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I love the idea of a AG0ON, and can pitch in with graphics. I think it's very important to keep the hobby alive with fresh blood. I work audio in the entertainment industry, and there has been a lot of cross-over between what I've learned from amateur radio and on the job. I use Spectrum Lab on a scrappy old pentium running windows 98 to do all kinds of useful things at work with the waterfall display; such as tuning a PA, setting gains, quickly identifying feedback frequencies for EQ, and monitoring outputs. At home, I route my transceiver's audio through a direct box and into Ableton Live so I can EQ, compress and notch filter the signals before routing it to my headphones or modem software. It's also useful for quickly recording the radio's output if I hear something interesting that I want to replay later. I've spent the week scanning the SW & HF airways from a beachside porch at St George Island, FL with an inverted-v dipole. I've picked up as far west as Italy, and as far south as Buenos Aires, mostly listening to PSK31 and CW. I also picked up a numbers station at 11.63 MHz in the middle of the afternoon. I'm not transmitting anything since my tech privs don't do much for me as far as playing with digital modes, which is really what I'm interested in. I'm going to test for my General ticket later this month so I can get on the air soon.
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Mar 21, 2014 19:09
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DrakeriderCa posted:I'm curious about what people think of this idea - I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of it but I haven't seen it discussed here. It would probably work for receive, but transmitting might mess with the electronics in the quad. Flying and transmitting could be difficult, you'd probably want someone to focus on flying while you work the radio. What might work better is to use the quad to fly a monofilament up and over a tree, and use that to pull up your antenna instead. I'll actually be trying this myself once my quad comes in from HK.
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Mar 21, 2014 23:49
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Jonny 290 posted:(on that note it'd be REALLY nice to hook up a simple servo or latch to detach the line if you get hung up) Nah man, you've got four perfectly good line cutters spinning on it already. What could go wrong?
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Mar 22, 2014 20:20
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I passed my General exam last night! I had to drive thirty minutes out of town to get to the testing location way out in the sticks, and wait around for almost an hour for the third Extra to show up to be able to test. There were a few other guys there testing; one for both Tech and General, another for General, and one for Extra. Fortunately, the guy who was taking Tech and General was able to take his Tech while we were waiting. The guy testing for Extra was still waiting for another VE to show up when I left. One of the professors at UAB is a ham, and offers extra credit in a communications course for passing license exams, with the points scaling along the tiers of licenses. The VEs were surprised when I told them I was testing just for fun and myself, since all the guys my age who test there are just in it for the extra credit. Indeed, the two others my age who were testing that night were testing for that reason. Maybe after they graduate they'll find an interest in it again, when their beards start to grey. While filling out the paperwork, I was a little surprised when I realized I'd had my Tech for almost four years and still haven't transmitted once. It's probably why I haven't found any grey hairs yet.
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Apr 19, 2014 17:44
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uapyro posted:Congrats BHam ham! I made it from around 2007 until 2013 without really transmitting at all. Are you Birmingham proper or an outlying area? I'm in Vestavia Hills. I hear a lot of traffic on the local repeaters with my scanner, but I have no HT. I might pick up one of those UV-5R's and join in once in a while, but I'm much more interested in digital modes & DX on HF than shooting the poo poo with local commuters.
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Apr 20, 2014 01:43
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I've finally exercised my newfound HF privileges, but nobody has answered my CQs. Granted, I'm not around to play with my radio until after most of the greybeards have long since gone to bed. I know my transmitter is working properly because I've been able to pick up my signal on a web based SDR out of New Jersey, which was pretty cool. I've got an old PC hooked up for modem and CAT, so tomorrow I'll VNC in during my dinner break and try some more.
