-cycle.

>>2975367
Definitely possible, assuming it’s using the old WWVB and not GPS. In fact I’m fairly sure some guy on YouTube made his own transmitter so he can get a signal in his basement.
FYI it is illegal to knowingly interfere with legitimate radio broadcasts.

tl;dr how to make loaded coil dipole for 160m

I think I may start on finally rebuilding my old fan dipole when it starts warming up. This time, I'm adding in 160m. The problem? Not enough room. Solution? I can use loading coils. That presents an issue: the information I have is absolute crap and everything I see on it is basically gibberish or they just go into how many times to make a turn on the coil while not mentioning the size of the pvc pipe they are using, gauge of the wire, approximately how long to make the wires before and after the coil, the height it'll be hung up (20 ft) etc. I will give credit that they say to put the coil in the center of the elements for best results.

Anyone got a particular resource that explains this to someone who is dumb, preferably not a video?

inb4 use an ATU. I already do with my ocfd, but I prefer it to be as close to resonant as possible for the bands I'm going to be working. I know that coils make the bandwidth for 160m extremely narrow, hence why I will use an ATU for it. Also, in the future, I may just get a radio with a built in ATU, and if I can at least get the SWR down to 3:1 then that would be grand.

Explain repeater channels to me, I'm stupid.

Do you broadcast a signal to the repeater on those channels, does the repeater broadcast on those channels, or do you just use the channel for everything if you have a repeater?

Can you use other people's repeaters? Is there a cost or etiquette or some kind of public use repeater?

>>2975394
>Well the LC circuit means it’s not a square wave but a rounded and uneven wave, despite the square wave into the transistor gate, I think. But maybe I’m getting it confused with class-C. I don’t think it’s PWM’d but they might be messing with duty-cycle.
The output from the transistors are intended to be as square as you can get but the filters will turn that into something very close to a sine wave, simply by removing as much as possible of as many harmonics as possible. Just do a FFT of a quare wave and you will see.

>>2975493
>repeater channels
Are you referring to GMRS? Analog repeaters, you listen on one frequency and transmit on another. When you transmit on that frequency, the repeater will "repeat" it on the listening frequency.

Digital is different. You transmit and listen on the same frequency. However, you transmit it on one half of the frequency, while listening on the other half.

>>2975455
A short antenna has capacitive reactance and the capacitive reactance can be tuned out with a coil. The overall length of the shortened antenna will be determined by the amount of inductance in the coil.
(refer to section IX of document directly below)
https://www.hamuniverse.com/basicantennas.pdf

https://www.66pacific.com/calculators/coil-shortened-dipole-antenna-calculator.aspx

>>2975367
It's a 60kHz signal so it's kind of a pain in the ass to effectively transmit (low frequency = big antenna). It could be done, but it's not worth the hassle just to set some people's watches and clocks wrong. Cell towers and shit use GPS and wouldn't be affected.

>>2975552
>low frequency = big antenna
You'd just use a magnetic loop antenna, not like the watch will be picking up any of the electric field. Sure your range goes off by inverse cube instead of inverse square, but that's not an issue when you're just trying to interfere in a small area. The harder part would be stopping the real WWVB signal from getting through.

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>>2975455
160? Nah, try 2200 and not with coils. You are not a real ham until you make this dipole.

>>2974159
What's going on with this vanity call mess which is a ripple effect of the government shutdowns?
Can anyone make heads or tails of the extensions? The AE7Q and K2CR sites show different data and neither are correct.

>>2974159
Qrd on "world radios"; are they worth it?

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Ground has thawed early this year. Going to dig a hole and put up a 30ft amazon flagpole to use as an antenna mast.

My thinkpad t470 battery is dying, replacements are $40 from china. I only used it for browsing, sdr etc. On the offchance is there something with 2 usb port some ram and and os that's perhaps used purely for capturing noaa image transmissions or meteor that you lot know about. I'll lose my mobility without the laptop battery and really, i'm penny pinching a mobile solution, thanks.

>>2976216
[ ] capture NOAA images
[ ] pinch pennies
you may choose only one.

