INGO HAM Radio Club

[laf]

I do POTA with my G90, 9Ah bioenno battery, and ARRL long wire antenna kit. Toss that up in a tree, string it over to a buddy site usually and operate off a bench. Problem is the RV's are worse than a modern house for electrical noise. Usually I have to ask camper friends to turn off their battery charger and then my birdies drop off. I have added about 20 mix 75 ferrite cores to the 12v circuits in my camper and that's cleared up most of my noise but they don't want me in their electrical box. I'm almost always on FT8 or occasionally SSB but with a young kid, I need to be able to walk away quick to deal with them so POTA activation always takes a back seat.

 

[PistolBob]

If you're a CW POTA op...Elecraft has a new radio out. The KH-1 made for SOTA and POTA operators. All self contained. They started shipping a few this week. Looks interesting.

 

[Cameramonkey]

If you're a CW POTA op...Elecraft has a new radio out. The KH-1 made for SOTA and POTA operators. All self contained. They started shipping a few this week. Looks interesting.

It’s a neat little design that’s for sure.

 

[PistolBob]

It’s a neat little design that’s for sure.

K4SWL Tom Witherspoon has about a half dozen YT's out there now showing this new radio off. Personally I love doing POTA but this radio is not for me. I do love my KX-2 though.

 

[1SG USA Ret]

Stopping by to say Hello. N9IKE here. I am rural near Markleville and belong to two County clubs. Been a ham since 1984. Our local club: Madison County Amateur Radio Club (W9VCF) has 67 members of which about half are active in the club. We have weekly donut meetings on Thursday mornings at 9 am and monthly regular meetings on the first Monday of every month at 7 pm. Both are at the County EMA at 200 N Delaware St in Anderson. We have a weekly net on Wednesday nights on 145.39 with a PL tone of 151.4 at 8 pm. Feel free to check into the net and say hello. We also test on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 7 pm and walk ins are welcome. As we are an ARRL affiliated club, we collect a $15 ARRL fee for testing. We have people from all over central Indiana show up for test sessions. We even just finished a General class and will probably start a Tech class in the spring. Classes are on Saturday mornings. We are on Facebook and have a W9VCF.org webpage. Some of the
members of one club are in the W9OBH Anderson Repeater Club on 146.82 PL tone 110.9 and are members of the county EMA. They have outreach programs both clubs participate in throughout the year. 'Nuff said!

 

[laf]

The ARRL's year of the volunteer is winding down but Indiana has one more activation. If you want to be W1AW/9 you can sign up and pick a band and operation type and practice your pileup skills. It starts on 12/13 and ends on the 18th. I picked a couple of slots for digital modes.

 

[1911ly]

W9AMR here. I am in South Bend. A group of us locals get on 146.520 around 10 to 10:30. Some times we move to around to 75m 3805-3825 depending on activity.

If there are just Extra class in the group we move to 80m on 3705. From time to time we move to 160, usually on the weekends if the band is really busy. Feel free to join in.

We are a friendly group of rag chewers that talk about anything you can think of. On HF we have regulars from all over that join in. Hope to catch you on the air. Please feel free to say your from INGO.

 

[Cameramonkey]

W9AMR here. I am in South Bend. A group of us locals get on 146.520 around 10 to 10:30. Some times we move to around to 75m 3805-3825 depending on activity.

If there are just Extra class in the group we move to 80m on 3705. From time to time we move to 160, usually on the weekends if the band is really busy. Feel free to join in.

We are a friendly group of rag chewers that talk about anything you can think of. On HF we have regulars from all over that join in. Hope to catch you on the air. Please feel free to say your from INGO.

Not sure how well my wire will tolerate 80m but I might try to pull you guys in for giggles. My stick analyzer says not too good on 80m but its worth a shot. (and I dont have the real estate for a longer wire.

 

[1911ly]

Not sure how well my wire will tolerate 80m but I might try to pull you guys in for giggles. My stick analyzer says not too good on 80m but its worth a shot. (and I dont have the real estate Ifor a longer wire.

If it is less then a 2:1 or 10% reflected power it should be fine to try a QSO. If all else fails a signal report would be awesome!

73

 

[Cameramonkey]

If it is less then a 2:1 or 10% reflected power it should be fine to try a QSO. If all else fails a signal report would be awesome!

73

Nope. 3.3. And I dont think my FC-50 is that good. I might give it a shot and see what the tuner says.

 

[1SG USA Ret]

W9AMR here. I am in South Bend. A group of us locals get on 146.520 around 10 to 10:30. Some times we move to around to 75m 3805-3825 depending on activity.

If there are just Extra class in the group we move to 80m on 3705. From time to time we move to 160, usually on the weekends if the band is really busy. Feel free to join in.

We are a friendly group of rag chewers that talk about anything you can think of. On HF we have regulars from all over that join in. Hope to catch you on the air. Please feel free to say your from INGO.

