Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada How many of you are amateur radio operators?

That's a 'Roger'. WB8YSQ here. Been a ham for 51 years and still loving it. Although recently at the gun range shooting my new AR15 M4 Carbine and CZ-75 SP01 9mm, I really think that target shooting is a tie for the most fun! Sure am having a lot of fun at the range and with friends.

Thanks for posting Dave..... WB8TSQ has been one of our "Elmers".... experienced Hams take new comers under their wing because well there is a lot to know and hands on learning works way better than just sitting down with a stack of manuals....

I'm a guy that back in the day never figured out how to program a VCR..... trying to get the computer to interface with a radio was a bang my head against the wall kind of experience..... Dave gets along fine with computers.... He retired a few years ago and built his dream observatory a few ridge tops over from me.

Check out his web page here

http://www.blueridge-observatory.com/#xl_xr_page_index

My wife and I have given him a place to shoot , deer hunt and taught him how to butcher venison.... Dave has helped reduce the amount of time I spend wanting to bang my head against the wall when the computer and radio don't play nice together.....

You met people you likely never would have when you check out a local Ham club...

I use ham radio to incorporate hands-on projects into my teaching. Other than that, I use aprs for tracking, email and sms messaging when I’m out and about in the out-of-doors. I’m only a tech but I’d like to move up so I can study and apply nvis propagation.

huskyrunner, it sounds like you are already doing a lot with you technician privileges. Are you familiar with digital Mobil radio DMR? If there is a DMR repeater with in range you can work the World. The cost of the hand held radios keeps coming down < $150.00 IIRC.

Are you interested in nvis for emergency and/or camping type operations?

Link re nvis...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvZ7z-6wAy0

Whatever, I'm glad you did post on the main forum.

Steve, Burghardt's in Watertown? Was Mecca when I was a novice in 7th grade. The ads in QST weren't up to the illicit copies of playboy that got passes around but close.

New sets intimidating? Not if you understand. I think it was the HRO-500 double conversion (or was it triple) receiver with tunable IF and tunable notch/peak/bandpass filters that intimidated me. But now with software receivers I suppose anything analog is passe. Still have a Hallicrafters S-38C 5 tube shortwave receiver that I need to restore - filter capacitors ya know. The glow and the vision of electrons flying from cathode to plate always fascinated me. Don't get that with transistors, much less ICs. And a bad bypass capacitor that made me test the chassis with a neon bulb to make sure it was plugged in the right way.

Then 8 bit personal computers stole my interest, always was on the tech side,

Never did use ham radio on the road here. Would travel with the old Kenwood 2M HT in the car but generally no activity.

I haven’t tried DMR. DMR would make a good dsp project for the students. It is in the queue.

Yes, NVIS for emcomm in mountainous areas. I’m interested in using the guyouts for a spider beam mast as the dual inverted vees for 40 and 60 M. I haven’t seen that done, but someone probably has. The mast itself could also become the support for a tipi-tent with the operator at the base of the mast. Shorter cable, less swr losses.

The pics I’ve seen of the military versions all have the operator right at the mast base and the mast itself is a giant lossless coaxial cable to minimize losses. I’d love to get my hands on one to measure some specs.

You would likely find summits on the air activations interesting.... This guy uses pack goats to haul his gear up... pretty entertaining

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu2mDr2Eo1U&list=PLAB38550CA8152C5F

Kite antennas are interesting too. A few years ago I spoke with a guy that had just built a $50.00 40 Meter QRP kit. He drove out along the Long Island Sound flew his kite with antenna up. He was running 5 watts and I could hear him up to 10 over 59 in NC. The signal went up and down as the wind blew faster or slower. He was having so much fun he was giggling like a little kid.... He gathered a "pile up" as word spread on the DX cluster. He worked lots of stations for at least an hour. Being over salt water is a big plus.

Location in general is huge. WB8YSQ is maybe 20 miles away from me as the crow flies. My elevation is just below 2900 feet the tower is on a very narrow ridge. Dave is closer to 3000 feet. I spent way more money on my antenna system... on paper it should have noticeably better performance. He consistently gets way stronger signal reports and hears stations I don't... best theory is that his location is 10 miles or more away from another ridge higher than his house.

He picked the spot for dark sky conditions for his observatory but ended up with an outstanding location to play radio.... I'm very happy for him.... I may need to move though

Man, I’ve never heard of a kite antenna! Thank you. I’ll study up on them. Reminds me of the Zeppelin antenna the Germans trailed from their airships.

2dwind,

How's your ground? Always wanted to try a trap vertical with a radial buried ground. Should give a lower angle of radiation and optimal radiation resistance in less than ideal conductive soil but never got around to it.

