The one thing I love, is just listening to people chat about whatever is on their mind, such as politics and the price of oil.
I’m really looking forward to the point I can chat too, I sometimes wonder how I will fit in with this crew of amateur radio operators. Mainly because I’m so much younger than them.
But in the end it’s going to be fun, and that’s what this hobby is all about.
Just looking at new radios Hannah and I may get, and we keep on looking at the IC-7000. This radio appears it will cover everything we want to do and more.
The good thing is we can easily set it’s output power so that on the foundation license I can transmit (there is a 10 watt maximum on the foundation license) and then ramp it up when Hannah goes to transmit (once we’ve transfered her license from the states to here.)
I really like the look and the feature set of this radio, and it appears it will work a lot better where we are, as it’s dsp filters should be able to cut out a lot of the noise.
Well, got home tonight, and decided to do a quick scan of 80 and 40 meters as I do, got VK3LO nice and clear, discovered why, he seems to be only around the corner which would be why I’m able to pick him up quite well when he is transmitting.
So Hannah and I quickly threw up the wire dipole outside, and discovered that much to our dismay, we got the same results with the wire dipole inside (well it’s a different one, still about 10 meters per pole but up in the picture rail of our room.)
So the (electrical) sounds of the suburbs is still causing an issue.
What we really need to do is try and set up the wire dipole up a bit higher other than just throwing it up randomly in the back yard, and see if that makes any difference.
Or wait till next time we’re at mum and dads again and see what we can do there.
Or look at other antenna designs we can throw together in a cheap and easy manner, and see how they go.
All good fun.
Also saw the antenna tuner for the FT-707 on vk classifieds and by the time I’d got home the thing had sold, got to be a bit quicker.
~Ivy
Working with the radio at my mother and fathers place is much more successful than at home. The fact that it’s about 60KMs from the city helps. And it’s nice to spend a night in a place without light pollution is really nice.
Anyway Hannah and I set up a basic wire dipole antenna, 10 meters side to side, and strung it up around the decking out the back of my parents place.
This antenna cost us the grand cost of under $5AUD nice and cheap.
Anyway during the daylight hours, we listened in to the 20 and 40 meter bands, even picking up KE6M from california, which was kinda cool.
At night the 40 Meters seemed almost unusable as there was a lot of AM stuff emanating from China, and also a repeating noise that could of been an over the horizon radar system also from China.
But 80 Meters was fairly active, and we filled many pages of my little log book with stuff we found interesting. One of the cool things was a couple of guys talking about how to build decent chokes and baluns from stuff in their junk boxes.
A good day all in all.
I so need to get myself licensed so I can start transmitting.
~Ivy
Well to be honest I am new to the radio game. I do remember when I was ten or older a friend of my mum and dads was into ham radio. I thought this was amazing, I remember seeing the QSL cards that this person had, including one from East Germany and I really thought this was cool.
But in looking back, I think my interest began much earlier, with a radio receiver that my grandmother had. I can remember little of this set other than it was white, and had many knobs. The two things I do remember receiving on this radio, was the local constabulary talking about a stolen mini, and the Russian woodpecker. I found out what the “woodpecker” was from the show on the BBC many years ago “Tomorrows World”.
Anyway I digress, at home, in the near the City of Melbourne, with a basic wire dipole, I can pick up little other than noise, and faintly the odd voice, of which due to the noise I can’t make head of tails of.
I guess this is what one gets in world where cheap electronics spew out electrical noise. And possibly the trams running on their DC current also could be responsible.
Though to be honest, It could be all my electrical equipment in my room too.
In the end I guess I need a better antenna at home.
~Ivy
Well, I’ve been bitten by the radio bug it seems. Last week Hannah and I purchased a second hand Yaesu Ft-707 for not much.
It does have an issue with TX, which we haven’t really looked into yet (it could be a broken thermistor on the p.a. board) so we haven’t really tried that yet, which isn’t a big deal as I’m not licensed as of yet.
It does seem that the radio reception though at home is awful, though at my mum and dads place, we’ve been able to receive quite decently using a wire dipole antenna. We are restricted in what we can do at home mainly due to space requirements. Though I am interested in setting up the wire dipole out the back, to see if that could make any difference.
Our other aims are to see what other antennas we can construct and work from there, oh and get myself a vk3 call sign.
~Ivy