Is anyone else doing Field Day? How's it going? In the NE US, it's been very hot and humid with occasional thunderstorms.

Running a QRP station here and taking a break for the evening. Planning on getting up early tomorrow.

I had a VE session the day of the hack so I'm glad to see things are working again.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/12513834

> American Radio Relay League cyberattack takes Logbook of the World offline > > The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) warns it suffered a cyberattack, which disrupted its IT systems and online operations, including email and the Logbook of the World. [...]

cross-posted from: https://real.lemmy.fan/post/2770288

> They need help scanning twenty more pallets of stuff.

Just moving in to our first home, and I'm very excited to have the freedom to set up a permanent HF antenna.

I'll probably build a sort of fan dipole and run it along the side of our property. That's the only place long enough to fit. However, the power lines for the neighborhood run over part of our backyard. I'm not worried about my dipole being too close to high voltage power (it won't be) but I wonder if the AC frequency can cause interference on certain bands?

I've got an itch to activate a particularly difficult-to-activate POTA park. The few who found success did so with a barely-qualifying amount of digital or CW contacts with the exception of two prominent and skilled phone operators (and one of them had to give it a second try another day). What brings the difficulty is the terrain: the park is a RF pit of despair beach with 20m tall shear cliffs into the surrounding mountains. It's also remote enough to make spotting difficult; there's no cell nor a APRS repeater for self-spotting.

There are a few strategies I could go for, like beaming into the ocean for KH and VK stations, but I think this park is just about the perfect case for NVIS propagation. I'll probably give my EFHW a shot in an inverted V or sloper configuration, but I'm also thinking of building:

• A basic dipole since I could pump more power into it than my existing EFHW transformer can handle.

• A one-wavelength loop antenna. In theory a low loop offers a more circular radiation pattern than a dipole and slightly better gain. However, it's twice as much wire to raise.

What kind of portable antenna would you choose to operate daytime NVIS? Do you have any other ideas or thoughts?

It seems the band plans are absolutely packed with bands for repeaters, satellites, cw, ssb, slow scan tv, etc. As a new ham is there a easy diagram of the frequency spectrum of what I CAN use just for simple beginner voice transmissions?

G5TM put out a nice video where a viewer was debating between the inverted L and a compromised vertical. It's a good review between the two for folks with height limitations.

Do people have thoughts on the newest flagship HT from Kenwood? He brings up some worthwhile observations. I just got a FT5DR and I am not impressed with it's stock battery life when compared to my HTX-202 (greatest rig ever made and will ever be made) or my AnyTone AT878UVII+.

I also like him pointing out the manufactures not providing drop in chargers for these expensive rigs. It's bullshit.

EDIT: For anybody coming across the same issue, USB was the problem. I was trying to avoid having 12" of radio equipment sticking directly out of my laptop where it could easily be snapped off, so I used a little USB power meter as a short extension cord to let it bend. I don't know if it was the power meter or my laptop, but when I replaced the power meter with a short USB extension cord wrapped a few times around an ferrite E-core, the issue went away. I only got noise at the extreme horizons, and touching the antenna made no change.

I've ordered a USB extension cord with ferrite integrated to use in the future. $8 on Amazon.

I'm working on a V-dipole to pick up 137.5MHz NOAA APT transmissions. I found that when lowering the antenna closer to ground than my design, performance improved. I believe this is because the pavement in front of my house is not a great conductor, so my reflecting ground plane is actually a few inches below the surface.

The thing I can't explain is why I get such a dramatic improvement in performance when I use my finger to touch just the arm of the dipole connected to the center conductor of the coax. The difference is night and day. The surrounding noise in the signal drops to the point that it’s inaudible, but the radio signal is relatively unaffected. Touching the shield conductor does nothing.

I picked up a cheap VNA and was able to determine that touching the antenna does slightly de-tune it, but the impact is the same for both arms. With the configuration I have, the SWR is something like 1.07 before touching it, and it rises to around 1.2 when I do.

I've heard about surface currents that can cause problems, but those only occur on the outside of the shield conductor, and I have a ferrite choke right at the feed point anyway.

What's going on here?

EDIT: to add that I'm using a Nooelec SDR with a SAW filter tuned to NOAA frequencies as well as a terrestrial AM blocker. This is connected to a Framework laptop on battery power. I'm curious if this could be an electrical issue coming from my laptop.

@amateur\_radio does anybody know how to unlock an Anytone 878 after shipping? I’ve pressed Menu and \* I have plugged it into the software and the four options to select aren’t showing up. I’m stuck.

