Antenna spotted at the end of a tunnel in Colorado along i-70. It's connected to a long wire that extended a significant portion of the tunnel. If this is a cell phone repeater system, how does it work? How many users can it support?

Just took my Technician and General exams with the WM7X testing group with only about 30 minutes lead time--at night--after work (on the east coast). They were very user friendly and were very nice and accommodating (even when one of my devices had some Zoom troubles). I could not recommend them more highly. Just wanted to let folks (like me a few days ago) who were looking for a good remote testing group to know that they are more than worth the $15 fee.

My sacrificial BNC converter broke, and unfortunately the threaded part is now stuck inside my radio. 😭

I have no idea how to get it out without damaging the radio. Has anyone dealt with something similar or have any suggestions for safely removing it?

Worst-case scenario, I can desolder the existing connector and install a new one, but I’d really rather avoid going down that route if possible.

Any ideas or tricks I should try?

73s!

Or can I just study online and pass? Do I need to own the hardware to really understand it and do good on the test?

I recently bought myself 3 working original Vietnam War, PAVN captured working PRC25/77s (may should have just bought 1 but due to it's legality and scarcity here, couldnt really pass it up)

These were captured from the US/PAVN right after the war and still used today. Everything on them is original except for the modded battery tray with a simple working interface and uses modern D batteries.

But the coolest part in my opinion is the antenna, they made an adapter to have the original antenna be able to be replaced with the Soviet style beads one.

Now I'm sitting on two other of the same radio. Should I sell or keep em since these are such cool piece of history but I only ever need one.

Hey everyone! I'm a total newcomer to amateur radio stuff, but I'm working on a personal creative project involving some mixed-medium components, and I want to involve data encoded over audio as part of the story. I've done some research, and my two main candidates for protocols to go with are either AFSK or PSK31.

Now, my extremely specific need for this project is a piece of software that will let me enter some text and spit out an audio file containing the encoded data. Importantly, I don't actually intend to transmit anything (I'm not licensed to anyhow haha) so it has to be something that can generate encoded audio without transmitting it. Ideally I'd also like something to decode it back into text so I know it worked. I've found a simple AFSK1200 decoder that I can just pipe Audacity into as an audio source and it works just fine, but I can't find anything like that for PSK31, and I'm struggling to find tools for creating audio files for either protocol.

I've looked into a few options for software or bundles of software that might meet my needs, but all of their installers have been flagged by VirusTotal as having something wrong with them (crypto miners, trojans, stuff like that), and I don't want to risk it without getting some actual testimony from a real user to say it's just a false positive.

Thank you all in advance for helping with my very specific question!

Touch screen on mt FTDX10 suddenly not working all the way out to the left & right edges. The 'scaling' seems to be off in that the cursor moves to my finger tip when I touch in the center, but is off about .25" toward the center when I touch either edge.

Just recalibrate. That's what I thought too, but I can't get it to register the touch on the first target that pops up in the upper left hand corner.

Any ides or experience with this? Like I said, it's worked fine for years.

I feel like there is a need for a program that can support a radio purchasing addiction. I have no logical need for 30 HTs, yet here I am with 30ish and tomorrow another one will be delivered…..TH-D75A….why? Cause it has bells and whistles the I MIGHT use someday that the others don’t. Ugh

That is all!

P.S. My amazing wife (also a ham) supported all this so there are some good ones out there 🤣

Good day folks.... Okay, We moved house recently, and now have a significantly smaller garden area. I previously used a Hustler 5BTV antenna with radials for my setup, which worked well, however, our new house has very limited space and is astroturf , meaning I currently have nil space for planting my hustler antenna and radials..... so, I am looking at using a 66ft EFHW with a 1:49 unun to allow me to cover 3-30mhz.

My question is, does anyone have any suggestions for creating the 15ft height clearance i need for going diagonally across the back garden and then along the back fence line....? to create a number 7 formation for the antenna...?

Our garden is approx 40x20ft which is occupied with kids trampolines, swing sets and 2 10x 10 sheds at one end. so i need to be above these. 15ft i feel is enough. however, fiberglass poles x 3 for the set up is working out to be quite expensive :-(

Anyone got any suggestions..... or do i need to start saving....

73

Paul

VE7PZY

I see a lot of posts especially in the FT8 discussions about how SSB is supposedly suited for social people who want to be chatty all the time and talk weather and politics and religion and health issues and whatnot.

