Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

Costco has a good price on a 7” android tablet

 

I may be the only person in the world who's actually never been in a Costco. Not a member. Is the deal good enough to justify joining?

 

Meh. If you want one, I can buy one and ship it to you.

 

Samsung galaxy tab E 8”
It’s the same one Best Buy sells, but it’s a bit cheeper and has 32gig internal memory. Verizon cell service inactivated gets you the internal gps

 

Cool. This will be my first attempt at programming via computer/cable/software etc. I have been out of it for a while. Still using my old 32AT

 

Anyone doing WFD today? A group of us were supposed to operate from a remote cabin owned by a local Boy Scout Troop. Unfortunately the cabin road is not passable. I was able to get back there with the Taco. We had to push a RAV4 out, but that was due to him getting 2 tires off the trail. It spooked the rest of the group, and now they're not willing to try. Sigh

We've got plan B in place: operating from a friend's Barn. We should be on the air before the contest starts today at 2 p.m. EST. Operating with my call sign: K8MD. Hope to work you!

 

I used Chirp with my

$19 UV-5R VHF/UHF Dual Band Radio 144-148MHz 420-450MHz Transceiver

UV-5R and I liked it alright. I usually work on a .csv offline (at work) and then import it. The tabbing/UI is more user friendly in Excel than Chirp, plus it looks like every other spreadsheet I deal with at work daily. I'm hoping the UI for the Kenwood software is a little better, but as long as I can work via .csv, I'll be alright.

 

I won't be contesting but was going to get on the air to answer calls. Not sure when I'll be able to get on though as I have a Saturday list that's a mile long. 40M?

KC1JUT

 

Yes, we're working 40m and 80m right now

 

The club is doing WFD but unfortunately I’m not able to attend because I have 3 different events to attend today. Going to make some contacts with some on tac310 though when I can. I’m KN4OZE.

 

Currently at 7.245 working my way up the band

 

Instead of the field day activities, I spent the weekend FINALLY installing my TM-V71a. I mounted the radio body under the driver's seat, faceplate on a cup holder cell phone mount, antenna on a ditch light mount, speaker near my right leg. Really liking the setup so far. More in-depth install is on my build thread (see sig). Pic time:






73's

 

WFD went very well... mostly. We beat our score from last year by a healthy margin. Biggest mistake: one of the OM's setup his endfed on a tripod and it blew over at some point during the night. We were primarily running 40m phone on that particular station. We kept wondering why we weren't making better contacts on 40m this morning.

My station worked very well through the entire duration: IC-7300 -> switchable bandpass filter -> 600' RG-213 -> sg3000 remote tuner -> 40' of 300 ohm twinlead feeding a full wave 80m loop in a square, suspended by four trees. I used 12" lengths of 3/4" schedule 40 PVC as the center insulator and also as corner insulators. My station was mostly running 80m phone, 80m psk31 and 20m psk31. I even made one contact on 160m phone for a multiplier. My first ever contact on 160m.

It was the first outing for the switchable bandpass filter. I don't want to admit how many times I forgot to switch it and put power into it on the wrong band. It has an automatic mode which allows pins on the back to pulled down (or up?) to switch bands. I'm thinking I should be able to make an Arduino controller for it that gets frequency from the IC-7300 via CI-V and then pulls down (or up?) the appropriate pin.

 

Looks great! Gotta get a Mobilelinkd device in there with it now!

 

That is phase 2!

There are so many things to learn about with this radio. Right now I've mostly got the standard scanning, repeater rag chew, listening to the air bands, etc. down. Next is cross band repeat and APRS. I'm trying to slowly phase those in so that I actually remember how to do everything.

Question for 71a owners or ham pros: The radio has "wide band receive" capabilities (118-524MHz and 800-1300MHz) and I can see them when I cycle through the bands. My question is: what are those used for? I know 118- about 130 is air bands, and obviously the normal 2m 70cm ones, but what are the others?

 

Mobilelinkd is sweet because it has so many uses. I'm shopping HF rigs right now and will pick up a second one for that to do APRS, winlink, and all my other digital needs

 

Dang, I've been waiting on my call sign with the government shut down. Can't wait to set that stuff up to play with.

 

It hadn't occured to me that if/ when I get my general in March I might be waiting awhile....
Haha . Hopefully you have yours by then !

 

Sounds like everything is moving again, hopefully this week I go in the database. Let's hope the government is open in March for you...

Haven't dug into the digital stuff enough, but they are a little more exciting and useful than being able to listen to people talking about the weather on the local repeater

Good luck on the general!

 

Thanks! I'm looking forward to it. Plus it means I get to buy another radio!

Been reading up on tons of tactical based programs. Tons off stuff the offroading / camping community might be able to utilize. We do a lot of group trips so this stuff is real neat to me.