Amateur Radio
In just received the following. I went to the login page and it is up: MEMBER BULLETIN July 1, 2024 Dear ARRL member, Effective 12:00pm ET / 16:00 UTC we will be returning Logbook of The World® (LoTW®) to service. As work progressed on the network, some users encountered LoTW opening briefly during which some 6600 logs were uploaded. The logs were not processed until this weekend as we tested that the interfaces to LoTW were functioning properly. We are taking steps to help manage what will likely be a huge influx of logs. We are requesting that if you have large uploads, perhaps from contests or from a DXpedition, please wait a week or two before uploading to give LoTW a chance to catch up. We have also implemented a process to reject logs with excessive duplicates. Please do not upload your entire log to “ensure” your contacts are in LoTW as they will be rejected. Lastly, please do not call ARRL Headquarters to report issues you are having with LoTW. You can contact support at LoTW-help@arrl.org. Through the end of the year, you may experience planned times when LoTW will be unavailable. We have been using this time to evaluate operational and infrastructure improvements we would like to make to LoTW. Those times will be announced. We appreciate your patience as we worked through the challenges keeping LoTW from returning to service. We know the importance of LoTW to our members, and to the tens of thousands of LoTW users who are not ARRL members. LoTW, just behind QST, is our second most popular ARRL benefit.
Is anyone else doing Field Day? How's it going? In the NE US, it's been very hot and humid with occasional thunderstorms. Running a QRP station here and taking a break for the evening. Planning on getting up early tomorrow.
I had a VE session the day of the hack so I'm glad to see things are working again.
www.bleepingcomputer.com
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/12513834 > American Radio Relay League cyberattack takes Logbook of the World offline > > The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) warns it suffered a cyberattack, which disrupted its IT systems and online operations, including email and the Logbook of the World. [...]
cross-posted from: https://real.lemmy.fan/post/2770288 > They need help scanning twenty more pallets of stuff.
Just moving in to our first home, and I'm very excited to have the freedom to set up a permanent HF antenna. I'll probably build a sort of fan dipole and run it along the side of our property. That's the only place long enough to fit. However, the power lines for the neighborhood run over part of our backyard. I'm not worried about my dipole being too close to high voltage power (it won't be) but I wonder if the AC frequency can cause interference on certain bands?
I've got an itch to activate a particularly difficult-to-activate POTA park. The few who found success did so with a barely-qualifying amount of digital or CW contacts with the exception of two prominent and skilled phone operators (and one of them had to give it a second try another day). What brings the difficulty is the terrain: the park is a ~~RF pit of despair~~ beach with 20m tall shear cliffs into the surrounding mountains. It's also remote enough to make spotting difficult; there's no cell nor a APRS repeater for self-spotting. There are a few strategies I could go for, like beaming into the ocean for KH and VK stations, but I think this park is just about the perfect case for NVIS propagation. I'll probably give my EFHW a shot in an inverted V or sloper configuration, but I'm also thinking of building: - A basic dipole since I could pump more power into it than my existing EFHW transformer can handle. - A one-wavelength loop antenna. In theory a low loop offers a more circular radiation pattern than a dipole and slightly better gain. However, it's twice as much wire to raise. What kind of portable antenna would you choose to operate daytime NVIS? Do you have any other ideas or thoughts?
It seems the band plans are absolutely packed with bands for repeaters, satellites, cw, ssb, slow scan tv, etc. As a new ham is there a easy diagram of the frequency spectrum of what I CAN use just for simple beginner voice transmissions?
youtu.be
G5TM put out a nice video where a viewer was debating between the inverted L and a compromised vertical. It's a good review between the two for folks with height limitations.
Do people have thoughts on the newest flagship HT from Kenwood? He brings up some worthwhile observations. I just got a FT5DR and I am not impressed with it's stock battery life when compared to my HTX-202 (greatest rig ever made and will ever be made) or my AnyTone AT878UVII+. I also like him pointing out the manufactures not providing drop in chargers for these expensive rigs. It's bullshit.
EDIT: For anybody coming across the same issue, USB was the problem. I was trying to avoid having 12" of radio equipment sticking directly out of my laptop where it could easily be snapped off, so I used a little USB power meter as a short extension cord to let it bend. I don't know if it was the power meter or my laptop, but when I replaced the power meter with a short USB extension cord wrapped a few times around an ferrite E-core, the issue went away. I only got noise at the extreme horizons, and touching the antenna made no change. I've ordered a USB extension cord with ferrite integrated to use in the future. $8 on Amazon. I'm working on a V-dipole to pick up 137.5MHz NOAA APT transmissions. I found that when lowering the antenna closer to ground than my design, performance improved. I believe this is because the pavement in front of my house is not a great conductor, so my reflecting ground plane is actually a few inches below the surface. The thing I can't explain is why I get such a dramatic improvement in performance when I use my finger to touch just the arm of the dipole connected to the center conductor of the coax. The difference is night and day. The surrounding noise in the signal drops to the point that it’s inaudible, but the radio signal is relatively unaffected. Touching the shield conductor does nothing. I picked up a cheap VNA and was able to determine that touching the antenna does slightly de-tune it, but the impact is the same for both arms. With the configuration I have, the SWR is something like 1.07 before touching it, and it rises to around 1.2 when I do. I've heard about surface currents that can cause problems, but those only occur on the outside of the shield conductor, and I have a ferrite choke right at the feed point anyway. What's going on here? EDIT: to add that I'm using a Nooelec SDR with a SAW filter tuned to NOAA frequencies as well as a terrestrial AM blocker. This is connected to a Framework laptop on battery power. I'm curious if this could be an electrical issue coming from my laptop.
