13
votes
Are there any other HAMs around here?
Where do you usually work from? What is your setup? And also, what has been your most memorable HAM experience so far?
Where do you usually work from? What is your setup? And also, what has been your most memorable HAM experience so far?
Tech license, so I don't get fun trans-continental QSOs or anything like that.
I mostly operate from home, but I've done Field Day a couple times, with a solar-powered bicycle-mobile setup in a park. Worked folks in four counties last year, which was pretty good considering I was operating at 1W most of the time.
Most memorable experience: got someone on a local repeater to phone-patch a 911 call for me when I came across an injured equestrian in a cellphone dead zone. Local RACES guy who was monitoring the repeater actually got there before the ambulance, lol.
For me I just enjoy learning how radio works, and realizing what's going on around us that we can't see. It's neat to find out all the police/emergency frequencies, air traffic control, cell phone/pager traffic, airplane GPS data, etc. are just floating out there waiting to be received by anyone who knows to look for them.
I dunno if it counts but I bought a RTL-SDR to play around with. So far I've only used it to listen to FM radio stations and a few walkie-talkies I found in the 850MHz range. I've been planning on trying to receive ADS-B satellite imagery, but haven't got around to it yet. Also toyed with the idea of getting a HF upconverter since the minimum frequency on this thing is like 50MHz, but I'm not sure how much fun that would be or if it'd be worth the money.
It's "ham" not "HAM".
It's a silly thing to comment on, I know, but ham doesn't stand for anything. It's short for "amateur".
Yeah, you are right, my bad. Sadly I can't edit titles.
Ham here, general license. I've got a copper cactus 2m/70cm antenna on my roof, and a clear view to a bunch of nearby repeaters. I rarely use that though, unless I know in advance someone wants to chat with me on there.
I recently built a uBitX and had some fun messing around with it until my 20m dipole broke. Still need to fix that. I want to mess around with digital modes on there once it's working again. I've heard good things about FT-8.
I also have a few RTL-SDR dongles and a LimeSDR Mini I mess around with. I've done some ADS-B and plane mapping, as I live near a major airport it's fun to see all the planes flying right over my house as they land. I'd like to take some time and learn more about gnu-radio and sending signals and digital modes with the LimeSDR Mini, not just receiving.
I have an old FRG-7 but I don't have a clue what to do with it. I assume I need a decent antenna to pick up on anything. Beyond that basic assumption, I'm pretty clueless.
General ham here. I don't work too often outside of some FT8 and phone contests. Been trying to learn CW, but it's been an uphill battle because I lack the self discipline to practice every day.
My setup is FT-891, AT-100ProII tuner, and using a Singalink for digital modes. I live in a condo with antenna restrictions so I've got a 20m homebrew dipole and 40 hamsitck dipole in the attic for working from my home QTH. For working portable I've got an Alpha Antenna magloop, SotaBeams Bandhopper 2 dipole, MFJ -1910 fiberglass mast, Bioenno 12v 12Ah LiFePO4 battery, and Bioenno 28 watt foldable solar panel (with a 12V/24V, 20A charge controller) for charging in the field.
I upgraded to general last October and 2018 Winter Field Day was probably my most memorable experience to date. I found out about it only days before hand and it was my first chance to work when the bands were really busy and folks weren't looking for long ragchews (which I'm terrible with).