>>2976216
Get a powerbank. It has a thunderbolt port so you should be able to power it off of that and it is useful for powering other devices as well.

>>2976216
the $40 battery will be the cheapest way to make it usable again, anon

>>2974162
I love you
>>2974387
Look up no sodder CB dipole.
If you do sodder it is much easier. I have a plastic project box with my Pl 259 connector, it looks just like the Balun in
>>2974162 picture but it is not. I wish I could ship you an antenna. Because im am making about 2 a weekend.

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>>2976144
>a 30ft amazon flagpole
How about 256 flagpoles in a circle? Like pic. related?

>>2976269
Man, you could talk to autistic boomers living on the fucking moon with that setup. Does everyone still send out post cards as proof you spoke with someone really far away? I don't like talking to people, period. Never saw the appeal of playing a bunch of money for equipment just to speak with someone that collects barbed wire and runs HO scale train for fun.

>>2976304
that's an elephant cage listening post.

quansheng uv k5 10-11-12m TX mod (yes, TX)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r0eDCDEofg

>>2976269
To think that Rudolph Hess may have taxied his Me on the remains of that taxiway on his fateful trip to England in 1941.

>>2976304
>Does everyone still send out post cards as proof you spoke with someone really far away?
I do. QSL collecting is a part of the hobby I enjoy. No e-QSL's.

>>2976360
CB is back, baby!
> reading the rules, need to transmit vast distance
> find a loophole…
There is no restriction on the amplification of the incoming signal! Distance problems solved!

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>>2976388
>what is the noise floor?
You have to get around amplifying all the noise in addition to the signal, though.

Have you ever made contact with your bros on /diy/ ?

t. doesn't know what the fuck all of this is

>>2976460
> amplifying the noise
Filters. I one heard (here) that the main difference in a motorola or yæsu and a quansheng isn’t the chipset, it’s the quality, design, and number of poles in the analog filter array.

Also, you can get around the distance limitation by exchanging omnidirectIonality for focusing with the same wattage for both transmitting and receiving.

Some enlightened districts have changed the rules to encompass transmitting signal “density” (I’ll call it) which technically prevents it, but is nigh well unenforceable.

>>2976471
I just looked up packet radio and that shit is super cool. Maybe this could be a fun hobby

seems like the cellphone killed the radio.
but it could never kill the killer feature of radio which is obviously communication autonomy.

basically a vicious plan to take the radio and to pervert it into a one pseudo-full duplex device completely dependent on cell infrastructure to function.

at least if there could be a freeband for gsm communication people could put up their own gsm base station but that is of course too much to ask for.

i suppose everyone should get quanshengs with messenger functionality and set up repeaters on pmr and just stop using cell phones.

if only 5% of all people started doing that, independent repeater networks would spring up on a massive scale.
encryption could be implemented in firmware doesn't even have to be perfect considering 2g gsm encryption has been broken for a long while now. nobody seems to care much.

the point is not to overthrow some government anyway so some basic encryption is enough and cheaper.

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>>2976492
I run my own pocsag paging system. I have about 95% coverage of my city. I don't carry a phone, just a pager, and its my own infrastructure.
You can just do these kind of things if you want.

>>2976532
thats nice
pocsag seems pretty robust, i've heard it inside basements in small town, didnt do any decoding there because no discriminator output but it seemed clear.
which baud rate do you use?

>>2976532
the network i heard was a scandinavian pocsag network probably government run. i dont know how many watts they send out but it was loud and clear to my ears.

Are any radio protocols robust against simultaneous transmissions on overlapping frequencies? I suspect LoRa-like chirps might be able to be discriminated from one another if they’re overlapping, so long as you don’t have any ambiguity with regards to two signals crossing one another. It would still reduce your SNR though. Ideally you’d be able to pick out a weak signal transmitted at the same time as a quiet signal.

But maybe this is silly, and frequency hopping is just the ideal method even for low-power long-range low-baud comms.

>>2976316
It is well known that Wullenwebers are good for listening and direction finding, but it is less known (and not a secret) that these are also good for directive transmissions too.

>>2976642
true but they were mostly used for listening.

