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Land Ops - The Off Road, Navigation and Amateur Radio Search Club
Who wants to try some HF communication on Sunday evenings? We have a lot of options, digital or voice or maybe both at different times. We are probably limited to 40 meters right now and 80 meters would be even better for close contacts although I understand what it takes to get a good 80 meter antenna up at a residence.
Hi Rick,
So there are a number of people in Land Ops studying to advance from Techician to General license. Perhaps you can elaborate of the path to HF.
From my understanding the path might look like this;
1. Study for General, take test and pass it. 2. Buy an HF radio (need recommendation for a good affordable mobile) 3. Buy or make two antenna versions (mobile and deployable base)
Personally I am interested in the ability to fold the whip down and get NVIS for the 300-400 mile range.
Could you elaborate and help us who are looking to advance into HF?
I would like to try some different HF methods to see if we can communicate at this close of a range.
Yes Chris, that is pretty much the path.
For a home/base radio, both Tim Sperry and I have the FT-450d. Great radio for the money. Antennas are the fun part, I have put up and tore down 4 or 5 in the past couple of years. Wire is cheap.
I do have a 102" whip to fold over for NVIS mobile work, just need to test it yet. If someone can help me with that it would be great. They would need to be SoCal local and have the ability to get on 40 or 80 meters. As soon as I have some more data, I can help other people do the same.
A couple of us will be testing local comms on 40 meters soon and we can give more info about that also if successful.
I will be on 40 meters this Sunday 7/2
7:00pm voice (will post freq on Sunday night)
7:30pm psk31 on 7.070
Let's try 7.265
Rick-W8KO
Nothing heard, moving to psk31 on 7.070
Nothing on psk either.
Looking at my NVIS map, no surprise. The highest usable freq for NVIS is 4Mhz. So the only way someone local would hear me is if they were close enough for a ground wave.
For NVIS work over SoCal, we must be able to use 75/80 meters. I have that capability, but I understand that it is a much longer antenna and many won't have room for it.
I will try again next Sunday, but this time will broadcast around 3.9Mhz.
ok, planning to take my General test on July 8th in Cypress. First step in HF for me. I'm using flash cards like I did before. Pretty confident I'll pass.
Is there an online site where someone can listen to HF traffic before getting a radio?
Chris,
You can start here http://www.radioreference.com/ or http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/?rl=rr. I'm familiar with Radio Reference (I used to host a feed for CARA that MR hosts now). If you have a receiver or scanner that can monitor the Amateur bands, that is another good way. 40 and 20 meters tend to be used more, if anything for antenna height and band openings and should be easy to find some SSB or AM stations chatting. I hope this helps.
Jacoby
Thank you Jacoby, yes, it helps. For starters I'll take a listen to the sites you mentioned. Haven't seen for a while. Are you still primarily on the Catalina repeater?
