Anyone interested in trying a psk (doesn't have to be psk) fediverse net on HF at some point?
Only a few weeks into the winter weather and my discone has already lost an element to the wind. Access is challenging so going to be a while before I can get it down to fix. All the elements were tightly screwed in though so I'm not sure what more I can do, perhaps add a bit of PTFE tape around the screw thread? #hamradio #antenna
After months sat up on the roof doing nothing, I finally hooked up my HF discone to where I need it and ran some FT8 monitoring tests overnight. Considering propagation is supposed to be garbage, I was very surpirsed how well it performed. Never seen so many contacts over the pond with my previous efforts, just a shame I cannot tx with it too. Receiver was Airspy R2 with Spyverter.
First test of my discone after mounting it outside the loft was a mixed bag. Reception improved all over but 2/70 still absolutely dead, though I can get a reasonable reception of the only local repeater I can reach now so that's something. Next step is to get my transmitting aerial up and put out a call to see what comes back.
Are there any show and tell pages of #hamradio antenna setups? Looking for ideas to plan ahead before investing in hardware.
#facepalm at people openly admitting to illegally using Baofengs w/o a license in Amazon reviews. Ok ignorance is a thing but it's not helped by some self identified M0's there wrongly claiming that they are ok to use on PMR.
Is Amateur Radio on Life Support?
#introductions
I picked up a RTL-SDR dongle around 2013 and happened on a 2m repeater scanning the bands. Had no prior contact with ham radio before and my interest was piqued. I went along to my local club who helped me get M6FCY & 2E0DQI 2015. Joined BBADL in 2017 and got M0TDN. I enjoy the learning, practical/EE elements to the hobby mostly but as an Operator I'm still rather new and very time poor due to new baby and moving twice this year but it's a long race.
Managed a quick test of my new 2m dipole from the 1st floor bedroom instead of the loft where it's more convenient to set up a basic shack, but couldn't get into GB3MI from there so looks like the extra elevation made enough difference for geting over the nearby hospital building.
Dinner was ready by the time of my club net however so I didn't get a chance to test simplex but if the repeater results are anything to go by I probably didn't miss much, maybe next week!
After Sunday's miserable performance on the club net. I hacked together a basic dipole using some thick galvanised wire I had lying around. Not very easy to work with so tuning would be challenging. No need to worry, first test gave a 1:1 match on the upper half of the 2m band! Put out a call on GB3MI which is in the area of my club members, no response but I could RX myself via hackgreen websdr and gave myself 59, FB!
So I finally attempted joining my club net for first time after moving QTH 30 miles south, I now have a very large building to immediately to my north which blocks everything.
Can't get much from 2nd floor so tried from the loft, RX was more reliable but TX still very poor.
Only the VHF guy with the big tower that used to warm my shack reported S1 and just about copied my call sign but everyone else just got my carrier. Looks like simplex back to the club is a no go until I move again. :-(
If you're new to Mastodon, you might be interested in alternative web clients like Halcyon (https://social.dev-wiki.de/) for a familiar Twitter-like experience, or @pinafore for something new, clean and lightweight. Both connect back to your instance here, they just present your account to you in a different way.
UK full license op. Soldersmoker (the L is not silent). HF. Datamodes all when the harmonic is sleeping.