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This thread inspired me to go and grab my Technician license. I grabbed the no nonsense Tech study Guide pdf and read it just out of curiosity. After that I considered actually getting licensed, so I googled for testing locations. It actually turned out that testing was being held the very next day, so I went for it and got the tech license on the first try. I took a stab at the General license just for kicks and failed miserably with 19 wrong out of 35. No real surprise there. I hadn't tested myself on any of the questions in that question pool, so that test was all me. Currently still waiting for my callsign. Also trying to get my hands on a radio. Im open to either a yaesu ft-60r new, or a used vx-7r. I ordered a ft-60r from universal radio. Got an email saying was on backorder until next month. I said no thanks. If I wanted to order my radio from Korea and wait two weeks I could have done it myself 
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Jan 23, 2010 01:59
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Came across a ft-60r for $135 shipped. Just to good of an offer to pass up. Had another deal going for a vx-7r for $275 shipped. But that price is a lot closer to fair market value compared to the ft-60r which seems like a killer deal. HF looks like a lot of fun in the future. Right now Im just getting into this. I think Ill be content with my radio. Saw some people using it to work AO-51. So I will definitely try that as soon as possible. Also, I'm in the boston metro area. Hoping that since this is a pretty techy place the average age of your ham radio user here is below 60. Things are looking pretty good so far. Only one greybeard in the class when I took my tech examine.
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Jan 23, 2010 17:17
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Just got done catching up on about 8 months worth of posts in this thread. Got my license almost a year ago. Haven transmitted once since I got the license, got a little yaesu ft-60 to play around with during that time. The local repeaters are full of OF's that I would never talk to. Is HF more interesting? Thinking about getting the General license and a hf rig to play with. A year later and I feel a bit better about droping $350-$400 on a hf setup. Also thanks for the tips on the New Jersey repeater system(W2NJR) on echo link. Getting drunk and tuning into that on echolink is pretty hilarious at times. I wish the OF's in my locale were as interesting, but sadly they are not
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Dec 12, 2010 04:01
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I have just discovered http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?feedId=4746 and it has been non stop entertainment. These guys are funny and the gimick people like "squeaky voice" have been pretty good. Someone did a "Mobile church of the .435" where you could confess your sins on air. A bunch of people confessed to all sorts of things and the "reverend" just came back and explained that every thing from porn addictions to smoking weed were all very normal.
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Sep 25, 2011 00:56
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i recently received one of those new model nanovna v2 in the mail and used it against every antenna i already had and learned a lot. it also showed me i can basically make a resonant antenna out of anything that has coax and some wire at the end of it. not bad for the price. i figure any antenna analyzer will do the same thing for teaching. before that the swr meter in my hf rig wasn’t really doing it for me
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Nov 6, 2020 23:53
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Unsure if there is a solution to my current problem but I wanted to toss this out there I bought a Anytone mobile DMR radio and am using it as my base station at home during the pandemic. One issue thats popped up is its seems like its obviously a SDR based radio. I live less than 50 yards from large apartment building with lots of radio gear on the roof and one of those things is the local analog police repeater. Every time the police transmit it breaks the squelch on my radio for just about all the 70cm freq's I have programmed in. Its seems like its just a flaw in the design and my radios front end is getting overloaded with harmonic's and breaking squelch. If I look over on my SDR waterfall running on a different antenna. I dont see any spurs being picked up in the 70cm band. So its gotta be something happening inside my radio and not spurious RF floating around in the ether from nearby transmitters.  Curious if I could try building/buying some sort of filter to try and knock out the freq the police tx on. More than likely I think the solution is "buy a real radio" and not use one of these newer SDR designs. My old yaseu HT does not have this problem. So I figure I need to go with something that has that type of design. If someone has a 2m/70cm base station they like I can try searching the markets for one.
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Feb 2, 2021 17:59
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I made a similar mistake with the parrot talk group on DMR and it was a private call vs group call thing. similar to you. some guy in london replied to me testing. then it turned into a full QSO. meanwhile multiple people are “testing” in the background in between our convo. very bizarre
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Feb 19, 2021 14:34
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i have owned a yaesu ft60r for over a decade and the most that i can do with the menu system is switch into memory mode and scan my pre programed frequencies. but maybe i am turbo dumb idk. its also one of the things you figure out once and then three months later after not touching it you can’t remember how to get to X i bought a big radio with a million knobs and like it very much. one day ill try on of the new icoms for comparison.
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Feb 20, 2021 18:51
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hastily setup fldigi last night and played some rtty. I’m still newish to the hf bands and had only been using ft8 and js8 call for digi modes. This rtty thing is really fun. found a few people on 40 meters and did some free form keyboard to keyboard chat js8 call kinda empty these days and rtty is too unless its a contest. but once i got someone who wasent just shouting macros at me then it was a blast.
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Feb 21, 2021 18:28
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nice, i like putting myself out there on the repeaters and it tends to bring out some people i suspect dont tx a lot. i like it. i read something here locally where some guys went mountain topping and tried getting the longest DMR simplex contact and ended up running into a problem not with the signal strength. but the distance/latency between the two radios was so great it was breaking underlying assumptions made in the protocol itself https://nedecn.org/talk-groups/dmr-simplex/
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Feb 21, 2021 21:39
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thehustler posted:
yo thanks for this. glad to see other people’s experiments with this. ive seen analog fm done a million times but DMR is still newish.
