What about a boards net?

martinedwards

with all these new folks passing the exam, and getting their licences in the next couple of weeks......

what about a nice wee 40m net some time so the noobs can have a chat with some folks that KNOW they are new and so will be all nice and understanding?

martinsvi

that's a great idea but I guess it will take some time to get newbies, like myself, on the air... Ideally, if call-sign arrives next week, I'll still have to do some shopping and setting up.. who knows how long will that take. Also I'm not sure if 40m is the right place for newbies to gather... I wonder would 10-17m be a better choice

martinedwards

maybe.

40m was a thought because there are a bunch of "inter G" nets on there and it seems to be fairly straight forward to get full coverage of the Britsh Isles on 40.

10 is really dependant of favourable conditions.

and the WARC bands are great if you have all sorts of antennae in your farm.

most folks start off with something that'll get the 20 or 40 bands

PauloMN

Good idea, 40m would be a good shout. Really must get my HF antenna sorted out. Got my license a few years back but am essentially a newbie as I've hardly used it.

martinsvi

fair enough... let's hope more people pop up, let their preferences be known and go from there... I was hoping to get in touch with you, Martin, anyway - I see you do CW and I might need someone to practice it with... but that's not going to happen sooner than autumn

Michael_Myers

Any recommendations for a mobile rig for a newbie on a budget ?

Was looking at dual band 2m /70cm

All feedback appreciated

martinsvi

I would really love one of these - http://www.radioworld.co.uk/catalog/ft-7900_meter_70_cm_dual_band_fm_transceiver-p-8405.html?osCsid=d276da453bc57634c2ebb76d6879e24b

it's just a shame that they don't come with battery packs so they're not very "mobile".. decent handhelds are very expensive, Yaesu VX-3 seems like a good compromise but can 1.5w be enough to be heard.. 3w if running from DC

and then there's Baofeng - ridiculously cheap handhelds that can transmit even outside amateur bands, so not very legal I suppose and there's no telling what other issues it might have.. but then again it's 10 times cheaper...

I guess I'm also quite confused and would love to hear from others...

Michael_Myers

martinsvi wrote: »

I would really love one of these - http://www.radioworld.co.uk/catalog/ft-7900_meter_70_cm_dual_band_fm_transceiver-p-8405.html?osCsid=d276da453bc57634c2ebb76d6879e24b

it's just a shame that they don't come with battery packs so they're not very "mobile".. decent handhelds are very expensive, Yaesu VX-3 seems like a good compromise but can 1.5w be enough to be heard.. 3w if running from DC

and then there's Baofeng - ridiculously cheap handhelds that can transmit even outside amateur bands, so not very legal I suppose and there's no telling what other issues it might have.. but then again it's 10 times cheaper...

I guess I'm also quite confused and would love to hear from others...

Yes , the Yaesu mobile rigs seem to be the business, but is there much activity on 2m / 70cm ? The lower end (cheaper!) mobile rigs only seem to support these bands.

martinsvi

it depends where are you located. I've been scanning frequencies with a Uniden scanner - located in South of Dublin I can hear guys chatting on Dundalk repeater - EI2CCR on 145.675. There was once a guy from near Belfast operating it using just 3w. Dundalk also runs an Echolink gateway on 145.2125... I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I've heard a Londoner chatting with a guy from Florida... it is very active at evenings, unfortunately I can't quite hear it very well, I'm thinking of building a quad-antenna to get a gain. More info on Dundalk - http://ei7dar.com/

South of Ireland, Cork seem to be very active, or so I've heard....

martinedwards

baofengs are great, especially if you switch the antenna, as the rubber duck overheats badly. maybe bad swr?

anyway, the ABILITY to transmit outside the bands doesn't make it illegal in the hands of a ham operator. just USING it in those areas.

I highly reccomend one. I have one in my car and use it on 2m & 70cm, though I have a dedicated 2m rig too. during the social unrest over Christmas it was very handy to listen to the bus radio chatter to see where was safe to go and where to avoid.

2m FM is busy up here, the weekend I took my baofeng to Dublin was very quiet, but that might just have been that weekend.

my /m rig is a converted Philips PRM8020. 20w FM and 10 programmed channels inc 3 simplex and 7 repeaters. so far I've used the GB3NI repeater only, but that's where the action is round here.

for HF I have a FT101B whitch I'm semi retired because I got a FT747GX which has full band TX capability, so the likes of 60m is available straight away. Ants are 1/2 sized G5RV and a long wire for the freqs that the G5 wont tune to. results are good, with 108 DXCCs worked since October.

for ME, 20m is a sweet spot, and I haven't done much on 40, and virtually nothing on 60/80/160m yet.

martinsvi

ok so, I guess I'm ready to go, 40m sounds fine, anyone fancy a chat tonight? I finished installing everything last night, still have to do some "cleanup" = have to hide the cable, make another earth lead. after installing an earth rod using just my hands I was quite in a lot of pain

anyway, I heard some Ks, VEs, UAs operating (lots of EU as well of course) did a couple of test calls on an unused frequency, swr was about 1.2 yay... then I wanted to make my first CQ call but I realised that I'm too tired and can't remember how it's done, went to bed

last week I got my Yaesu VX3, even built a 5 element 2m yagi for it, no luck hitting Dundalk, other repeaters are behind mountains so no VHF/UHF for me