Thanks. Lightning protection and grounding still to come. Lightning arrestor will be inline with coax, grounding will be more of a pain. If ya like that mast.. just wait till I figure out this one. From a friend's house. 40' tall. Current mast is only ~22'
You'll be talking to the space station in no time. Have you looked into sunspots yet regarding radio frequencies. It's crazy how deep it goes!
Ironically.. when my friend was here today with the antenna analyser, I completely forgot my J-pole for 2M. He said we can work on that soon. I sooooo.. can't wait for ISS contact.
Yes, I have. They say the band's are troublesome now due to the low solar cycle. But over the next few years propagation should get progressively better.. peaking around 2015. Have you looked into an azimuth chart yet.. I can help you with a link. Enter coordinates and it'll tell ya where to "aim" your antenna. NS6T's Azimuthal Map
No better time to get licensed other than now. BTW.. to anyone planning to test.. study for General as well as Tech. more bandwidth, and in my personal opinion, not much extra to learn. $.02 73
Yes I certainly am. It tickles my long dormant grey matter. I hope you do. Although.. be careful.. it's hard to listen and not be compelled to join the conversation. You may be testing soon as well. Heard Italy and Switzerland on the radio today, but not enough power to reach them. Amplifiers are 'spensive
Chaz you can catch my group here M,T,W,F around 8pm. Links if anyone cares to listen online. 30 second delay NH Hub Digital Systems
Without a linked repeater network, nope. At times my HT signal is weak on the repeater 22 miles away. Hence the J-pole project.
I gotcha.... I don't fully understand everything just yet. My baofeng dm-1701 with a small antenna picks up everything from around the world
Yeah, DMR has a lot of functionality, as the repeater network is quite expansive. Not sure if nodes are linked via internet as well. Jason, who runs the Ham2.0 channel on YouTube is big into DMR.
Great video! Like shown, it's a pita to program and is doesn't like certain versions of windows. I had to hook everything up (with help from a local ham) on my son's newer laptop. It's a great radio though, but complicated. Once RabbleRouser gets his, he may throw it a few times.
Radio arrived Friday, been playing around with it a little. Get the local PD in clear, haven't been able to pick up any operator chat though. I'm receiving a ringing on some Freq's not sure what that is about. Other freq's sounds like morse is being used but does anyone use that anymore? Packet data? I think I'm going to study for my tech license though; but I don't think I can take the test anytime in the future with the lock down going on. And no the camo case isn't because it's cool, it was the cheaper than the black case
Nothing outside of normal C-19 chatting. With my new schedule, the airwaves are a bit quiet till around 4 AM. Then everyone is talking about coffee. Nice radio. If you need a study book for Tech, just say the word. Although I'd advise a bit of extra study for General as well. Not much more on that than the Tech. A bit more math and electronics mostly. And yep, there's a lot of CW Ham's out there. Not sure if there's much of it on VHF though. Hmmmm I use the Repeaterbook app to find the repeaters in my area.
