GEARS W TX (146.115 MHz) recordings for 2025-12-03

Or is that the. The main one right there? Yeah, I got. I got two of these, actually. I got two of them. I got a pair of them. And then I also have an 878 anytone, but they just died. It just froze. So when. When I turn it back on now just stuff in Chinese. So I don't want. I have a 578 mobile and a second 578 mobile. I have one in the house and one the truck. Hopefully you hear me over the music. I. Over here. We're setting up for concert over here. So they're testing the stuff. So you probably hear music in the background with. So, But. All right, nice talking to you. Have a safe drive up to Sacramento there. T7GWF Las Vegas. I was going to say it sounds like a good time wherever you're at. Yep.

Well, that's a cool radio choice you have there. And I'm sure your anytone can be revived. It sounds like a software issue, whatever it may be. But yeah. Cool to see another fellow Motorola user out here. I will be listening again. The name is Josh. November 16th November Golf Monitoring.

Kilo, delta 3, charlie, charlie x ray. Kilo delta 3, charlie, charlie, x ray. Amanda, if you have a copy, on kilo, alpha zero, whiskey, whiskey, tango. Over. Kilo Alpha Zero, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, tango. This is KD3CCX. I copy you. Thank you so much for your help. How are you doing? Over. This is so cool. I'm happy to finally talk to you instead of talking to you through the keyboard. Hey, it's working great. And you sound fantastic, Commando. Glad to have you. Hooray. This is fantastic. It feels even better than when I took the training wheels off on my bicycle. So I'm coming through.

Your local repeater and you're on your rig, Is that correct? That is absolutely correct. I'm talking to you on my Yaesu FT991 right now, and I've got it hooked up to a mobile antenna that's just sitting in my hallway, as a matter of fact. And yes, you're connected through the Internet to this repeater and we're talking to each other. That is so stinking cool. I love it. I actually have Echo Link running on my cell phone right now. I didn't feel like pulling out my laptop. It's first world problems, you know, But I thought, well, let me just do this and see what I've got. And here we are. So what time is it out there right now? It is 7:05pm Eastern Time, where I am.

Oh we're three hours behind you. It's only four o' clock here. Sun's just about getting ready to set. I literally live right on the border of Nevada and eastern border of Nevada and Arizona. Matter of fact I hop in the car and maybe drive five minutes if that much and I'm in Arizona. It's that close. So the only downside to living this close is it kind of gets a little darker sooner over here but I don't care. Still having a good time and you sound great. This is so cool. I'm so happy to talk to you. Wow, no kidding. You are close. Really Just a stone's throw and you're in Arizona. Okay. Okay. Not bad. Yeah, you've still got a little bit of time left in your day. Mine is winding down rather quickly. My cat has stopped sulking me and is now curled up on a heating pad napping so I think I have her reprieve for.

But anyway, yes, it's fantastic to finally get the chance to talk to you as well. Online is the. Technically, I'm still online, but I think this is cooler. Yeah, this is way cool. Now we gotta. Now we gotta get you. Get you upgraded and get you on HF and really get into the world. I don't know what you got for equipment. I guess you're just getting started and that's cool. But, yeah, we're all anxious to hook up with you on cw. And I'm a voice kind of guy, CW as well. But either way, I can talk to you. That works for me. Excellent. Yes, I am just getting started. I am vhs, uhf, and then Echo Link for the time being. I'm glad I have Echo Link, though, because it's obviously extending my range.

Of what I have so far right now my bow thing I just have the 19 inch little rubber ducky antenna working right now on continuing to study toward my general so that I can extend you know what I'm allowed to actually be on in terms of I guess technically in terms of voice but because I can already do CW now when I have access to an HF rig of course but in any case I'm also finishing up learning the characters working working on that ICR so that when I do get on I'll be a lot more confident and I'm also working to make sure that I can practice on V band comfortably while I'm waiting for an upgrade. Well that's great Amanda. I love to hear this. This is fantastic and I'm sure a bunch of people have told you this but you can always reach out to me for anything if you got questions. I'm sure you got enough Elmers on your side of the country there to help you out but.