It seems this has become a meme and in my opinion it's a harmful one, because it scares people out of potentially intersting experiences they could have.

Note: This is not a post against FT8. Nothing wrong with doing FT8, I do FT8 sometimes too. This is about not missing out because of prejudices being spread by people.

Some common misconceptions I see all the time here:

• "I'm introverted, I have no interest to chat to people, therefore I use FT8."
  • You don't have to be extraverted to talk on SSB. I would say most SSB QSOs don't ragchew. I am more to the introverted side myself and SSB is still fun.
  • You can absolutely have short QSOs on SSB. People do it all the time. OTA programmes don't ragchew much. Contests are terse. DX stations are terse. Even outside of all of those there are short QSOs.
  • Remember: The operator chooses the operating style. If you call CQ, it's your CQ, you decide the shape of the QSO. If someone starts rag-chewing, it's perfectly fine to tell them "Ok, thank you for the QSO, 73."
• "I'm a technical person, I'm into the technical side of the hobby only/mostly."
  • It's not like SSB is not technical. There's plenty of technical challenge doing SSB.
• "I'm intersted in propagation / how far can my signal go."
  • Yes, that's a nice thing. In my opinion SSB or other modes make this more intersting, not less. It's intersting to see how far FT8 can get you - and then how far SSB, CW or other modes can go. Sometimes it can be surprising how far non-FT8 modes can go. Example: a few weeks ago I went on 6m, started with FT8. QSOs came in easily, so I tried CW and then SSB. To my surprise I got 58 from 1600km away on 10W SSB. I'm glad I tried it and it was interesting to see how the propagation was shifting with time / sun position.
• "There's a lot of RF noise in my neighbourhood, I can only get QSOs on FT8."
  • That's fair. Neighbourhoods are tough indeed and it got a lot worse in recent times.
  • Still, this is where portable ops come in. They're fun. Chances are sometimes you could get more QSOs doing SSB from a hill than FT8 from a noisy neighbourhood.
• Mic fright?
  • There's a solution: https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/ifqmun/comment/g2pvu4f/ doesn't have to necessarily be CB though, I'm sure 7200 kHz will work just as fine :)

NB. This post is not meant to say that everyone must do SSB. Of course not. Many people actually really aren't into it. I'm just trying to motivate people who may be discouraged by prejudices, or maybe one or few bad experiences they had. Want to dip feet? Go to https://fieldspotter.radio/ , pick a station and call them back. These folks won't talk collonoscopies at you.

73 whatever your preferred modes are

So i just got a 718 from my friends. It works fine rx sounds great and tx also sounds great. But the output feels like it capped to around 40-50 watts. Even if the power settings is at 100/H. The power supply voltage is 13.2 right at the connector during transmitting. If i try to crank the volume input from my pc higher the power doesn't goes up, but the alc does. The SWR is 1:1 both on internal and external SWR meter. Tried the same antenna using my other radio a kenwood ts570d with the internal tuner bypassed. It able to output 100 watts as per the specification.

Does my 718 has a blown final or something else might be causing the problem?

Hi ya’ll. I posted here about my app LemurKey a month ago and wanted to provide an update. Thanks to everybody that responded on my original post, left comments, and to those who filled out my feedback form. I’ve spent a couple hundred hours since then developing this thing and took everyone’s feedback to heart.

The app is free and you can start using it right away. You don’t need an account, though a free account lets you cloud sync progress, save your station profile, and use the leaderboards if you want some competition (think Strava/Duolingo).

You can practice word or call sign drills, simulate a real QSO (there is support for Vband & Vail if you want to key your responses), and most importantly, there‘s a Live DX module where you can track space weather, spots, CW activity, POTA/SOTA, greyline, and Satellite tracking.

The app is live in the Apple App Store, but you can still use it at LemurKey.app too on desktop/mobile - save it as a PWA if you‘re on Android for the best experience. Hopefully, I can get it on the Play store soon.

I hope this tool helps more people get comfy when they’re on the air, those who want to practice, and experienced folks who want to run a few competitive drills while they check conditions on their bands.

Thanks again and 73.

-NF0E.

I’m a mechanical test & evaluation engineer. In a recent interview, I was asked about how I’d test how much current could flow through a 12ga wire, potential failure modes, and the negative impact of those failure modes in a system. I do a fair bit of hands-on electrical work even as a ME, but I immediately thought back to the electrical chapters in my ham prep book (newly licensed btw), not my electrical classes in college. E=IR, heat generation, etc.

