Multiband/ ham radios

I don't have any suggestions but I'll bump your thread because this sounds more interesting than 95% of the stuff we usually talk about here

>>62450002
Yaesu FT-60 my man. $160 new, about $120 used. Add another $20 or so for an antenna upgrade.

>>62450866
Thanks.

Amazon good enough for one of em?

What if I want a home station? Reading the AARL Technician and General books over the course of a week has turned my brain to radio jelly.

>>62450908
I would suppose so, I've never had an issue ordering ham stuff on Amazon but YMMV. For a home VHF/UHF station most folks will buy a mobile radio such as the yaesu FT-7900, a 12V power supply of about 20A, and some sort of antenna to put outside. It will be stretching the budget a bit but with the right antenna setup you will have much better results.

I'm assuming you're in the US? Most likely your local ham club will be administering the test. Mention that you're looking for equipment and are cash-strapped. Hams love to help other hams get started, and you might be offered some great deals on used equipment or even equipment donations. Get to know the typical used gear sites such as the QRZ and eHam forums, along with craigslist. Don't be afraid of older radios, they're cheap and as long as they support programmable PL tones for the repeaters and aren't roached out they should serve you well.

>>62451121
US based, yes, in a condo. So I have concerns about setting up an antenna because this place is half filled with hateful old white people and the other half are Amazon zergs.

What kind of reception can I get with an antenna inside my place?

It's not really that I am cash strapped, but I have no idea what a reasonable budget for this new hobby is. I am taking the test tomorrow hosted by the local HAMs and getting them to stay on topic is.. difficult. I asked one about handhelds and he started talking about some niche thing he uses his Extra privileges for.

Extra feels like I need a fucking associate's degree before I would be ready for that test.

"Roached out?"

>>62450430
Thanks. Used to browse /g/, /diy/, and /ck/ in 2010 or so when I was first building computers. Now I mostly lurk on /k/.

>>62451193
I'm in a condo too, sucks huh? There are a ton of variables for reception, mostly depends on the composition of your building and sources of interference around you. In my place with my handheld, I can stand in one spot and hear a repeater full quieting, move a couple feet away and have no reception at all. Do you have access to your attic? A mag-mount antennna stuck to a baking sheet up there might have good results and not be visible. You gotta get creative with this shit. Start getting into the stealthy antenna mindset and look at your surroundings, you might notice some spots that could work in your situation.

For budget, it's really just whatever you're comfortable spending and what bands you want to operate. VHF/UHF is low cost of entry, maybe $2-400 for a decent setup depending on what deals can be had. HF is more pricey. In the beginning, my advice is to stay as cheap as posssible to see if you even enjoy the hobby or not. Speaking of which...

Sounds like you've been talking to the typical ham dude. They can be awesome or really arrogant and annoying, it's a coin toss really. It's the same way on the air.

I've been licensed 13 years and aren't an Extra yet, always been General. It would be nice to have the extra room on the HF bands but I'm not active enough for it to matter.

Roached-out is just a term for shitty, beat up, nasty used gear. Maybe it's a regional thing, hehe

>>62451421
No attic. No roof access either. A few years back some brave souls tried to convince the HOA board that we should switch to solar. They refused because they didn't want anything permanently affixed to the roof (????) and were very concerned about water intrusion from screws (????????). So a roof antenna is out.

I do have a tv tuner and antenna for that inside which does fine.

Any tips for if I ever do transmit? These HAM dudes look like they went to high school between 1980 and 1992 and still act/dress like it. I've been forewarned about the guys who like to track down people for any FCC violations.

Mostly I want a radio to listen to neat things and in emergencies. If one were to not be under FCC guardianship, how would one go about securing one's comms?

Also why are old hams obsessessed with moonbounce/atmospheric scattering? I get that it gives distance and random audiences but... ..

ham is unironically all usenet tier boomers stuck in the 60s, you'll find they have their own circlejerk shit and you won't be allowed in the club. You have to expect this when the technology is built around making up aliases for yourself because you all know you couldn't manage to hold a conversation because another person's face just makes you sweaty

>>62451580
You could also put an antenna in front of your window or sliding door. And maybe a handheld with a good antenna on it would work fine too?
Never know until you try it. Yeah HOA's suck ass and are the enemy of hams in general. I'll soon be moving to an HOA-free house and lemme tell ya I have about 7 years of pent up wacky ham shit i'm itching to try!