But hey, we're all here for you, so if something sounds strange, just reach out to us. Ka0wwt. Yeah, I definitely appreciate you, but. And what I'm finding is that different Elmers in my life seem to have different specialties. So very quickly learning that if I want to get one or two suggestions instead of of 25, I'll pick one person to go to instead of a whole forum, because I'll be sitting there for hours with everybody's insights. And it's fantastic insights. It's also extremely overwhelming being brand new. So if I have any concerns or questions, I'm happy to come to you directly. Thank you very much. Katie3ccx. What a cool call, son. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, well, you know, like I said, I know you know that. And it's like, give us.

Enough opportunity for as many you talk to. We'll have just as many opinions or even more. But that's okay. You talk to a bunch of different people and weed out the stuff and figure out what the real answer is and go with that. I didn't say that out loud. No, technically you said it over the air, not out loud. So I'll buy that that dog will hunt. But yeah, absolutely. It's been wonderful getting to meet people, and I'm really hoping to make it to the Daytona Hamvention next year so that I can meet some people in person. Steve N1SG has been helping me out with my characters on the Sunday afternoon Elmer Clinic, and I think he's that he goes there every year even though he lives in New Hampshire. So hoping to link up with him. I'd love to hear.

Meet you in person at some convention someday. I don't know exactly what takes place, where or when, but that would be really cool. Well, the wife and I are already planning a major road trip next year, and one of the places where we're going to be is in Dayton. So if you make Dayton, you will see me there, because in all my years of hamming, I have yet to be there. So we got a big trip scheduled, and part of that trip is Dayton, so I'm definitely going to make it next year. Outstanding. Oh, that's so exciting. My sister lives about an hour and a half away from Dayton, so I'm just going to make it a trip to see her, and then I'm going to pop over with Steve to be a part of the convention at some point that weekend. So that's super. D.

Exciting. Okay, as I told you, this repeater is. This conversation is going all over the place, so I don't want to hold this up too much, but I'm happy we got a chance to talk to each other and have this quick conversation. And we can certainly do this again at any time. Now that you're an expert in the field, You flatter me. Most days, I feel like I'm just barely keeping up with what's happening around me, but I don't mind. Everybody is so kind and patient. And like I said, I appreciate you making the time and helping me work through this, but. Yeah, that'll be just fine. I baked some oatmeal cookies, and they are calling my name, so I'm gonna hop off as well so that other folks can get on and do their yakking. All righty. I will talk to you soon on Discord.

Butch.ka0wwt. This is katie 3 ccx. I will be clear. 73. 73. Amanda, it was great talking to you. And we'll be over for the wife. And I will be over for those oatmeal cookies shortly. But keep the light on. K83ccx. K0wwt.

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Fresno link up.

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K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

Kilo5 julia, charlie alpha. Radio check. Kilo5 juliet, charlie alpha. Radio chat. Kilo 5 Juliet, Charlie Alpha, clear.

K7amp, k7cgq, K7 emp. You need to get an antenna. It.

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Kilo7 Oscar Foxtrot Oscar mobile from nevada.

How are things in perump and 6k in a year? Things are pretty beachy. A little chilly, but I can't complain. How about yourself. When you see a little chilly? Well, I guess. Yeah, Las Vegas can get pretty cool, huh? You see, Chili? How. How chilly? According to the handy dandy thermometer, my car, we're looking at 39 degrees on the south side of Drone right now. Okay, that's a little chilly.

And you often get wind there too, don't you? Usually. Springtime is about the worst with the wind getting into seasonal transition between hot and not hot. About the only time I see them. Yeah, we're transitioning into summer here. So the last couple of nights we've had some thunderstorms and late evening early morning rain. All is good. We could use the water. Currently 74.55 degrees here right now. That doesn't cost you. Better you.

Southern hemisphere. Yeah, I'm sitting right at 4 degrees, just a little outside of Bogota, Colombia. Quite lovely, actually. I've been here a year and I haven't seen it below 70 and haven't seen it above 90. Yeah, we're sitting at a good altitude here, too. 5,000ft. We had a cat that adopted us here not too long ago. Go. He's not a cat, It's a kitten. Darn thing just bit me.

Bit me on the end because I wasn't paying enough attention to them. Cats are kind of funny. More of a dog guy myself. But I'll still hang out with the cat. Yeah, it's kind of fun. Keep the roads away. Fish the snakes and get pretty good stinks around here. All right, well, I was just heading off the bed and I heard you chime in there, so I thought I'd better reply to you. The name here is Ken. I might be talking to you before you said you're Oscar. Oscar Oxford. Oscar. Is that right? That's affirmative.

I'm looking at my qrz lookup log here. I don't know. Maybe I haven't. Maybe I haven't looked yet. What is your. What is your full call sign? I'll look you up right now. Full sign is going to be kilo7 Oscar, foxtrot Oscar. Okay, Ryan. And you're out of Bron. You're not far from home, huh? Okay, well, Ryan, nice to meet you. And I'm gonna go ahead and start shutting things down here and sitting to bed. Good. Keep talking to you there in kn. Here, again, the name is Ken, and I am in Colombia.

I'll have a great evening there, Ken and 73.

System24 link up.

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Beep.

Sa. System2link office.

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Is am 7 pal test. If I'm getting through, anyone out there happens to be listening, I would appreciate a sign report.

This is KM7 Dal testing. If I'm getting through and anyone out there happens to be hearing me, I would appreciate a signal report. Kj7fku and you're coming. 5x5 full quiet. I appreciate it. You are also coming in 5 by 5 73.

This is Kim 7d A L testing if anyone out there can hear me. And I suspect that this signal is probably coming through pretty good. I would appreciate a signal report. Kj7fkq again. Yeah. That one is not as clear as the first one. You got some popcorn going on. And the overall quality is not as good as the first transmission you had.

Well, I'll hop back over to the other repeater because your audio quality sounds good enough. You sound like you might be a knowledgeable guy. Is Repeater Book still sort of the best source for if repeaters are actually active? I've just kind of gone through repeaterbook and there are a couple other local websites, but they might be maintained the and loaded everything into the Baofeng, and I'm just kind of going down the list, making notes of what works and what doesn't. But it takes a while. So I'm new to this. I don't know if there's a better way. You just have to you're doing exactly what I did was just go through all the different frequencies to see what works or not. Yeah, Repeater Books did. There's also another website that got some good stuff called Radio Reference. And one of the issues that you you have with these.

That things can change so fast that takes a little time to get the website's update. Yeah, looking at the website thinking was like Las Vegas Ham or something like that that just had a table of some stuff that it was the correct frequency and correct PL tone, but like the call sign had changed or location had changed. So I lucked out with the program and felt like the name was wrong. Yeah, you just gotta kind of do some research and practice and see what's working or not. You know, there's a few clubs in town. You know, I believe that this is the Henderson Radio Network that we're on right now. I live in Boulder City. I'm always using the B1 on there. I know there's also the Las Vegas Radio Radio Amateur Club. And then there's also the Spring Mountain Radio Group. Those are like three clubs.

That are around also cincy repeaters and a few other ones around too. So they're out there. You just gotta kind of dig for them. Yeah, I was listening to. I think it was on the N4NJJ repeater network where I think some of them are linked. Some of them are wherever. It was a IRLP thing in between here and Buffalo, New York. That was pretty neat. But I think I ended up missing the window of whenever the nodes were still linked before. I asked him how cold it was up there. Yeah, some use like the wind system and other linking protocols and stuff. Yeah. If you're new to this, just keep at it. It gets really fun and you just have to practice it like you would musical instrument or something.

And other question I had was if I misprogram something and I have a DMR repeater set in and I hit with FM signal on that channel, is that going to screw it up for them? And is it going to be in a way that's super obvious for me because I've lucked out so far. Accidentally programmed a couple in, but then you can hear what's clearly DMR signals on a non DMR radio. But I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be accidentally stepping on anyone's toes here. I don't think you would in that situation, because you're dealing with completely different protocols. I'm not an expert at it, but I'm going to say no on that. I really appreciate the advice. I think I'm going to keep on hopping on down this list and see how much more time.

Time I'm going to spend staring at chirp 73kn 7dal sounds pretty good talking to. Yeah, I would check out the website radio reference and I know that on Chirp you can access it as well. I do think you might have to pay a small fee for a subscription, but there's a lot of good repeaters on that as well. Good Talking to you 7 3.

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K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

86 mobile 101 in motor park system 26 lake.

Deep.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

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K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

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Here.

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Fresno link k6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

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Fresno link up k6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

M60.

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K6poc mobile general system 26 link k6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

N6sm.