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https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/news/coleman-fd-seizes-improperly-programmed-two-way-radio/

>>2975506
That explained nothing of what I needed to know. Thankfully, I found a resource that did explain it in a dumb downed way and not in an autistic wall of text.

>>2976776
K

>>2976776
By the way you responded I think you're the autistic one
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news

>>2976864
We're on 4chan on a thread about ham radio, I don't think there's any of us that haven't been touched with the tism

>>2976776
>>2976864
>>2976942
Ham radio is an autistic hobby anyway.

>>2976942
>>2976979
I think being a licensed ham radio operator is a more reliable certification for autism than a psychiatric diagnosis

>not autistically stimming by pressing he press-to-talk button over and over again, repeatedly kerchunking the repeater

>>2976994
what if you're a cb'er only?

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bought a re-branded version of this power supply. basically same supply with a different branding.
its certified by nordics, germany and austria and the manufacturer was into radios before doing power supplies.

considering the certs and history, i bet that it doesn't interfere with radio sets.

also it was fairly cheap at 20 euros considering he said it was never used and is new.

>>2977076
also they have a NSN (national stock number). don't know how much that is worth but it seems like a military catalog of dependable things.

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>>2976713

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>>2977116

>>2976478
It is a very fun hobby there are so many avenues to go down, you can send images, emails or even tweet over radio with aprs, learn morse, contact unusual and far away countries, get outside and do pota and sota in parka and mountains, also you'll be in demand if shtf

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I was thinking about making a radio and some guy at a gun show had a box full of radio dials but he wouldn't sell them piecemeal so I bought all of them
Anybody ever make something simple? Like a 1 or 2 tube am receiver. Don't really know anything about radios tbqh

>>2977166
This. It's hobby of hundreds of hobbies.

>>2976979
I was a military Morse code operator, and I suspect more than half of the people I trained with were on the spectrum. I also suspect several of the officers, people who happily accepted rather crazy stuff as long as we could get that message across, no matter the jamming.

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>>2977179
A lot of plastics simply degrade over time, or look fine but become very brittle so be careful

You need the thing those dials attach to… likely a big rotational plate variable capacitor to build a radio.

>>2977179
For simple radio receiver construction ideas, look thru the massive radio book and magazine collections on WORLD RADIO HISTORY site.

Especially the decades ?1941-1981) RADIO CONSTRUCTOR archive:
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Radio_Constructor_Magazine.htm

>>2976994
I'm not into the ham side of things at all. But if you spot me walking around outside pointing the whip antenna of my radio in different directions trying to hear things you'll just know. Or if I get in your car and you're listening to AM radio and I start ranting about how it only sounds bad and gets a negative rap because the filter width on these radios is too narrow. I guess a broadcast engineer who does not have autism could start talking about such things but they're a dying breed don't you think?

>>2977399
You do not have autism: you are just a professional nerd.

>>2977179
I've made cw Pixies, you can build from 10 usd on ebay but they're only morse

>>2977399
>engineer
>not having autism
In all seriousness I just use the autism thing as a joke, I think things like that are severely diagnosed and really don't help anyone, I certainly have some traits like that but I'm fairly well adjusted man with professional job and 3 kids, I've never been tested for anything. I think if you tested most engineers or accountants etc they'd be somewhere on the spectrum but then most hairdressers you could diagnose with bpd probably, it's just different personality types

>>2977425
Meant to say severely over diagnosed

>>2977422
I do have legit autism. I was in denial about it for a long time. Perhaps you could say that's the only reason I found any success in life. If you refuse to believe something is "wrong" with you then you can't use it as an excuse for your failures, right? But after all of that comes reflection about how I managed to make it in a world that wasn't made for me. Denial brought me that far but it was time for an honest assessment.

>>2977425
I probably could get a diagnosis but I don't think it could help me. In childhood all the experiences with attempts to "help" me only made things worse. The adults couldn't seem to understand that I actually liked pacing back and forth on the playground alone and trying to force people to be friendly to me did nothing. Out of a room of 100 people maybe 5 of them will end up liking me and 3 of them will be total normies. Some people that seem to be similar to me end up being my mortal enemies. Being naturally introverted I'm fine with this. Either we connect or we don't.