On Wednesday nights after the 8 pm net is over, the ragchewers go up to 28.465 so the Techs can talk too. You are welcome to check in and say hello. Aim your antenna towards Anderson. The 2 meter net only lasts about 30 minutes. N9IKE

 

[Cameramonkey]

Being a ham came in handy today.

I got a confused call from one of our managers. "Hey, Bryan said I should call you on this and you would know what to do. We got this weird letter from a company telling us our license with the FCC is expiring? Why would we have a license and call sign? Do we need to pay them to renew our license? Is it even legit?"

Well as a matter of fact, I know exactly what is going on. I can probably get it renewed directly through the FCC's licensing system. (Bryan knew I'm a ham and didnt mention it to her. Just that I'm the guy that knows things.)

Now I get to deal with the FCC because the UPN used to create the license doesnt seem to exist, and the gent that originally worked on the project is LONG gone.

 

[1SG USA Ret]

Personally, i think Dstar use is waning. Proprietary software always turns off a lot of people. Plus when you interface with stations via the internet, are you really playing radio?. Locally in the cincinnati area, the k8big dstar repeater used to be heavily used. I just checked and only about ten unique stations in last two weeks.

I have a couple of guys in my club who are FT-8 nuts. I like to get them riled up by telling them "That's not really ham radio."

 

[phatgemi]

I have a couple of guys in my club who are FT-8 nuts. I like to get them riled up by telling them "That's not really ham radio."

LOL. On one hand I agree with you but sometimes ft8 fits in with goofing off in shack doing other things. I can work ft8 and still watch tv or do computer work (i do have second old laptop dedicated to diggie modes). Plus a big big goodie for ft8 is they are the most prolific at qsling via LOTW.

 

[caverjamie]

I have a ham and a gmrs license, but my interest ebbs and flows in the hobby randomly. Last couple years I've only done mototrbo/dmr stuff. I still have a motorola xpr-2500 uhf dmr radio in the car. I did just finish installing a pair of kenwood nx-5700 and nx-5800 decks in the truck, so I can actually do vhf and uhf mobile again. Now I can do P25 as well, but no repeaters close enough to me...but maybe on the next road trip. I know Indy has one, and Floyds Knobs down this way.

 

[Cameramonkey]

I have a couple of guys in my club who are FT-8 nuts. I like to get them riled up by telling them "That's not really ham radio."

Yeah. Saying FT-8 is ham radio is like saying that race they did a while back where drivers were all in self driving teslas and were only there to tell it to start and to be there if something went wrong was a race.

Yeah, it takes skill to set it up, but once its running, you arent really doing anything ham.

 

[Cameramonkey]

OK, this is odd. Hoping fellow FT8 users on a FT-891 can chime in.

When you transmit data via WSJT, does your power meter on the radio show your output power?
I ask because I just got my digirig mobile Friday and am starting to play with FT8. I followed a tutorial and got my radio configured. But I cant make contacts to save my life.

So I started troubleshooting and noticed that in data mode, when I set the meter to power, it shows no power emitted. (I tried 5, 25, 50w, etc) If I key the mic I show no power on the meter. If I change to CW and key the mic I see the correct power for CW being emitted.

So is my rig not actually transmitting for some reason, or is it not supposed to show power while in data mode?

And yes, I see the irony of my last post. Just playing around when I dont feel like actually talking to anyone. I actually started this journey to do some WSPR to check my propagation.

Next step is winlink and maybe some mesh stuff.

 

[laf]

You aren't transmitting then. I don't have that radio but what I found for others in my collection is if the ALC meter isn't at 1 bar you won't get anything out. If your sound card is too low mic volume, you won't get audio to amplify. If WSJT-X output gain is set too low you also won't get out. There's 4-5 things to look at.

Radio told to listen on that jack for audio (my Xiegu G90 has mic or jack input, others are data port or mic port or usb)
Windows mic level set high enough
WSJT-x mic gain set high enough
WSJT-x output device is the digirig (youd hear tones on pc speakers if it was set to them)
Split operation set wrong, set it to none in wsjt-x until you figure out how to get power out. Then change it to rig if you can.

 

[Cameramonkey]

Found it. Two issues.
First somehow my output got muted.

Second, I fat fingered my call and omitted a number in the middle. Which caused bizarre issues. It would put my outbound calls in brackets <>, which caused others apparently to ignore my traffic. It also dropped my grid square from my CQ.

As soon as I fixed my call, my auto fill worked and I had a contact on my first reply to a CQ.

Cool, but not nearly as cool as a phone exchange.

 

[Cameramonkey]

Pray for my wallet.

Next week one of my offices is moving from Parma to Brecksville, OH. And I'm the network guy that moves the network gear and sets up the new offices.

That new location is about 30 mins from DX Engineering. So I'd be a fool not to stop by.

Now, the answer is, can I only pick up the $80 or so in parts I NEED?