******** The Official amateur radio thread ********

Feek, great thread, I am sure there are many on here who can contribute to this.

Whilst not an amateur radio operator myself I certainly see the appeal in building your own equipment and using it to communicate with people across the globe. I have a mate in work who is very much into his ham radio and we often talk about what he gets up to.

He has lent me a book by an American chap, Bill Meara (from solder smoke podcasts, you may have heard of him) entitled 'SolderSmoke global adventures in Wireless Electronics' and whilst a lot of it goes over my head I am finding it is a fascinating read.

Incidentally I have recently acquired a soldering iron and some soldering kits with the aim of teaching myself how to solder with the aim of eventually building some stuff.

Your setup looks great, keep up the good work :)
 
Bath.

One interesting I found out is Bath, has a Buildathon day which allows Intermediate students to complete their radio project in a single day's workshop.
 
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Feek said:
I know some Unis are struggling with radio clubs but it's worth asking around. If you're going to be anywhere near Cambridge, get yourself involved with Camb-Hams, they're a great bunch of guys, I know some of them very well.
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Struggling in terms of funding or the number of people volunteering/participating?
 
Thanks Crizzy. I've got the Soldersmoke book, both paper and Kindle and he does a great job of explaining some of the more technical stuff in an understandable way.

I listen to Bill's podcast as well, he can ramble a bit but they're generally quite enjoyable.
 
Nightglow said:
Bath.
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The Bath club is great, they do a lot for newcomers into the hobby. Every year they have the Bath Buildathon where they put a bunch of people into a room and they all build a kit. I think you've just missed it this year.

flibbage0 said:
Struggling in terms of funding or the number of people volunteering/participating?
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People I think. I know of someone at one Uni where they still have a radio shack set up but he can't get access to it until he can get the club started again and that means he's got to find twenty members. He's struggling to find that number of people who would be interested.
 
Feek said:
Thanks Crizzy. I've got the Soldersmoke book, both paper and Kindle and he does a great job of explaining some of the more technical stuff in an understandable way.

I listen to Bill's podcast as well, he can ramble a bit but they're generally quite enjoyable.
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I've only heard one but it was quite relaxing and enjoyable, seems like a top bloke.
 
Feek said:
The Bath club is great, they do a lot for newcomers into the hobby. Every year they have the Bath Buildathon where they put a bunch of people into a room and they all build a kit. I think you've just missed it this year.


People I think. I know of someone at one Uni where they still have a radio shack set up but he can't get access to it until he can get the club started again and that means he's got to find twenty members. He's struggling to find that number of people who would be interested.
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Yes I missed it, it was today.
 
Feek said:
Here's one of the little Morse transmitters mentioned above. It's not the one we're using but it's exactly the same (this is my one). To give you an idea of scale, that connector bottom right is a phono (RCA) socket.

qrss_transmitter-20120107-203755.jpg
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Wait. What!

You take that tiny wee thing, power it with half a phone battery. Send out morse over 7m cables and theres some dude in NZ who can pick it up?!

Feek, you have blown my mind!

Surely attenuation is a significant factor at such weak strengths? Is that why the signals are so long?
 
Lunawolfy said:
Wait. What!

You take that tiny wee thing, power it with half a phone battery. Send out morse over 7m cables and theres some dude in NZ who can pick it up?!

Feek, you have blown my mind!

Surely attenuation is a significant factor at such weak strengths? Is that why the signals are so long?
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You've got it - It's using a simple half wave dipole aerial, probably one of the most basic and straightforward aerials you can make.

I have a homebrew dipole in my loft for the 50MHz band and I've spoken to people around 3,000km away using it. It's two pieces of wire and a length of coax, that's it.

The signals are very weak from our slow Morse beacon, you couldn't have a conversation at that sort of signal but the fact is that the signal does make it and can be displayed. Our beacon has been described by someone in Pensacola, Florida as one of the most important there is for propagation testing because we're always the first one who drops onto his screen as the conditions change throughout the day. If he doesn't see our signal appear then he doesn't bother listening for any other Europeans :D
 
Feek said:
No it's not. You're thinking of what the bands are like during contests when all people exchange is a signal report and other info such as a serial number. Outside of contests it's much more than that.
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Such as?

I suppose sending morse over such vast distances using home made kit is sort of cool but beyond that and chatting to people about the sizes of your aerial I can't really see the point in this. But you could say that about most hobbies maybe? So, beyond talking to fellow radio fans about radio stuff and sending low strength code where is the attraction?
 
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I've got one of these:

Realistic DX-302 Shortwave Receiver
0.01-30 MHz, AM/SSB/CW

Made back in the 80's and been to Africa and back, I used to pick up the agricultural broadcasts from Russia on it.


RealisticDX-302600.jpg


I'd like to do the exam to get a transmitter some day
 
Thanks for reminding me ;)
one of the best things i've got is a little black unicom wind up torch AM/FM radio that I won in an internal competition.
this very moment i've RXed france and spain and I'm sure I just caught the word "pravda" on another.
The battery lasts forever and holds its charge, it also pretty loud and drives the output pretty well too.
:)
 
wow that's awesome, I'd love to build an aerial like that, my granddad when he was alive used to be into it in a big way, he built a few aerials similar in size to yours from scratch, the only problem was where he lived the council was strict about how high you could have the aerial because he lived in a mobile home park, also people on the site would sometimes complain even though he was right in the corner out of the way, I could understand if he was in the middle of the park/site, wish he was still here, was a very clever man :(.
 
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Feek said:
People I think. I know of someone at one Uni where they still have a radio shack set up but he can't get access to it until he can get the club started again and that means he's got to find twenty members. He's struggling to find that number of people who would be interested.
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This isn't at University of Bath is it?
 
Ahleckz said:
Such as?

I suppose sending morse over such vast distances using home made kit is sort of cool but beyond that and chatting to people about the sizes of your aerial I can't really see the point in this. But you could say that about most hobbies maybe? So, beyond talking to fellow radio fans about radio stuff and sending low strength code where is the attraction?
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I suppose a lot of talk is about the hobby, it's like when you get two people who have a similar interest, they'll talk about it. I do remember a contact I had with someone a few months ago who told me that if you don't know the name of the other persons dog at the end of the conversation then you're not trying hard enough! I said that I don't own a dog but if I did, it would be called Bonzo. His reply was that he doesn't either but he does own a cat and his cats name IS Bonzo :)

flibbage0 said:
This isn't at University of Bath is it?
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No, they're doing fine.

Today I've been operating using Radio Teletype (RTTY) which you may remember from years ago when the footie results used to come up at the end of World of Sport and they'd appear on a teleprinter. It's all done by computer now but the actual audio tones generated are the same, for a sample click here. I've communicated with people in the USA, Aruba, Latvia, Sweden, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Japan, Macedonia, Indonesia, Georgia, Bermuda, Canada and others using RTTY today.
 
So... I just contacted my local amature radio club for the foundation training. It does say on their website that they will only run it if there is enough interest :(

Am I able to put up an aerial and just listen for now? So I can get a feel for things? I have never used amateur radio stuff before :/
 
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Really interesting thread, thanks for posting it.

So are most of the people you contact able to speak English?

Also, how good is a connection to someone, like can you lose a signal during a conversation and not be able to get it back sometimes, e.g. if the weather suddenly takes a turn for the worse or something?

From seeing the morse being sent, could you transmit data i.e. computer files to someone and if so at what kind of data rate? Or would it be fairly useless for something that large.
 
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