My Week in Radio
- PSKFest 3rd place in QRP class (of 4 people)
- New R1CBU 0.32.2
- IF shift feature to move birdies away from your signal
- 2W FT8 to Belgium and back on 40M
- EFHW high SWR, but tuner deals with it
- too cold to go out to investigate much
- wonder if it’s water and ice on the uninsulated rope
Others
- KN3I, John:
- radio on the workbench for repairs
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- back to Drexel to help get their station back on the air
- Kiana, a student.
- K3DTS is closer to having liability insurance for classes
- working with the balloon team from Drexel and another High School
- APRS for tracking
- launch from Nottinghill Farm Park
- back to Drexel to help get their station back on the air
- W3SCY, Luke:
- working on CW, 20wpm
- WFD 2 weeks ago
- checked into AMPM net on 3835kHz, Sunday, 04:30pm.
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- KC3OOK, Bill:
- net control for various nets
- enjoying crimp coax connectors
- W3KZG, Scott:
- refurbishing some export 10/11/12M export radios to keep and sell
- WA3KFT, John:
- various nets
- lots of check-ins on AWA net, 7237kHz
- KD3AIS, Tim:
- back from a trip to Germany and Netherlands
- Looking forward to Ron’s classes
- AF3Z, Jim:
- SKCC anniversary event is done: K3Y here in the states
- helped coordinate 17 operators
- ~4100 contacts
- 1363 unique operators
- 300 contacts personally
- US sweep: 9 call areas + Alaska, Hawaii, PR
- SKCC anniversary event is done: K3Y here in the states
- AA3LH, Leon:
- spoke to Costa Rica
- W3DEN, Dennis:
- Just moved to West Chester
- in a retirement community, so antenna restricted
- W3MOW, Mike:
- fired up raspberry pi hotspot for DMR
- new vehicle, so radio not setup in mobile yet.
Questions
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Students are using APRS to track balloons they launch.
- using a kenwood HT and phones to track APRS.
- suggest maybe a beam for tracking it directly
- What is the range of APRS?
- Suggestions for tracking?
- W3KZG, Scott:
- check with Corbin, K3HXW.
- KD3EE, John:
- it’s packet radio, so relayed by digipeaters
- bridged to the internet, so reliably visible on aprs.fi
- btech uv-pro is a great, inexpensive radio.
- seeing DC to Williamsport to New Jersey on my map here
- I have a fixed antenna for APRS 30 ft in a tree
- AA3LH, Leon:
- Un-Un at the end of an EFHW, how do they get away without a counterpoise?
- WA3KFT, John:
- Needs a good earth ground to be the other half of the antenna
- stake, water pipe, etc.
- need a radiating element and a counterpoise
- Needs a good earth ground to be the other half of the antenna
- KC3RFG, Jim:
- started with end-fed antennas
- if you don’t install a counterpoise, it’ll use the shield of your coax as the other half of your antenna
- choke the coax before it enters the house or gets to the radio
- proper counterpoise helps avoid RF on the coax
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- he wrote an article on the 985 website
- not all end-feds are horizontal, any vertical antenna is an end-fed
- running low power, you don’t need to worry as much about return RF.
- vertical whips are end-fed
- horizontal random wire is an end-fed.
- ground plane or radials of a vertical is a counterpoise
- person serves as counterpoise on an HT
- AA3LH, Leon:
- always uses speaker-wire counterpoises with ham stick verticals
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Has anyone interfaced a weather station to NOAA via APRS or via internet connection?
- W3MOW, Mike:
- Is this the same integration like Weather Underground?
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- Weather Underground and all those other services.
- Ground Truth Weather
- W3KZG, Scott:
- Dylan, K3DZN, has a weather station at the house that’s all linked up.
- KC3OOK, Bill:
- Have you bought the Davis View weather station yet
- It has lots of modules
- APRS is a module, good for emergency service
- Can run on a RPi or small computer depending how much you want to do