I’m getting radioactive again!
I’ve been a licenced radio amateur since 1981 but with some big gaps in my activity. I was last active (on HF) in 2006/7 but then I moved to a non-antenna friendly location. I’ve just put up my first antenna since then and I’m nearly ready to have my first on-air conversation in 18 years-ish.
The antenna is a 2m/70cm vertical (a C30 antenna which is a marine radio equivalent of the Diamond X30). I’ve got a handheld (Yaesu FT5D) connected to it and can hear the local repeater (GB3FC) talking to itself every 30 minutes. There’s little activity on it though.
I’ve also set up a Pi Star hotspot which gives me local, i.e. within my house, 70cm access to various digital networks. It’s like having an Internet connected repeater in the house and it’s amazing what a little Raspberry Pi Zero W (with an RF hat) can do! This is RF to the hotspot and then Internet from there to other gateways. So not much radio involved in this, but there is at least a little bit of radio!
I’ve got a Mobilinkd TNC4 to get myself back onto the AX25 digital mode. I’ve had that connected up to the handheld but not heard any activity yet. There’s supposed to be a node/BBS about 2 miles away so I thought I’d have heard that but there hasn’t been any activity on that frequency yet. I’ve not had the TBC connected up with the new antenna connected yet though so I’ll try that later.
I’ve also set up my weather station to send APRS weather data. This is actually via APRS-IS - the Internet based APRS system, but once I’ve got things better connected/figured out I’ll look to see how I can get that transmitted as well as published over the Internet. If you look at the aprs.fi map you’ll find me on it.
No HF yet - that requires more planning, especially how to get a semi-decent antenna up. Suburban UK living doesn’t fit well with HF antennas so there’s no easy solution. Another big issue is likely to be how to avoid the awful RF noise levels in this area. I’ve done some listening but it’s not easy when there’s all sort of digital hash contaminating the frequencies.