Posted on 09/22/2020 7:09:20 AM PDT by tbw2
Free and cheap ham radio projects list by WA5VJB
Free and cheap ham radio projects list by WA5VJB
http://www.wa5vjb.com/references.html
Smart guy. I used to be in the North Texas Microwave Group with him. Fantastic club— had a “Who’s Who” of moonbouncers, microwave ham radio innovators, thinkers and do-ers.
What is the status of California’s attempt to remove support for Ham radio?
I have a General Class Ham Radio License and am getting into SDRs, I have a cheap $20 USB Dongle from RTL-SDR coming in the mail.
Where I live I should be able to pick up significant airline traffic and might be close enough to a major shipping port to track shipping containers, etc...
I don’t think they were actually trying to get rid of Ham Radio, I believe the issue was Repeaters on Public and no one paying for it....
Thanks.
L
BTTP
Advanced Class (grandfathered class) Ham here. In 2004, I bought a old 1960’s Heathkit linear amplifier SB 200. I bought update modification kits for the power supply, soft start and soft key to make a 50-year-old vacuum tube amplifier work safely with modern, solid state Ham transceivers.
Lots of fun soldering and updating. New capacitors and protective diodes for the old analog meter. Works great!
Modern amplifiers are VERY expensive so a modified “old timer” has been a nice alternative.
The amplifier takes about 100 watts normal transmitter output and bumps it to about 600 watts out for better transmitting performance and stronger, long-distance communication.
Bookmark
Good info; thanks.
Nice page you have DocRock.
73’s NU4J
For later reading
Isn’t 100 watts the standard output of most ham radios?
100 watts is standard for full size HF (shortwave) radios. Some people have fun with QRP HF radios (5 watts or less), they’re lightweight, can be easily battery operated, and popular with backpackers. Amps are usually used at home stations
Thanks, I bookmarked the webpage.
Thanks! Bookmarked.
That’s been proven true by the California blackouts. Cell phone towers went down from lack of power. One acquaintance of ours called my dad in tears. Solar panels in 95% of cases are wired straight to the grid to maximize green energy rebates and minimize cost ... so you can’t recharge your cell phone unless you had additional portable solar panels, either.
Ham radio operators with generators were fine.
That never happened. The State hired a private contractor to manage radio repeater sites, and the private contractor wanted the ham radio repeater out of the site. It was massively overblown.
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