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thehustler
Apr 17, 2004

I am very curious about this little crescendo
Comes to about 50 miles. My contact today was 22 miles away and had me at S8 on 5W into the Slim Jim (2.15dBi gain?). Presumably there is a bit of a cliff drop off the closer you get to the end of the range, but I’ve had some perfectly readable S1 signals before. Very interesting, I know this is nothing new to folk but it’s fun to actually learn it and do it.

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Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



My new garage's door is not very high, so the 1/4 wave 2m antenna mounted on the roof of my pickup whacks it every time I pull in or out. It's on an NMO mount and so far I haven't seen any obvious damage to the antenna or the sheet metal, but drat it's an obnoxious noise. I see a few little stubby antennas on Amazon, like https://www.amazon.com/Eightwood-Mobile-Antenna-Magnetic-430mhz/dp/B077N3V87V/, but are they any good? Am I better off just learning to deal with the noise?

manero
Jan 30, 2006

Pham Nuwen posted:

My new garage's door is not very high, so the 1/4 wave 2m antenna mounted on the roof of my pickup whacks it every time I pull in or out. It's on an NMO mount and so far I haven't seen any obvious damage to the antenna or the sheet metal, but drat it's an obnoxious noise. I see a few little stubby antennas on Amazon, like https://www.amazon.com/Eightwood-Mobile-Antenna-Magnetic-430mhz/dp/B077N3V87V/, but are they any good? Am I better off just learning to deal with the noise?

There are a bunch of adjustable lip mount antenna mounts available (Diamond or Comet, I think), so you can at least get a chance to hop out and put the antenna down. Otherwise there are also antennas that can be folded down as part of the antenna itself

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Yeah those little super stubbies are no good. They'll "work", sure, but not as well as even a quarter wave. Seconding a foldover mount if the TWANG bugs ya.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Foldover mount would do the trick but I'm loath to exchange a proper NMO mount on the roof for a lip mount... maybe I better just try to deal with the twang and keep an eye on the roof & antenna for any damage.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Comet 2x4SR has a foldover option https://www.amazon.com/Comet-Original-CA-2X4SR-140-160-435-465/dp/B00HVGQZ9G

it's a really interesting dual band mobile whip. SR = "search and rescue". You won't ever really see an SWR below 1.4 or so anywhere, but the matching unit is built to be more broadband so you can run your GMRS or volunteer fire department radio on it. I've got one on the truck I use as a dedicated scanner antenna, does great.

That one's a UHF mount, they have an NMO version too, but I just got a UHF -> NMO adapter for my setup.

Kaiser Schnitzel
Mar 29, 2006

Schnitzel mit uns


Hello Hobbyists and Crafters of all sorts! Our friends from Creative Convention are visiting with their Travelling Showcase of Wonders and they want to see all the cool and fantastic things you've been working on! Go show them off and admire the handiwork of other talented goons!

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3946255

PhantomOfTheCopier
Aug 13, 2008

Pikabooze!

horse_ebookmarklet posted:

The entire AREDN stack is CGI PERL!! in 2020. The 1st party packages seem to have been secured.
Only took me around 5 beers to find my root RCE. Might take many more to find a second but smoke/fire.
Hmm maybe I should see about helping out. The community kinda gave up on cgi.pm in favor of clunky frameworks, but there's still stuff that needs it and fcgi.

I'm not really into data but it could be interesting to glance at the software.

Good find! Thanks for giving back to the community.


ps. And Lua and shell scripts and javascript too!

PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Dec 14, 2020

thehustler
Apr 17, 2004

I am very curious about this little crescendo
Just making a Pixie kit, what's the best transistor I can use as a replacement for the S8050 it comes with? I have some 2222s - they should allow for more current from C to E, so I would expect that's more power out?

Is it just as simple as replacing one for another? Depends if it requires a different bias voltage I guess on the base.

Edit: absolutely fine, should a few more measily mA.

thehustler fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Dec 15, 2020

LimaBiker
Dec 9, 2020




Somehow those simple pixie kits are harder than i expected to get working well. I built a pixie on some copper clad board which worked just fine, but i managed to destroy 2 of those kits.
Turns out, running the 9v kit on 12v blows up the final transistor, a diode and a choke.

I'd say 'just plop in any random transistor and see if it works'. Perhaps check out the original pixie design for some bias resistor values.

