Setting up regular skeds - do it now, not after SHTF

[Tim]

Thanks for the reply.  It was great.  I needed my memory shaken up a bit and that did it. 

You guys are putting out good info.  I totally agree about the cw too.  I am getting back into comms, because I found some guys near me who prep and have gotten their licenses.  They have general and above, but none of them know code.  It is my mission to show them the light.  Gotta lead by example.

I am waiting on my Tech license and plan to get my general next month.  I will be getting my code back up to snuff in the meantime.  I plan to use NVIS to talk with my buddies, when I get my rig up.  Some of them are about 75 miles away and I am thinking that is my best bet.

What do you guys think about 6 meter simplex operations in rural environments?   I need to talk about 30 miles simplex and would like to have a base that can communicate with our handhelds at the same time.  I am not planning to use repeaters.  Murphy's Law. 

Let me know if this sounds crazy. 

Thanks again for the forum and the advice.

Tim

[KK0G]

What do you guys think about 6 meter simplex operations in rural environments?   I need to talk about 30 miles simplex and would like to have a base that can communicate with our handhelds at the same time.  I am not planning to use repeaters.  Murphy's Law. 

Let me know if this sounds crazy. 

Thanks again for the forum and the advice.

Tim

Antenna, antenna, antenna. In other words it's almost completely dependent on the antennas 8) .
For example, if both stations are on relatively flat ground and have 5 element directional Yagi antennas mounted in the clear on 50 foot towers, they could very easily have armchair copy at mere milliwatt power levels. If on the other hand both stations are using 1/4 wave verticals mounted at 20 feet on the roof with a ridge between them, 500 watts may not make a connection.

[gil]

Hello Terry. I sent you a message... I have never been in the military, but I Think I would have liked it and done a decent job.. Oh well, too late now.. I sure don't miss carrying a heavy backpack every day. I think too many preppers overestimate their ability to carry a heavy load over long distances. I sure did...

Gil.

[gil]

I vote for the Yagi as well! Easy to make and quite cheap. Don't discount 2m SSB either: smaller antenna and probably similar range to 6m. I am about to build a 2m one soon and will post about the build.. For 2m a quad would be even better!

Gil.

[cockpitbob]

Yeah, the terrain controls it all.  Over water you can probably go 50 miles between 2M HTs.  I've had a lot of dissapointing experience with the VHF stuff.  Some of us tried 2M simplex and 2M SSB with poor success.  Here in the 100' hills of north east MA there were guys 15 miles apart that couldn't hear each other.  I have a J-pole 25' off the ground (in the attic :P ) and I can't here some guys 12 miles away behind a 75' hill while there are some repeaters 30 miles away I can hit.  Even the guy with the 7 element yagi (mounted vertically) on his tower couldn't find me 20 miles away.  I'm getting more and more interested in NVIS on 40M and 80M.

[cockpitbob]

I vote for the Yagi as well! Easy to make and quite cheap. Don't discount 2m SSB either: smaller antenna and probably similar range to 6m. I am about to build a 2m one soon and will post about the build.. For 2m a quad would be even better!

Gil.

See the short article in QST about the Scouts building a 3 element 2M yagi from barbed wire.  I never though the Scouts and ham radio would merge produce something that looked so rancher/steampunk. :D

[gil]

Some of us tried 2M simplex and 2M SSB with poor success.  Here in the 100' hills of north east MA there were guys 15 miles apart that couldn't hear each other.

That really surprises me.. Especially over only 15 miles.. Both antennas were polarized the same way?

Gil.

[Quietguy]

I plan to use NVIS to talk with my buddies, when I get my rig up.  Some of them are about 75 miles away and I am thinking that is my best bet.

I have a 135ish foot dipole up about 45 feet and 75m SSB is a daytime slam dunk with a good friend about 75 or 100 miles north of me.  He has a similar antenna and we have never failed to connect during the day regardless of time of year.  Power level is probably in the range of 50 to 100 watts depending on where I left the setting the last time I used it.  I routinely connect to an 80m Winlink 2000 Pactor 3 station about the same distance away until as late as midnight.  Pactor 3 is much more efficient than SSB so the hours are extended.  If you run CW you can extend the hours and lower the power even further.

Wally

[cockpitbob]

That really surprises me.. Especially over only 15 miles.. Both antennas were polarized the same way?

Gil.

Yup, vertically.  We were stunned, amazed and depressed.

[KC9TNH]

What do you guys think about 6 meter simplex operations in rural environments?

I don't think it sounds crazy at all.  6m gets discussed from time to time because it's a very un-used siren calling to people. But there are reasons for that. 6m is also part of the spectrum the military use for their SINCGARS and other VHF systems and there's a reason it's notoriously terrain sensitive. I've done a bit of terrain & spectrum analysis on that particular vixen back when I worked in the belly of the beast and she is most fickle. Tactically, it's primarily the reason 2 sites that want to talk to each other send some other poor schmuck with a case of MRE's to a high-point to act as a re-trans site. And, in the case up in my neck of the woods, we're not even talking serious hills as some would out west; mounds and hogbacks that, at most, get 400' above the surrounding terrain.

