Ham Radio?

Discussion in 'Overlanding / Off-Road' started by Kylemeister, Sep 24, 2016.

  1. Justin Bohnett

    Justin Bohnett Member

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    New antenna day! Crystal clear during all our SAR exercises this evening. Super happy with this little guy.
    Diamond SRH320A
    20210119_201551.jpg
     
  2. TerryD

    TerryD Member

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    I have been considering a Diamond for my FT-60R. I have a little rubber stubby I use for Hamfests and local events so the antenna isn't poking me in the ear constantly when I wear it on my bag.
     
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  3. Justin Bohnett

    Justin Bohnett Member

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    Haha! Those little ear pokes are what drove me to pick up an HPG kit bag.
     
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  4. TerryD

    TerryD Member

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  5. Justin Bohnett

    Justin Bohnett Member

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    Nice! I had no idea how tough it is trying to use a ham within a building until last week.
     
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  6. TerryD

    TerryD Member

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    Yeah! Even a 5w HT can cause all kinds of interesting things to happen. I usually ran my VX-5 on low but the little Icom uses 2x AA so I don't have to worry about charging or any of that. Just plop in two batteries and set the frequency.

    I usually scan my club's frequency, the hosting club's frequency and their local repeater just to kinda be nosy and catch the announcements.
     
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  7. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    I added a Diamond SRH77CA to my FT-60R. Definitely a major improvement over the stock antenna.
     
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  8. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    It's time for one of my favorite radio events of the year -- 13 Colonies.
    http://www.13colonies.us/

    July 1 to July 7. Make a contact with all 13 special 1x1 call signs, get a clean sweep. 3 bonus stations, including a new one this year from France.

    Lots of fun to chase the special event stations. SSB, CW, FT4, FT8, RTTY.... whatever the operators sign up for.

    If you are new to chasing, try this website & download the app from your app store, play store, whatever it's called.
    https://hamalert.org

    You build what's called a "trigger" for things. Start by feeding it all of the 1x1 calls. If you want, you can specify a mode -- I want them all on CW (because my noise floor is entirely too high for SSB). It will pop an alert to the app (or email, or SMS) to notify you when it sees things either on the DX cluster or Reverse Beacon Network (CW).
     
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  9. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    Route 66 On The Air is like 13 Colonies, except you get to chase 22 different stations across the original path of Route 66.

    The VE at my club is the trustee for W6K, the special event callsign for OKC. The halfway mark for the event was 9/15, and so far we've volunteered 130 hours between 10 operators putting the call out for other operators to chase.

    I took one of my Elmers (mentors for you non-hams) to a local train museum, across the street from a historic flour mill and operated for a couple of hours. He's legally blind, and an absolute bad ass at CW (Morse code). He loves working weak stations, and was pulling stations out of the noise that I couldn't even make out. There was enough signal to know there was a station there, but it was too weak for me to copy. Too much time spend around power tools and things that go bang for me I suppose.

    I feel more confident than last year's event. It's clear that the support of my two CW Elmers has paid dividends. My requests for fills (W6?) has gone down this year.

    Also added an LNR Precision MTR-4B to the stable this week. I'm going to pair it with a Vibroplex ParEndFedz 20/30/40m end fed antenna, and a set of paddles from GM0EUL. I'm planning to make this a fixture in a pack in my work vehicle, since I find myself near a 10-point SOTA summit that could be an easy lunch activation probably once a month.
     
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  10. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    Anybody chasing the 13 Colonies event this year?

    Some of the stations are doing slow-scan television (SSTV) and satellite passes, which is new for this year. Also looks like more stations are operating split this year.... and that a lot of people are not familiar with it.
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2022
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  11. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    Just finished up the ARRL 10 meter contest. Set a new personal best for contacts made, multipliers, and score. I'd have to look at logs, but I think this is my strongest finish in a solo contest effort. Worked all 50 states except South Carolina. Worked DX, including Scotland, Corsica, Italy, Spain, and Isle of Man in addition to the usual South American & Caribbean stations.