Also, hi, i'm LimaBiker, QTH Amsterdam, and i like to fool around with radio stuff that is two or three times older than i am. If anyone needs advice on how to fix tube equipment, let me know.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
metal case quad 2's would be a good final amp yeah. I did a 100% homebrew CW crystal transmitter and used 2n2222a sputniks in push/pull for the final and got drat near a watt with almost no idle current. was clean on the scope too

Loving Africa Chaps
Dec 3, 2007


We had not left it yet, but when I would wake in the night, I would lie, listening, homesick for it already.

Is there such a think as a remote antenna setup? I have a 10m long attic i could put one up in but then no where to run it to somewhere i would want to use a radio.

I ask because i'm getting increasingly obsessed with all the radios in https://www.cryptomuseum.com/ and love the idea of building a radio kit in the style of an old spy set. I don't have a HAM license (UK based) but feel like that project would be a good nudge to get one. I bought a baofeng a while ago to dip my toe in and listen but the repeaters in london i got was old dude's talking about diarrhea mostly. I suspect maybe the answer is some kind of SDR in the attic and connect to it over WiFi if that is even a thing

poeticoddity
Jan 14, 2007
"How nice - to feel nothing and still get full credit for being alive." - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse Five

Loving Africa Chaps posted:

Is there such a think as a remote antenna setup? I have a 10m long attic i could put one up in but then no where to run it to somewhere i would want to use a radio.

I ask because i'm getting increasingly obsessed with all the radios in https://www.cryptomuseum.com/ and love the idea of building a radio kit in the style of an old spy set. I don't have a HAM license (UK based) but feel like that project would be a good nudge to get one. I bought a baofeng a while ago to dip my toe in and listen but the repeaters in london i got was old dude's talking about diarrhea mostly. I suspect maybe the answer is some kind of SDR in the attic and connect to it over WiFi if that is even a thing

There are some pretty slick SDR setups that integrate with a Raspberry Pi which might fit the bill of what you're describing.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Loving Africa Chaps posted:

Is there such a think as a remote antenna setup? I have a 10m long attic i could put one up in but then no where to run it to somewhere i would want to use a radio.

I ask because i'm getting increasingly obsessed with all the radios in https://www.cryptomuseum.com/ and love the idea of building a radio kit in the style of an old spy set. I don't have a HAM license (UK based) but feel like that project would be a good nudge to get one. I bought a baofeng a while ago to dip my toe in and listen but the repeaters in london i got was old dude's talking about diarrhea mostly. I suspect maybe the answer is some kind of SDR in the attic and connect to it over WiFi if that is even a thing

A lot of modern rigs can be controlled over TCP/IP. So you'd jam the radio in the attic near the antenna and connect from downstairs. I think the newest ones even do WiFi if you're not keen to run an ethernet cable.

the milk machine
Jul 23, 2002

lick my keys

poeticoddity posted:

There are some pretty slick SDR setups that integrate with a Raspberry Pi which might fit the bill of what you're describing.

i was fiddling around with a raspberry pi + sdr upstairs where i get better reception this summer; i think i was following along with this article: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-setting-up-and-using-the-spyserver-remote-streaming-server-with-an-rtl-sdr/

thehustler
Apr 17, 2004

I am very curious about this little crescendo
The LM386 on my Pixie is motorboating :kingsley:

CapnBry
Jul 15, 2002

I got this goin'
Grimey Drawer

the milk machine posted:

i was fiddling around with a raspberry pi + sdr upstairs where i get better reception this summer; i think i was following along with this article: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-setting-up-and-using-the-spyserver-remote-streaming-server-with-an-rtl-sdr/
I was not aware that spyserver would work with rtl-sdr, I might have to give this a try.

My primary radio is an SDR plugged into a Raspberry Pi 3A+ with rtl_tcp that sits out on the back porch and I connect over wifi from SDR Console or SDR#. It works great other than me having to go outside to switch the antenna from HF (random wire with 9:1 unun) to VHF/UHF. I used to have an SDRplay RSP1A but in this setup it couldn't run 16-bit samples or grab a lot of bandwidth without choking the network connection, so I went back to just the RTL-SDR.com dongle which gives me 90% of the signal for 20% of the cost.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
the most entertaining thing that i learned this year is that you can buy a synology NAS with a celeron chip (translation: can run docker), install the OpenWebRX docker image, jam a god drat RTL stick in the front USB port and you have a web sdr running on your NAS. no configuration file fiddling, no horseshit. I think I had to add one line to the docker run command to have it mount the USB device. I was unironically amazed at how simple it was.