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Apr 28, 2014 07:59
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Finally made my first contact, on 40m with PSK31 to a guy out of Cuba! It was exciting to see my callsign decoded from an over the air signal after years of only listening. Sadly, propagation shifted almost immediately after he replied to my call, so I wasn't able to get a full QSO out of it. A few minutes later I answered a CQ from a guy out of Georgia, and we were able to get a few turns back and forth before I had to close down because of a thunderstorm rolling in. ickna fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Apr 21, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2014 04:00
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Keiya posted:So I've been thinking about getting my technician license, as much out of curiosity about how radio actually works as anything*, but I've hit a problem: There *is* one group somewhat local, but they have no available schedule or basic information or anything, all their available information is aimed squarely at existing members. And they meet only "for the purpose of sharing information regarding Amateur Radio contact with distant stations." You don't really have to get too involved with your local group, even if they're the ones offering testing sessions. Try looking for a testing session here instead. I took my tech at one group south of me, and my general at one north of me, and haven't interacted with either since. quote:So, um... now what? I was somewhat interested, but hitting something that practically says 'this is for old timers, not you newbies' makes me feel, well... a bit unwelcome. Once you start digging in, you'll find a niche group (i.e. this thread) to be a part of, or something that interests you more. I was more interested in skipping 25w digital signals across the ionosphere than playing walkie-talkies with nearby strangers. The process of learning how it all works was also interesting to me, and more intellectually stimulating than mowing down a few waves of aliens in an FPS. Don't give up yet.
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May 19, 2014 13:19
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Keiya posted:Yeah, I checked the ARRL site first. Nothing listed. Even with the zip code + radius?
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May 19, 2014 23:48
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SpaceCadetBob posted:So I've been completely enthralled by this whole amateur radio thing since someone posted about it as a hobby idea in A/T. I know all of jack about radio technology so I'm shooting in the dark. I grabbed a SDR thingy off of amazon and downloaded SDR# and am trying to learn the basics. If you're using an RTL stick then your range should be +- 40 ppm. The two that I have bought have all been within that range. You can calibrate with a known broadcast FM station frequency. Also be aware that these sticks have poor filtering so a lot of times you'll get images of some stronger signals bleeding into other areas, usually strong signals like local fm stations will show up like that. It can help to narrow the bandwidth you're looking at to reduce these; sample only 1 mhz instead of 2.8 and it could clean up some.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:23
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You can also pick up a lot more if you grab a whip antenna for a handheld transceiver and adaptor to go into the dongle: Antenna and cable That antenna also works great on any of the Baofeng handheld radios if you decide to get your license to transmit down the road.
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Jan 24, 2015 03:08
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The numbers are negative relative to a fixed reference value in log scale, where 0 = unity, -20 is .01 of that reference and so on. Squelch disables audio output unless the signal is louder than a certain threshold so you're not just listening to white noise all the time.
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Jan 24, 2015 19:33
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Yeah, untick the AGC box in your config box. Also the dynamic range on these sticks are pretty weak so you probably won't see much going above -20. Another good tip is to get the stick and antenna as far away from your computer and any wired networking as possible. I use a 25' active usb extension cable to get mine away and be able to mount it higher up. Once you're more familiar with the software and tuning around, you should look into an upconverter so that you can pick up shortwave AM stations (all kinds of loonies and propaganda broadcasts) and all the HF amateur radio frequencies (graybeards with ailments talkin' bout windows 95 and diabeetus). I use the HamItUp from Nooelec which goes for about $60 and it works great. Basically it shifts all the frequencies that are too low for the stick to pick up normally back into the range that it can (* 125 mhz typically), and you tell your software to compensate for the offset so you can still tune as usual.
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Jan 25, 2015 00:24
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You won't need the mcx adaptors for that one, they have sma already. I picked one up last week and the noise floor is much better on it than the original, and the there is no drift on the oscillator at all. The included long antenna is great, but you'll need an up convert box to make the most of it for HF.
