Ham Radio

Is there a portable civilian device that allows for short to medium range (10 miles or so) that would allow for 128 or 256 bit encrypted data bursts, and if so, what level certification would one need to go about for using it legally in the US? I’m imagining a data burst to convey less than 1 MB of data with an accompanying bit total that could then be “delivery confirmed” by a return message with that bit total. Bonus points if it could play nicely with a Disco32 Discus.

I know it wouldn’t fool a foxhunt, but was curious if such a thing exists and if so, what’s the entry cost in money and time?

I'm not usually one to repost/post memes...but its almost believable

I can’t hit the local analog repeaters without using the higher power on my HTX242 (yeah it’s old but it’s what I got), the HT I have is DMR (and analog) but I would like to use low power DMR to make the battery last longer. I want to do something like this (see pic). Anyone done something similar?

Note I already have moded the HTX for COS output and made a control interface using a ESP32, I also have a Pi-star hotspot that I could repurpose until I can get another.

I'm going to try building a couple of pvc/measuring tape Yagis, one for 2m and one for 70cm. I have a basic understanding that the satellite (going to try ISS voice first) will be at a certain compass direction and angle above horizon. I think my main question is the beacon. I tune to the beacon signal and start hunting for the satellite, what am I listening for? Any particular Homer advice?

The window is being opened for new Community Radio stations. While this is not our amateur radio, it should overlap interest-wise. Post on mastodon with link https://mastodon.radio/@phwolfe940@denton.social/110645699222089850

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1519718

Went out to Cherry Creek State Park (K-1213) with a buddy and played radio. I took my buddipole but couldn’t get it to tune up because I forgot to charge my VNA. Luckily I brought an EFHW that I strung up to the buddipole’s tripod.

I only worked 10 contacts in 4 hours. 8 SSB and 2 CW, but it was fun. I forgot how awesome operating from a park is, and I want to get back into POTA!

Rig: IC-705 Antenna: 80-10m EFHW Power: 9ah Bioenno battery

Hello everyone.

I recently learned on this very community about SOTA and immediately fell in love with the concept because it combined my two favorite things: hiking and technology/radio. Problem is, I don't actuatlly have any formal knowledge or qualification, but I would very much like to start learning.

I don't know the exact laws about ham radio in my country (Romania) but I will look them up if that helps.

Thank you in advance for anything.

If it’s not too muddy, I plan on going out to a nearby park and operating portable on emergency power by myself or maybe with a buddy. If it is muddy, I’ll try setting up in my backyard. I’m hoping to get a lot of good CW practice in!

What is everyone else doing?

One of my favorite podcasts had an episode on ham radio, and I thought you all might find it interesting.

KN6QQW put together a great slideshow from the Net Control trailer at the 2023 Mountains 2 Beach Marathon in Ventura County earlier this year, and it's on Conejo Valley Amateur Radio Club's Youtube channel now. Take a look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGeXIR1h8U4

(Yes I know the photo has my coords and grid, but at that scale I'm not concerned)

Got it up and running this weekend but didn't have the mounting hardware until this morning. Just now got it mounted and am loving it!

It's highly customizable and each of those windows you see can display quite a few different things.

Anyone have recommendations on how to hide the power & HDMI cable?

These days there are lots of web-connected software defined radio receivers around the world. Back in 1995 I built a web-controlled shortwave radio web site using my Drake R8, a SoundBlaster sound card and NetBSD Unix. You can still see what it looked like with the Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/19970507174555/http://www.chilton.com/scripts/radio/R8-receiver

A few years ago I finally got around to learning enough JavaScript and Python to make an interactive HTML5 page with streaming audio. I think it turned out pretty nice. The controls mimic the functions of the R8 pretty closely with a few changes for simpler operation. Works with most web browsers (though not iOS/Safari which, for some reason, doesn’t support the HTML5 “mediaSource” type I use for decompressing the audio stream.)

Check out my HDR (hardware defined radio) at https://www.chilton.com/R8/receiver.html

If anyone would like to join an amateur radio lemmy instance or post to an amateur radio specific community, https://lemmy.radio has been set up.

They're active from Ducie Island right now. I've only managed to pick them up on 20m so far.

This is my project and someone pointed out that it might be good to jitter the points by some set amount to help with privacy concerns some people might have. I want to know what the ham community thinks.

At least here in the US, it's very easy to look up someone's location based on their callsign already, unless they've opted for a PO box. I don't think jittering would affect the usefulness of the site in any major way as long as one can ascertain the general location of a node.

What does the community think? If so, how far out should the jittering me done?

https://www.packetradiomap.com

SOTA was the biggest reason I got into amateur radio. Love mixing radio/tech with getting out in the fresh air.

So what do you need to talk to a $100 billion space station? As it turns out, about $60 worth of stuff will do.

I love playing with packet, and I love playing with APRS. So how do I decide?

There’s quite a bit of both packet and APRS activity in the area. I don’t want to put up another antenna at the moment because funds won’t allow, otherwise I’d get another cheap 2m rig for APRS.

On packet, I occasionally check in with other hams and send messages. I mostly keep it running because my webmap at packetradiomap.com uses my radio to map locally received stations. I could modify the webmap to not use my radio though.

I feel running an APRS station is more “useful” though, as my area isn’t covered very well by iGates or digipeaters.

So if you had to choose, would you go full time APRS or packet?

I'm just curious what everyone's operating positions look like. If you feel comfortable, share a photo or two.

Here's mine. I'm really wanting some sort of shelving to sit the monitor's on to help tidy things up a bit. I'm not too handy though, so it'll be an adventure. The autotuner controller drives me crazy because it won't sit flat due to the heavy coax coming into the back.

Looks like the last post is a year old. Are there any hams/amateur radio operators here on lemmy? If so, what projects (if any) are you working on? I'm building a 5 element yagi for 2m.

Quiz yourself on the official questions of the American ham radio license exams, track your progress, focus on challenging questions, and take randomly generated practice exams. The most up to date questions provided, outdated questions also available. Fork of Funktrainer by D.Meyer.

Location, call sign, interests, level, whatever

Why is it called HAM radio? What does HAM stand for?

I'd love to add more resources; the German version is fleshed out a bit more. Feel free to link resources for starting here and I'll add them :)