Forseti
May 26, 2001
To the lovenasium!
If you don't need the NAS part you can get all kinds of cheap used x86 business hardware on eBay. Something like this Dell/Wyse DX0Q would do the job nicely I think. I have one that I snagged for $15 for a while back (used and with nothing but the computer, not even a power brick). It's just a normal computer that you can boot off a USB stick and install whatever x86 OS you want. They're a bit wimpy but still a decent bit faster than a Pi 4 and will absolutely thrash any other Pi.

A Raspberry Pi can run docker as well, but you might need to know what you're doing more with ARM. A lot of docker images are already available for ARM but plenty aren't. You can usually an ARM compatible one generally but that's the part where you might need a bit of linux know how.

Actually, I just checked one of the OpenWebRX images and it does have builds for arm and arm64, so it should work pretty easily on a Pi: https://hub.docker.com/r/jketterl/openwebrx/tags?page=1&ordering=last_updated

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Yeah, if i was building a fresh rig, i'd do the 8 gig pi4 and jam one of those clone RSP1s into it (i have one and love it) and call it good. I wanna say you can even PoE it somehow, so you're only looking at one wire to to the head end

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Jonny 290 posted:

the most entertaining thing that i learned this year is that you can buy a synology NAS with a celeron chip (translation: can run docker), install the OpenWebRX docker image, jam a god drat RTL stick in the front USB port and you have a web sdr running on your NAS. no configuration file fiddling, no horseshit. I think I had to add one line to the docker run command to have it mount the USB device. I was unironically amazed at how simple it was.

Is something like that what would let me run one of those WebSDR sites that people can connect to in order to check out the radio in my area? Running it on my NAS instead of my Pi feels a bit sketchy, but maybe I can figure out how to run it in a jail instead or something. Worst case it's just for me and close friends who can VPN in to my network.

I still don't have money for a transmitter right now but I needed a break from work and I wanted to see if I could get more OTA channels than the patch antenna that's up on my wall. Antenna construction seems more this thread's style than anything in IYG, so here's today's work with nothing more than random scrap and components around the house.



The Gray-Hoverman design seems to be the cat's pajamas, but I don't have enough thick gauge solid wire for its big driven element, so went with the DB4 design that's really common online due to the dipoles being easily made from scrap wood and metal, and it can be built in half an hour. Hanging by the window I'm able to get the station from 40km away that my store bought one could never pick up so I'm already ahead of the game. It's not picking up the lower-powered stations from the other side of my building that are much closer and (I believe) higher-powered, so a better antenna can only do so much against concrete and brick construction I guess. No point in putting on a reflector since the stations are 180 degrees apart from each other.

The balun in the first picture was so flimsy and the wires inside so gossamer that I decided to try making my own 4:1 transformer, following the directions from here. Good thing I had the foresight to get bags and bags of ferrite toroids of varying size back in my RC days. I have no idea how to confirm with a multimeter if I did it right, but so far it's much more robust than the pre-built one that broke wires just by tightening the leads. I made another one so I could make and connect a 300Ω dipole to the 75Ω input on my AVR and the FM radio band definitely sounds better than with the length of bicycle cable I had shoved in there previously.

Forseti
May 26, 2001
To the lovenasium!
Thanks for the heads up on that OpenWebRX docker image, I got an RTL-SDR last week but it's been sitting on my desk waiting for me to figure out which software I need. I didn't even think of docker, very nice to have everything ready to go like that.

Coxswain Balls posted:

Is something like that what would let me run one of those WebSDR sites that people can connect to in order to check out the radio in my area? Running it on my NAS instead of my Pi feels a bit sketchy, but maybe I can figure out how to run it in a jail instead or something. Worst case it's just for me and close friends who can VPN in to my network.

You can probably run it on your Pi pretty easily using a docker image since the maintainer makes ARM versions for it as well. https://hub.docker.com/r/jketterl/openwebrx


Coxswain Balls posted:

The balun in the first picture was so flimsy and the wires inside so gossamer that I decided to try making my own 4:1 transformer, following the directions from here. Good thing I had the foresight to get bags and bags of ferrite toroids of varying size back in my RC days. I have no idea how to confirm with a multimeter if I did it right, but so far it's much more robust than the pre-built one that broke wires just by tightening the leads. I made another one so I could make and connect a 300Ω dipole to the 75Ω input on my AVR and the FM radio band definitely sounds better than with the length of bicycle cable I had shoved in there previously.