The guy flying the kite had been a Ham 40 years.... pretty sure that was the most fun he had ever had in the hobby.... People were still talking about it weeks later. Someone who knew him said he took his gear to the FLA Keys hoping to work Europe but got skunked because there wasn't good wind while he was there.....

Huskyrunner you should SO upgrade to General class. I read somewhere that due to covid 19 you can get tested online.... I'm thinking that change was only last Month....

If budget is tight there is a ton of great quality used gear for sale now... Hams are like rifle loonies only worse.... everyone is always wanting to trade up.... and since SDR has come on strong outstanding analog radios are now selling for pennies on the dollar.

If you can find a ham club in your area they could help you find gear for sale locally..... I dragged my wife along as a study buddy. We got our tech and general at the same time. The local Elmers were helping me with the scavenger hunt for all used gear to put a station together.... I figured it would have been selfish to spend much money on a hobby that was going to be a 95% John hobby.... Jayne is kind of introverted by nature.

Jayne is a family practice doc. At one of the first meetings we went to a retired ER nurse told a story about how 40 something years ago one of her husband's socially challenged engineering pals made a snarky remark about how she could never get her licence because a woman would never be able to learn Morse code..... her husband knew she was mad so he bought her the code study tape and she turned out to be a natural...

At the end of the meeting Wanda came over to introduce herself and she asked Jayne if she was just there to support me or if she was going to get her licence too.... Jayne said "Oh no... I'm getting my licence too!" I came home knowing the tide had changed and ordered a brand new radio the next morning and we have been adding radios amplifiers and better antennas ever since.....

Jayne wanted to study for the extra class exam almost right away.... I am not a technical person at all... the general class licence really isn't that hard but the extra class study guide gave me chest pains.... I figured I'd have a better chance of parting the Red Sea than passing the extra..... Jayne passed with flying colors and I didn't make the cut.... it took a year of being made sport of by hams literally around the World for needing my wife to pass me as third party traffic if I wanted to work the extra class frequencies (where most of the really cool DX happens)... before my male ego couldn't take it and I managed to pass the extra.....

nighthawk, our first antenna was a vertical Hustler 5 BTV it required radials generally the more the better. I never had great luck with that antenna and ended up giving it away to a new Ham... he has been running it for 6 or 7 years now and is very happy with it... not sure if my very steep sloping yard was part of the reason the radials didn't seem to reflect the way I'd hope or not?

Since then we have put up a tower with beam antennas.... The tower is grounded with wide heavy copper straps going to ground rods on all 4 sides.... I don't think that was the grounding question you were asking about though?

I've gotten 2 bits of advice from our Elmers that really stand out... The first was from Wanda who knew I was freaked out about retesting for the Extra exam She told me to "Only remember the correct answers...".

The second one was "For every dollar you spend on your station invest 75 cents of it into your antenna system...". People get carried away with latest greatest gear... but none of that matters if you have a poor antenna system.

I'm not so good on antenna theory, was thinking of an unbalanced antenna like a vertical. Since the ground makes up the other half of the antenna I would suppose a steeply sloping yard would be a problem. Think of a ground plane on the roof after a wind storm. There are rapidly diminishing returns with increased number of radials. This has been well studied to optimize commercial installations. I don't remember how many, probably in the ARRL antenna book. Was the text I grabbed first. Sounds like a plan for the beam if you have decent conductivity, enough to keep currents off the tower. That would screw up the pattern like an extra extremely weird element.

Used to dream of all kinds of HF antennas, half zepp, rhombic, etc. But kept coming back to verticals. Particularly an array I could switch from the shack. Sort of an electrically steerable vertical beam with that extremely low radiation angle.

What would really be cool would be to get strapped to a man carrying kite and operate from aloft. Why lift just the antenna?

Um, because the wind might die....but it might make a popular you tube clip...

Antenna reviews by real hams.... warning antenna discussions often bring out stronger feelings the say 6.5 Creedmoor discussion does here....

https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-category?id=13

https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-category?id=11

My suggestion for a new Ham is get an off center fed dipole up as high as you can and start to play radio.... maybe 150.00 to install...

More fun choice get a Hex Beam antenna and watch it outperform your friends much larger more expensive beam antenna. About 700.00 for the antenna maybe 300..00 to 400.00 for a light duty rotor and then figure out how to get it 30 to 40 feet up in the air.... light duty tower like a Rohn 25 is common and can often be found for free if someone will just come and take it down.... if it's already on the ground you might have to pay a few hundred dollars.....

Because the Hex Beams are so light with low wind load people mount them on utility poles with a tilt over rotor plate on top... I had the local power company come out to install a cut in half power pole because I needed 2 elevated guy line points to guy out my tower which again is on a very steep lot. They gave me and installed 2 used power poles for free while they were here that I use for a wire 80 meter antenna.