[Archangel320420]

I say use two meters FM vox controlled @ earbuds and boom mics for on the ground tatical. Low HF bands for inner-state communications with your team members.

[KK0G]

We damn near had a full fledged net going tonight on 40 meters! I called Wes as usual and we chatted for 15 minutes or so until the band dropped out on us, then I heard Ray call Wes, then I called Ray, then Terry called Ray and finally I called Terry. Signals were very weak at times and there was a fair amount of QRM but I copied everything other than the tail end of Wes's and my original QSO. Let's keep it up guys.

[RadioRay]

Yes - Full house from this end:

Gil   QRP on 30m with his magnetic loop INSIDE of his apartment.  Then 40m QRP on the wire outside.
Chris
Wes
Terry

All on CW. I heard Chris and Wes, then the band went long between them and they could not hear each other, though I could copy both.  So I let Wes know that Chris was sending his "QSB QSB 73 73 DE ..." .  Short shat with Chris, then Terry keyed-up! How cool is that?

The only screw-up was when I flipped to low power and then to dummy load to practice a bit with my bug and noticed after about 5 minutes that it was NOT in the dummy load position...  I hope that I didn't have enough bleed through the antenna switch to interfere with Terry & Chris...  That was BEFORE I had a rum -    :o

I am using the Marine SSB transceiver from my old sailboat boat days - in A.M. mode to key it's carrier to make CW and using the non-transmitting Elecraft K2 ( long story about an E-bay purchase from a contester...) as my receiver. Until money falls out of the sky on my wife and I, this looks like the best way for me to be on the air in QRO (50 SCREAMING Watts) .  Personally, I prefer having a separate transmitter and receiver for a home station.

Good Job Team!



>de RadioRay ..._ ._

[mdmc]

I am using the Marine SSB transceiver from my old sailboat boat days - in A.M. mode to key it's carrier to make CW and using the non-transmitting Elecraft K2 ( long story about an E-bay purchase from a contester...) as my receiver. Until money falls out of the sky on my wife and I, this looks like the best way for me to be on the air in QRO (50 SCREAMING Watts) .  Personally, I prefer having a separate transmitter and receiver for a home station.

Good Job Team!
>de RadioRay ..._ ._

Ray I am trying to figure out how to safely connect a keyer to my SEA 322 Marine SSB.  I didn't need to know too much about it to use it while living on my boat. The manual is very through about the technical aspects with schematics, theory of operation and block diagrams. I am wanting to tie in a keyer to the ptt circuit but at this time I don't really know enough. I have included a bit of info below. Does this sound doable for an iambic keyer?

Listed operating modes quoted from the manual in the "General Information" section are as follows;

A3A, A3J, 2182.0 KHz A3H in E0, 0.3F1 (SITOR)


I had to go look these up
A3A: Mode of single sideband with -16dB pilot carrier
A3H: AME or AM compatible (carrier with only upper sideband)
A3J: Telephony; single sideband with suppressed carrier

Under "Transmiter" section it lists
Power Output   A3A, A3J, 150 watts PEP

On the control head there are light indicators for selection of modes of operation are;
USB, LSB, TELEX or AME

It said AME light "Indicates AM equivalent carrier is reinserted"

Unfortunately Stevens Electronics Assc. was sold and I can't get any info at all.

All opinions appreciated.
Thanks

[gil]

Sorry I missed you guys on 7037.. The loop by the way is on the second floor on my house, which fortunately is an old wooden house.. We are at about 28ft. above sea level here, so the loop is probably 38ft. ASL. Tomorrow (Thursday) I have my CWOps class at ten, so no-go for me. Friday night maybe. Or if you guys can be on a bit early, at 9:45 EST, just to see if I can copy you. Great thing is about the class, I head-copied Ray with no trouble 8) Practicing with a code buddy every day helps a lot! We are prohibited from writing anything down. I m starting to head-copy at 20-25wpm. One year to go from 0 to 15wpm, and a few weeks from 15 to 25.. Go figure..  :o I am still missing a lot, but it's getting better. What I did realize is that head-copy is not a code issue, it's a short-term memory issue. Four or five-letter words are easy.. Above that, you forget the first letters. For computer geeks: It's FIFO, "first in, first out." The practice is to increase your memory buffer size and TTL ("time-to-live"). Another weird phenomenon starting to appear is words popping into mind without the need to add letters together.. Still rare at this point, but it happened a few times. As if that conscious process has been switched to a background task. Again, computer lingo; lots of analogies with the brain. At some point it might become a second language, directly from CW to thought. I'm not holding my breath, but it would be nice.

If anyone wants to practice head-copy with me, download the free ooVoo video conferencing program. We can have a regular online practice session. ooVoo allows multiple users at once.. You should be at 12-15wpm to start I guess, maybe as low as ten..

If I can get to 20-25wpm with 90% accuracy, I'll be happy. It seems like that speed is easier than 15wpm for head-copy anyway. Otherwise the TTL problem comes into play. Above 25wpm it becomes a processing speed issue..

You guys who used to decode Morse for a living, how long did it take you to just listen and have thoughts and images pop to mind? Or maybe using a mill is different because it's often one-time-pads and random letters? Do you just see words or still add letters together, albeit very fast?

Gil.