Now I'm a married professional. Nothing that led me to this was normal or suggests stability. But all the choices I made and the things I hyperfixated on gave me knowledge that made a career possible. The exact kind of career I imagined having when they asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up in the 1st grade, working with radio/TV stuff.

>>2977427
>I do have legit autism
>I probably could get a diagnosis
Pick one. Self-diagnosing doesn't count.

>>2977432
I could have just lied and said I got a diagnosis and you wouldn't be on my nuts about it. It's not like I'm trying to put myself in some special category because I think it's cool. It's quite shitty in many ways. You missed the point.

What is a diagnosis going to do except possibly get me labeled as less of a human being capable of making my own decisions? Is the person diagnosing me going to help me somehow? I really doubt it. I could go into detail about some other things, making a ham radio thread into my entire autobiography instead of just a couple of posts about myself, to make some gigafaggot (You) on the internet happy but that accomplishes nothing for me.

>>2977065
This means you are gay and only looking for truckstop hookups. Duh.

>>2977453
I thought all the lot lizards advertising their wares on there were females. Times change I guess.

>>2977425
>>2977426
>>2977427
>>2977439
This is not an autism support thread. Take your autistic shit somewhere else.

>be me
>new to radio stuff
>create a "dipole" with a twist tie
>connect it to a cheap sdr
>first thing I hear is my neighbor watching porn on 863 MHz
Yeah, this is awesome :^)
Anyway, what is the cheapest/dumbest way to create an antenna for HF?

>>2977505
Random wire antenna

>>2977505
This >>2977527 or end fed half wave.

>>2977505
i just made a full wave loop for 11m.
i haven't put a balun yet and i have not even measured SWR on it so txing is out of the question for now but in terms of rx it works fairly well.

this antenna hangs inside of a courtyard inside an old building and reception sucks but i manage to get channel 6 superbowl channels from florida and alabama.
i'm in southern france.
i think it is somewhat directional because its facing west for now

however 27.555 usb is mostly quiet for me. i mean, i can hear some people but its unintelligible. same with channels 36-40 lsb, some conversations but mostly unintelligible and faint.

i will try facing it east soon.
its basically a triangle formation that looks more like a V with the feed down at the bottom.

the building complex i live in has an attic and im allowed to put an antenna there but that is like three floors up so i need to get some long enough coax first.

also it works the best in the afternoon. in the night its almost nothing.

also channel 11 works but as with channel 6, these guys are pushing thousands of watts but its good to know that the antenna+radio is not totally deaf considering the walls around it are out of brick.

right now i'm picking up americans on 38 lsb as well and i can even understand what he says. but he is starting to disappear. as often is i only hear him and not who he talks to.
it must be the solar activity cycle since the antenna is definitely not the reason, lol. skip times

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just decoded some ft8 on channel 26.

>>2977586
ignore the frequency, it makes no difference it seems since its microphone input anyway.

it was received on 27.265 (channel 26)

and just like that, the sun went down and so did 11m for me.

What's the best way to prep for the General and Extra tests in present day? I might go to Dayton this year and that would be a good time for me to take the tests.

>>2977940
Idk about Americans, I took a ham cram course that prepares me for the exam with two full-day classes, run for free at a local community college. Basically everyone passed. All we did is go through a study guide that covered all the possible questions in the exam, there was also an exam generating online tool we could use for practice tests. You could absolutely go through that sort of study guide yourself, but the class helped us bounce ideas off each other and the instructors had good ways of remembering things.

>>2977940
I read the godawful ARRL books for them. Then, I downloaded this app and took each section quiz over and over until I memorized the questions and answers and passed perfectly three times in a row. Go to the next section and repeat. After that, take sample test until I miss no more than two. Then, do it every day until test.

I only missed two questions on general, and four on extra.

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>>2977999
And I forgot to include the pic of the app. Here it is.

so are LiFePo4 batteries the new meta for radio?
i keep seeing them sold as replacement for lead acid.

