Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

Sweet project! that looks like a great unit. Need another Larsen? I am going to sell the one I have in the pic above (never used only taped on for weight).

 

Really liking the 2/70C that I picked up in Bozeman..

Just a reminder to put Loctite on the set screws on your NMO mount. Lost my 150B somewhere on a trail out in Eastern Washington. Didn't notice until we were at the trailhead. Lucked out, and found one in Bozeman, MT - for $15! Pretty funny, the women at the commercial radio shop had no clue what it was, and just threw out that price. Should have seen if they had more than one!

Had a 120 Mile QSO on 146.520, East of Deming, WA down to Issaquah - elevation of 3,000 Feet. S9 the entire time on both ends.. Pretty schweet!

 

Be careful with the amount of lock tight it is an insulator don't want to lose your ground. Never lost an NMO generally the "O" ring holds it tight. Had a 3/8 24 mount beak off and my $400 screw driver antenna landed in the street. 120 miles is a damn good trip with out e skip we get a repeater in Nova Scotia down on the coast every once in awhile it's 260 miles away they use no tone and we hear it on our 147.015 (same freq.) repeater but it's all ways e skip.

 

Just a small drop on the stainless set screws on the base of antenna.. Not the roof pass-through.

Yeah I'm impressed! Consistently gotten 110/120 miles. Have had QSOs both ways; south of Seattle and northern BC. That elevation really helps. Probably could go a lot further, that 120 mile contact was a S9 the entire time!

 

PM sent.

Excellent! How much power were you running during your long distance QSO?

 

I decided to educate myself on antenna design and theory. As it turns out, I did not know that end-fed verticals with ground plane radials need great care to function correctly. It's really true of all ground plane antennas. Anyways, I took my base station antenna down and made some changes.

1. Insulate radials from metal mast using 2' section of PVC pipe.
2. Added an RF choke coil to stop any common mode currents
3. Reduced the size of the Larsen BSA bracket by cutting it in half.
4. Switched to zip ties instead of hose clamps for mounting.
5. Painted things black

I cut the PVC pipe and made a RF choke coil.


All taped up


BSA kit mounted with zip ties.


NMO cap removed and antenna mounted.



Thanks to Tom, W8JI for his great tutorial pages here:

http://www.w8ji.com/ground_plane_verticals.htm

 

55W

 

Picked up a new Diamond 770 Antenna. Mounted to the bed bar and run into the cab to my radio.

The old comet mag mount will be used with my HT for APRS.

 

Finished my APRS install

AvMap G6, Kenwood d72a, and Comet m-24b dual band mag mount.

 

very nice bro!

 

I just ran across some information about a relatively new app for Apple and Android devices called RF Finder. It touts itself as the “world's only geo-enabled repeater directory”.

For an annual subscription of $9.95, you get the app and an updated database of repeaters every year. The app “knows” where you are because of the GPS chip in your phone/etc. and will show you nearby repeaters.

http://www.rfinder.net/blog/

Anyone tried this one out?

 

Every time we double power there is a +3db gain on the receiving end. Every 6db change is +/- one "S" unit on the radio signal meter.

For example, if you had the same QSO but transmitted with 5 watts instead of 55 you would only be -12db, and appears as an "S7" instead of an "S9."

I'm glad you're enjoying the 2/70c antenna. It's a good one!

 

Glad you got it all installed. Hows it all working for you?

 

Seems to work better than my little mag mount. Although I haven't left the city to truly test the range. I am hearing some repeaters a little clearer as well as holding my contact in places that were previously sketchy.

The mag mount did drastically increase the range of my HT, as I knew it would. I am finally hitting an igate and able to see my tracks on aprs.fi for my whole trip across the city, not just parts of it. Hell, the new rubber ducky antenna increased my tx and rx of aprs on my HT, stock antennas suck!

 

LOL at this Amateur Extra who operated an unlicensed transmitter on 296.550 Mhz (Military freq.) and was busted for it. In the end he was fined $16K.

What the hell was he thinking?!? He operated that way for four months!

http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2012/DA-12-2008A1.html

EDIT: I searched his call sign, here is what he was doing... http://monitor-post.blogspot.com/2012/12/us-uhf-milsat-pirate-busted.html

 

Great find.

I noticed a few other threads people saying that the FCC isn't going after violators, this story and many more I hear on the ARRL news broadcasts, begs to differ. They are going after more and more all the time.

 

Ham sticks work at least good ones do. I was chatting with a ham about 600 miles away he was mobile on 17 meters he was using ham sticks (well they were MFJ sticks) any way he was doing a good job. He had a 3 magnet mount on his trunk with the sticks on that. They are cheap and a good way to get on HF mobile without spending a great deal of money the down side is changing antennas every time you want to work another band. I don't think any thing below 20 meters would work very well because it is such a compromise. I have not had real good luck with them and maned up and spent the money for a screw driver antenna and have never looked back. A long whip will tune but is sure is unwieldy. The tuner does not fix an antenna that is not resonate it just makes a match the radio likes so there would be small a small range of resonance that the long whip it's self actually would be tuned for.

 

The big problem is that they are very broad banded there is no attempt to address that. By using a gain antenna it just makes it worse I have a broad banded Kenwood that is light years better then my Baofeng but I can not use a long whip because it will then pick up the Noaa Weather station on Mt Washington 29 miles away and the intermod wipes any thing else out. If there are other transmitters near by you probably are getting mixing from the various signals even to the point that it may match the freq you are trying to receive. The demand for the radios to be used for scanners has caused these problems.

 

on rfinder.net they say an update for Garmin and TomTom with repeaters as POI is coming. If they do that and I can import them to my AvMap, than they can have my $$$. Having the repeaters listed on a GPS unit while traveling would be epic.

 

Option 2, and is what I use including 6 meters

This SS Whip is one of the toughest ones I have had to date.

http://www.dxengineering.com/search...antennas?autoview=SKU&N=4294953330+4294952907