Ham Radio / Off-grid communication

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Dynamo Dan said:
Any tips/ideas/product recommendations for the fibreglass pole
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I've had great luck with Spiderbeam brand telescoping fibreglass masts. I have a 12 meter and 10 meter one. Both are lightweight and have no problems even in adverse weather and high wind.

https://www.spiderbeam.com/index.php?cat=c2_Fiberglass Poles.html (EU /international store link)
https://www.vibroplex.com/contents/en-us/d9186.html (US store link, i always lol at the name)

For my portable op deployment it's usually guying it down or driving over a flagpole mount with my car. The "drive over flagpole" thing is a game changer too btw if you are doing field ops or POTA and have access to a vehicle.

Pic is my 9:1 random wire antenna deployed with the 12 meter Spiderbeam mast.
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For more long term deployment you could do something like this:

What I did was got a 5 gallon bucket like this one and some quikrete concrete mix from the hardware store:
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I then put a PVC pipe that roughly matches the diameter of the mast and poured the quickcrete in. I used the lid of the bucket to make sure the PVC pipe stayed in place while the quickrete was drying. I also poked some holes in the top of the lid to ensure that the quickrete could dry and enough air was coming in. There are probably less redneck ways of doing that but it werked.
 
Although my personal radio activity was light these weeks, there was a lot of stuff happening at the club. We welcomed a group of very chill, “younger” (although most are older than me) hams and I went with them for a few activities.

One is big into QRP and extremely light loadouts, he has shown me his Gawant antenna (example here: https://k1fm.us/2020/06/the-gawant-antenna/ ), looks like a bit of a meme, which really intrigued me.

Although the efficiency of such a design must be dismal, I really dig the form factor and think that it may be really handy for quick digital mode ops or other QRP fuckery. One thing I’m not a fan of is hanging the antenna directly on the radio connector, as the weight is not negligible.

As my health is slowly getting better, I'm looking forward to do more stuff on the air (I want to try SSTV !), ham radio is one of the rare things that kept me motivated through my personal issues.
 
Would a regular usb tv tuner that has the rtl2832u chip in it still be able to receive satellite frequencies?
potatofarms said:
qo100 can be received using rtlsdr and a standard tv sat dish from junkyard. to transmit you need a ssb uhf tranceiver and upconverter. or use a pluto+ sdr and wifi amp to do rx and tx.
there are 2 transponders, one for ssb, morse code, data modes, and a kind of low tech internet. the other transponder lets you transmit high quality digital tv.
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Gaysquirt said:
Would a regular usb tv tuner that has the rtl2832u chip in it still be able to receive satellite frequencies?
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It really depends on the frequency and bandwidth you're trying to operate at. The rtl chips can receive GPS signals directly for example, but it's too imprecise for decoding. SSTV over VHF from satellite is fine too, but you're out of luck with commercial ku-band TV signals, even with a down-converter since the signal is beyond the rtl chips max bandwidth.
 
Juan Números said:
As my health is slowly getting better, I'm looking forward to do more stuff on the air (I want to try SSTV !), ham radio is one of the rare things that kept me motivated through my personal issues.
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Glad your health is improving!
SSTV is interesting. My mobile and HT are capable since it boils down to having computer connectivity (or phone in this case) So I be I could figure it out on HF, I just haven't tried yet. I've read the ISS sends SSTV down time to time, is that still going on?
 
I tried to talk about radio comms in general with an IRL friend of mine and all I get as response is "discord, internet, that sounds ancient, blah, not interested" -shit. So yeah, whatever then, it's like trying to argue with a wall.
 

Found this site and it has some great info. Very concise and easy for beginners to understand. I really like the way they explain impedance here:

I've saved a .zim archive of it and will throw it on archive.org.

WanderingFarmer said:
I've read the ISS sends SSTV down time to time, is that still going on?
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Yes - absolutely. The site ariss.org usually keeps a schedule https://www.ariss.org/upcoming-sstv-events.html

You can use N2YO to find when the ISS will pass over your location. The best part is if you're close enough you don't need a fancy Yagi-uda or anything, a stick antenna on a HT can pick it up quite well.

triforce9001 said:
I tried to talk about radio comms in general with an IRL friend of mine and all I get as response is "discord, internet, that sounds ancient, blah, not interested" -shit. So yeah, whatever then, it's like trying to argue with a wall.
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Maybe it's just the🧩, but the whole idea of radio, especially when you get into HF is like being a fucking wizard. You are essentially doing magic like cutting a wire to a certain length to bounce a signal off particles in the atmosphere to talk to people on the other side of the planet. Being able to communicate entirely independent of infrastructure is going to be useful in the future much more than we know it now.
 
WanderingFarmer said:
Glad your health is improving!
SSTV is interesting. My mobile and HT are capable since it boils down to having computer connectivity (or phone in this case) So I be I could figure it out on HF, I just haven't tried yet. I've read the ISS sends SSTV down time to time, is that still going on?
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Thanks ! Yeah, it's still going down time to time. A V dipole is quite good to receive ISS / NOAA satellites APT pictures / Meteor M-2 series LRPT in VHF but some fucky effects start to appear if it's too far from ground (https://apbouwens.github.io/V-dipole-rad-pat/). Also heard good things about the turnstile (?) but never experimented.