>>2978101
I use some in portable, they are ok, lighter than lead for the same capacity and about the same voltage, Li-ion was too low or too high

>>2978111
i also read they have overcharging protection built in.
does that mean i can leave the charger on for a while if i don't monitor it?

i've never even seen one of these yet.

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>>2978113
The 12V packs should have a BMS : battery management system to prevent :
- overdischarge (too low voltage)
- overcharge (too high voltage)
- over current for load : limits the current for the load or cuts the load if it needs too much current
- over current for charge : limits the charge current
- cell balancing : as cells are in series to provide 12V, some of them can charge more and/or discharge faster. Each cell is made equal to the others

>>2977999
>>2978001
Thanks anon. I think I just prepped with the ARRL books for the technician test but it was a long time ago now. You're right, they're not great. Not that memorizing the test pool is much better hahah

>>2978117
Memorizing the questions and answers is what most are suggested to do anyway. It's much easier to learn when you have the license to operate and make mistakes without some boomer in the club breathing down your neck.

>>2978101
LiFePo4 has a lot of really nice advantages you should look into. The biggest downside is the need for new chargers/maintainers.

>>2978101
Compared to Li-NMC they're less energy dense but safer and can handle more charge-discharge cycles. But drop-in replacement lithium deep cycle batteries typically still need lithium-specific chargers, and they're quite a lot more expensive than just running a 3S lipo. Cheap pre-made LiFePO4 packs might exist, but I haven't seen them before. If you care about the longevity or safety of the chemistry, I'd consider buying some prismatic or cylindrical cells and making a 4S pack up with a balancing BMS: >>2978115

>>2978140
>but safer
Cue tech illiterate boomers rrreeeee'ing about the few news stories of lithium batteries exploding and causing house fires.

>>2978146
Yeah ultimately it's a relative thing. I've never caused a battery fire in my years of working with the things, but it's definitely a benefit of a lead acid battery that you can just chuck it up in your hot roofspace to run your alarm system. I'd be fine with a small name-brand LiFePO4 up there if it's not constantly being fed the maximum pack voltage of 3.65V per cell, but probably not Li-NMC cells, and definitely not a lipo. Though if you put a battery health monitor up there so I can see when a cell starts to go bad in 8 years and swap it out I'd be more comfortable with it.

>>2978146
funny... you are the one that brought it up.

>>2978151
Different anon. I'm just making fun of the boomers who become hysteric over the small minority of reports of lithium batteries catching on fire.

how can i best find a compromise between vertical and horizontal polarization? so as to have a mix of skip and local 11m?

>>2978289
Polarization doesn't matter once the signal bounces off the ionosphere since the skip induces a change in polarization. However, a vertical antenna will give you better gain for local communication. Verticals also have a better take off angle than horizontally polarized antennas.... you can get away with the vertical antenna being lower to the ground than a horizontal for skip, assuming you don't have obstacles in the way. You still want it mounted high as possible, especially since local stuff is line of sight.
My advice is go with a vertical. Don't overlook the importance of a good ground plane.

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>Boomers, get out of the way!
That's how the AARL sees the new generation of HAMs.

>Be me
>Be Britbong
>Just got licenced
>Nob around on VHF and UHF
>All I hear is old men talking about their ailments and the weather
>Wonder why I wasted my time to get licenced
>Realised I could have just sat in the doctors surgery for this boring chatter
Am I doing it wrong /ham/?

>>2978490
They tell funny stories sometimes
https://vocaroo.com/1a17lQE6jfk2

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>>2978490
>Post same narrative over and over
>Post le smug face when
>Post boomer facefuck meme over and over
>Post anecdote about rag chewing about health issues
Yeah, ham is right up your alley

>>2978490
This is the /diy/ board, are you somehow not here for the purpose of making your own radio equipment? Whether that means DXing, doing weird shit like moonbouncing or ELF, experimenting with digital protocols, or just making simple transmitters or receivers or amplifiers out of discrete transistors.

>>2978488
Boomers cannot afford new ham equipment with their SSI checks and they're quickly dying off. They got to with the next hip thing going on.