Well, John, if you're listening, how did your solar project or your turbine project, your wind project? How'd that come along? Just got my cup of coffee. KN6MGK. Carla 36. Oh, we're just sitting around here watching the money grow, I guess. Whose money? I don't know. Listen to 80 meter. And the answer to your question about the wind turbine, it's in the box, ready to go. Just got to go to the desert. Okay, so, yeah, you listen to 80 meters. You listen to those guys on 3. 9. 9. They're probably done by now, but, gosh, they start off. One of the guys gets up sometimes at 4 or 5 in the morning.

One of the guys lives right over here in Magalia. So listen in on that frequency occasionally, maybe you'll, you'll hear something interesting. And it's 3885 I'm watching, listening to it on that Dr. SDR. Is that frequency that they have the net or they have a get together every morning. Is that 3,955? Well, the one I'm talking about right now is 3,997. And there are some guys from around Washington, Reno, Nevada, one guy here from Magalia, Oregon. So a little bit of a diversity of locations, but within a few hundred miles of each other here. But anyway, you might take a listen into that if you're talking about Sundays.

Sunday mornings. That's 3855. Oh, okay. So they just have that on. 3855 is only on Sunday morning. Yeah, that 97. That 3997, I think you said it was. I think I went through that. I heard some people talking on that, but I'm basically listening to the. Oh, CNBC and checking emails and stuff like that. You know, just hanging out, getting ready to go to Red Boss. Oh, yeah. Cnbc, huh? Yeah. I quit watching them back when Mark Haynes died. Yep. That was the end of it for me. So I started watching Stuart Varney. Varney and Friends after that. Yeah. Mark Haynes and. And they were a pretty good group. And. Yeah, we used to.

Watch them every morning. You know, like I said, it's Erin Burnett. She went to CNN after she had a little run in with a Saudi Arabia guy or something. I don't know what it was. But nevertheless, yeah, Mark Haynes was pretty good. Yeah. Well, that's when things weren't too political. And, yeah, I watched it until the morning he passed away. And, you know, I watched Aaron Burnett probably for a little bit after that. But when she went full on communist, I was out of there. I didn't want to bother with listening to her anymore. So that's kind of what happened. And then still some. Okay. People left on cnbc, you know, but some of them I wouldn't listen to anyway. But, yeah, Varney and friends.

A couple good, good people on there these days. So the only one left that I, that I liked at all on CNBC was Rick Santelli. So. Anyway. All right. But whatever. Yeah. I've been watching Gold and Silver go sky high again. Yeah. I didn't see that. Well, I guess. Yeah. You talk about communists. I'm afraid that. Well, it's not what they call communism, but dictatorship if they don't be careful. The White House is going that way, but I think they're going to get in the midterms. It's going to change. Yeah. It seems like about every midterms. It does. So if there's a if there's a Democrat in the administration, the Congress kind of starts to turn.

More Republican, and then when there's a Republican and the administration turns more Democrat, you know, it's supposed to be kind of. That's kind of the way it's supposed to kind of work because, you know, change is supposed to be difficult. KN6MTK yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's. If everybody would. I don't know what you would say without getting too political about it, if, if you didn't buy the Supreme Court and threaten everybody that made the law. You know, I mean, it's blatant. There's a lot of people are breaking the laws, and you gotta admit that. And that's what I'm afraid of, is it's never going to go back like it was.

Yeah, well, the rules and laws have all been broken for a long, long time before I was born, including the Supreme Court and the stacking of the Supreme Court and all that stuff. Judges being bought off and stuff like that happening for a long, long time. That's nothing new under the sun. It's not even political anymore. So that's just sometimes about greed. So, anyway, it's unfortunate, but it's tough to find a perfect governmental system out there. I think that us in America have one of the best ones of the world, so that's good. But keeping corruption out of government, that's tough. When man is involved, we tend to mankind, at least, tends to be sometimes greedy and immoral. Yeah, well.

That's, that's I kind of agree with that. Once they get a little bit of power, they kind of use it, and then they get more and more and more. And next thing, you know, they kind of run the place without any garage rails, let's put it that way. But yeah, it doesn't make any difference who gets in there, just long as they get the one that's in there out. And, you know, like said it'd be three years, you got to put up with it. And then they put a Republican or a Democrat. That thing is just amazing. Yeah, every once in a while, like on the second Reagan administration, he won by a real landslide. So people were pretty well backed behind Reagan for at least the first part of his second term. And, you know, that's pretty much when I was first starting to vote and so forth.