There are roof mounted systems that can manage the light weight of a Hex Beam antenna.... that might not be an option if you are married though....

WB8YSQ and I spoke with a Ham who was running and absolutely state of the art SDR radio by Apache Labs an Anon radio... truly cutting edge gear that requires a very powerful computer and being a full on computer guy to make it work.... open source soft ware that extremely smart people are constantly upgrading and sharing for free....

When Dave and I looked at his QRZ page we saw that he had his Hex Beam antenna mounted on the top of a tree... His wife didn't want an unsightly tower in their yard so he had a tree service come in a top a large tree and mount the rotor plate up there.... I hope his tree stays standing for a long time....

If I was "a computer guy" I'd have one of these radios.... WB8YSQ IS a computer guy and he needs to buy one of theses so I can come over and play with it... (Seriously Dave , you know you want one of these and it's only money right???)

https://apache-labs.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVV0b4_aYhQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I9DnlWqdjg

Antennas are like the width of ties, falling in and out of fashion. I remember when cubical quads were all the rage. But the future has brought us the hex beam. Must be better, six is more than four. Antennas and transmission lines always been a black art to me. But like the cubical quad the laws of physics still hold. Fun to play with though and with the quad there were some advantages over a beam, mostly mechanical given your location and budget.

Amazing what you can do with a signal once you go digital. Consider that your now commodity GPS receiver pulls signals from below the noise floor. Doesn't seem possible if you've ever worked 80m at night with thunder storms within a couple hundred miles. But I don't think I've had more fun than building a 1 tube transmitter for 40m. (12AX7) when I was in 7th grade. A guy at the club supplied the coil form and another a couple milsurp crystals



You could shift the frequency a bit by disassembling the thing and grind the quartz element with toothpaste to raise the frequency or add a little graphite with a pencil to lower it. Never had the guts to try it on one of my in band crystals. Antenna was a portable dipole that sort of worked. No SWR meter, cut to Handbook length and hope that was good enough.

And I am a computer guy. RTTY and weather FAX and SSTV on the old Radio Shack Color Computer was a thrill. (could only receive at the time)

WB8WSQ and I are planning to talk later this evening... probably on 80 Meters if anyone would like to join us shoot me a PM with some contact info and I'll let you know what frequency... around 9:00 PM Eastern.....

I'll ask Dave to post a few of his "back yard sky photos" so you guys can see what I'm up against antenna location wise.... Another Ham from the club did a google earth location on the base of my tower and then used some kind of terrain mapping software to predict how much gain I would likely get by raising the antenna stack another 20 feet.... turns out not much... Ridges well over a mile away apparently block some of the low angle radiation..... only kind of kidding about needing to move....

I got this to try. It's Chinese made, and is small and cheap. As you can see, it fits in the palm of my hand. It is a QYT KT-8900R tribander. Max. o/p is 25 watts. From the reviews I have read, it doesn't quite make it. Reviewers are saying 20-22 watts. I'm not sure if they are just copying what they read elsewhere on the Internets, or actually tested it. Regardless, there is no difference between 20 and 25 watt.

Should this turn out to work properly, it will be perfect to take hunting. Because of it's small size and output, this little tribander will go for days with a deep cycle battery before the battery needs recharging.

I also have a Baofeng Mini UV-25X2 25 Watt Dual Band coming from SD. I hope the manual is better than the 8900R, and not Chinglish.

For those of you in the US who are considering a ham license, go here. The days of Morse testing are over. Thank God it's 1950! In my experience, that usually starts the debate about the value of Morse.

http://www.arrl.org/getting-your-technician-license

https://www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/newsID/1038

Our Ham club had gotten permission to operate from a 5000 foot elevation state park for field day this year.... due to a reported spike in Covid 19 we decided to call the group field day off for this year.... My wife and I spoke with several Hams on the local 2 Meter repeater last night who had operated field day solo.

We heard reports of simplex 2 Meter contacts, both FM and SSB being made to well over 100 miles from operators who drove up to overlook areas here in the NC Blue Ridge Mountains..... I may need to give that a try..... I'd like to try a hitch mounted mast with a yagi 2 meter antenna.

That is always fun. Originally, I wanted a 6m SSB set up to take advantage of those times when band conditions would open up. Whether it's 2m or 6m, there is that feeling of camaraderie and the accomplishment of filling in some squares on your map.

I finally got the tribander into the Escape and programmed. I have not received the cup holder mount yet, but I can learn a little about it. I used CHIRP software. There is still a lot to learn about CHIRP, but the radio is now usable. One of the downsides to some Chinese radios is the Chinglish instruction manuals.

I will eventually get around to buying a VHF all mode radio. I like the idea of SSB and want to learn more about digital.