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Aug 27, 2015 19:07
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taqueso posted:This would be to shift the HF signals up to a frequency that the stick can handle, right? Exactly right. I have the one from Nooelec that shifts the received signal up by 125mhz, which helps get it away from strong FM interference. It's neat but a little fiddly, especially when you're trying to discern what is signal and what is interference or an image of a signal that is actually somewhere else. I'd play with it at the native frequencies for a while to get the hang of the software and nuances of the stick, then add on fancier antennas or the upconverter later. I also suggest using the 2.8mbps bandwidth option on your input configuration while starting out; you can see a wider swath of spectrum and you run into less frequent image signals. I typically have my gain set around -30 and don't use any of the AGC options. Also try to keep your reception frequency pretty close to the LO frequency but not equal to it, I usually use 250-500khz above the LO tune for listening to get away from the DC spike at the center frequency, and there seem to be less spurs in that offset.
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Aug 27, 2015 19:37
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swampcow posted:Mmm. This is cool. The one thing stopping me from getting into this stuff is cost. Do I need to be licensed to use this? You only need a license to transmit, which these can't do anyway. It's worth checking out at $25, and if you find you really enjoy it you can look into getting your license later, otherwise you could unload it pretty quick on ebay or sa mart.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:42
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Pangaea Ultima posted:Guess I'll keep playing around with it. Turn off any AGC on the dongle's config, nearby FM stations that you're getting loud and clear are probably killing your sensitivity. Also, try extending your antenna to different lengths to better match what you're looking to receive; looking for about 17 inches for weather band. As far as garbled and volume goes, make sure you're using the right FM bandwidth to demodulate; broadcast FM is significantly wider than weather/voice and trying to tune a narrowband FM signal with the same wideband settings won't work well. If you're running windows, I suggest HDSDR over GQRX. I haven't had the best results with GQRX personally, and the interface on HDSDR is nice. taqueso posted:I have been able to receive the daily weather net on my local VHF repeater and the state-wide weekly net, on the same repeater. I haven't been able to get anything in HF, even with direct sampling or whatever it's called. Maybe you got a DOA antenna if you can't receive the NOAA stations? What kind of terrain is between you and the station? Trying to get HF on these dongles without an up-converter is largely an exercise in futility unless you're far away from any big RF sources. Their sensitivity is already so low down that far that anything louder that is in it's normal reception range is going to make reception difficult. Also as a general note, the further you can get your dongle away from the computer and especially any ethernet lines or switch mode power supplies, the better. Especially for HF. I use mine on a 30' powered USB extension cord, and for really weak stuff, I'll run my laptop off battery power to stop the noise from the charger messing with things.
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Sep 12, 2015 19:14
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soy posted:People seem to act like if you broadcast without a license even once lightning will strike and your radio will explode in your hands? This is a fact, which is why lightning protection and proper grounding are so important. There aren't that many trolls, fortunately. It's largely self-policed and most operators are pretty civil unless you're deliberately interfering with someone else's transmissions or flat out dog cussing someone on the air. Most of the dramas is off-air in clubs or on the occasional repeater.
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Oct 21, 2015 22:07
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deathflea posted:I passed my tech a few years ago but just recently got a radio. Today I said to myself "Man, I hope there's a SA thread on Ham radio!" And so here I am you should also check out my call sign at aol.com if you want to talk or do something: yospos radio thread, there is some good info in there too.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:21
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I plan on reading this thread top to bottom see you in a few hours.
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DSLAM posted:I'm setting up a portable HF radio in a Pelicase and are looking for a replacement for the usual "Pick N Pluck" foam. It should be more dense/harder(?) and be one solid block so it doesn't tear up over time due to all of the cavities I'm making. If anyone know what the material is called or where to buy it I would be grateful. this is probably what you're looking for. I recently built a pelican 1530 case for my KX3 and SLA battery kit, using the pick and pluck. I probably pulled 70% of the cells and I haven't had any issues with durability since I left at least a 3 cell border around any cavities. If yours came with the pluck foam I suggest using it to work out what your layout is going to be before committing to cutting the cavities from your single block.