So with Reagan. So, you know, but it is tough to find people that stand by. And then, of course, Clinton, I think he was pretty well for his second term, was pretty, you know, it was a pretty good administration, too. So it's really it crosses party lines that every once in a while you get someone who the majority likes and, you know, is willing to keep them for a couple terms. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what about radiant, about the 80s, he had a tough deal to deal with. And actually, he was a he was an actor, but he was a tough guy. I believe he went in there and just did it.

And, you know, he was dealing with 18% interest. And you know what that does. I guess I lost it. But. Anybody? No, he. He brought the interest rates down. You know, he. He dealt with a lot of hard issues when he inherited, I guess you'd call it. So he was pretty good, I think. Hard. But he. You didn't lose me. I was just delivering a cup of coffee to my wife down.

The hallway. So it's that time of the morning for her. She's gonna get going in about a half hour. And I'll be leaving about 15 minutes after that. But anyway, I've been working this antenna I put up. It might be a neat one for you to try at some point. Maybe you could research it a little bit. Just an off center fin dipole. So some people call them Windhams. There's different varieties of them. You can build them yourself pretty easily. But instead of being fed at the center, it's fed off about a third of the way. And some of them are a little bit less. So maybe 20% of the way, it's fed in a different spot. And it's able to give you more bands. So this one I cut for 40 meters, and it works for 40, 20, and 10. So I get three bands off of one.

And pretty resonant in those three bands too, because they're harmonic. It's not going to be perfect. It's like two to one. It's a little bit better than that. Like one and a half to one on 20 meters and 10, but two to one on 40 meters. So very usable. Yeah. Have you got it? I remember you saying something like that. Have you got it up yet? And I've seen that on YouTube. I've seen offsets and stuff. I'm not sure if it's the exact antenna or not, but yeah, you know, like I said, right now we're, we got 20 meter up. We've been making contacts on 20 meters and being kind of slow, but it's big enough. Well, have you ever gone to PSK reporter? Because you could plugged me in right now. I was working ST8 this morning for about an hour.

And, man, my map's pretty darn good. I was getting I got into Indonesia, of course, Japan, that's pretty easy. But China, all over. All over China anyway. And of course, all over the United States as well. But little skip zones in there. But maybe just has to do with population between, oh, I don't know, say, Utah and, you know, some parts of the, what do you call it, like, the plains. So. But anyway, if you ever go to PSK reporter this morning, I was working it. So you kind of see the propagation. I was getting on 40 meters anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, you know, I go on YouTube just like everybody else does. You do, too. Everybody does. And I went in and seen.

What that FT8 and I guess it's PSK is same or somewhat the same. Not the same, but somewhat. And you're on this 891. You have to get a external sound card to hook it up. He would tell us all how to do it, all that kind of good stuff at half dude. And I kind of enjoyed that. That was kind of cool. But what I'm into now, Steve, I was going to tell you, I told told Mike about it is to make this QSL card. We have a little card made up. Kind of designed it ourselves, I guess you call it. And I gotta give credit due for it's due. My wife is the one that's doing it. And when she gets it all fixed up, I'm going to take it down and get about 25 training.

Send you out. Well, I'll have to get you on HF first anyway. Yeah, I have never made up any cards. A lot of people are doing them all electronically and stuff like that these days, but there's a few. I probably got a dozen of them here over the last few years where people send me that I probably need to send something back to them someday. I just happened. Yeah. Do you know what I mean by a PSK reporter? PSK reporter. If you just go online and you go type in PSK reporter. Do you know what I'm talking about? To be honest with you, not. Not really. I just know it like digital. Probably crossing your beard. That's not all I know about it. No, I'm talking about a website. I mean, these are things, tools that you need to know for propagation. So.

PSK reporter online. If you just Google that, it'll, it'll say, like, display reception reports. You know, you can, you go in there and you can put, you know, use different filters and so on, like, what band, 40 meters, what call sign? And like I'm KN6MGK. And then, you know, look, look over the last couple hours and it'll propagate a map. It'll show you all the stations that we're hearing me on, say, FT8. So it's real important because if you go out in the field and you want to know what band is working, you know, how's propagation on all the different bands, you can really quickly operate FT8 for a few minutes on each band and get an idea as to how your, how your antennas are working. Yeah. Okay, so that's a PSK report, is that correct?

