Amateur Radio FAQ

[CapoGreg]

I'm assuming what he means, facetiously, is that you meant you were going to use a callsign with the prefix of 1B versus what you meant that you were going to be operating in the 1B class for field day, a portable station operated by one or two people or a battery operated station. http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Field-Day/2014/2014 Rules.pdf

There does seem to have been an up-tick in enforcement of people not following the rules regarding identification.

Ah...thank you. With the emcomm & SAR background I've always been particular about proper identification. I was referring to a 1B class station operated by myself off commercial mains at the campground.

 

[awptickes]

Ahhh, ok, that makes more sense. I hadn't read the field day rules yet.

If things go as planned, I'll be a 1b class station as well. Running 3W pep on lithium batteries with a solar charger. As soon as I figure out which public place I'm going to operate, I'm going to send out a press release to the local news paper.

 

[Mrhyde]

Just got my brand new technician call sign. KC3DCK
they asked me if I wanted to try the general test and I flopped. 20 wrong answers out of 35. Lol. I just took a stab at it haha.

On the air as soon as my call sign is on the website.

 

[K31]

Just got my brand new technician call sign. KC3DCK
they asked me if I wanted to try the general test and I flopped. 20 wrong answers out of 35. Lol. I just took a stab at it haha.

On the air as soon as my call sign is on the website.

Congratulations!

 

[Mrhyde]

Congratulations!

Thank you! And thanks for the guidance via the thread.

I just saw that my call sign has posted so I'm sure I'll be on the air a bit around lunch time today.

 

[chale127]

Just got my brand new technician call sign. KC3DCK
they asked me if I wanted to try the general test and I flopped. 20 wrong answers out of 35. Lol. I just took a stab at it haha.

On the air as soon as my call sign is on the website.

If you have your call it's on the website....

 

[awptickes]

Thank you! And thanks for the guidance via the thread.

I just saw that my call sign has posted so I'm sure I'll be on the air a bit around lunch time today.

Shoot me a PM, and maybe we can meet up.

I'm also located in Bel Air.

 

[6-Pack]

Does anyone want to have a meet-n-greet on the air Saturday before Field Day? The one time of year I'm glad to have ponied up for the 2.3kHz SSB filters

 

[garym]

Does anyone want to have a meet-n-greet on the air Saturday before Field Day? The one time of year I'm glad to have ponied up for the 2.3kHz SSB filters

Pick a freq!

 

[6-Pack]

How about 14.230 (14.260 as a backup if 230 is already occupied) so our General friends can join in too?

 

[garym]

Time?

 

[awptickes]

14.230 has some kind of digital on it right now. How's 260?

 

[garym]

Come to think of it 14.230 is in the SSTV area of 14.230 to 14.236.

A lower band may be better for close in, maybe 40 or 80M. 60M (5MHz) is also a really good band for local and DX. I may be mobile a bit during the day but I can do 80M to 6M from the mobile.

 

[Pinecone]

I don't have an antenna up for lower than 20M at this time.

 

[awptickes]

so far I've got 1 QSO. I refuse to run more than 5W, because nobody listens anyway.

 

[rpker]

so far I've got 1 QSO. I refuse to run more than 5W, because nobody listens anyway.

I was at the CCARC field day site and our QRP rig was making more QSOs than the 100W digital station. I personally made QSOs with OH, WV and the Carolinas.

 

[awptickes]

I was at the CCARC field day site and our QRP rig was making more QSOs than the 100W digital station. I personally made QSOs with OH, WV and the Carolinas.

I was at the Gamber volunteer fire station fair grounds.

I didn't really have a lot of time.

 

[garym]

Anyone catch this Gun talkshow that had a spotlight on Ham radio?

Check out hour 3 on 5 July http://www.ksgf.com/podcasts/thegunshow/

They have Bob Heil and Gordon West from the Ham Nation weekly podcast (new hams especially should watch Ham Nation) http://twit.tv/show/ham-nation

Gary NC3Z

 

[K31]

New Technician class starting in MoCo September 27, 2014 for six consecutive Saturdays at Montgomery College, Rockville (AKA, Harvard on the Pike).

http://www.marcclub.org/mweb/exam_classes.html

 

[alucard0822]

I'm enjoying another relatively new benefit of a Ham license, RC FPV.
Just got a Fatshark Predator system to play around with. Being most flight radios are 2.4ghz spread spectrum, to take advantage of decent power lots of channels, and low intereference, the FPV system has to operate on another band, in most cases 5.8ghz, the antennas are small, and the systems are compact, but most people are limited to about 25mW without a license, good for only about 500 meters. For those of us with Ham licenses, the general limit is about 1W, or 40 times the power, good for a mile or two line of sight, and there are other bands like 1.3ghz that is capable of several miles of range, and can penetrate structures and barriers better. Knowledge of antenna design and gain also helps, most use circular polarized antennas, some omnidirectional for better signal flying around, some high gain directional for greater range. The technology has been falling in cost and complexity, and new simple RTF kits like the predator are ready to go in minutes for a couple hundred, mount the camera and transmitter on the plane(Velcro makes it easy to swap plane to plane), plug in the battery connector, turn on the goggles, and fly with a view from the aircraft. have also used it on an RC truck, less range, but within a couple hundred feet 5.8 offers adequate penetration through walls and brush, with open line of site, I have good video when the 2.4ghz control link gets glitchy and fades around 500-1,000ft.

a couple setups using the Fatshark gear. The video is from a separate SD camera, jumpier picture from vibration, narrower lens, and worse low-light performance compared to the surprisingly good Fatshark camera I'm using with the goggles. Made a small cheap protective mount for my RC truck out of a Tupperware dish, some dampening foam and Velcro that has survived a couple rollovers. All mounting points are Velcro, so takes only a minute to swap between models.




Add an OSD, better camera, better goggles, head tracking, pan/tilt camera mount, lots of details, time and creativity(and at least $1,000 total), and you can have this: