Anyone know roughly how far a UHF (440) signal can travel, 40W of power, end-fed half-wave vertical mounted above the metal roof of a 1-story house? We're on the city limits so there's not much obstruction.
I'm not looking for exact answers, I'm just trying to calculate if 40-50 watts of power is enough to reach the neighboring (30 miles) city.
For bonus points: assume I'm on a 5W HT. You think there's enough rx gain to even hear an HT 30 miles away? Or would I have to bounce through the 50W tx in my car as an amplifier to even try that.
In about 14 hours is my general exam. I know my formulas for calculating PEP and peak / RMS voltage conversions are incorrect (and hopefully I'll have time to fix them after work)
Place your bets on how many attempts it'll take ๐
@Castopod Why do you guys hard-code localhost:8080 into castopod? That seems rather odd, I shouldn't need to edit application code directly to get something to install correctly. Especially since your documentation makes no mention of this.
It seems that like 75% of the QRM in my vehicle is the stereo system. A certain amount is the subwoofer amp, most definitely, but just power cycling the headunit is enough to see a noticable S-meter change (from like S2 to S6). Knowing that my power lines are (unfortunately) ran together, and that it would take basically ripping apart my entire dash (for the 4th time) to re-do any wiring back there, any ideas on what I can do to mitigate this, without re-cabling my entire frontend (or moving things, since my radio placement is... kinda permanant for better or for worse on top of the dash)
Okay everyone, here I am once again asking a seemingly meaningless question:
Would you rather prefer a blog's RSS feed if it contained only the summary of all posts, or the full text but only the 10 most recent posts?
(I have learned from personal experience that every RSS reader I can try will choke on a feed file that's several tens of MB in size if I run full text all posts)
In the #hamRadio space, the handheld radio operators are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The baofeng users, who love their radios, and the rest of the hobby, who prosecute those users. These are their stories.
Oh, joy, so I just looked at @penpot. Like, actually looked and not just "noted on list of things to consider hosting later."
aaaaannnddd we've got one SaaS offering, and Docker. F'in Docker man.
Come on, Internet. Realize that not everything needs to go into a container. My network is already just a pile of containers, and it's really not worth having the overhead and additional complexity here of container-in-container.
And no, they're #LXC. Docker is not the only container(ization) tech out there, and I prefer my systems be actual systems, not a PID in a sandbox. So it's not even DinD, it's some cursed docker-in-lxc that manages to break slightly with every Proxmox upgrade because it relies on specific kernel and device settings that aren't guarenteed to be compatible.
Apparently like 3 days ago I received a package and never really noticed
So I open it and this is what I'm greeted with. Someone just randomly sent me a DMR HT with handwritten note saying that they saw my QRZ page where I mentioned that I wanted to get to DMR but didn't have the spare cash to invest in it, realized they had this that had a broken battery clip that had been sitting on the shelf gathering dust, and boxed it up.
They knew that a piece of plastic and the retaining spring had broken off inside of the battery clip, but could not tell where they went. I could see it almost immediately, and I'm waiting for the glue to dry right now.
Furthermore, the letter wasn't signed with anything identifying, so I don't even know who to thank.
Assuming my glue fix works correctly, the programming cable should arrive tomorrow.
#HamRadio operators, someone mind telling me about what's a good time for 40m in the US midwest? I'm trying to check if my setup like, works, but either everyone's in a QSO or my CQs go unanswered. (And when it's this cold out I can only say the same 12 words for so long, even without considering the ADHD "can I do anything else right now" factor)
I need to tune it for like 40m or 20m and try and hit POTA stations...
It's half past 1 in the morning. I just spent 15 minutes in my bathroom. With the lights out. Reversing a roll of 120 film by hand, because my camera decided it wanted to be special and wouldn't properly count frames, and thus wound the entire rollover before even moving off of S. I didn't bring an empty spool with me. So I have to, in the dark, unwind, reverse, and rewind, an entire roll of 120.
This is not the first time I've done this. And I can tell you from experience that every time I do it I end up having to move the start of the film about a quarter inch or so because I can never get the tension right and have to move the taped end. So I'm sitting here, literally sitting, on the floor, I kid you not, using my feet as makeshift clamps to hold either end of the roll flat so I can manipulate the other one without it coiling up into cthulhu's monster.
I did it. But I don't know how badly misaligned everything is.
I'm going for a challenge run. Next exam session for the club in this town is monday. The next tuesday, my vanity call gets activated. Let's see if I can advance from unlicensed to Extra, in three consecutive testing sessions (meaning 1 week study per exam), before that happens.
I have one day (not really one shot, they'll keep throwing exams at me as long as I keep sending them $14 payments until the session end) to try and do this. All my practice results come out ~86%, lowest across all practice exams is... 74.00%.
By the numbers I'm going to do this (and I'm not even 30), though it seems my ability to retain knowledge (without someone kind enough to provide the background information and math) is getting saturated here, I don't know if I'll bring my average much above 90%. I'd love to ace an Extra but I'll take any pass over no pass.
And that's that. First actual (read: HF) (read: non-repeater) experience on #amateurRadio, #POTA from K-4192. Started on 20m, eventually moved to 40m.
Just under 6 hours, just under 100 QSOs, several from Canada, even one FT8 contact from Bulgaria, 30W, over 5,000 miles away... And (maybe) less impressive, a 3-fer park to park!
Lessons learned:
actual logging software. Or not forgetting to write times down (I have an audio record, so I can find timestamps, it'll just be painful).
I can only really transcribe a callsign OR watch the meter for a signal report, but I can't do both.
RF burns hurt
Apparently telling the world that one park has three operators all huddled around the radio makes the hunters absolutely pile up
I want a Yaesu FT-450. I don't have the money for a FT-450.
either I'm late on unkeying or some hams are faster than my reaction time on keying up to answer. (Though you don't really know when someone on SSB is quiet or unkeyed)
No, it's not impressive, literally just the local county club's repeater in this city. But it's a first.
Side note: you can do all the math you want, but it doesn't really hit you the range a 5W HT has until you actually make a solid contact several miles away for the first time. Yes, I came from CB, yes, it still mildly amazes me
So for hopefully obvious reasons, I can't give too much specifics here.
I'm on the job site. IT contractor. Got a kiosk in a department store that needs a migration. New SIM card for the router and new hardware on the back end. I show up with my usual computer repair toolbox.
This thing is sitting half disassembled, stupidly precarious, nearly fall off the step stool every time I reach over because it's almost like this thing was set up in a location in a display stand, in such a way that it cannot be accessed
Time to replace PC. Get told by senior tech over call that you've just got to get a flathead and a hammer in there and literally chisel it loose. Uh... I don't carry those tools. Nowhere in a "kiosk replace media player PC" job do I expect to bring my crowbar, hammer, and paint can opener flathead.
I know this isn't the first one of these you've done. Next time, put that in the work order?
This is an AnyTone 578UVIII PLUS. It's currently off. The activity light is blue. That's not ever described in the manual. That light goes cyan when receiving DMR, but not pure blue.
Furthermore, it only does this like a minute after I start the car. Only if the car has been idle for some time.
Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? This isn't documented, like, anywhere. It's one of those things where you search for it and it sounds like you're the only person in the world with the problem.
