My son and I made a quick run to the Puget Sound seaside to take advantage of the 20 meter band this morning. Sitting here in Seattle we made a contact in the Czech Republic using less power than you'd use to light a lightbulb. #hamradio#amateurradio#ft8
For all #WSPR operators in the Midwest, keep an ear out for DL0WH on 40m. @quantensalat is a physics teacher who built a WSPR station with his class. It would be so awesome for the kids to hear reception reports from real live people.
Tune to 40m overnight, and let’s see if we can give them reports!
I can say without a doubt of all technically oriented communities the HAM radio community is by far the most rude, hostile, and least educated in their field of any group.
The amount of just pure idiocy and lack of understanding of even the basics is astonishing considering this is a licensed trade.
Anyone know roughly how far a UHF (440) signal can travel, 40W of power, end-fed half-wave vertical mounted above the metal roof of a 1-story house? We're on the city limits so there's not much obstruction.
I'm not looking for exact answers, I'm just trying to calculate if 40-50 watts of power is enough to reach the neighboring (30 miles) city.
For bonus points: assume I'm on a 5W HT. You think there's enough rx gain to even hear an HT 30 miles away? Or would I have to bounce through the 50W tx in my car as an amplifier to even try that.
Don't know how much it gets used, but I think the #Brandmeister#DMR#SMS messaging system is down.
Messages to #APRS (310999) don't go through. Messages to N4DVM (262995) get stored in the system, but her DMR radio is logged on and should be receiving messages, but don't.
Can anybody else confirm this, or am I doing something wrong here? (just learned how to do it this weekend- getting some practice in).
Never dreamed my #POTA#parksontheair activations would become this. Every activation for more than 2 weeks. Sad someone spends $1k+ to bring havoc to others as a form of entertainment. Is this what #AmateurRadio#Hamradio has become? COUNT ME OUT!
Been trying to figure out why radio is appealing to me. The serotonin bump is nice, yeah, but there has to be more to it.
Ultimately, I can't help but feel that it's a different sort of challenge. No routers to contend with, not nearly as much software to futz with, just throw some metal in the air and go. Probably why QRP operations, particularly mobile, interests me too. Somehow, declaring "Maximum firepower!" Just feels like cheating to me.
Besides, it also circles back to electronics, another interest I'm pushing myself back to.
I often get the urge to get into #AmateurRadio because of my dislike for social media companies.
Positives: no algorithm forced on you, you're not being tracked, your information isn't sold to marketers, and the physics/engineering is fascinating.
Negatives: I know very few others who use it, I'm not interested in hearing about people's medical conditions, there's no privacy, and the only reason you're not tracked is because so few people use it.
In about 14 hours is my general exam. I know my formulas for calculating PEP and peak / RMS voltage conversions are incorrect (and hopefully I'll have time to fix them after work)
It's going to be a different type of #amateurradio#hamradio#pota#parksontheair activation on Friday as this is one of the accessories that I will be using. It might be a difficult activation. 😁
I feel like it would be worthwhile to write a little desktop app that lists current #POTA spots along with a little bilutton that tells #FLRig to QSY and set that mode.
Making some good contacts on the 15 meter band right now. Again, amazing to me that I’m essentially using the power equivalent of a lightbulb, setting it on my balcony, and waiting for someone in Belize to see it and flick their lights on and off in reply. And it works. #hamradio#amateurradio#ft8
What name do you like best for a non-profit #FOSS community for Ham Radio? Think Apache incubator but for Ham plus other open-source services and resources for the community.
FYI I have both the dot com and dot org as well as the hyphenated and non hyphenated versions of the below. Please mention which variant you prefer in comments.
I'm reaching out to the mastodon #hamradio community to find out if there's anyone in the Houston, Texas area that will be holding an exam session. I tried the Facebook route but that failed miserably and I don't trust the #ARRL exam session listings. Are their any volunteer examiners in the Houston area that can help steer me in the right direction outside of MeetUp and Facebook. :)
I love amateur radio but if your first experience of it is via the ARRL website, you will be forgiven for thinking the hobby is stuck in 1998. #hamradio#amateurradio
Having a tendency to stress-buy, a hobby that is not cheap in most iterations (looking at you, HF), and a potentially legitimate need for a piece of hardware (depending on who you ask) is kind of an awful combination.
I might be able to afford it, but 'can' and 'should' are two very different things.
It seems that like 75% of the QRM in my vehicle is the stereo system. A certain amount is the subwoofer amp, most definitely, but just power cycling the headunit is enough to see a noticable S-meter change (from like S2 to S6). Knowing that my power lines are (unfortunately) ran together, and that it would take basically ripping apart my entire dash (for the 4th time) to re-do any wiring back there, any ideas on what I can do to mitigate this, without re-cabling my entire frontend (or moving things, since my radio placement is... kinda permanant for better or for worse on top of the dash)