I don't think you can really tell anything useful with a multimeter here. If you have a scope and a signal generator you can design some tests for aspects of it but I think to test the match what you really need is a SWR meter (traditional) or a Vector Network Analyzer. VNA's are extremely expensive if you want a real one from someone like Keysight, but I recently found out about the NanoVNA from Andreas Spiess' youtube and it looks awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pjcEKQY_Tk

Something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-2-NanoVN...o4AAOSwG7FfDNrV although you can probably find it cheaper on AliExpress. Anyone have experience with one? I'm really tempted to pick one up.

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Got it. It's the only tool I have on hand right now so it's not a big deal if I can't do any formal testing. Everything's working better than before so I'm assuming I did something right and won't fret over it.

The thing about it thrashing an older Pi is what's making me think of putting it on my NAS, since I've already got some other stuff running on my 3B+. Not like I can't give it a try with a different SD card if I can get my hands on the needed hardware in the future though.

wolrah
May 8, 2006
what?

Jonny 290 posted:

I wanna say you can even PoE it somehow, so you're only looking at one wire to to the head end
Yes you can, the Pi 3B+ and 4B both have support for an optional PoE hat that makes it integrated, as long as you don't need those hat pins for something else. Most recent Pi-likes have adopted a compatible design as well so those hats are cheap, plentiful, and widely supported in the "hacker SBC" realm.

Those with older models or who need to use the hat connector for other purposes can also get one of many PoE splitters that'll take in 802.3af and output USB power.

Coxswain Balls posted:

The thing about it thrashing an older Pi is what's making me think of putting it on my NAS, since I've already got some other stuff running on my 3B+. Not like I can't give it a try with a different SD card if I can get my hands on the needed hardware in the future though.
Keep in mind as well that part of the advantage of Pis is that they're cheap and widely available, so if you don't have enough headroom on one you can always easily add another to your "fleet".

Forseti
May 26, 2001
To the lovenasium!
I was just trying to say that that particular quad core AMD chip is a wimp by PC standards but is still a bit more powerful than a Pi. I don't think the CPU is actually all that much faster, probably trades blows, but it has much better I/O subsystems easily available (at least 2x SATA, one for the built in 16GB SATA DOM and an open one and also a mini PCIe slot that can be used for WiFi or something like that, and an extra RAM slot you can use to get it to 8GB if you want). I've used mine to play Civ IV with no problems. Just an option if you would prefer to use x86 instead of ARM.

Basically everyone thinks thin client = useless (I certainly did) but are relatively aware of what you can do with a Pi, so just trying to provide a frame of reference :)

My guess would be you can run OpenWebRX just fine on a Pi. The CPU in a 3 is pretty good, they're just held back by I/O in some tasks.

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

I'm a student right now so I have to be more picky with my purchases, unfortunately. It's also why a lot of my hobby time these days is spent on fabricating useful things from literal trash. I hear about people just finding Pis or having them given to them for free at events and such, but I've had no such luck. I'm really glad I got this thing before I started school, since it's saved me a ton of money on standalone appliances that are double the price with less features, and once I can get actively back into radio stuff again there seems to be a ton of uses for another Pi.

Might as well also ask about this while I'm here. My dad passed away a couple years ago and while sorting through his stuff at my parents place I found what I'm pretty sure is the first radio he bought after immigrating here in the 60s or 70s. I haven't tried plugging it in because I've heard you have to be careful with that on older radios. This is a solid state receiver though so I don't know how much it matters. I opened it up to remove the decades of pipe smoke that accumulated in there and while the caps look good and not puffy, I dunno if I should go ahead and replace them because of their age anyways.

He was an elderly parent so playing with radios and running antennas and stuff as he got really old is one of the few things we were able to do together. Right now it's just looking pretty in my entertainment center so I think it'd be cool if I could make an antenna for it and start using it again without breaking it.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Forseti posted:

I was just trying to say that that particular quad core AMD chip is a wimp by PC standards but is still a bit more powerful than a Pi. I don't think the CPU is actually all that much faster, probably trades blows, but it has much better I/O subsystems easily available (at least 2x SATA, one for the built in 16GB SATA DOM and an open one and also a mini PCIe slot that can be used for WiFi or something like that, and an extra RAM slot you can use to get it to 8GB if you want). I've used mine to play Civ IV with no problems. Just an option if you would prefer to use x86 instead of ARM.

