The store-bought 2m/70cm groundplane antenna I’ve had mounted on a broomstick inside my apartment now has a home outside where it can reach so many more places. After some brainstorming sessions in the hardware store, thinking of methods to mount 3 sections of military surplus fiberglass poles to my balcony railing, I figured out how …
Tag Archives: VHF
Lost in Transit
So far, my hit ratio for making a successful Winlink connection over HF is 1 out of 20. My antenna just sucks that much, and my radio keeps overheating and turning off the output, and QRM/QRN causes any ongoing connections to fail. And then there’s the difficulty of burning an RMS node by failing the …
Winlink 2000 – Email on the Wind
Since I have my ham rig already set up for soundcard modes, I decided to give WinLink 2000 a try. WL2K is an email-over-the-air transport system that can take advantage of many modulation modes and frequencies, and allows a remote station with no Internet access to send and receive email messages complete with attachments. It’s …
First Listen with KD5RCA
This weekend, I had my first experience with a VHF repeater. Looked up the repeater operated by the Four States Amateur Radio Club in Texarkana at 146.620 MHz. Didn’t make any contacts (because I don’t have a license, obviously), but I did get to hear some actual chatter and get a better sense for the …