đź’¬ OT The official Amateur (ham) Radio thread - and GMRS
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. This shouldn't be a replacement part, it should be going into an open spot.
Whos got a swr meter to set my Wilson 500 up?
I don't know where I put mine. It's been years since I played with this stuff. I also need to find a nice microphone
I don't know where I put mine. It's been years since I played with this stuff. I also need to find a nice microphone
I used to have one of those!!!! Paired with a Texas Star 500.
For a mic, go with Astatic. The D104 was the “go to” model, but I preferred the 636.
I need an SWR meter too. I found my old DOSY but it’s dead.
I've got a dx66v as well. That talks at 80w or something, have to direct wire it from the battery with heavy gauge.
I had chip at the truck stop do all my work. He was in Hampshire?? Near i90 and 47 I believe...
I can’t even remember where I had gotten all my gear. At one point I had two Galaxy radios, think the second was an 88DX. Also, somewhere I have a Cobra 148GTL. I have a President AR-144, and know exactly where that is.
The President 2510 (two actually) I wanted to key really low and swing high on purpose. When driving my 500, I could make it key as low as 50w and it would swing to about 150. The 500’s low was variable, but High was all “kick your ass and take no handles “. That would key at 250 and swing to 550.
Shortly before I got out of the game I had traded in my Texas Star 500 for their Phantom 667. What a beast. I could drive that to almost 750w, and ran dual 6’ Firesticks.
At the end, sold the amps, Galaxy radios, and antennas. Simplified my set up with just the 2510, a Grey 100 (with 60w finals instead of 50w), and a nice clean Francis whip. I did add in a Wilson 500 mag mount in case I was in someone else’s car.
The 2510 with the Grey and the 636L performed great. The two radios are in their original packaging and boxes. I can still use them for either 11m or 10m. There was nowhere (channel) they couldn’t go, from 26-30Mhz, 10Khz at a time.
Many times the few of us that had channel kits would just go 30Khz below 1 or above 40. Or, to fuck with people go in between channels, like 3/4, or if close enough to each other change to FM.
Oh, and that was just my mobile setup. For home I had a President Washington with a Tri-Star (?) switchable antenna. I have a 40A power supply that I drove a small 250w linear with.
The antenna had three sticks in a triangle, all 120° from each other, about 3’ from the mast. Using all three as a single point of propagation it only had like 6db of gain. But you could switch it so that two of the antennas would change to a ground plane and reflect your signal. So you could focus it in a 120° wide “beam” and get about 12db gain. That was a really great setup.
I’m trying to think of the base mic I have for it. That I kept since it sounded so good. I have it in a box, somewhere. I miss that President Washington. It had a channel kit to go +/- 40 channels with a frequency counter that had like 30Khz of adjustment. So I could be on channel 5 and “dial up” to 6 or 7 without touching the channel knob.
The antenna had three sticks in a triangle, all 120° from each other, about 3’ from the mast. Using all three as a single point of propagation it only had like 6db of gain. But you could switch it so that two of the antennas would change to a ground plane and reflect your signal. So you could focus it in a 120° wide “beam” and get about 12db gain. That was a really great setup.
I’m trying to think of the base mic I have for it. That I kept since it sounded so good. I have it in a box, somewhere. I miss that President Washington. It had a channel kit to go +/- 40 channels with a frequency counter that had like 30Khz of adjustment. So I could be on channel 5 and “dial up” to 6 or 7 without touching the channel knob.
Found it, it was an Antenna Specialists Super Scanner. Man was I far off with the name. 6db Omni, 8.75db in beam.
Not directly HAM radio, but I have an old Uniden Bearcat 8500XLT that runs most of the day, for local VHF/UHF. I just happened to spin the VFO to an open channel (unused), and started picking up WWV. WWV has been on only 2.5 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz, 15 MHz, and 20 MHz. My scanner has a frequency range 25 MHz to 1.3 GHz.
Hmm.
Turns out WWV (NIST) is also doing an experimental broadcast on 25 MHz, which my scanner automatically defaults to on open and unused channels (000.0000 MHz). So, with a 30 year old Radio Shack "Archer" 3-element scanner antenna on my roof I'm picking up the signal out of Fort Collins, CO. I'm guessing atmospheric conditions are allowing that, cause it's not normal.
www.nist.gov
Hmm.
Turns out WWV (NIST) is also doing an experimental broadcast on 25 MHz, which my scanner automatically defaults to on open and unused channels (000.0000 MHz). So, with a 30 year old Radio Shack "Archer" 3-element scanner antenna on my roof I'm picking up the signal out of Fort Collins, CO. I'm guessing atmospheric conditions are allowing that, cause it's not normal.