Well, it's PSK report. Sure. But I'm sure that it might come up that way. Okay, yeah, I'll do that after a few minutes or maybe when I get back from restaurant. Yeah, yeah, we'll see about it. We'll check it out. No, I really like that. I. I don't know. I've always used a, you know that QRZ chart, You know, where it says two bits. Good. That. That kind of thing. This is a little more exact, I think, kind of tells you where they're hearing you specifically or hearing anybody else. What stations? Yeah. So the one other comment I'll make, because I have a. You have the 891. I have an 857D, which is basically the same thing as an 891, but it adds VHS.

And UHF all in one. Well anyway if you ever wanted to do say FT8 or JSA call or any digital mode the sound card you need is a digi rig and you just go online and order it. That guy is really neat. I just emailed him, I told him what rig I had and he said yeah just order this and this. It's a set of cables and the digirig and I did and I got it in and been using it and it works great. So anyway but the one that they sell is pretty easy for the 891. I think it's like the Dr. 891 or something like that. So they've actually made one specifically for the 891 and you know the total price of the cables and the digirig probably right around 100 bucks. It's not so bad, little extra thing you got to carry but I went to the dollar store and got this little plastic bag thing. It's very small but.

The digirig is the size of a matchbox, really. Cables is what kind of counts there. And. But it fits in there. And I put that in with my. My kit. So in haul the whole thing, my radio and that and microphone and all that stuff in a really small bag. KN6NGK. Yeah, that. Yeah. I think the one they were not advertising, but show it on YouTube. Was it Tiger single or something like that? And I think, like you said, it was running about 130 bucks, 134 bucks. Then you buy the cable, or the cable comes with it, and it plugs into the back of the radio. It's plug and play. Pretty much plugging into your computer. Get your software up and run it. Yeah, well, that's kind of what I'm trying to. Trying to help you.

Because even Mike would agree with you. Now that's old school like the signal length they're huge. Yeah you want to get the new stuff now. So digirig is it so things the size of a matchbox. You know it's not very big. Maybe it's a slight bit bigger than a matchbox but anyway it's very small. Yeah that old school thing was a big box with these serial cables you had to wrap all around them in a DC power cord and stuff. I mean at the Gears auctions they pretty much throw them away so I know people still pay for them and everything but I've never seen anyone pick one up at the Gears auction for three years. There's always one sitting there and it always gets tossed into the electronic waste file at the end. So everyone uses these newer digirigs now. They're a lot smaller, a lot more portable work just as good if not better. Can 6 MT.

Yeah, they come out with all kinds of newer stuff. Yeah, that's one of those. I think that. Tiger parts. I've seen them. Like you said, you know, I've seen them. I didn't know what there was, but I seen them. I'll be honest with you. But yeah, I've seen them on at ham swaps and stuff like that, you know, But. But no, we. We were just looking at it, and, you know, right now we're. We're just playing around with it. I figured I'd get two contacts a day. That's good enough for me to park some of the air. And I'm a hunter. And then I put in there. Qrz. There was a guy yesterday, he was really excited in la. He's been a half for years, but he just pried up his rig and.

I was the first one that he got a hold of. He was really excited over that. Oh yeah, yeah, I already got one. Well I have to leave here in about 20 minutes but this morning I was up and yeah, I already got one contact on parts on the air this morning so. But it was FP8 like I said. So I was operating FT8 for about an hour and a podcast came up so I go, yeah, let's grab that. He was in Texas so not a big deal. But yeah, sometimes you fall back on wanting something that you don't have to talk on. Even CW is one of those. After about an hour of talking like I did the net last night and I was there for 50 minutes, my throat was getting dry. So anyway, it's nice to have another mode to fall back on and FT8 can be one of those and so can CW and so can other forms.

