Ham Radio / Off-grid communication

Real Retard Posting Hours · Ayer a las 1:53

I was gifted $70 dollars in the form of a radioddity gift card, what would YOU get and why if you were me?

888Flux · Ayer a las 1:55

Real Retard Posting Hours dijo:
I was gifted $70 dollars in the form of a radioddity gift card, what would YOU get and why if you were me?

Are you active in the ham hobby? Do you have an existing setup?
What interests you?

sorta need more to go off of lol

Real Retard Posting Hours · Ayer a las 2:08

888Flux dijo:
Are you active in the ham hobby? Do you have an existing setup?
What interests you?

sorta need more to go off of lol

I just got my general. I went from tech to general in one day (took both tests after doing one of those "weekend zero to tec" classes. I have a trade set up with a friend where in exchange for a very fancy bike, I will get a gently used 7300 an HF-010 antenna from a friend, and a red LDG box thing and a blue LDG box thing and some coax, a power supply and an external tuner but it is arriving probably in November/December realistically (he wants to hand deliver it to me but gave me the gift card so we can make the trade happen earlier). Open to everything but a full desk top home shack is currently unlikely due to me travelling a lot for work.

Also what is this new xiegu thing going on? And what's this flex radio people keep talking about it seems like a very expensive hf radio.

I do own a baufeng uv-5r but I'm open to digital modes. Oh and I have some triband baufeng thing but I can't seem to listen to airplanes with it.

888Flux · Ayer a las 2:23

Real Retard Posting Hours dijo:
I just got my general. I went from tech to general in one day (took both tests after doing one of those "weekend zero to tec" classes. I have a trade set up with a friend where in exchange for a very fancy bike, I will get a gently used 7300 an HF-010 antenna from a friend, and a red LDG box thing and a blue LDG box thing and some coax, a power supply and an external tuner but it is arriving probably in November/December realistically (he wants to hand deliver it to me but gave me the gift card so we can make the trade happen earlier). Open to everything but a full desk top home shack is currently unlikely due to me travelling a lot for work.

That's pretty much a shack in the box right there. The red LDG thing is a 9:1 unun and the blue LDG thing 1:1 is a choke/balun btw. The 9:1 unun the red box is used for building a random wire antenna. If you attach a length of wire that isn't resonant on a band like 35.5 ft (10.8 meters) or 71 ft ( 21.6 meters) and throw the end up in a tree or on a mast you get an antenna that can work 40 - 10. Also add some counterpoise wire like 20 ft or so that can just lie on the ground.

I just skimmed thou,gh the Radioddity site and if you don't have a NanoVNA for measuring SWR I'd pick one of those up:

https://www.radioddity.com/products/nanovna-h4

Vital for any type of antenna building. You can use the 7300's built in SWR meter but it's not advisable and a lot more convenient to have a device that can measure antenna characteristics standalone.

Real Retard Posting Hours dijo:
Also what is this new xiegu thing going on?

I actually just saw that for the first time checking their site. Very excited to see a 100 watt Xiegu radio. Just as long as it has a price advantage to something like a Yeasu or ICOM, otherwise I'm not sure its worth it.

Btw, I'd build a random wire if you have space to run it and can get the end or feedpoint high enough instead of using the HF-010. A lot easier to deploy than a vertical IMO, but you do need some space for it

(Invidious)

Real Retard Posting Hours · Ayer a las 2:30

888Flux dijo:
That's pretty much a shack in the box right there. The red LDG thing is a 9:1 unun and the blue LDG thing 1:1 is a choke/balun btw. The 9:1 unun the red box is used for building a random wire antenna. If you attach a length of wire that isn't resonant on a band like 35.5 ft (10.8 meters) or 71 ft ( 21.6 meters) and throw the end up in a tree or on a mast you get an antenna that can work 40 - 10. Also add some counterpoise wire like 20 ft or so that can just lie on the ground.

I just skimmed thou,gh the Radioddity site and if you don't have a NanoVNA for measuring SWR I'd pick one of those up:

I actually got one because I thought I would use it to listen to short wave radio (i wanted to make some antenna at one point)- never used it tbh.

888Flux dijo:
I actually just saw that for the first time checking their site. Very excited to see a 100 watt Xiegu radio. Just as long as it has a price advantage to something like a Yeasu or ICOM, otherwise I'm not sure its worth it.

Hmm so seeing how I have all my bases covered. What should I get with this gift card?

How is the uv-25 or the uv-25 plus or the DM-32UV?

888Flux · Ayer a las 3:23

Real Retard Posting Hours dijo:
How is the uv-25 or the uv-25 plus or the DM-32UV?

The DM-32UV is pretty cool, I like that it can do both analog and DMR. If you don't have a HT already may as well pick one of those up. Someone else in the thread might have some other suggestions though

Slime Tube · Ayer a las 4:41

Hmmmm. Xiegu G7250. Going to wait and see what the price is on that front. The pre-owned market for second hand HF gear is reasonable if you know where to look and I'd be more inclined to pop for a used Yaesu or Icom if the prices were similar. It's simply because the support ecosystem is there for those brands;Yaesu customer service is fantastic.

There's a Baofeng DM-1701 on there at approx $70 and they openly state they're selling a model that runs OpenGD77. If you don't mind the lack of GPS and want a DMR radio, that's probably worth a look.

Real Retard Posting Hours · Ayer a las 11:26

Slime Tube dijo:
Hmmmm. Xiegu G7250. Going to wait and see what the price is on that front. The pre-owned market for second hand HF gear is reasonable if you know where to look and I'd be more inclined to pop for a used Yaesu or Icom if the prices were similar. It's simply because the support ecosystem is there for those brands;Yaesu customer service is fantastic.

There's a Baofeng DM-1701 on there at approx $70 and they openly state they're selling a model that runs OpenGD77. If you don't mind the lack of GPS and want a DMR radio, that's probably worth a look.

What is so good about open GD77?

Slime Tube · Ayer a las 11:57

Real Retard Posting Hours dijo:
What is so good about open GD77?

From stuff I've used personally: APRS beaconing, the promiscuous mode features are nice when trying to pick out the colour codes on the local tier 3 network, manual talkgroup entry (not having to preprogram your radio is wonderful), improved radio UI (you can edit stuff on the handy rather than having to hook it up to the cps). It's a big quality of life improvement over the factory interface on the DMR hardware I've tried. There's a lot I've not played with (iirc there's features for ISS doppler in there).

888Flux · Ayer a las 21:58

If you are interested in HF SWL oddity listening, Milcomm, or digital signals processing I just found this absolutely cool as hell blog:

https://i56578-swl.blogspot.com