marcspaz

None, unfortunately. It's a UHF only antenna. You would need the plain Ole 771, not a G model, if you want VHF.

Great Poll. Hard to pick just one, as you really hit all of the major factors.

Me thinks thisem' sarcasm in these posts. Not sure. Just in case, I'll use my power supply as an example. When any of my 50w radios run full tilt on the bench, to create 50w out of the final PA, it uses about 95 watts of DC power. However, for my power supply to be capable of creating that 95w DC, it burns about 165 watts of AC power. At about 60%-65%, those are about average efficiencies for this type of good personal use power supplies. And private use radio efficiencies just kinda suck, too.

@KAF6045 I am not sure where about you live, but Garret and I are in the same general area. With an HT, person to person, less than a mile is pretty normal range around here, depending on where both stations are. In my immediate neighborhood, my max range with a handheld to a mobile is only about 2,000 feet. HT to HT is even less. Once I leave the neighborhood, it opens up to about 2 miles.

Nah... I am sending you a PM in just a minute to help out, but worst case, we are close enough that we can just meetup and we can go over it in-person.

You must be talking about Mike's repeater on Bull Run Mountain on channel pair 19 (x.650). That repeater is a rock star. It is intentionally unpublished. Any licensed operator is welcome to use it, as long as you are by the rules. Mike wants locals using a specific tone so we don't cause interference with the Ellicott City repeater. If that is the repeater you're talking about and Mike hasn't given you the tone already, shoot me a PM and I'll give it to you.

Actually, you cannot both measure time and know exactly where you are in time. In fact, the more precise your measurement of time is, the more unlikely you are to know exactly what time it is. You can either know what time it was... or experience time in the moment... but you can't do both.

You can also talk to users whom are using FRS radios... usually referred to as Bubble Pack radios, commonly available at Wal-Mart, Target and hundreds of other stores that sell recreational outdoors type of stuff

You have way too many fields populated. Make it look like this... you should have better results. Obviously, set your power to whatever is needed.

Thank you, both! It's very much appreciated!.

@Radioguy7268 measuring is a very good way. I also have a antenna transmission line analyzer that works pretty well. I made a video about line loss and how it impacts communications, to help train new Hams that join my ARES teams. If you are really bored... but I am no Randy.

Can't speak for everyone, but I get my coax loss information from the manufacturer of the cable I use in any given application. Pretty solid source.

Not that I am aware of. The adjustments are all in the menu. Honestly, and believe me I am not writing this to be mean, but if you don't know how to do it based on training and experience, you probably should try to find any either. Just my opinion... without the correct training and alignment tools, its likely not going to be possible to align it yourself. Do you have an friend that have a high-end meter that is known calibrated, so you can run a comparison as you make the adjustments? That friend would likely be able to assist.

Im definitely not trying to take anything away from your thought... but I'm pretty sure all amateur radios are capable of local communications. I haven't owned a radio that can't. With 100w and FM, I can talk just as clearly and just as far (LOS wise) as a VHF FM radio, with people around me on 10m, 20m, 40m... all the HF bands. The massive advantage you have with VHF isn't the range. That actually hampers you. The advantage comes from the point that I'm pretty sure there isn't a Ham alive that doesn't have a VHF radio. Pure numbers aid the likelihood of finding the right person or persons to talk to in a local emergency.

Man, do I have e stories. LOL. When I use my GMRS radio while in my driveway, the garage door opener lights turn on. In my last Jeep, I had to move the antenna because when I keyed up, my dash would reboot, run self diag, and my windshield wipers would turn on. I also have a HF radio and an amp that puts out about 1,100 watts. If I run it full-tilt, LED lights in my house that aren't even plugged in will actually light up. It trips my wireless surround sound, turning that on. And depending on the frequency, it makes my radio/alarm clock's radio turn on until I let the mic go. RFI does some wild stuff.

So, I had fun goofing around today... and the results are a fail (thankfully). All the publicly available tool were a complete failure. This is a very good thing. So, as @OffRoaderX mentioned, short of a hacker compromising the service provider (which is very, very difficult), today no one is grabbing your information from just your IP. Thanks for the friendly challenge Randy!

So, I sent Randy what I found. Just waiting for confirmation before I share my results. I will only be sharing Pass/Fail info, though.

I'm on the road right now. when I get home tonight tonight I'll take a look at it.. I am going to send you a PM because I don't want everybody to know how it works and I'm going to show you every step of the process so you know I didn't cheat. By the way the way I can't do a packet capture without a warrant to do a man in the middle capture or without permission of the system owner to set up traces on the network. So I'll have to do a reverse look up. I don't feel like getting fired for doing a man in the middle attack without a warrant.

Once upon a time ago anyone could lookup your IP address and it would show your name and address when you ran a certain type of query (not whois)... You still can today, but with the introduction of IPv6, you either need to perform a packet capture to view the payload or you need to do a reverse lookup to get the host name, and then search for that host name's location. Not everyone knows how to do any of that, though.

@Lscott Great post. Sounds like you had some nice gear. The FT-847 looks awesome. I know what you mean about the weird looks, too. Especially with my Jeep, which is 6 inches higher than stock with 37" offroad tires and 3 86"+ antenna's hanging off the bed. It's a convo starter almost everywhere I go.

The Surecom SW-102 is designed to be calibrated by the end user. While there is a chance it's accurate out of the box, it's not always. There is a possibility that you need to have your meter calibrated.

Yes, it does. It has a built-in repeater. So it has to be able to transmit and receive at the same time. There are two radios in one package that function independently of each other.

Honestly, I don't know. The stuff I deal with at work is all geostationary for data and I just manage the servers that control them... The few AMSAT contacts I made prior to a few days ago was all on other peoples gear, with SDR's and everything was computer controlled there, too. This is my first time doing AMSAT or any other type of satellite work 100% on my own, with my own gear and manually. It does seem like I was doing okay both days. The first day I only adjusted the UHF downlink and the second day I adjusted both the VHF uplink and the UHF downlink. I had equal success both days, but the recording I received from day 2 sounded great. So I am prone to think it depends. LOL Based on what I am reading, the experienced doppler it is mostly based on the speed of the satellite and its trajectory in relation to your station. For example, if you have a direct overhead pass, horizon to horizon, you would have the most noticable doppler effect. If the satellite comes into view off in the distance and traces the horizon, you may experience no doppler effect. Again, I am new to this, but I think that is correct.

I got on the repeater again tonight and didn't have any issues. I couldn't hear myself in the downlink but a new acquaintance sent me a recording of me talking and I was staying right on frequency, even with the gross adjustments I'm limited to. I think I can't here myself in the downlink because the uplink and downlink are almost perfect harmonics. The satellite is 437.800 down and 145.990 up. If at the beginning of the pass, I noticed that if I listen on 437.810 and transmit on 145.980... I get a faint sound like a station nearby, but not on the same frequency. Since I didn't hear myself in the downlink, I started dropping my transmit frequency thinking I didn't adjust enough for doppler. When I got to 145.940, I could hear myself 100% perfect, full quiet and zero distortion on the receive side. Flawless talk back. I guess from now on, I am just going to start at 10kc+/- and assume that if I heard the repeater at +10kc, then my transmit needs to be -10kc. As I move the receive down, I'll increment transmit up the same amount. That seemed to work well last night. I may look for some other satellites to work and see how it goes.

Ah! That makes a lot of sense. Agreed!