Of ham radio, but it's just fun having different choices. And yeah, you get out there in the desert and you work some photo stations and stuff like that, and maybe you have lunch and just want to look at your computer screen and see what's populating. Like this morning, a Fiji station came on. I got Fiji. Some China stations came on, Hong Kong, Singapore. But the Hong Kong and the Singapore stations couldn't hear me. I could hear them, they couldn't hear me. That happens a lot. But anyway, but I did get Fiji, and I got there's a de expedition going in Vanuatu, and for two days I've gotten them every morning. So Vanuatu is coming in pretty good on 40 meters. So anyway, early morning on 40 meters has been really good. Then it kind of dries off during the day. But that's why it's neat to have a morning.

Multi banded antenna. And I'll go back to that, that offset of fed work. Three bands. So 40, 20 and of course, 10. And if you get one long enough, this one was longer, I cut it down. But you can get it to work, you know, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10. But I don't have the room for that here at the house, so. Working pretty good. Something worth thinking about next time you put up an antenna that you want to try something a little different. Yeah, well, like I said, I got the 10 and 20 meters. I gotta get me a little switch, you know, switch antenna type deal from the two coax up there so I can put them both up at the same time. But I'm waiting until I get down there to Quartzite. Now Quartzite, they have a lot of that kind of stuff.

At that hampshire there and then down there. Yuma. Now that's a big corporate, I guess you call it corporate. These will show up. And plus they have all kinds of people there, you know, I mean, it's a pretty good sign down there. Yuma. So I plan on going in and I'll pick up those logging in there. Well, as a ham radio operator, we tend to like lots of coaxes running through our house, I guess. But it is kind of nice to be able to get more than one band on one feed line. So something to consider. That's why I like the N Fed half wave and I like the off center fed. I've also used a version of the G5 RV called the G0 GSF. That was probably the first antenna I built. And I was able to get on even parts of 80 meters, too. On the digital part.

Anyway on that one, and set that one up as a, as a, as a inverted V on that one. And I hung that one up at about 30, about 35ft or something like that. And that worked pretty good. But, you know, had its limitations, too. I built that one. So pretty interesting. But these multi banded antennas can be pretty nice, but they're not perfect. So they might be like, you know, 1 and 3, quarter to 1 or 2 to 1 SWR and so forth in different operating areas of the bands. But my understanding is you have that little antenna tuner, so that would fix it up. So it'll work really well with anything that's close to resonant like that. Yeah, it does pretty good. Here's a question for you. I think I know the answer, but I'm just going to.

Going to throw it off to make sure that I'm thinking in the right mode there. As long as you get your antennas, say, 8ft off the ground, like the inverted B or something like that. The height really doesn't make that big of a difference. Or does it? The higher the better, I'm sure. But the takeoff angle is. Is okay. Say if you were 25ft of ground. Well, there's some tactical purposes for antennas right on the ground, especially for listening. So antennas can work anywhere. In fact, a lot of people will put up a listening antenna, like a loop on the ground, they call it. You can research that. Some people use their fence lines. Like, I have a wood fence around my house, and they'll put it right on the fence line all the way around their house.

For listening. A lot of times you can transmit off of them too, but that's where the ground can absorb your signal, at least a good part of it. So it just depends on what you're after. But anything that's less than a quarter wavelength from the ground is considered NVIs. What do they call that? Very close communications. So, yeah, no, the ground plays a pretty important part of things. And higher isn't necessarily better. It depends on what you're after. If you're after dx, you know, further contacts, then higher generally is a little bit better because you have less ground absorption and more refraction from the ionosphere. So you would want higher. But let's say you want to talk to Oklahoma consistently, you probably don't want as much dx. You could be skipping right over them. So you want.

To set the height. Right. So you get the best refraction for that type of communication. So my answer to your question is it depends. Yeah, you answered. All depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for local, as we call local. Hold on. Or if you're looking for a long distance. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I get what you're saying there. Now, see, I have my. I have my antenna. The speed point of about 25ft. And the, you know, it's an inverted bead. And I come off the deck about 8ft at the bottom, and that's at each end, if you will. You know, of course, there's been out maybe 30ft or so, but I hit Texas. I hit Texas.

Like I'm hitting you and Mike and everybody else. Oh, there's two meters. I hit Texas 10 meters. Just easy. Yep. Yeah. And you know what? That's like hitting Japan. So Japan on 40 meters or on 20 meters, generally it's easy. So just like Texas, you know, so it's got the right, the right spot, you know, anyway. But totally understandable for me when I'm setting up portable, I like the vertical antenna. I've been trying to encourage you to get a vertical antenna, especially when they're cheap. Some of them are cheap. Like the one, one that I use that I can get over to the East Coast a lot. Real Easy is only 40, like 45 bucks on Amazon, you know, so, yeah, I think that that's a good thing to have in your kit, you know, and it's very simple.