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May 14, 2017 23:04
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Yeah they're cheap and suck, but mine has been great for my Raspberry Pi APRS tracker. I built a custom relay circuit for the PTT and interfaced to a USB sound card. Works well, 100% copy on the packets from digipeaters 75 miles out. I even checked for spurious/oob emissions with my sdr kit and everything was where it should be.. maybe I lucked out on that. Sure was great to do the RF stage for $35 instead of $100s. You can tune the squelch settings in Chirp, which solved that issue but I run it wide open for packet anyway. The built in mic definitely sucks for voice, though. You pretty much have to eat the thing for the mic to pick up your voice.
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Jul 10, 2017 04:21
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:Edit: Been doing a bunch of research, seems like my USRP SDR is obsolete! LimeSDR way outperforms and is real cheap. It also looks like SDRs can't really replace a traditional rig yet? Not quite yet, though there are some higher priced SDR kits that would cost you more than the traditional boat anchors that are making headway. Mostly SDR seems to be making its way into the internals of more traditional hardware as a hybrid of superhet and SDR which is pretty cool for doing digital filters and waterfall displays. I really like my Elecraft KX3 which is basically a portable faceplate of a more traditional rig with SDR guts. I think once somebody comes out with a sub $200 SDR based RX/TX kit with HF to UHF coverage there will be an acceleration of the computer as a rig setup you’re envisioning, not unlike the flood of interest in SDR RX that came with the RTL-SDR sticks.
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Jan 7, 2018 00:36
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eddiewalker posted:Very narrow filtering. Their radios aren't capable of scanning hundreds or thousands of mhz. Your dongle has basically no filtering so harmonics up and down the spectrum muddy your signal. 100% this. Front end filtering is super important. RTL-SDR sticks are great for a general survey of the local spectrum. Kits kits like the SDRPlay are good for narrowing down on bits of it but ultimately dedicated hardware that is filtered to that one range is going to be better even with a lovely antenna.
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Jan 10, 2018 04:29
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soy posted:I looked on radio reference to figure where the transmitter probably is and put my poo poo as close to an unobstructed place in the house as I could given the length of usb extenders that I currently have. You can get a active 32' USB extension on amazon for like 15 bucks to run it out a window or something. I use one when I put my stick on top of a 25' telescoping mic stand in the back yard and it works great.
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Jan 10, 2018 21:28
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There’s a lot of capital letters strung together in there but I gather the gist of it is that you have an APRS implementation on something arduino-y and are working towards exposing multiple com ports to pass APRS packets, GPS and command/control to a computer, which is super cool. I’ve done an igate and another digipeater/tnc project using direwolf with decent success, but the hardware I was running it on would be overkill if I wasn’t using it for other projects too. I did the igate with an RTL-SDR dongle passed through to a Linux virtual machine on my desktop, and the digipeater/tnc was a portable project for my car running on a raspberry pi and a hacked together interface for a USB sound card + baofeng HT and a USB GPS unit dumping geolocation info to GPSD to be picked up by a second pi over wifi with a display running Xastir. How difficult would your project be to simplify that raspberry pi setup, or what’s the possibility of working it in to a stand-alone igate using something like an ESP8266 and skipping direwolf entirely? I realize that doing any kind of SDR dongle setup is impractical with these microcontrollers but an analog audio setup with an interface cable to an HT might work. It would be pretty cool to be able to drop a self-contained ESP/Arduino + cheap rear end baofeng based igate in a friend’s attic to fill a gap in local coverage, or let it run in my car and beacon automatically over VHF and a mobile hotspot as I’m rolling down the street without having to go through a full linux boot on a Raspberry Pi and python scripting to glue it all together.
