@sonhouse saidYour first "real" rig? What have you been using up to now?
An Icom 756Proiii, about ten years old but got a good deal, around 650 bucks. Paid with Paypal so if it turns out to be a scam I get my money back. Don't think it is, got a phone # and we talked so I think I am safe.
@Kewpie
I have a rig about 25 years old now, working fine but it is very small, the size of a CB but much more powerful and transmits from 1.8 MHz to 450 MHz and 100 watts. A CB does those 40 channels around 27 MHz only and 5 watts.
I have the highest level amateur license.
@ogb
A high antenna would be wonderful but only have trees around our yard maybe 40 feet high max. That is an ok height for higher frequencies, like 10 meters (28 MHz band) and 20 meters, (14 MHz band) but 80 meters, (4 MHz band) those dipoles want to be more like 100 feet high. That is not going to happen🙂 so working 4 MHz what happens is the transmitted signal tends to go more or less straight up in the air which limits the range you can talk.
The other problem is we are in a solar cycle minimum, the 11 year cycle.
It looks like we may be entering the next uplift in cycle so propagation will slowly improve. The solar cycle effects the ionosphere, low cycle means the ionosphere is basically transparent to RF especially from 14 MHz up. But an active solar cycle with lots of sunspots means the ionosphere is like a mirror so a signal hitting the ionosphere from underneath (it hangs out around 100 miles up) and signals can bounce up from antenna to ionosphere, back down to Earth which reflects the waves back up to the ionosphere and during really high solar cycles, lots of sunspots, that signal can actually go all the way around the planet sometimes 3 times around, causing what is known as round the world echo, since the path length is roughly 25,000 miles once around Earth that results in a delay or echo of around 100 milliseconds or so and you can hear that in the signal.
At 50 MHz and up there is another path through the troposphere and in Australia a new tropo path record was set at near 5000 km which is amazing but not reliable. Anyway that's the 50 cent tour of ham radio.
@ogb
That is what I did. That dipole has stood up for months and we have had wind that literally blew trees down so the antenna won't go down. I have the pieces of a 70 foot tower but have not had time to erect it as of yet. It is a pretty major project, beginning with digging a hole 6X6X6 feet and filling it with concrete to form the base of the tower, a piece of metal sticks down into the wet concrete to form the base and when the concrete sets, the first ten foot section is attached and then next on top of that however many ten foot sections you have. It's not an easy task.
But now we are putting our house up for sale so I won't do that till we get settled in new house. I hope we can find a house on top of a big hill. A ham's dream......
- Joined
- 23 Jan 20
- Moves
- 2296
Is their something small i could buy to have fun with the truckers going by?
I live next to a highway and i am hilarious with the “trucker talk”
When i had a travelling job we would use a handheld and it worked but you had to be close to the trucker.
Some truckers caught on LoL
Good times.
I don’t want to have to set up an antenna though...and I am about 400 meters from the highway so any ideas?
Also, do you find a lot if people out there?
@old-indian
This talks about hand held CB radios, about a hundred bucks a throw or so.
No external antenna needed, they can talk more than a mile unaided.
@Kewpie
I have an earlier Icom rig the 706, it is for mobile, in car or truck, very good for what it is but it is about a quarter century old now, bit long in the tooth😉
The Icom 756 has a lot of features lacking on the 706.
