Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

Ft-891

 

That's hilarious, because that's the exact shelter I was considering. I was also looking at a cabelas branded hub shelter. I do lots of portable operating, it'd be my shack.

Your photos confirm a suspicion I had: whether those hub ice shacks are water proof. I was speculating no one uses them in the rain and I'd need some sort of rain fly.

Looks like you had lots of fun. Embodying the spirit of the contest. Where were you operating from?

 

Larson 2/70 black, if worried about getting stuff stuck in open coil cover it with some heat shrink.
I just take off my antenna and just screw on the NMO cap if it going to be more then couple hrs. or longer

 

Don't look up the KD1JV MTR3b, otherwise it will become 7 radios.

 

I am a general class ticket holder who doesn’t know CW. Lol.

 

Fair point. Spring may not be needed.

I'm seeing that those are 37" long?

 

yea their tall
https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/lsn-nmo2-70b

 

The only ham radio I do in the car is HF CW.

 

I'm a no code extra. Although I genuinely want to learn CW and become a know code extra.

It's a neat radio. Hopefully that radio will inspire my learning CW. I should have joined into the reddit amateur radio subs' CW challenge.

 

How long did it take before you became proficient at code?

I've stared but after this weekend I'm dedicating 15-20 minutes a night now to studies.

 

Unfortunately I’m looking for something closer to 6” if it’s going on my roof.

 

I passed 20wpm code within a few months of being licensed (1995). My elmer back then was strictly a phone op. He let me operate single op CW contests at his large station in exchange for tower work. It only took me a couple of weekends of contesting to become comfortable with CW at higher speeds. After that, I got invited to do multi op contests in the Caribbean, massive pileups for hours on end. I also did SO2R at my home station for a while when it first came on the scene. That was some hard core CW practice, but I never really mastered it....

 

But the looks you get when you whip out a Harris at the radio CP for an offroad race is priceless.

 

Against the odd tree branch, sure, but schwack it against the top of your garage backing in and the answer is...not so much.

Did that with my 1/2 wave diamond and bent the 1/8" steel plate it was mounted to about 20* upwards. Antenna was fine. It amazed me.

 

That's fantastic.

 

Just started learning CW yesterday. Man that stuff is weird to listen to.

My Larsen antenna is jacked. Tell me if I'm wrong but... isn't the center post on the NMO Larsen supposed to go to the radiator? Mine is wired backward. The threaded sleeve is connected to the radiator.

Pulled out a HF CW dual shoe radio kit I never assembled. Unfortunately it runs right off the edge of my technician class freq. privileges.

APRS is up and going. Home brew TNC1 is working fine after setting the correct baud rates between the bluetooth and microcontroller. Printed an enclosure for it to make it nice and tidy.

 

Can't wait to see it's finally assembly

 

Which Larsen is it and how did you conclude it is backwards?

Short answer is this might be correct or it might be shorted. If you're using DC resistance on a multimeter then what you're seeing might be right. Remember that the antenna is designed for RF, e.g. AC, so an inductor will look like a very short wire resistance but will have an intended impedance.

The only antenna that has a characteristic impedance close to 50Ω is 1/4λ and as a result they do not need an impedance transformation. Other antennas, especially 1/2λ antennas, need to make their impedance match the radios and so will have matching networks (meaning a circuit with capacitors and inductors) that might look odd at DC if they are inductively coupled to ground.

IIRC I noticed this on my Larsen 2/70 and so I just assumed they used a shunt in the network. This is a highly generalized idea but a matching circuit like this will look at DC pretty much like the whip is shorted to ground, although if you measure it'll actually have a few Ohms of resistance.



Also, if there's capacitors in the network they will look like opens at DC, not to mention might be polarized. So if you reverse the leads a cap may conduct for a while until it's charged.

Now if you've swept the antenna with an analyzer and it appears shorted then it could be faulty.

 

It is the dual band larsen NMO (NMO2-70B).
I understand some of the weird theory of impedance and inductance but this still seems backward.


Isn't the impedance of 50 ohms generated between the radiator and ground plane under load? I don't expect to see 50 ohms across the shield and core with a multimeter but I do expect the center post to be connected to the radiator.

 

@DaveInDenver you might be right
https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/defective-brand-new-larsen-nmo-2-70b.377043/