Radio Station WWV
Notice: Since November 15, 2021, WWV and WWVH has been broadcasting a test signal on minute 8 of eac
Yeah that's an "opening." I believe we are nearing the peak of the solar cycle expect it to happen more. Good time to be a CBer too.
25 MHz, puts it at the very top of the 12m band. So not unheard of for skip/skywave propagation, but it is unusual for the distance between me and Ft. Collins, which is roughly 1000 miles.
Unfortunately I don't have receivers that will go further down in to HF (below 25 MHz). I do have a small superheterodyne Short Wave receiver, but it just uses an extendable antenna, with no way to hook an external antenna to it. That would give me a better indication.
I already checked some 2m beacons and am not hearing anything, but that is not at all surprising. I'll have to see where the 6m beacons got moved to, and if there are any 10m beacons.
Unfortunately I don't have receivers that will go further down in to HF (below 25 MHz). I do have a small superheterodyne Short Wave receiver, but it just uses an extendable antenna, with no way to hook an external antenna to it. That would give me a better indication.
I already checked some 2m beacons and am not hearing anything, but that is not at all surprising. I'll have to see where the 6m beacons got moved to, and if there are any 10m beacons.
Not directly HAM radio, but I have an old Uniden Bearcat 8500XLT that runs most of the day, for local VHF/UHF. I just happened to spin the VFO to an open channel (unused), and started picking up WWV. WWV has been on only 2.5 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz, 15 MHz, and 20 MHz. My scanner has a frequency range 25 MHz to 1.3 GHz.
Hmm.
Turns out WWV (NIST) is also doing an experimental broadcast on 25 MHz, which my scanner automatically defaults to on open and unused channels (000.0000 MHz). So, with a 30 year old Radio Shack "Archer" 3-element scanner antenna on my roof I'm picking up the signal out of Fort Collins, CO. I'm guessing atmospheric conditions are allowing that, cause it's not normal.
Radio Station WWV
Notice: Since November 15, 2021, WWV and WWVH has been broadcasting a test signal on minute 8 of eac
Going to go with Skip.... not hearing anything (WWV) on 25.0000 MHz now.
Did hear a lot of over-modulated garbage on 11m though, which is pretty much on par for that band.
More like a super cesspool. Sad to see how much garbage is on that band now. It's a competition to see who can be the most unintelligible. The last few times I ran through the channels I couldn't understand 95% of what was being transmitted. Main reason I started to get into GMRS and working on my ham ticket (again). Might aim for General instead of Tech.
For the GMRS there is a local repeater with about 60-70 miles of coverage, and weekly net check ins seem to be fairly popular and friendly.
https://www.idahoares.info/current_propagation.php
Looking at this you wouldn't even hit 6M honestly, however 10M should be well open.
Looking at this you wouldn't even hit 6M honestly, however 10M should be well open.
Agreed.... since I don't have any 6m equipment, not a huge concern. But for that 25 MHz WWV signal, it's open.
My dad (licensed) has a Yaesu FT-840, which is an HF all-mode, so he can play around and see which bands are active.
Mr_Roboto, I picked up a NanoVNA... still learning it but did some testing with my micro mobile GMRS antenna, with a simulated ground plane (9" pie tin). Not bad for a 6" whip...There is a +5 MHz offset for input, so 467 MHz in (M2), and 462 MHz out (M1). First trace (yellow) has a scale division of 0.05. The blue trace is set to scale division of 1.00.
There's some kits out there for 40M CW called the Pixie. I built one, it was actually silly easy to do. Probably an hour and a half into it, nothing major. Far as I can tell it puts out about .3W RMS. You're going to want a fully resonant antenna to use this one for sure, you don't have the power to lose trying to use it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/175501765605
For under $6.50 to your door you can build a 40M CW transceiver or a pair of em for a $10 bill. I'd couple this with some cheap wire from a store to make a dipole from. Some coax and a few connectors are likely going to be the big cost honestly. Kinda wild if you ask me. I'd almost put this in a small box, run wires down for a key and the speaker and just direct couple it for efficiency. An end fed half wave would probably be good in this case to minimize the coax run length.
Also got a NESDR SMART I've been using with ADS-B to track planes. Got an interesting lesson in propagation in my house via this one. I have a small dipole I built, and it was laying on my desk with the ends pointed to the walls and it was basically deaf. I have the antenna dangling now with the end pointed to a window and it hears way more traffic. Absolutely wild how direct the lobe direction is with this, I mean there's no comparison.