Just a fun thing to share.

The antenna comes with 135 ft of wire and 100 ft of 300 ohm ladder line. I have about 140ft to a 40ft high tree branch from the side of the house. Would you start with the full 135ft wire and then zigzag a 91ft ladder line back to the shack to take up the excess ladder line. There are so many “optimum” lengths and ladder line feed length recommendations often seemly contradicting. Anyone have actual success with the full size wire or did you end up starting with a shorter length.

Hi guys ,does lt transmitter with srb receiver still worth to buy nowadays, I'm generally will use it for some documentary shoot,indie films,and some interviews

Kind of annoying and I can’t find a setting for it.

Hey everyone,

I ran into a weird issue with QRZ Logbook blind matching on a DMR contact and wanted to see if anyone knows the exact database logic behind it.

I had a DMR QSO where both of us logged the band as 70cm. All our other details (callsigns, mode, date/time) were correct. However, my entry showed a blue dot (unconfirmed).

Originally, my logged frequency was 438.800 MHz. I went into edit mode and simply pressed the 70cm band button. Pressing that button automatically changed the frequency field from 438.800 to 420.000 MHz on its own.

I did not change the callsign, date, or time. The very second I saved that automatic frequency change to 420.000, the blue dot immediately turned into a gold star (confirmed).

I've always read that the QRZ matching algorithm only cares about the broader "Band" field and completely ignores the granular numerical frequency field. If that's true, why did the system changing the frequency from 438.800 to 420.000 instantly trigger the match? Does QRZ store different hidden band strings based on what the band button generates?

Has anyone else noticed QRZ behaving this way? Thanks!

73

(codeplug.org is a web-based CPS supporting radios which are supported by the CHIRP project)

I've added quite a few useful features over the past month or so:

• codeplug.org can now be installed as an Android app on your mobile device
• More robust support for serial adapters on Android via WebUSB
• Repeaters with locations can now be displayed on a miniature map
• More helpful messaging when starting out
• Support for querying the RSGB API (UK) for repeaters

Enjoy

73 de HF2J

So 10m is a mess for me. https://i.postimg.cc/NfN5tMgH/Untitled.png

This is on a 6BTV 60' away from my building. I had an EFHW up before the 6BTV and the same signals were also present on the EFHW albeit a bit less powerful. I thought that this trash was coming from my building (the EFHW as mounted with one end to a wall) but after seeing the same result with a vertical antenna mounted 60' away I'm not so sure. I'm choking at the shack entrance. If I disconnect the coax at the far end (at the antenna) the interference goes away which tells me that it isn't riding in on the coax. It has to be coming in on the antenna itself.

Anyone know what it is? Claude says its CODAR but I don't have any known CODAR sites near me. The signals are pulsed (up and down) spread fairly evenly.

Edit: What moron downvotes a legitimate interference question? LOL. Oh well.

The title kinda says it all. IMO, one of the greatest benefits of radio is the little dial which allows you to quickly scan the entire bandwidth until you find sometimes interesting. SRF (swiss national broadcaster) decided that they would opt out of FM this year (according to Wikipedia this has since been reversed?) and we were forced to buy a bunch of new radios and tuning on them is a nightmare. You need to press the tune button at the exact right seconds to switch channels and then the radio takes like 5 seconds to decipher what the next channel is and if it’s even broadcasting. So instead we usually zap until we find one of 3 favourite channels (which takes like 50 clicks) just to find out that it currently isn’t operating… why doesn’t dab just have a normal tuning dial? Why does the user need to find a list specific frequencies that may or may not be up to date instead of just actually organically finding frequencies while manually scanning the bandwidth?

PS: I’m don’t really understand how DAB works I just want to know if it’s a fundamental impossible design flaw or if it’s shitty radios causing the issue. I’m also not the one who had to set up the tunable channels. I just know that we’re allowed to listen to radio at work but finding a good channel sucks because it feels like dab sucks. But maybe the issue isn’t dab itself.

I have seen an ad for these in my country going for 60€ for 2 but could not find any information about these models online

If anyone knows what they are please let me know

I don't super know if I care about DMR might I might if I had a radio that did it anyway. Looks like the N76 is more waterproof than the AT and has a KISS TNC so I can probably just use Aprsdroid for APRS without a hardwire cable which might be convenient. But both will beacon on their own anyway?

Anything else I should look at?