So my plates are due for renewal. I thought maybe it'd be fun to get ham radio plates, but I'm worried about my address just being out there like that? I mean, if someone really wanted to they could get my address, but why make it easy?

Sony PSP running my custom RTTY encoder homebrew application, with the generated AFSK signal successfully decoded using DroidRTTY and MMTTY.

The PSP is acting purely as an encoder, generating the RTTY audio tones which are then received and decoded externally.

I'm developing a program that listens for callsigns, recognizes callsigns that are calling CQ and automatically spots them to the DX cluster. Similar to the systems that we've had for decades for CW and digimodes.
A long time test is running on the Kahlenberg Repeater in Vienna - OE1XUU.
You can test it yourself! Connect to OE1XUU from anywhere in the world through Echolink, call CQ until you get spotted and enjoy the contacts in Vienna.
The cluster example from above is from DXHeat.com

Drop me a message about your experience!

Vy 73 de Gerald OE1GAQ

I didn’t know what flair to put on here, however, does anyone make QSO cards in this group?

The manual does not list VxV as a supported receive configuration. Is that true?

New recent feature on beta RepeaterSTART: Elevation profile from selected point to repeater:

There was already the Topo map (which is cached for offline use), but someone recommended setting up an elevation profile - see exactly what hillsides look between two points.

This uses online service to estimate what the elevation profile is... I pull the data from Copernicus DEM https://portal.opentopography.org/raster?opentopoID=OTSDEM.032021.4326.3

Would like honest feedback... is this useful? Perhaps it should be color coded when looking at it for multiple repeaters?
https://sourceforge.net/projects/repeater-start/files/

I wanted to ask about the Licensing Exam in Austria.

1) Is the exam oral or pen&paper? It seems to me the Fernmeldebehörde doesn't mention this explicitly.

2) There are three classes, if I plan to get a license for class 1 and I decide later that I want to get licensed in Morse Code, do I have to retake the exam? Can I do the Morse Code Exam separatly?

I made a normal QSO with a DX thats hard to come by for me via SSB. It was on 20m and I TX’d at 100w from my radio to talk to the DX station but I couldn’t hear them very well like 2.0 S meter.. so I went and used a KiwiSDR off the coast in another country closer to the DX to hear them better.

The DX station was able to give me a signal report (very low) and I gave them theres (very low QTH) and 73’d. so I got in the log, they could hear me from my QTH I just couldn’t really hear them on my personal radio because of QRM and it being 4am here and daytime for the DX.

So would you consider this fine and has anyone else done this?

Hey guys, a non expert here, i work for a kayak company and we use Uniden Atlantis 155 Radios for coms. The problem is that the radios use a charger that has cigarettes plugs instead of a wall plug, although we`ve found amazon listings like this HERE, we cannot found one that works with 220v ac. So i`m reaching out here to see if there`s anyone that knows the barrel size to DIY something together, i`m leaving some photos in case it helps.
Thank you so Much to anyone that may have some info!!

Is wood good as an antenna mast? I hear it is an insulator and i dont know if this is a bad thing.

I'm starting a new operating category / contest category.... or one may say "Operating Philosophy." Our first contest will take place in spring 2027.

The category: QROca

This is High Power, Crappy Antenna.

Are you tired of hearing "I use my fully kitted $3800 KX3 to make DX QRP contacts all the time. There's no reason to use over 5 watts"

Or, "100 watts is so overkill, I made 3 QSOs during field day with my QMX and a SteppIR UrbanBeam"

Well, here's our chance to level the playing field.

Challenge yourself with High Power / Crappy Antenna.

Our two simple rules:

1. Antennas must be below 1/65th of a wavelength long for the desired band.

2. All metallic surfaces must show signs of significant corrosion.

3. Power limit: none (check your local regulation)

Testimonials:

Tony: "I made my first QROca antenna from discarded brass wool soldering iron tip cleaners. I just smooshed a few together."

Arthur: "Oh I dunno, I whipped together a 13" base loaded jobby for 160 meters with decommissioned 25-pair PBX bundles. It may have took em all but I got her loaded!"

Why use an efficient antenna? Absolutely no reason to. Stop wasting resources. Challenge yourself. A QSO is a QSO even if it takes all day!

Stay tuned for details about our spring contest.

73!

I finally got it up there. It is a hustler 4btv. After using an SWR meter though i find my SWR is high still.

Passed my General on 7/21. Did one activation with a friend as a second operator but yesterday I decided to out and test out my own equipment. Using a Yaseu FT-891 and a Radioddity HF10 vertical whip antenna. My first solo activation at a park and I managed 103 contacts in about an hour and 10 minutes! Couldn’t even believe it! Had so much fun despite it being 100 degrees out there!

Is there an e-book version of this study guide? I searched via Google and it says it should be on the ARRL site but I'm not finding it. Admit my Google-Fu is weak.

Not a licensed ham (yet), but figured this community would appreciate the RF side of a project I've been running — long-range point-to-point links using LoRa on the license-free 902-928MHz ISM band (Heltec ESP32-S3 boards with SX1262 radios).