[@amateur\_radio](https://sh.itjust.works/c/amateur_radio) does anybody know how to unlock an Anytone 878 after shipping? I’ve pressed Menu and \* I have plugged it into the software and the four options to select aren’t showing up. I’m stuck.
I don't seem to be receiving emails from the internet despite having the addresses in my whitelist. Does anyone know if I'm missing a setting somewhere? I do receive other Winlink emails.
He has a lot of good tutorials and covers a lot of RPi stuff. Worth checking out.
[@amateur\_radio](https://sh.itjust.works/c/amateur_radio) Just passed my Technician test!! Looking into the Anytone 878. Is this a good or bad first unit?
Having just completed the ARRL RTTY Roundup, I thought I'd update my QSO map. The tool I used is: http://tools.adventureradio.de/analyzer/.
The ARRL RTTY Roundup is today. Anyone else planning on participating? I like RTTY and would like to use it more often and these events are some of the few times when I know there will be QSOs.
I'm kind of concerned about the "minimize interference" for the majick Tesla powerbeams (wireless power transmission).
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6324540
www.youtube.com
After having seen some articles of the recent coronal mass ejection and the possibility of a K5 geomagnetic storm, I thought I'd share this time lapse of Solar Cycle 25 thus far from NOAA.
I’ve asked this before, but had another twist on it. I have a couple 5W UHF HTs, and they sometimes get used in a dual radio chest pack. Am I running any risk of damaging them by transmitting so close? It’s pretty common for first responders to run a setup like this, so I’m thinking it’s probably okay?
www.raspberrypi.com
For all geeks out there!
I rarely had a chance to play around on it when it was open due to my work schedule, but I got a remote access tool set up that can control my rig remotely. FT8 during the day on 10m has been getting me a ton of interesting contacts that I just don’t see on the other bands at night.
For anyone interested in satellites and especially weather satellite decoding, Satdump just got some great improvements.
Did anyone else get to take advantage of 10 meters opening up today?
I just got my HW-101 back on the air. When I was a kid, my dad got he, my brother, and me one of these at a Hamfest for $50 after we outgrew our HW-16. This isn't that rig, though. We can't find it. I picked this one up and, even though it still has issues, I've been making DX, POTA, Route 66 QSOs with it. Been getting good signal reports too! It's fun but, after tuning and not having any audio filtering, I've really come to appreciate modern radios. If you're just getting started in the hobby but are intimidated by tube rigs, don't be. They're worth considering (tube availability might be a challenge though). (For those who are curious, that is a real Astatic D-104 mic but the amp has been removed so it can work with the HW-101).
Hi! I wanted to share a simple dual band dipole that I've built recently. It has been performing perfectly fine for me the las weeks given the fact that I'm at the first floor of a tall building surrounded by tall buildings also. Also it's extremely cheap to build. To get it out I'm using a fishing pole. Maybe someone in the same situation than me could find it useful.
Hey all, New here. I have a pair of Baofeng uv-5r with an extended antenna and they have worked really well for me. Anything better for that size out there?
Another post on here inspired me to ask about this. I recently got my license (General) and am thinking of how to get an antenna setup for HF. The issue is that I live in an apartment on the ground floor. I do have a patio that's about 10'x5' with the "ceiling" (the bottom of the unit above me) at about 7-8 ft. What I'm tentatively thinking is that I have just about enough room to fit a 10m dipole around the inner edge of the patio roof, although it'd have to bend around the corners. Would that have any shot at working? It would be fairly low. I'm also a little concerned about MPE, since it would be right under my neighbors balcony. I could also set something up inside but that doesn't seem ideal either. Any other options I should consider? It would be nice to get on lower bands too but I suspect that won't happen, at least at my apartment.
Hello all! I’m trying to get my foot in the door with HF digital and looking for antenna suggestions using FT8/JS8Call with a Xiegu G90. I have ~60 ft if space in the backyard to work with & live on the second story looking down into the yard (~20ft up). I’d ideally like something portable I can pack up and take around with me camping. I’m leaning towards a random length wire right now, but would love to hear what you come up with! Thanks in advance!