>>2978490
Just wait until you get on 80m.

>>2978497
>new ham equipment
who needs soulless SDR shit
30-50 year old equipment is where the fun is.

>>2978499
absolute bullshit! I have equipment going back to the early 50's. doing anything on it sucks ass. try tuning in USB or LSB. you need someone talking for a minute or 2 to tune them in and get the beat frequency right.

finding anything is hit and miss. with SDR I can see conversations and signals all over the place. on old ham equipment you can go right over an interesting signal just because they stopped transmitting just as you tuned in to it.

no old equipment is shit. and I restore old equipment.

>>2978500
I said fun not quality.
If all you need is to talk to someone, use your phone. But yea to each their own. Fun is subjective.

>>2978499
>Buttons and knobs, baby!
I'm with you. My youngest radio was made in 2001, my oldest is 1976. Still my favourite is a Kenwood made in 1993 I bought new. I prefer those blue/green vacuum fluorescent displays over anything else.

>>2978500
When I get into a retro mood i'll fire up my FT101E for an evening. But the constant peaking of the finals when I change frequency makes me appreciate my more modern radio(s) with built-in ATU that much more.

>>2978499
>who needs soulless SDR shit
Me. I like to spend some of my time on ham radio actually talking to people instead of slowly turning the dial to find someone.

>>2978527
You can do both and cheat and check the waterfall in your area via numerous SDR websites.

>>2978520
Yeah those old analog Kenwoods are relatively easy to repair as their schematics are actually readable and one can learn a lot about radio and it is a bridge to DIY.
Otherwise, it is just some kind of internet chat over radio waves. I've never used stuff like echolink but the idea seems completely ridiculous. Apparently you can hit a remote repeater from your computer. Don't even need a radio. Why? WHY?

>>2978490
Be the change you want to see.

i'm in the city center of a fairly big european city.

my plan is to put a 50 ohm full wave for 11m/cb about 10 meters in the air.
i did simulation with EZNEC and if i put the antenna as high as i can which is about 8 meters up, and according to it, the more height the more gain so this time its going UP
to reduce rx noise, the antenna is horizontally polarized

any other tips for dense urban environments?

i meant full wave loop

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I'm just wondering just hypothetically how do these websites verify certain amateur radio operators? like qrz.com I had to send in a pdf of my license document but I could literally edit it and put whatever the fuck I wanted. I could publish the template of the pdf and people in other countries could edit it to have a full UK license that would let them do whatever the fuck they wanted in their own country (all the countries with reciprocal agreements with the UK which is quite a few).

Ofcom (the regulatory agency) surely doesn't just give out license numbers and names and addresses to just about any random website that asks.

>>2978501
"fun"? searching the band for hours (especially now) is not fun when using old equipment. it only became somewhat fun with SDR.

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>>2979016
You could also consider installing a low-pass filter to ensure no harmonic emissions bleed through and to reduce possible television and other radio interferrence. Insignificant insertion loss.

Not just good engineering practice but this will show due diligence to the authorities when it comes to any complaints you may get.

>>2979072
ok thanks. you think i need it for a dedicated cb radio?

i just finished trimming the loop. i now get a good swr. some channels as low as 1.2 or the needle barely moves on those. (channel 10 to about 40)
about 1.4 on 27.555.
feels good as its my first proper antenna build (checked for swr that is).
i did some vhf antenna before but i'm not a ham so i can't talk there and never bothered trimming those
cb is where its at for me and president grant export is my radio.

too bad the band is so quiet at night

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Wondering if you all can offer me some guidance with SW antennas for picrel. I am not into DXing or anything, I just like hitting scan and stopping anytime I hear something interesting, so I want something which does not need to be tuned. My plan at this time is a broomstick antenna with a variable cap that can be switched in and out so I can tune it if I want. Is wire size mostly about impedance? or does it affect other things? Can I just use a transformer to match the impedance? Is there anything special about the transformers used for antennas, or can I use any suitable impedance matching transformer in the ballpark and call it good? Does diameter affect anything other than impedance? Can I just treat this like a standard air-gapped coil as far as impedance is concerned and select diameter to work with the wire I have to get the desired impedance or is there more to it? How does length of the coil and the wire play into these?