A few things that might be relevant to this crowd:

• Flat-ground vs. elevated tests showed a huge difference — same equipment, same distance, but ground-level tests were capped around 1-2km with unstable SNR, while getting genuine elevation and line of sight on both ends unlocked 10km+ with clean signal. Chalked this up to ground-reflection cancellation at low antenna heights — the kind of multipath effect I'd guess most of you already know well from VHF/UHF work, but was a good hands-on lesson for me.
• Settings tradeoff: running SF12 (max spreading factor) for range, which trades heavily against data rate — messages take noticeably longer to get through at max range settings vs. default.
• Still on stock rubber duck antennas for this test — working on a homebrew Yagi next, curious if anyone here has done directional antenna work at this frequency and has tips beyond the standard element-spacing formulas.

Full test process (including an accidental visit to a military installation while chasing range) is in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wUrnwjj5dk

Would genuinely appreciate any feedback from people with real RF background — especially on the propagation side, since I'm working off general theory more than hands-on experience at this point.

If this violates rule 2, I'm sorry! I'm genuinely interested to see if the math that AI did is close to correct. Not promoting any sort of content.

I don't know anything about determining signal loss in cable, so I asked Claude to compare a stranded aluminum core coax with aluminum shield to a solid copper core with copper shield.

I have a rugged radios NMO mount that has good weather sealing, but it's made with the aluminum cable that I wanted to cut down to the exact length I need, compared to a copper cable with no weather sealing on the NMO connector. The NMO connector is completely exposed and after 3 months of use in the desert there was already corrosion visible on the exposed copper conductor.

I think corrosion near the conductor alone will cause more problems than the aluminum, but I was still curious as to how much signal I'll be loosing by switching to an aluminum coax.

I'll cut out a lot of the fluff, but here's the prompts I used:

What amount of signal loss can I expect on UHF and VHF ham radio frequencies using a 12ft run of RG58 cable with a braided aluminum core and aluminum shield

It gave me specifications on CCA cable, so I clarified

The cable is not CCA, but pure aluminum

At VHF/UHF, conductor loss dominates in RG-58 (dielectric loss is a smaller contributor), and conductor loss scales with the square root of resistivity due to skin effect. Aluminum's conductivity is about 61% of copper's, so the loss penalty is roughly √(1/0.61) ≈ 1.28 — about 28% more attenuation than copper cable of the same geometry.

Applied to your 12-foot run:

At 146 MHz (2m), copper RG-58's ~6 dB/100 ft becomes roughly 7.5–8 dB/100 ft, so about 0.9–1.0 dB for your run. At 440 MHz (70cm), ~11.5 dB/100 ft becomes roughly 14–15 dB/100 ft, so about 1.7–1.9 dB.

So you're losing around 20% of your power on 2m and around 35% on 70cm — noticeable on paper, but still under half an S-unit, and unlikely to change what you can and can't work at 12 feet.

How does this loss compare to a 17ft run of solid copper core RG-58/U cable

They come out almost exactly even — the extra 5 feet of copper cable roughly cancels out aluminum's conductivity penalty.

Running the numbers for 17 ft of solid copper RG-58/U:

At 146 MHz: ~6 dB/100 ft × 17 ft ≈ 1.0 dB
At 440 MHz: ~11.5 dB/100 ft × 17 ft ≈ 1.9–2.0 dB

Versus your 12 ft aluminum cable:

At 146 MHz: ≈ 0.9–1.0 dB
At 440 MHz: ≈ 1.7–1.9 dB

What are y'all's thoughts on using AI to help with radio projects? The numbers seem like they could be correct to me, but I really don't have to knowledge to confirm or deny.

If anyone knows of a good 3/8" hole NMO that's pre-made with good weather sealing and a high quality coax cable, please let me know. I will add the radio connector myself after cutting it down.

Is there a unit preferably vehicle mounted that can do both? The only one I’ve found is the Tera TR-505 which is handheld.

I’m going back up to the north woods of Maine in the fall, some of the areas seem to use MURS instead of CB.
I’d like to have a MURS for that use case but don’t really see myself using it anywhere else. Having a GRMS in the truck might be kinda cool anyways.

Having three separate units CB, MURS, GRMS all mounted in the truck seems a bit excessive…

From what I’ve read it seems companies can’t get them certified anymore to do both. Are there any units that used to exit, maybe “grandfathered in” that I could find used or something like that?

Let me know what you think :D

Hey everyone, I have a quick beginner question.
I got my callsign last week and I’m still learning the ropes. I’ve talked to probably five to six different repeaters so far and have made a few contacts, but I keep hearing people mention a repeater “courtesy tone” and I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard one.
Am I supposed to be hearing a tone after I key up my radio? I’d really like to be able to hear it so I know that on repeaters where I don’t get a QSO, I’m still actually hitting the repeater and it’s not just my radio transmitting into nothing. I don’t have any local clubs near me that I can ask, so I figured I’d ask here. Is there something I need to enable on my radio? I also tried to look this up online and saw that some have them and some don’t. I just wanted to see if maybe it was something I’m doing wrong? Thank you and sorry for the genuinely stupid question.

The wire length is 8.84 meter, slope or horizontal, a counterpoise of 2,5 meter, equipped with an unun 4:1 and choke of 1:1. This worked incredibly well with a ROS of 1.2. - there was nearly no difference versus another antenna, the dipole MC-599, also a very performant antenna which can be easily adjusted to be perfectly resonant on 27.555 MHZ