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Feb 22, 2021 01:50
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that you should have no problem with( online testing ). the pandemic brought in a lot of new people to the hobby and at the same time a few places built out a network of volunteer examination coordinators and some software to do it all online. Its how I upgraded my license during the pandemic. would recommend https://hamstudy.org is the big one. Local clubs are doing zoom meeting tests periodically as well if you have contact with someone locally.
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May 28, 2021 04:00
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SOTA/POTA is a fun angle to the hobby. It deff taps into things that are both outdoors and high tech. There a number of phone apps that makes chasing activators easier. I use SotaGoat on my phone for notifications for when someone activates nearby and then I try and jump on the radio and make a contact with them. daytime 20 meters has lots of pota people on it and its pretty easy to stumble upon them when tuning around the band.
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Aug 18, 2021 00:14
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lol good ol’ hams I guess. The easiest way is dont touch the exposed metal wire portion of antenna. Commercially made antennas are usually insulated for exactly this reason. stopping you from touching the burn’y part. Something to be aware of though as a license holder. You are allowed to experiment and that’ll bring you closer to a scenario where you can get zapped.
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Oct 21, 2021 13:29
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ya, this is a thing that exists (minus the vr) https://dk8ok.org/2018/07/25/direction-finding-first-experiences/ there are loads of software defined radios all over the world that are coordinated online. to the point you can ask a lot of radios what direction they think they hear a signal from and then lay that data down on top of google maps. its uncovered the location of things like number stations and pirate radio broadcasters.
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Dec 15, 2021 14:02
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do it. thats how i get most people into ham already have an activity. add radio. get a bunch of people through the tech exam. then bam. every one effectively communicating during said activity. having all my friends get their ham ticket has saved me so much time while out on adventures. no more going the wrong way for half an hour only to turn back. no more having someone walk across a vast distance only to come back with the wrong thing. no more spending 20 minutes in town trying to find a place to eat. we split up and whoever finds the best spot wins. seriously when i think how much $$$ an hour we’re spending out on group outings. saving an hour or two over a long weekend will pay for those radio’s easily. as a side benefit some people took a bit further and got sick mobile setups and are on the local repeaters now.
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May 21, 2022 00:18
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you should be able to hear ft8 on 20/40 meters basically 24/7. makes for a pretty good test because its a popular mode and there’s always signals
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Oct 25, 2022 01:17
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think about being drowned out by some local rfi. i have put together the worst homebuilt antenna and heard ft8 on 20/40 in my basement. even suboptimal antenna should be picking up ft8 unless it’s completely swamped by a local noise source.
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Oct 26, 2022 04:02
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that should work rather good? even if you’re deaf locally. when you TX. that should go pretty far. assuming resonant antenna, coax, decent transmitting radio. its common for people to hear you but you dont hear them well enough to be able to reply.
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Oct 26, 2022 06:33
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Achmed Jones posted:so how much danger am i in of frying myself with my ss-30m? i would prefer that little and poodle jones dont get zapped should be good. the ones that have voltage on the outside of the case are the older style linear power supplies. the big heavy ones with huge transformers in them. even then its the 13.8 volts. not enough to shock you but enough to make some sparks if some metal object gets in there. yours is a modern switching style supply which means its design is from when some basic consumer protection ideas existed vs. the older style which are from a time when people thought it was ok to have 400 volts dc exposed on the outside of tube equipment. still love my old astron linear’s tho. super simple. easy to repair and modify. can be left turned on for several decades with zero faults. https://www.repeater-builder.com/astron/astron-index.html is the go to for a rabbit hole of information about the older linear style power supplies
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Nov 11, 2022 04:55
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join the goon dmr weekly net. most of us are computer professionals and its 100% angry man shakes fist at cloud chat
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Feb 7, 2023 19:07
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had one of those “woah” moments you get with ham radio every once in a while. Something about a line of thunderstorms or the cold front they rode on let me carry on a conversation with a 2 meter repeater thats about 105 air miles from my place. Normally I cant hear it all. maybe occasionally I can kerchunk it. then barely make out the station ID. This time it came up in the scan list nice and strong. I thought I’d give it a shot since it was coming in so well and yep, other side heard me fine. lasted about twenty minutes before i fell back into the static.
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Jun 18, 2023 22:38
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most of the foam in those coax cables is not closed cell. so it’ll eventually become water logged and never evaporate. will deff tear stuff up if you leave it like that. I did something similar by letting some coax rub against tree limbs and it was all torn up. right in the middle of a 100ft run too. so in the end I cut it and put new ends on it. but. now. I have two 40ft runs that are drat near useless for anything cause they are too short. go figure.
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Jul 19, 2023 03:48
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pretty legit. A lot of clubs moved over to zoom meeting style testing during the pandemic and never went back. Turns out its very convenient for everyone and they like it.
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Sep 26, 2023 03:30
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nice. I got a gen 1 sdrplay free from a friend and it is so much more capable than a rtl-sdr that its hard to even comprehend. way less susceptible to reflections and overload than the rtl-sdr. seems to be way more sensitive too. would not hesitate to get one of the newer models.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:05
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