    Technician class licenses have access to a portion of 10m.
     
  12. timdgsr

    timdgsr Member

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    Nice!

    I’ve only played around with uhf/vhf. I’ve got an ic-7300 sitting on my desk waiting to be set up. My kids are young enough that it wrecks my free time. Maybe one day I’ll get around to using it.
     
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  13. TerryD

    TerryD Member

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    I want to get a 7300 for my next rig. But I've got other stuff to deal with right now.
     
  14. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    We were running the IC-7300 as our main team contest rig, and then my Elmer upgraded to an IC-7610. We don't use it to its full potential by a long shot.

    The IC-7300 is still probably the best bang for the buck in the HF market.
     
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  15. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    One of the neat parts of ham radio is the vast number of specialty interests. Everything from chasing foreign countries to bouncing signals off the moon.

    There's an activity called Summits On The Air, or SOTA, that I enjoy.

    There are two different roles, chasers and activators. Chasers can be anywhere -- most often at home, sometimes mobile, and if the planets align you work another activator on a different summit. Activators carry radio gear and antennas to a mountain summit. Summits carry different point values based on summit elevation, being worth 1, 2, 4, 6,8, or 10 points.

    As a chaser, you can claim points for any summit once per day. As an activator.... you can earn points for a summit once a year. Since 2022 is almost over, I made a 15 hour round trip to activate 4 different summits. 3 of them were easy pickings, and the fourth was a mile hike (and it was all uphill).

    Carrying a radio, antenna, and battery you want to choose gear to accomplish the mission (making a minimum of 4 contacts) without breaking your back carrying gear. I bought an LNR Mountain Topper 4B as a portable radio, mainly to keep in my work vehicle since I'm near a 10 point summit about once a month. Low current draw, and can even run off a 9-volt battery. I was using a 2200mAh Lithium Ion pack designed for RC racecars. The output for the little CW (Morse Code) only rig is about 5 watts depending on the power feeding it. My antenna was the Chameleon MPAS Lite, which I pretty much cobbled together from various components of the MPAS system. Not the lightest option available, but it works pretty well.

    My farthest contact was a station in Sweden, some 4700 miles away -- over 900 miles per watt of transmitting power! Morse code is extremely efficient at low power, and SOTA was one of the driving forces for me learning it. Morse is no longer required in the US, but amateur radio operators are the largest users of this old technology because it's so efficient.
     
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  16. R Stowe

    R Stowe Moderator Staff Member

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    A guy I follow on IG does the SOTA thing, but I was unclear on the details. Thanks for the explanation.
     
  17. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    Absolutely! One of mentors is being lured into Parks on the Air (POTA), which is similar to the SOTA game but a lot easier on old guys than carrying gear up the mountain. I've got to get out more this year. I always have good intentions, but my on-call rotation (1 week on, 1 week off) at work really makes hobbies hard on the weekends. If I'm on call, I have to be able to be at the office in an hour. If I'm not on call, it's every hobby competing for attention.
     
  18. FTG-05

    FTG-05 Member

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    KI4DXX, right now listening to one of the local repeaters 145.150 on my Kenwood TM-271A.
     
  19. SteveG

    SteveG Member

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    KM6WJH Checking in. It’s great to see people on here embracing Ham. Cheers!
     
  20. Kylemeister

    Kylemeister Member

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    Anybody play around with Winter Field Day?

    We didn't make a big effort of it. It was an excuse to enjoy some nice January weather for a few hours. We used some of the setup time to do a Parks On The Air (POTA) activation of a state park. We then shifted into WFD mode, and knocked out some contacts as a 1M (1 transmitter mobile location) station. We chose M class as we were inside a utility trailer, but could have chosen O for outdoor since we had all the doors open. We didn't shut things down until probably 8pm, so it was tearing things down by lantern and headlamp.
     

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