APRS via ISS is also a good point to start practicing with satellites, it can be achieved without too much hassle. (doppler is less prevalent in VHF).
 
harbringer883 said:
Can anyone recommend a good cheap HAM radio for beginers?
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Yeah, before we get into this here's a few questions.
1:
NortelNutworks said:
Who do you want to talk to with it?
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2. What bands do you want to operate in?
3. Are you interested in learning CW or digital operation modes?

You'll probably wind up in the same boat as me where against most recommendations you start in the QRP (low power) side of things where it's all more finicky and you end up teaching yourself how to make antennas yourself.

Edit: I can't words good on mobile.
 
888Flux said:
You can use N2YO to find when the ISS will pass over your location. The best part is if you're close enough you don't need a fancy Yagi-uda or anything, a stick antenna on a HT can pick it up quite well.
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I've got one of those shitty Baofengs, and it can pick it up pretty well when I throw an AR-771 on it.
 
I used to not really like digital modes, but after seeing just how weak-signal it is, I can't get enough of them. Used to think DX was a miracle and now it's regular! It's been very, very fun seeing who you can contact with whatever is lying around.

Gonna shill FreeDV while I'm at it, they just had a major release yesterday. It's your voice but compressed using AI into PSK tones transmitted over the air, which is then decoded back on the other end. It has a lower bandwidth and much lower SNR than regular SSB too, about -2 dB at 1.5kHz. Doesn't take much resources at all, either.
 
Digimodes are nice but the cost of that sweet range and signal sensitivity is black boxes everywhere. With a simple AM/SSB transmission all you need to understand it is a bit of high school maths, or complex numbers if you want to go the exp(2 pi f t) way. Digital modes, especially the ones which have so good noise performance (some can receive very low bitrate signals even under the noise floor level - amazing) have so much telecom and signal processing tech inside that you need years of study to really understand what is going on inside.

I like the idea personally, I never used any digimodes. So far I was playing with SSB reception.
 
Channel Catfish said:
Gonna shill FreeDV while I'm at it, they just had a major release yesterday. It's your voice but compressed using AI into PSK tones transmitted over the air, which is then decoded back on the other end. It has a lower bandwidth and much lower SNR than regular SSB too, about -2 dB at 1.5kHz. Doesn't take much resources at all, either.
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codec2 is also great. It's not ML based like RADE is but nonetheless has workable performance over as little as 700 bits per second.
 
Between two apartments at the moment, so all my ham radio stuff except my Quansheng is in boxes.

Related to ham radio stuff, in typical fashion, I have been a monumental retard during the move and thought that taking the wheel when sleep-deprived and clearly not fit to drive was a good idea.

Needless to say, I had a bit of a fender-bender with the rental truck. I'm fine and everything inside was also fine (only minor cosmetic damage to truck), but the rental guys want some money (which is understandable) and this money will come from the amount earmarked for my portable HF setup, which sucks major ass.

On the upside, I'm looking forward to do some portable ops with already equipped hams.

The club also has a repeater in a high but remote location, which is ideal for ham radio but no internet connectivity. I'm looking into adding some packet radio network.
 
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triforce9001 said:
I tried to talk about radio comms in general with an IRL friend of mine and all I get as response is "discord, internet, that sounds ancient, blah, not interested" -shit. So yeah, whatever then, it's like trying to argue with a wall.
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Relatable. My best friend got me into this doing cb stuff when we were kids. His response now we are adults with cash to spend on radios: govt license lame also we talk on discord why bother. Disappointing.
 
Juan Números said:
Between two apartments at the moment, so all my ham radio stuff except my Quansheng is in boxes.

Related to ham radio stuff, in typical fashion, I have been a monumental retard during the move and thought that taking the wheel when sleep-deprived and clearly not fit to drive.

Needless to say, I had a bit of a fender-bender with the rental truck. I'm fine and everything inside was also fine (only minor cosmetic damage to truck), but the rental guys want some money (which is understandable) and this money will come from the amount earmarked for my portable HF setup, which sucks major ass.

On the upside, I'm looking forward to do some portable ops with already equipped hams.

The club also has a repeater in a high but remote location, which is ideal for ham radio but no internet connectivity. I'm looking into adding some packet radio network.
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Setting up winlink and aprs?
 
WanderingFarmer said:
Setting up winlink and aprs?
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Nah, just IP over radio (2400 baud AFSK with IL2P), even if there's something else I want to try. Our goal is to be able to remotely check on Computer A, B and C that are in the repeater site and spare us a 1+ hour drive to perform basic housekeeping (relaunch scripts, modify parameters…).

For this, we’ll add Computer D, both connected to packet network and local network.

I had started a proof of concept using Raspberry Pi and whatever handhelds I could find but it will need to progress before we can proceed with on-site testing.

Wanted to install this link on UHF but it’s already taken by a 433 MHz Meshtastic module, VHF is already taken by the main repeater and all high HF bands are also taken by other experiments. I don’t have many solutions.

6m is available but I don’t have a 6m-capable rig that could be left at repeater site. I’ve looked into VHF => 6m transverters but adds a lot of hassle.

Same for 23 cm.

Last resort for me would be to just add another UHF antenna and say “fuck it” as this network and Meshtastic have very low usage rate.
 
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