Ham Radio reactivation

Let's Chat
, ,
1

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.

2

QSL :grinning_face:
73’s IW2LAO
(aprs.fi: iw2lao-13)

1 Like
3

You’ll find me as one (or more) of G6FCI (APRS-IS), G6FCI-7 (handheld), G6FCI-D and G6FCI-N are from the Pi Star.

4

I look forward to hearing you on HF. I just recently finished off a DXCC on 6 meters. That took a while.

73 de w4uck

1 Like
5

I suspect my initial HF work will be using FT8. I think it’s safest to start with low power because I’m not sure if I’ll affect neighbours and with a limited garden size I need to be careful about the exposure of neighbours to EMF from the antenna. If I remember the calculations correctly staying below 10w means you don’t need to do anything special in protection terms.

6

I don’t know about your regulations over there, but the ARRL has an RF exposure calculator here, perhaps that will help you. I do a fair bit of FT8 and FT4. I prefer the JTDX program over WSJT-X as i prefer its user interface, but both do the job. According to our regulations, i can run 1500 watts with no problems, but then i don’t have neighbors :slight_smile:
Its pretty easy to work the world on low power with FT8! Enjoy!
73

7

The regulations are probably pretty similar. With a small garden the only way to get a reasonable amount of wire in the sky is to have the ends at the corner of the garden. That means it’s close to neighbours. It’s a while since I did the calculations, but I think to even get near to 100w I’d need to have 4m poles in the corners. I could also only use an inverted V. An inverted L would need an even taller pole to allow the drop.

A vertical could be another solution but I don’t think I’d get permission from the powers that be for a post plus vertical in the middle of the garden LOL