I don't seem to be receiving emails from the internet despite having the addresses in my whitelist.

Does anyone know if I'm missing a setting somewhere? I do receive other Winlink emails.

He has a lot of good tutorials and covers a lot of RPi stuff. Worth checking out.

@amateur\_radio Just passed my Technician test!! Looking into the Anytone 878. Is this a good or bad first unit?

Having just completed the ARRL RTTY Roundup, I thought I'd update my QSO map.

The tool I used is: http://tools.adventureradio.de/analyzer/.

The ARRL RTTY Roundup is today. Anyone else planning on participating?

I like RTTY and would like to use it more often and these events are some of the few times when I know there will be QSOs.

I'm kind of concerned about the "minimize interference" for the majick Tesla powerbeams (wireless power transmission).

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6324540

After having seen some articles of the recent coronal mass ejection and the possibility of a K5 geomagnetic storm, I thought I'd share this time lapse of Solar Cycle 25 thus far from NOAA.

For all geeks out there!

I rarely had a chance to play around on it when it was open due to my work schedule, but I got a remote access tool set up that can control my rig remotely. FT8 during the day on 10m has been getting me a ton of interesting contacts that I just don’t see on the other bands at night.

For anyone interested in satellites and especially weather satellite decoding, Satdump just got some great improvements.

Did anyone else get to take advantage of 10 meters opening up today?

I just got my HW-101 back on the air. When I was a kid, my dad got he, my brother, and me one of these at a Hamfest for $50 after we outgrew our HW-16. This isn't that rig, though. We can't find it.

I picked this one up and, even though it still has issues, I've been making DX, POTA, Route 66 QSOs with it. Been getting good signal reports too! It's fun but, after tuning and not having any audio filtering, I've really come to appreciate modern radios.

If you're just getting started in the hobby but are intimidated by tube rigs, don't be. They're worth considering (tube availability might be a challenge though).

(For those who are curious, that is a real Astatic D-104 mic but the amp has been removed so it can work with the HW-101).

Hi! I wanted to share a simple dual band dipole that I've built recently. It has been performing perfectly fine for me the las weeks given the fact that I'm at the first floor of a tall building surrounded by tall buildings also.

Also it's extremely cheap to build. To get it out I'm using a fishing pole.

Maybe someone in the same situation than me could find it useful.

Hey all,

New here.

I have a pair of Baofeng uv-5r with an extended antenna and they have worked really well for me. Anything better for that size out there?

Another post on here inspired me to ask about this. I recently got my license (General) and am thinking of how to get an antenna setup for HF. The issue is that I live in an apartment on the ground floor. I do have a patio that's about 10'x5' with the "ceiling" (the bottom of the unit above me) at about 7-8 ft.

What I'm tentatively thinking is that I have just about enough room to fit a 10m dipole around the inner edge of the patio roof, although it'd have to bend around the corners. Would that have any shot at working? It would be fairly low. I'm also a little concerned about MPE, since it would be right under my neighbors balcony.

I could also set something up inside but that doesn't seem ideal either.

Any other options I should consider? It would be nice to get on lower bands too but I suspect that won't happen, at least at my apartment.

I can't argue.

Hi all. Does anyone know whether I can use the $50 QRM Eliminator X Phase as a cut-rate antenna phaser? I thought maybe I could just use two of the same antennas, one on each antenna input, and phase between them to beam steer rather than to reduce interference.

Hi I am looking for a little connection advice.

I use a radio on my narrowboat. As such I am in the process of building a simple random wire antenna. Idea being I have a 5m mast I can raise on the boat while moored. Then run a wire to a local tree or another portable mast.

The issue I am looking for some help with. Is finding connectors so I can set up different length antenna depending on available space.

I have a large kite winding wheel to store the wire with a 9:1 unun on the end. But need to be able to set up 3 different lengths. 143-84-(36 i think) feet. To do this I need some form of connector a lot stronger the your typical bullet crimp. The wind on the towpath and movement of the boat will separate such connectos easy. As the boat rocks. But anything much larger the a bullet will not roll around the kite reel well.

I am looking for some kind on single wire electrical connector. That screws together. So I can select the best length for the enviroment I am in. Unscrew the wire at that length. Commect it to an elastic rope attached to the tree or land based mast.

If the worst comes. I'll make something myself using m2 bolts and inset standoffs. But would love to know if anyone has seen something ready made that will do this.

Someone more talented and experienced than me should host a Fedi contest. It would probably be a fun way to advertise this community, without actually advertising.