Yeah, lots of questions but searches are not providing much help, great deal of conflicting information with most things I can find being by people who have no understanding and seem to like string words together to make it sound like they know what they are talking about. I have a good amount of analog electronics experience, but never dug into antennas.

Any other antenna designs that would be better suited for my needs? Don't need anything fancy, just want something better than the whip and wire antenna the 880 came with and don't want to waste time going down dead ends, just want to make one antenna and be done with it.

Thanks, anons.

>>2979115
i'm a noob so double check what i say.

i think that for receiving only, you don't need to think too much about impedance matching but as usual, things are probably more complicated than that so double check that.
maybe priority for you is to attain larger bandwidth so you can get as much stations as possible.
take a look at those "donut loop" antennas. they cost like 5 dollars and are supposed to be wide band.

>>2979115
also diameter of wire/section affects bandwidth. larger=more bandwidth

>>2979115
Addendum: I might just build an active amp for impedance matching if needed but still curious about the transformer question, I might have a suitable transformer sitting about, I have a fair variety of well shielded audio impedance matching transformers. But my electronics background has always taught me how to avoid RF and it is alien to me to want it.
>>2979118
I am not convinced wire diameter has much effect, at least not in the size of things we call wire. Commercial antenna often use much finer wire than diy ones, my suspicion is that the diy ones use a wire with a resistance and impedance suitable for using variable caps scrounged from radios and the commercial ones are not, they are just going to buy the caps so can save money on copper. I am probably going to use magnet wire that is much finer than the ~17 gauge diy designs use, impedance and resistance is going to be very different, but if it works like an air-core coil as far as this aspect is concerned I might be able to get it in the ballpark.

I will look into the donut loops, thanks.

>>2979079
>president grant export is my radio.
>LP filter
Yeah I have no idea how clean the output is on one of those. As a non-type certified radio I have doubts and thus would err on the side of caution. But that's me.

Sounds good on the loop. I knew a guy in the Canadian prairies who had one for the 80 m amateur band. Said it worked decently but when he started bringing 2 sides a bit closer together so that instead of 4 equal-length sides, it was more shaped like a rectangle, the signal started becoming bi-directional with major signal lobes radiating out from the long sides, and a smaller lobe firing off the short sides. Almost like a di-pole.

>too bad the band is so quiet at night
You never know. I still remember the first time I heard CB skip. It was just after local sunset and a guy here in western Canada was talking to Aussie's on SSB with his Cobra 148GTL tweaked for maximum output and a pair of basic Radio Shack mirror mounted antennas on his Chev truck. I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't there myself. I suspect the Aussie's were running directional antennas.

I live close to the auroral zone so I love searching out unusual propagation paths. One thing you might want to do is obtain a list of 10 metre beacons and see if there are any paths opening up, even briefly. Keep your squelch off.

>>2979115
>Don't need anything fancy, just want something better than the whip
I used to have a Panasonic RF2200 and later an Icom R71A (still have it). For something quick and dirty I initially used a short piece of wire connected to the telescopic antenna with an aligator clip, then I clipped the other end to my metal window frame in my bedroom (roomy didn't share my radio interest). It worked slightly better than the whip but when I draped a 50 ft long speaker wire off my 4th floor balcony things got better. Btw, the telescopic antenna on the RF-2200 is huge. I think it was about 5 ft long.

>>2979151
this loop is a triangle probably close to 37 degrees as i have no balun or matching section so that the impedance is close to 50 ohm.
i think i need an rf choke too for noise and radiation, the feed line is not in an ideal spot and it might mess with the antenna

>>2978562
Why? I used to use my RTL-SDR for that. It was a pain in the fucking ass to do when I didn't have a rig that had a waterfall. If I zoomed in too much, I had to do lots of scrolling throughout the band to find the activity. If I was just right, I still had to zoom in to find the frequency the activity it was on, then switch the dial on my rig to that frequency.

It's just easier just to get a rig that has a waterfall build in. It's a lot more faster as well.