Also, for a long time ham radio software was designed with x86 only in mind. Especially if you're going to run windows applications under Wine, you want x86.


Coxswain Balls posted:

Might as well also ask about this while I'm here. My dad passed away a couple years ago and while sorting through his stuff at my parents place I found what I'm pretty sure is the first radio he bought after immigrating here in the 60s or 70s. I haven't tried plugging it in because I've heard you have to be careful with that on older radios. This is a solid state receiver though so I don't know how much it matters. I opened it up to remove the decades of pipe smoke that accumulated in there and while the caps look good and not puffy, I dunno if I should go ahead and replace them because of their age anyways.

He was an elderly parent so playing with radios and running antennas and stuff as he got really old is one of the few things we were able to do together. Right now it's just looking pretty in my entertainment center so I think it'd be cool if I could make an antenna for it and start using it again without breaking it.



Beautiful radio! If the caps are electrolytic and ceramic, I wouldn't worry about it. If they're paper & wax (yellow cylinders covered in thick, nasty wax), I'd replace them.

Just attach the longest wire you can manage to the A terminal on the back and run it as high as you can, see what comes in.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
that old halli is cool as hell, i've never seen it before. The design reminds me of those battleship Peavey amps from the mid 70s.

Ham stuff will be rare but there are AM fellas on 3.885 and 7.290 almost every day. Seconding throw up a wire and see what you can get.

It's also probably a really good AM broadcast receiver, so you could have some good fun trying to pick up weak little farm region stations and stuff!

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Plugged it in and local AM stations come in perfectly with 50' of 22AWG speaker wire I had kicking around. CBC Radio One has less static on this thing than it does on the FM band using my AVR with the dipole I hooked up. I definitely need to take it apart again and hit it with some contact cleaner though, the volume dial crackles like crazy and the switches don't switch reliably unless I do it slowly and partway. It also doesn't seem to switch to band 4 reliably half the time unless I do it really slowly.

It seems to be picking some stuff up on the higher bands, but my antenna placement can probably be improved from "tossing it along the length of my balcony horizontally and hope for the best". How should I properly run a single wire antenna with this setup? The radio is below my TV and while I just have it going along the baseboards and out the door, I can probably run it out with the air conditioner which is to the right of my couch next to the door.

The length of the balcony is about 10m and I'm 25m up. If vertical is better I can try sneakily hanging the wire down for testing, but obviously that won't be a permanent installation.



Edit: hosed down the dials with contact cleaner and all the switches and dials work properly now. Can't want to see what I can get with it, playing with analog dials feels so much more satisfying than adjusting stuff on those online radios for some reason.

Coxswain Balls fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 19, 2020

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

I just tossed the wire over my balcony and got a lot better luck on the higher bands, it was a lot like fishing and seeing what I'd catch. Got a couple of what sounded like preachers, but also a few that were pulsing in a melodic fashion, with one of them having a dude saying something I couldn't understand every few minutes. It'd be cool if it was something like a numbers station, but it's probably something boring like a signal from the airport or something from the National Research Council.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

Coxswain Balls posted:

It'd be cool if it was something like a numbers station

I think most of those are upper sideband but I think the pip is AM sometimes: https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/The_Pip

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

I got the wrong country and instead of the National Research Council time signal, it's the NIST time signal from all the way in Colorado which makes it super frickin' cool to me because I'm all the way up in Canada.

I also got this which I'm trying to figure out what it is. I think it's in the CB band and different jingles would come up every couple of minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L9DUnwAsH0

Signal fishing is fun but I think I'll have to make it a night activity so I don't bother all the people below me with the lines I'm casting out.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Coxswain Balls posted:

I got the wrong country and instead of the National Research Council time signal, it's the NIST time signal from all the way in Colorado which makes it super frickin' cool to me because I'm all the way up in Canada.

I also got this which I'm trying to figure out what it is. I think it's in the CB band and different jingles would come up every couple of minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L9DUnwAsH0

Signal fishing is fun but I think I'll have to make it a night activity so I don't bother all the people below me with the lines I'm casting out.

