Stayed up too late kicking off a 3d print for an enclosure that will hold two telescoping dipoles that should work for all frequencies between (maybe) 20m through 2m. Happy this hits so many technician friendly bands!

It is designed to mount to a 1.5” mast, and easily move between horizontal and vertical polarization.

Wish me luck, this is a 12 hour print and will need approximately half a role of filament; here’s hoping I got it right!

#AmatuerRadio #AntennaDIY #3dprinting #3Dmodeling

Received a letter today, allegedly from DMR-MARC, libeling some guy named Ken for "whoring" out Motorola radios.

According to the letter, Ken got in an argument with someone on Facebook, and evidently the DMR-MARC organization is now involved in a letter campaign to let the world know that Ken was a bad child, is a bad adult, and should be banned from ham radio.

It's like having Facebook delivered to my doorstep.

We're better than this, no?

@hamradio #HamRadio #amatuerRadio #dmr

I was informed by the NWS that they will get a report of new spotters on the 1st and 15th, and that my area doesn’t assign spotter IDs.

If I don’t have an email with more details by the 8th I should reach out. so, for my area, pretty trivial to become a spotter at any time!

#HamRadio #SkyWarn #AmatuerRadio

Back to Picota EA1/CT-101 for more #sota fun this morning. Tried the #elecraftAX1 on 40m for the first time, but wouldn’t get a good tune - suspect there is a longer radial I forgot about. Weirdly wouldn’t tune on 20m either, even though it did fine in the same spot a few days ago? After some faffing resorted to EFRW on the old fortifications wall and ground. Few contacts round Europe and some S2S action. Home via the coffee shop.
#SummitsOnTheAir #amatuerRadio #hamradio #morsecode

Turns out the next accommodation on our Spain holiday also has a #sota summit a short hike away, what are the chances? ;-)
This time La Picota EA1/CT-101. #elecraftkx2 and #elecraftAX1 combo and #morsecode getting me a few contacts round Europe on 20M and 17M.
Hope to be back there again before our week is up.
#SummitsOnTheAir #amatuerRadio #hamradio

Normally using Dipoles, but I own a Superantenna wanted to know- with the radials, if I elevate the antenna on the mast is it ok to just have them hanging down? Some of them are pretty short... #AmatuerRadio #HamRadio

So I just downloaded and installed the latest (2022) revision of something called #xnec2c

This is the evolution of the #ARRL Antenna Design/Simulation/Optimization software. The original was in fortran; this revision is in C and runs well with X on a linux desktop.

What a frigging mess, from an interface perspective. The documentation could use a bit of work as well.

Not to be terribly critical, just making this observation as a first impression.

This piece of work may have a long and storied history, and it may be taking on the patina of age; but one sure way to let your technology slide off into obscurity is to put your tools on a shelf and worship them instead of using and improving them over time.

Lets do a python version, with a proper modern UX, some help that does more than simply describe the software, but rather works as a living reference with a few simple wizards for the novice.

#amatuerRadio #radio #hamRadio #antennaDesign

Just got through a pile up into the Czech Republic from Ga for my first phone contact of the day. Always amazed at what you can do with an old radio and some wire. #hamradio #amatuerRadio #winterfieldday

#hamradio #amatuerradio #amateur #radio

Some of my infosec friendos are currently passing around this browser based circuit simulator:

https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html

#amatuerradio
#hamradio

So wgy am I goofin' around in here now, if I got all this radio stuff on the front burners?

I'm waiting on the this rasp pi 4 to finish building the latest GNURadio suite from source.

it's presently at 93% complete.

#amatuerradio
#ham

Where am I today?

Taking a little time to advance my radio game, that's where! I last left off with the purchase and reveicer testing of a Great Scott Gadgets HackRF One. It's a real low power SDR transmitter/receiver. It should do 10m - 2m work with the dipole antenna I made in the attic, at about a half watt.

When I get my shit together on it, I'll add some late stage amplification so I can get some legs.

Good Times!

I love messin' with radios!
KI5SMN@EL29kl

Practicing sending morse code using my radio as an oscillator. I was transmitting at 5W (as low as it goes) on a quiet frequency on the worst band I could find at the time using the one-way communication exception for code practice. Before I could send my callsign, I had it programmed in the keyer so I could still ID.

Looked in the manual for something else and found the setting to just use the radio as an oscillator. 🤦 They don't call it amateur radio for nothing.

#amatuerradio #hamradio

It's an adapter that takes one 1/8 microphone connector and one 1/4 stereo connector for PTT and connects them to the RJ45 port on my #amatuerradio. It also has a resistor and capacitor to feed power to the electret mic and filter the dc voltage out of the audio input. I have it working now, but it's a mess - I used 1/4 to 1/8 (and vice versa) adapters (cheaper), but the audio level is coming through too high and this set up is *hard* to modify.

The next time my elmer asks me what the appeal of FT8 is, I'm going to tell him that sometimes I turn on my radio and it is tuned to 7200khz and it makes me not want to talk to anyone.

#amatuerradio