other links: LandOps.org Home | Video | LandOps.com
Land Ops - The Off Road, Navigation and Amateur Radio Search Club
If you don't know what this is, it's a communications method using HF bands to communicate within a 200 to 300 mile distance using non line-of-sight comms. Instead of using 2 meters 146 MHz VHF, we use 40 meter 7.2 MHz HF. Antenna can be a simple inverted "V" 15 feet at center and two 45 foot long legs at each end. Power needed between 10 and 100 watts. Can be setup anywhere out on the trail and is very reliable and low noise. Cannot be Located using direction finding equipment.
I've set one up using an old ICOM 706 and built the antenna for less than $30.
From my location in the Central Valley I have talked (using USB) to stations in Orange County, San Diego, and Oregon State. Crisp clear low noise daytime use. For night time 60 meters or 80 meters can also be used. Right now we are just trying 40 meters.
We want to run a concurrent landops event between Northern California and Southern California and we want to find someone in SoCal who can run a station down there as a test. Anybody set up yet?
That sounds like a cool idea. I don't have any 40m equipment yet, but I bet John Emig W6CYS can do this with his eyes closed. He built a repeater that we used on the last Big Bear Extreme NightOp. It would be cool to have the teams have to find antenna parts and then rendezvous to assemble the antenna and make contact.
This will get me motivated to upgrade my license, and really open up Land Ops comms training.
Good article on NVIS and PC-ALE software
http://www.epicdarkskies.com/archives/1105
Ric
Great article Ric. Jim thats a good idea for assembling the antenna during an op. It would be cool if we could test this idea during Monache. Trouble is I might not be able to make it.