Transmitting is no big deal really, as long as you're licensed and following the rules and best practices. For V/UHF, the 5 watts from your handheld aren't going to bother anyone. At 50 watts, you don't want that to be close to your body when you key up and it could cause cracking/humming on neighbor's speakers when you use it. On HF, you can be pissing off a lot of people close by you, and often you can't really prevent that. HF can get into and mess with a lot of things. At 100 watts on 10-meter, I once had my neighbor ask me if I was messing up her telephone, she was hearing a loud buzzing. But I wasn't doing anything illegal/wrong and my antenna was far away from her house. I'm rambling a bit here but the gist of it is if you're licensed and making your best effort to transmit properly, don't worry about angry ham dudes. If a ham does happen to tell you that you're doing something you shouldn't be, whoops lesson learned, just say sorry and maybe ask for advice. If a neighbor complains, apologize and do your best to alleviate the interference, keeping in mind it might not be possible to do so.

For neat things to listen to, a good scanner is my favorite. I can monitor our airport, police/fire/ambulance, the power company, lots of local businesses, etc. This is a whole other rabbit hole from ham radio though.

During bad weather, I like to get on my handheld and check into a weather net on the local repeater. In the town I used to live, the national weather service would even talk to us on echolink, talking reports from spotters. Cool stuff.

Comment too long...

>>62451580
Hams are interested in the ionosphere and the sun and the moon and stuff like that because of propagation. Getting your signal out as far and wide as possible is a fun thing to do if it floats your boat. I love HF because it's kinda like fishing to me. I cast out my signal and see what response I get. Could be someone in Africa or the UK or South America...it's cool to see where you are reaching. Random audience is nice because the local repeater guys got tiresome quickly for me. Once you get to know them and what they typically ramble on about, unless you wind up becoming friends with a couple it can get boring.

>>62451580
>they look like they're straight out of 1985
So they're neo-luddites. Why would you even want to pretend to want to fit in with these losers?

>neat things
Circlejerking?

>>62450002
I paased my test around two weeks ago but I haven't gotten anything in the mail yet, what's the best place to find where my call sign would be if i don't have a FRN?

>>62452050
Not OP, but I was able to spot mine by searching for my last name on http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp a couple of days before I got it in the mail.

>>62451851
That does explain a lot.

>>62451890
I could definitely do window antenna.

How far from the radio should I be?

My neighbor to my left is an OCD squirrelly cokefiend. The dude across from me is cool but rarely home. Should be okay.

How much are scanners? Do they vary in legality by state?

>>62451965
Quit my job a bit ago so I've had time to kill. Figured I'd get some licenses and permits while I search for another.

>>62452270
At 5 watts from a handheld, you can have it right in front of you, no big deal. If you got a mobile radio and indoor antenna, I would keep the radio on the "mid" setting (usually about 20W) and stay about 10 feet away from the antenna. This is a good read about RF exposure if you're interested, there are also RF field strength calculators on the web: https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Documents/bulletins/oet56/oet56e4.pdf

Odds are with 5 to 20 watts indoors, your neighbors probably won't notice anything.

In the US there are no scanners for sale to the public that are illegal, as far as I know. How expensive they are depends on what you want to monitor. For this city to listen to the public service repeater system, I had to get a P25 digital trunker which was about $350 at the time. You could get lucky and have an old analog trunking system to listen to, scanners that do those are a dime a dozen. Go here and search for your city, see what is around to monitor and go from there: http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/

>>62451193
>hateful old white people
Oy vey, it's not too often that you see a Jew interested in technical hobbies.

>>62452421
So what is trunking? How does a scanner differ from a radio?

>>62452776
Trunking essentially uses a "control channel" and a set of other frequencies enable a large group of people to use the same radio system. Their radios are organized by "talkgroups" and when they key up, the control channel directs them to an open frequency. For those who have their radio set to monitor that talkgroup, the control channel will automatically tune their radios to the frequency to hear the transmission.

Scanners are just RX radios engineered to monitor a wide range of frequencies very fast. What makes them expensive is the extra components needed to monitor the various different systems in use, and the license fees (paid by the manufacturer) for those components paid to the proprietary license holders.

>tfw just got a new radio but can't find my programming cable

>>62450002
i hate radios and radio systems

t. motorola solutions employee

>>62453525
Can't program it by hand?

>>62454806
I can program frequencies to channels and set offsets but I can't name the channels and other nice extras. Plus I've got like 70 channels and with the programming cable I can import them from my old radio.

>>62454888
Yeah that's a bitch. The thing about those cables is you can never find 'em when you need one.

>>62454907
I just tried making one with the headset cable but it's not working so I ordered one online.

File: 61dE55IXVdL._SL1000_.jpg (78KB, 1000x1000px) Image search: [Google]

78KB, 1000x1000px

Talking about radio, recently got a small Tecsun PL-310ET.
It's a lovely little receiver, bought it in case we ever get something like a huge power or internet outage.
It's small and it performs really well as far as I can tell with my limited experience.

I'm just a bit disappointed at how much stations have gone down in recent years, moving over to internet.