Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

My diy 80-10m EFHW with a 49:1 balun was my first HF antenna, and I still have it up. There are a few times where it has worked better on 20m for me.

I can switch between the two, and I'm amazed at the weak stations I can hear now that they're not buried in an S7-9 noise floor with the dipole compared to efhw. It seems like this has been a noisy summer though...

 

This weekend, myself and a team of others taught the Three Day FEMA G-317 - Community Emergency Response Team Basic course. Some of that course focuses on Amateur Radio and Communications. The rest of that course runs parallel and complimentary to comms and radios, discussing first aid, supplies, disaster planning and recovery, search and rescue, cribbing, etc.

One of our participants was none other than this guy!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCacth3foPsjqgV4wW4kuDDw/videos
Gaston, The Tech Prepper. He's crazy smart and incredibly methodical to how he tackles problem solving and a super nice guy to boot. I had never met him before but had learned a lot from his channel. If you haven't checked him out yet, give it a watch. His insights and perspective really added value to the class.

 

I just did something like this a few weeks ago, could hear my buds on 10m but they couldn't hear me. My only HF rig right now is a g106 pushing 5watts

 

Another Extra Class new guy checking in from EN91cl. Whats up folks?

Since I just placed a order for my OR Premium Tacoma today Ive got plenty of time to search the forum how I am going to install a 2m/440 rig and antenna in my beautiful truck without making it look like a whackermobile.

 

Hey Dutch, you’re also a ham?! I’m KA1PG. Good to hear about the order. I have my antenna on a homemade “L” bracket mount sandwiched between the cab and 3rd brake light.

edit: I’m from the 50’s thread

 

That's what I got. Stuck a pretty tall 40" antenna on it so it got some cab clearance.
It's more geeky than I wanted but they just aren't making subtle antenna mounting easy any more.

 

Welcome, welcome. I'm not sure what a whackermobile is but I think I want one! Haha.

 

Ah yes. I miss the good old days of hamsexy.com

 

I know that this thread is more geared to the HAM radio operators and I am looking to get my certs as well, but I have some buddies that I am hunting with that are not interested in HAM radio and I figured you all would know best on GMRS as well. I know that with GMRS you are realistically only looking at a couple miles max range which works for what we are doing. I am looking at the Midland MTX275 to be mounted in my truck and use it to communicate with handhelds in the other vehicles. I am leaning towards the MTX25 due to being able to hide the box and just use the microphone when needed and then not have multiple boxes in the open when I get my HAM radio cert. Would this be a good radio to use for when there are people that are not interested in HAM that you are looking to communicate with? Onto the Antenna, I know that a longer antenna would be better within reason, but we are going through brush and I'm not sure that a roof mounted with any length would survive. With that being said would I be better off with a short

$50 MXTA25 3DB MicroMobile Compatible Gain Ghost Antenna – 3.5” Tall with 1.5” Base Diameter – Low Profile GMRS NMO Connection

MXTA25 antenna on my roof or a slightly longer antenna(~18"-24") on one of my ditchlight brackets in front of the windshield? Thank you all for the help.

 

If you want some license free but dependable units to hand out to noobs - look at MURS.

 

Anyone running some kind of small portable/mobile tuner? Really wanting my 10/11 meter radio actually pulling the double duty it supports

This one looks pretty good
https://youtu.be/_r05M2GYvuE?si=SiV1TcFIU2hsAZqk

 

I'm looking into tuners now lol.

 

I'd just cut two different 102" whips and call it a day. Never heard of a combo 10m/CB radio. If it's just 4w CB limit, a tuner will just be a power sucker.

 

that was my other idea, simply have two different antennas per use-case, or getting a 10-14" brass screw for the current Firestik and see if that can tune it into the 10m band.

Tuner seems like a nice cheat though, especially if I get an antenna resonant for 10m, and at 11m its ok that some of the 40-50watts is sapped into a tuner for 11m.

 

On my base station I run a tuner to an end fed half wave with a 9:1 unun in it. It's resonant on most frequencies fairly well, but since I have a manual tuner, I use that to get a pure 1:1 match.
The other day I heard a guy calling CQ. Answered him several times. No luck. Then I flipped off the Tuner and got a 2:1 SWR but he heard me clear as a bell.

 

A 10meter hamstick is $21.95. But a 50 watt CB - that's priceless.

 

$28 for me haha. This is an interesting read:

http://firestik.com/Tech_Docs/10MTR.htm

I need to get out and do some 11m and 10m transmissions to get the SWR and then play with the tuning tip and see if I can get both bands inside 3.1. If I can, then the tuner will bridge the gap. The goal with this radio has been to get the most coms capability in one radio short of getting a fully fledged $$$$$ HF rig in the truck.

All the while I know in the back of my mind I should have just gotten a Yeasu HF that works with their autotuning HF mobile antenna- this is probably what I'll eventually end up with after I relearn for the millionth time to pay once cry once.

 

4ft tall K40 K40BCMAX is broadband and covers 26-30MHz through a fancy(not really) coil section.

 

Yaesu's screwdriver antenna sucks. Scorpion is buy once cry once.

 

This is the cheapest option right now. Not getting a warm fuzzy that the tuner would actually get good 10m TX out of my current setup even at 40'ish watts at the radio. Also I don't see myself TX'ing on 10m, at the very least at least this import radio lets me listen into 10m.

With the solar weather coming, 10m is about to get lit though. Yeah maybe get a 10m whip and just listen in on 11m...