My Week in Radio
- POTA in DE (park and a bonus trail)
- homebrew delta loop
- 32 contacts on ft8 w/ 1W
- watched a youtube video about line throwing techniques
with an arborist
- I can now throw much higher and more consistently
- my far trees are near power lines, so I’m conservative with my throws
- now have my main wire higher than ever before: needed more throw line.
- been coding a bunch on 4 different personal projects all at once.
- lots of fun.
- testing and fixing a bug on the spectrum analyzer of the Quansheng firmware I use
- prediction that FCC might grant me a new callsign tomorrow.
Others
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Valley Forge Hamfest in Kimberton
- lots of 985ers attended
- headed to the field days site
- 985 breakfast coming up
- Valley Forge Hamfest in Kimberton
- WA3KFT, John:
- sold some stuff at the Valley Forge Hamfest
- hamfest seemed smaller than previous years
- KD3BPI, Simon:
- enjoyed Valley Forge Hamfest and meeting everyone
- source of noise on the radio in the car was picket fencing
- will upgrade to a better mobile
- N3CRE, Charles:
- evaluating AllStar and EchoLink
- KC3OOK, Bill:
- working on lab bench
- prepping for tower work tomorrow
- KC3YSM, Steve:
- rerouting some LMR400
- need some things he needed in Ron’s photos from the ham fest, should have gone
- generator project with soft start
- KD3AIS, Tim:
- observed all the ham radio antennas on a trip across ohio
- KD3APR, Paxton:
- working with Ron on some antenna and radio upgrades
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- control for pre-net AMPM.
- testing out a balun with a different tuner to see about tuning all the bands. it works!
Questions
- KD3APR, Paxton:
- Looking at 900MHz DMR used for emergency response, Radio Reference is not very clear about what they use. Does anyone have details?
- DMR is the generic digital voice
- 900MHz might be pretty niche
- Is it security through obscurity?
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Are you sure it’s 900MHz for first responders?
- DE may use P25 phase 2 trunked system that’s similar to DMR, like Chester county does. on 800MHz band.
- There may be concerns in public service for privacy, so it might be obscured.
- P25 is used for more specific details.
- Ham radio has no encryption.
- 902MHz-928MHz is 33cm ham band, so they’d not be there.
- W8CRW, CR:
- W1RC, Mike, might know about DMR programming
- KC3YSM, Steve:
- ARES in DE may use 900MHz ham bands
- 900MHz band is undergoing changes to accommodate some broadband usage
- W3MFB, Mike:
- KI6OM has a repeater on 900mhz
- 900mhz might be better for digital work than voice
- KD3BPI, Simon:
- Got 3-ohm Motorola monitor speaker from the hamfest, and the Yaesu wants an 8-ohm speaker. How do we match it?
- AF3Z, Jim:
- it’ll probably just work, but maybe not totally efficient.
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- should be fine.
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- it probably will be quieter or may distort. fine on low.
- KD3BPI, Simon:
- the speaker was in the free pile, and is stamped 1961.
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- When receiving through the repeater and trying to offer signal reports, be familiar with what the repeater sounds like to you when considering how another station sounds through the repeater. Understand that if the repeater is noisy to you, then even the best signal into the repeater will be noisy. Try simplex for better signal reports
- AF3Z, Jim:
- with enough listening you can tell the difference of where the noise is introduced.