The video could have been the ARRL's code practice transmission on 28.0675. The schedule is at http://www.arrl.org/w1aw-operating-schedule

Sir Bobert Fishbone
Jan 16, 2006

Beebort

Coxswain Balls posted:

I got the wrong country and instead of the National Research Council time signal, it's the NIST time signal from all the way in Colorado which makes it super frickin' cool to me because I'm all the way up in Canada.

I also got this which I'm trying to figure out what it is. I think it's in the CB band and different jingles would come up every couple of minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L9DUnwAsH0

Signal fishing is fun but I think I'll have to make it a night activity so I don't bother all the people below me with the lines I'm casting out.

It's funny, I live about 40 miles south of WWV and I got super excited the other day cause I picked up Canada's time signal.

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Pham Nuwen posted:

The video could have been the ARRL's code practice transmission on 28.0675. The schedule is at http://www.arrl.org/w1aw-operating-schedule

The time matches up and it certainly sounds like that's what it is. I think I'll try tuning in to it next time I have a chance to give decoding it a try, sounds like it should be fun.

Sir Bobert Fishbone posted:

It's funny, I live about 40 miles south of WWV and I got super excited the other day cause I picked up Canada's time signal.

Hahahah, that's awesome. It's the same with that HDTV antenna I just built; I'm way more enamored with the fact that I'm managing to pull a distant signal out of the air than the content of the signal itself, which is pretty dismal with broadcast TV that's not the local news if I'm gonna be honest.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp

Sir Bobert Fishbone posted:

It's funny, I live about 40 miles south of WWV and I got super excited the other day cause I picked up Canada's time signal.

when i drove up to operate WW0WWV for the 100th anniversary it was hilarious. i put every bit of attenuator my mobile hf rig had as i drove in and every single wwv freq was full scale S9+60 for the last couple miles in. good fun

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Soldered and heatshrinked a 30m 22AWG wire I can hang from my balcony to almost the ground. Originally put a fishing weight on it but that seemed like a bad idea if the wind took it and hit someone who was out for a smoke.

I was able to pick up football chat from KBGG in Des Moines Iowa on 1.7MHz broadcasting at 1kW, and I think a high school or college football game on 3.5 MHz? I heard Alabama but they might just be talking about NCAA stuff. So far from what I gather AM radio in the US is all about football.

I think I got the NRC time signal in Ottawa at 3.3 MHz but it kept cutting out before the top of the minute so I could set my clocks. Tried to hit up the NIST one but no more luck at this time. A few other channels with regular tones that I forgot to write down, but so far so good. I'm guessing the wire bends for clean routing in my apartment aren't great and ideally the only kink in the antenna should be when it goes over the railing and then straight down?

thehustler
Apr 17, 2004

I am very curious about this little crescendo
Experimenting with Slim Jims again, I just cut one that’s shorter overall than my current best effort for 2M but it’s resonant at 130MHz. I don’t get it. Should I be making the top shorter? Cut and resolder? I’ve tried that and it hasn’t really shifted the curve to the right at all.

I’m not cut out for this. If I can’t rescue this one I’m just gonna buy an N9TAX.

thehustler
Apr 17, 2004

I am very curious about this little crescendo
On the plus side I’m about to buy a near mint FT-817 (original model sadly) for £225 and that’ll be my first ever HF radio. I’m pretty excited. All the stuff is with it too.

Edit: On the down side, that's twice now I've heard a particular radio amateur call me out on-air (not by name) for being a foundation licence holder with lovely equipment and a lack of skills. Mentioned my kit very specifically so can only really be me.

This hobby is full of absolute cunts.

thehustler fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Dec 21, 2020

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Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Didn't realize I had to do a channel scan with the new antenna to fine tune it, now it's getting everything in the city perfectly so my building wasn't actually blocking anything. Compared it to the store-bought and it's no contest, my trash-tenna beats the pants out of it. There's only one more station it's not getting and that's because it's at the bottom of the VHF Hi band, which these DB4 antennas aren't suited for. If I can get my hands on enough thick-gauge solid-core wire I think I'm gonna take a crack at building a Gray-Hoverman antenna with NARODs, which are supposed to work really well with everything in both the VHF and UHF bands.

Antenna design seems really cool and building them with improvised materials is super fun. It also seems to have the bonus of not having to deal with shitheads on the air. If I can get all the local stations working perfect, I think I'm gonna try building a high-gain antenna to get some American stations. It'll have to do for now until I can finally get a modern HT to play with.

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