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Mar 12, 2018 05:14
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alnilam posted:I've been a licensed General for years but never owned an HF rig (used clubs during university, and haven't worked HF in a while now). I'd finally like to get around to setting one up. See if you can find a Kenwood TS-450 with antenna tuner module. It hits all your points and is easy enough to make an interface cable to do digital mode stuff too. It’s what I learned on and I’d still be using it today if I hadn’t bought a KX3 for better portability and not really needing 100w of power most of the time.
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May 17, 2018 01:02
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longview posted:I've been fiddling ... This is cool as poo poo, and part of what makes this hobby so interesting. Thanks for sharing!
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Dec 22, 2018 05:36
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Pimblor posted:wow time to dumpster this kx3 with no 2m lol Yeah I am contemplating selling off mine too. I will probably wait and see what the hands-on reviews are like before I make that call. Not to say I haven’t loved my KX3 but it would be great to ditch the external waterfall and the LCD digit screen for something a little more compact.
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Sep 3, 2019 04:49
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Gonna toss my recommendation for a Buddipole kit for a good portable/apartment deck setup. You can mix and match coils and whips to get a good antenna for any band, and add on to it later as you need for building dipoles or a taller telescoping mast.
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Sep 19, 2019 17:28
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d0s posted:Built my TNC-X and hooked it up only to find out that I'm in a kinda dead zone for APRS and Winlink, at least with my ghetto antenna setup (mobile antenna indoors on file cabinet). I can send packets but have only decoded once, from some guy a few miles south talking to a Winlink node I can't reach. I hear APRS packets occasionally on 144.390 and they trigger the TNC but never fully decode, from what I understand the signal needs to be perfect. I think this will change once I set up my outdoor antenna, a Comet GP-3 (waiting on coax+free time). Once you hook it in to an outdoor antenna you will get a whole lot more for sure. My setup went from being completely deaf to picking up multiple packets per minute just by sticking the antenna out of the nearest window.
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Sep 29, 2019 18:34
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COMMS SHELF
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d0s posted:Quick noob question, I am getting stuff together to install my GP-3 probably this weekend and I notice that on many installs of this type of antenna the coax is looped a few times at the base: Strain relief for the coax connector.
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Oct 2, 2019 03:05
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Macintosh HD posted:Yeah, this really is the way to go. I wish I knew about this when getting licensed originally. We're moving in a few months, so the best I'll be able to do is PO Box instead of the new address. It really sucks that all previous addresses are still available, even if you switch it to a PO Box. Unless you use a PO Box for your original address, you're pretty much out of luck until you move. Super same here. I would be far more likely to call people out for being lovely on the air if there wasn't that nagging feeling in the back of my head that they have everything they need a few clicks away to disproportionally retaliate; which is exactly what I would expect from a lot of the personality types who are toxic in the amateur radio community.
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Jun 17, 2020 14:57
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RadioPassive posted:Tried to listen to HF on two pieces of copper wire hung along my entire apartment and hooked up to a usb dongle. I think I need more antenna. You'll get much better results if you can get the wire outside, even if it is just dangling out of the window.
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Jun 17, 2020 16:53
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CapnBry posted:Can someone tell me if what I've got here is actually present or is some sort of harmonic artifact that comes from using a cheap SDR radio? It looks like an image but that spacing between duplicates is really close. What is the hardware you are listening with and what is the sample rate? What is your gain setting? Is it doing direct sampling for HF or are you using an up converter? I would try reducing the sampling rate first to see if that gets rid of some of the images, and then try reducing the gain to see if any of the other ones go away. It’s probably a combination of a strong signal overwhelming the input and the receiving hardware, so upgrading to a nicer receiver could help. I have the rsp2 and it has a lot of nice options for configuration on the front end to configure preselection filters.
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Aug 10, 2020 16:04
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thehustler posted:Caught him talking to our club chair (who is really nice and helpful) about how he was sick of the lack for progression (he has it in for foundation licence holders, yawn) and is bored of hearing about our “pathetic antennas” and being happy when we can reach a non-local repeater. Sounds like a guy who hasn't had fun playing radios in a long time resents new users for the the thrills that they are getting from learning and exploring.
