My Week in Radio
- Zero Retries Conference
- Sept 13
- virtual and in-person
- digital aspects of radio
- current job ended
- travel for some parks and other projects
- maybe building another lightweight directional VHF antenna
Others
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Joe’s been sick in the hospital, but he’s fine. It’s just hanging around long.
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- hosted PMAM net in Joe’s place.
- Working on Joe’s tower with Bill
- KC3OOK, Bill:
- Joe’s tower will soon be in the air.
- Lab bench is all built in the new shack
- WA3KFT, John:
- make power easily available on your bench
- building a master list of callsigns: 985 gang
- KC3SQI, Wayne:
- remote switch full of lots of bugs
- AF3Z, Jim:
- continued CW practice
- KD3APR, Paxton:
- on an 8W HT and beating the intermod
- trying to repair a radio, but the screen goes white and it’s hard to work on.
- W3MFB, Mike:
- listening to 40m
Questions
- KC3OOK, Bill:
- Reading about his HeathKit he’ll put in his shack. It has 2 different powers listed for AM. What is Controlled Carrier Modulation?
- WA3KFT, John:
- Controlled Carrier Modulation is the cheap way to do AM over plate-modulation.
- The audio changes the power of the carrier.
- Pay attention to peak rating.
- It’s kind of like SSB.
- Power supply needs enough power to not sag during peak transmission.
- AF3Z, Jim:
- HeathKit DX60 also has controlled carrier modulation.
- It’s much harder to overdrive the modulation.
- WA3KFT, John:
- T150 applies modulation to screens instead of the plate in some models.
- burned out a screen with audio too high
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- screen modulation can sound excellent
- plate modulation can require a very large audio amplifier
- has used carrier control to save $5k/month of a $30k/month power bill on a large AM transmitter
- BBC would down modulate a very high carrier to keep the signal very quiet. This was very expensive.
- It’s all about average carrier power in our radios.
- KD3BPI, Simon:
- switched to a magmount on a cookie sheet outside.
- has the Baofeng on the magmount on the car. at speed, he notices more noise (crackle) in TX and RX. Should he ground the antenna and radio to the car better?
- AF3Z, Jim:
- check the connection of the whip to the magmount
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- Could be building up static, since magmount isn’t electrically connected, and power is not connected.
- try clipping a lead from coax shield to something metal
- W3MFB, Mike:
- HT is a good way to start.
- could be “mobile flutter”
- switching to a more powerful modile radio
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Congrats on fixing your signal for the net.
- Seconds the idea of static building up.
- KC3SQI, Wayne:
- power cord to lighter outlet will be a good ground
- W3MFB, Mike:
- Why don’t we break for emergency traffic during nets.
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Nets typically have a script asking for priority traffic.
- We may not have thought about it. May not be necessary.
- One signals an emergency; “break break” between transmissions.