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Today's #HamRadio #POTA (Parks On The Air) adventure.

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  • mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoundefined

    Today's (Parks On The Air) adventure. Absolutely gorgeous, couldn't-be-better fall weather on a Saturday, so that it was a little surprising that we found parking space and that all the picnic tables were empty. Used my spiderbeam push-up mast to hold my inverted-v linked dipole up, tied the ends out to some trees, and got on the air on 20 meters, using CW (morse code) as usual. I first hunted operators in other parks and got 4 QSOs, but the pileups were deep, so I found a quiet frequency and called CQ. I didn't have to wait for responses, either! Some pileups were so deep they sounded like modem noise (showing my age here). A little intimidating for the new CW operator, but the other operators were patient with me.

    AZ is one of the states I haven't gotten in my hunter logs yet, so I was happy to see AZ pop up for one call sign. However, that operator reported IL, so I still don't have AZ. I'll have to keep hunting!

    By the end, I was getting a lot of QRM (interference from human sources). That's the curse of operating QRP (low power) — I'm sure they couldn't hear my measly 5W and weren't intentionally operating on top of me. That was OK, though; I had 31 QSOs and I was ready to QRT (quit) for the day.

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Today's #HamRadio #POTA (Parks On The Air) adventure.

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  • mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoundefined

    Working WFD CW today.

    Uncategorized hamradio winterfieldday
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    mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoundefined
    40m came alive in the last hour, as we started to get close to evening, and as 20m was frankly played out.I was going to plug my rig into battery, but then saw in the rules that your computer has to be on battery power as well, and I didn't have a way to plug my shack computer into battery, so I didn't bother running the rig off battery.Then when I went to submit my log, I saw that actually your logging computer can be mains powered, so the rules must have been about the computer you are using for digital modes. Which I wasn't. I did all CW, no multi-mode multipliers for me!So I could have gotten another multiplier for my 2-point CW QSOs for my solar-charged battery, as well as the 4x QRP multiplier. I could have had 510 points instead of 408 points. Which doesn't matter at all because I'm not actually in any form of contention for anything; I worked only about five hours thanks to all the winter storm prep. And even if I'd worked the whole time I still wouldn't be competitive. I only hunted, I didn't run.And running only 5W, I didn't even make the antenna wire warm enough to melt the ice that was covering it.Maybe next year I'll run instead of hunting. But probably still QRP, and maybe actually in the field...#WinterFieldDay #HamRadio
  • mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoundefined

    @qrper mentioned in his recent video how some hams like to make antennas.

    Uncategorized hamradio amateurradio
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    mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoundefined
    The prototype worked well enough that I'll proceed on to another iteration. Leaning it out with two legs held up by the radial wire worked well, and the little knobs on the top of the spool to hold the wire in place work fine. I'll made them a touch larger to be more robust, but the concept works.I want to be able to fit 12m of wire on the spool, because I want radials that work well as flat radials on 40m, which might take up to 28%λ instead of the nominal ¼λ which would be appropriate in the "discone" setup with 45° radials. However, with this wire, 8m barely fits on this spool. So I need to add a generous allowance for more wire.I need a handle for the hub at the bottom so that I can wind it up with the legs removed. It's unwieldy with two 6' long fiberglass stakes.According to DJØIP, 1 elevated, tuned radial is roughly equivalent to 8 ground radials. Two of these should give me the performance of 16 ground radials. According to his table, I can expect 3.76dB gain over my usual 4 radials on the ground, or even more if I'm using a shortened antenna.With these just leaning, if someone inadvertently walks into my bright pink wire, they'll probably just knock over the leaning posts, which is unlikely to cause a big problem. I'll probably use bullet connectors for the other end of the wire so that they can pop out and not knock the antenna over.
  • sb@metroholografix.caundefined

    One of my favourite features of the #fediverse is seeing people *learning things*.

    Fediverso fediverse hamradio selfhosting
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    sb@metroholografix.caundefined
    One of my favourite features of the #fediverse is seeing people *learning things*. There are so many folks here discovering dying arts and trades. People learning how the things we take for granted work, and endeavouring to implement them themselves!People getting their #HAMradio licenses, #selfhosting, making clothing, blacksmithing, gardening, repairing their own things, backporting modern software to run on windows 3.11... Y'all are my people. Never stop learning, and never stop sharing what you've learned.
  • mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoundefined

    In order to 3d print a little amplified speaker box to use for #HamRadio SSB 2-operator POTA with my wife, I want to model components and then model the box to go around them.

    Uncategorized hamradio freecadfriday
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    mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoundefined
    In order to 3d print a little amplified speaker box to use for #HamRadio SSB 2-operator POTA with my wife, I want to model components and then model the box to go around them. I found a speaker on grabcad that is only a few mm different from the speaker I found in my bin. Just different enough that I need to start over to create a good basis for my box model. I didn't bother constraining everything perfectly when modeling the steps in the metal shell, and I didn't model the cone accurately because those really don't matter that much. It's good enough to check for interference.I have barrel and XT60 power connectors already modeled from my last project to choose from here, but I need to add models for the 3.5" phono jacks and the TDA2050 amplifier board I bought from Amazon. Trying to decide whether to use that completely as-is or desolder the potentiometer for the volume control and use wires to re-route it to a more convenient place. A model might help answer that question.Not quite #FreeCADFriday unless you give me about 22 hours of grace. 😀