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Dec 23, 2020 18:37
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I’d like to bounce some ideas off of y’all on building an integrated SDR listening post of sorts. I have an RSP2, several of the rtl-sdr dongles and an HF>VHF converter. I’m trying to come up with a way to bring them all in together into one united system. I have a 4gb RAM pi4, but also a mid 2000’s core 2 duo workstation with debian that I decommissioned with no other use currently on deck. Goals currently are automatic reporting of wspr and jt65 type signals, and a web sdr for cruising around when I feel like it. Portability is a secondary goal, but I can give that up if it is necessary to use the beefier computer. Ideally everything could share one or two antennas depending on the bands. My current thoughts would be to dedicate an rtl-sdr or two to the weak signal reporters across the most popular bands, splitting an antenna input into the up converter and then sending that to the dongles. The RSP2 would be put on web sdr duty either through another antenna split ahead of the up converter to the rtl dongles, or given its own dedicated antenna. I think this could all run on the same computer using docker containers and passing the respective USB devices the the appropriate services.
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Jan 4, 2021 00:15
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Thanks for the input. WebSDR is what I was thinking of initially, since I used to listen to a lot of different sites that were running on it when I first got my license. It looks like it has barely changed, and he still doesn't make it available for download either.. so scratch that one. I see that OpenWebRX was abandoned by the original author a year ago but has been forked with activity in the last few days. It includes support for multiple receivers as well as background spot reporting for JT65 and APRS, which certainly simplifies that goal for me. I'm going to give it a go this week.
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Jan 4, 2021 08:33
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hosed around with openwebrx on the pi4 this week. It's mostly stable with the RSP2, though switching bands sometimes seems like it doesn't pass a gain parameter properly. Even with 5-8 Mbps bandwidths and digital mode decoding, I was only hitting between 50% and 70% CPU use. I spent the better part of a day dialing in the RF and IF gain levels for each band segment, and during that time found some sporadic E that was bouncing a bunch of the CB channels from the west coast all the way out here to the southeast. Once the died off, all I could find were some FT8 signals just above the noise floor across the 30m and 40m bands, though I suspect that was mostly my terrible telescopic whip antenna and poor positioning next to the steel awning at work. I'm contemplating a semi-fixed install of the hardware at my workplace, and one of those PA0RDT mini-whip antenna setups for it. I could actually make use of that steel awning for the ground plane and mount the antenna on top of that. Has anyone tried one of the premade kits off of eBay or amazon? the RSP2 has a bias-t feature that could potentially drive the LNA, though all the ones I have seen for sale have an externally powered LNA so I would have to figure out how to rig it to pull the power off the coax instead. My other challenge is trying to knock out the ethernet and SMPS noise as well. I can't really eliminate the wired network connection since my testing with the wifi connection pretty much saturated the lovely router we have there. A 5v linear power supply that I could drive the pi with does seem like a realistic option though.
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Jan 9, 2021 09:11
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Jonny 290 posted:One tactic I've heard of that vhf/uhf satellite snoopers use is to mount two small TV yagi/log periodics on a V-shaped mount, one aimed south, one north, about 45 degrees elevation - then just combine them. You lose low elevation passes because you can't look east/west but it's a cheap way to get going. Couldn’t you use this kind of arrangement with a tilt head, and align it such that it is coplanar to the satellite track? Instead of N-S it would be rise and set?
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Apr 26, 2021 00:47
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Jonny 290 posted:Oh sure. Thing is, most birds are in polar orbit, meaning they go largely north-south or south-north. Oh neat, I wasn’t aware that this was the case. I presume they’re not in molniya orbits if a 30s window extension is a factor, so why do most of them use polar orbits?
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Apr 26, 2021 04:15
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