I have a ubitx downstairs I've been tweaking. peeled some traces on the PCB though, gotta figure out how I'm fixing that one. Got in a hurry to pull the IRF510s because I think they need swapped. Sigh. Probably gonna throw sockets into the board.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/175501765605
For under $6.50 to your door you can build a 40M CW transceiver or a pair of em for a $10 bill. I'd couple this with some cheap wire from a store to make a dipole from. Some coax and a few connectors are likely going to be the big cost honestly. Kinda wild if you ask me. I'd almost put this in a small box, run wires down for a key and the speaker and just direct couple it for efficiency. An end fed half wave would probably be good in this case to minimize the coax run length.
Also got a NESDR SMART I've been using with ADS-B to track planes. Got an interesting lesson in propagation in my house via this one. I have a small dipole I built, and it was laying on my desk with the ends pointed to the walls and it was basically deaf. I have the antenna dangling now with the end pointed to a window and it hears way more traffic. Absolutely wild how direct the lobe direction is with this, I mean there's no comparison.
I have a ubitx downstairs I've been tweaking. peeled some traces on the PCB though, gotta figure out how I'm fixing that one. Got in a hurry to pull the IRF510s because I think they need swapped. Sigh. Probably gonna throw sockets into the board.
Played around with the SDR a bit tonight. My signal generator is basically a few hundred KHz to 240Mhz so that's where my thoughts and results are. I wish I had something that went up higher, but the demand hasn't really been there for me to buy another genny in the mean time.
I honestly feel like this thing is a bit deaf and I'll say my opinion is probably right and wrong at once. The built in gain is ~50db, and I'm of the opinion that seems accurate. Without the built in amplification I'm at -60-65dbm with an audible signal from my generator. With the gain turned up I'm at about -110dbm. I saw an additional -13DB or so below 50Mhz with it being totally deaf at 10MHz. I haven't tested it yet but I do have an upconverter for this that's supposedly useable for 0-60MHz effectively.
If I had a quieter amplifier with a better noise floor than what's built into the SDR I feel as if I'd be better off with that. I also feel it likely that I could be better off with some filtering too. Part of this is the risk of potential over run but also that if you're transmitting near this thing even on low power it freaks out. I think if I had input filtering on it that it would be a lot happier, provided the filtering was sharp enough to cut out the frequencies being transmitted on.
Been fucking around with my UbitX too. Haven't got squat for TX power in it and I'm trying to sort through that. The NTE278 transistors I had were causing me problems so I went to 2N2222As. I think I'm still having problems, just not sure yet. Been a hell of a time working through things, I want to make a test setup for the 278s. I'm really tempted to rip out a couple stages of the amp and shove an LDMOS setup in there and run that instead. I could probably pick up enough gain to make me not apologize for doing it. I'm deeply frustrated with this at the moment, just not sure how to proceed.
Also, I have a hankering to buy an Xeigu G90 or X5105. I've seen some of the X5105s on ebay relatively nicely priced, but it's only 5W while the G90s go up to 20W. Both have built in tuners, but the X5105 has a built in battery at the same weight.
I honestly feel like this thing is a bit deaf and I'll say my opinion is probably right and wrong at once. The built in gain is ~50db, and I'm of the opinion that seems accurate. Without the built in amplification I'm at -60-65dbm with an audible signal from my generator. With the gain turned up I'm at about -110dbm. I saw an additional -13DB or so below 50Mhz with it being totally deaf at 10MHz. I haven't tested it yet but I do have an upconverter for this that's supposedly useable for 0-60MHz effectively.
If I had a quieter amplifier with a better noise floor than what's built into the SDR I feel as if I'd be better off with that. I also feel it likely that I could be better off with some filtering too. Part of this is the risk of potential over run but also that if you're transmitting near this thing even on low power it freaks out. I think if I had input filtering on it that it would be a lot happier, provided the filtering was sharp enough to cut out the frequencies being transmitted on.
Been fucking around with my UbitX too. Haven't got squat for TX power in it and I'm trying to sort through that. The NTE278 transistors I had were causing me problems so I went to 2N2222As. I think I'm still having problems, just not sure yet. Been a hell of a time working through things, I want to make a test setup for the 278s. I'm really tempted to rip out a couple stages of the amp and shove an LDMOS setup in there and run that instead. I could probably pick up enough gain to make me not apologize for doing it. I'm deeply frustrated with this at the moment, just not sure how to proceed.
Also, I have a hankering to buy an Xeigu G90 or X5105. I've seen some of the X5105s on ebay relatively nicely priced, but it's only 5W while the G90s go up to 20W. Both have built in tuners, but the X5105 has a built in battery at the same weight.
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