The breakdown and everything. Now if you wanted to spend more money then you would go get like the JPC12 or something like a lot of people are or that radiodity one that they're selling right now. But yeah, Those are probably 150 to 180 bucks or something like that. So they get more expensive then. But I'm just talking about the cheap Chinese one. I have a more expensive one too but the one that works just fine for the price is that little one from Amazon. You know what is it about a 17 foot width that's extendable, you know and so it breaks down to being about maybe 2ft tall overall or something about like that when it comes down. So it's pretty small, easy to carry. Wrap my radials right around it. So anyway, but that just gives you a little bit different propagation than these wire antennas do. Yeah, yeah, no, no I, no I appreciate that. It's just nice.

I have looked at the. Oh, I'll forget this. I don't know. I got to wrote it down over here somewhere, but it's pretty expensive. But anyway, it's 80 meters, 40 meters and 20. I think it is 23ft tall and doesn't need any radio. But I've been Googling it and asking can I use my metal roof of my house or the radio on a vertical antenna? And some. Some come back. Oh, yeah, yeah, no problem. Just make sure the electrical contacts are good and all that good stuff. Other one says no, but I feel like that if you use the roof of your house, you're going to get a lot of noise. I don't know. Yeah, I think that's what's going to happen. But yeah,

You can. I don't see why not. You probably have to put a screw in your roof somewhere, huh? To try to get a good. Make sure you get a really good electrical conductivity there. Use a little grinder to grind off a spot, you know. So that's my thoughts, but yeah. So if you could put a vertical up above it, right. Then attach the ground field to your roof. Sure, why not? Yeah. Like you were saying, I kind of feel like that you're setting yourself up for some RF noise in your shack. And you know what? At 100 watts, it's probably not a big deal, but you start wanting to throw 500 watts at it and you're probably gonna. All your computers are gonna start wigging out. Your mouse. Your mouse clicker thing is gonna move all around. I know. I've experienced all this. By the way my monitor shut off all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. That's what this guy on YouTube said. He said that he lives in.

You know, homeowners association. You know, he moved there in a big attic. He put it in the attic. And he said that it's okay if you're running like 25 watts or even 50 watts. But he says you go pumping 500 watts, that's all going through your house. And I don't want to deal that. I don't want to even deal with it. But Josh, my son back in Oklahoma, he's got one of those kitchen faucets that I think the way you do it, you clap your hands or you touch it or something, the water comes on. The first time he keyed up his hf, he turned the water on, it off. Yeah. This weekend, my wife maybe turned it off. There was a contest at CQ Worldwide for cw. So other countries are looking for American stations. And so I'm listening. And CW.

And trying to contact them and making a few contacts. And my wife starts yelling at me that I'm shutting off her appliance, that she's running. And so I had to quit. So anyway, that ended my radio day. But anyway, it happens, and I was running like, you know, maybe 100 watts on CW. So just trying to get these other contacts and other countries. So that's the way it goes. What can help that is if you put a good station ground in and I've got one pounded in out there. I just haven't attached to it correctly and everything. So that's something I got to work on. And then maybe I gotta change out one or two GFCI sockets in the house here. That would help too. Yeah, yeah, I got. I gotta run. But let me tell you this. I got a. Well, I got the regular house.

For the electrical box where when they built the house, they drive an eight foot copper rod in the ground. Well, I drive it. I drove another. It was about a ten foot. But I got about all but about four feet to ground and I hit a big rock. And the rocks up here, you know, they could be as big as your house on the ground. So anyway, I stopped. But what I found out one morning I woke up on this 20 meters and I got a lot of noise. I thought what in the world of that? Because the day before or the same week before they I had zero z up here and almost zero. I mean it wasn't completely, you know. No. Extreme. But anyway, what I did, I shut everything off my house and I flipped just the meter off and the meter itself was making noise.

Oh, yep. All righty. That can be. Well, anyway, it sounds like you got to get going, and actually, so do I. So we'll chat with you later. Nice talk there, and hope to hear from you again soon. 7 3Kn 6Mgk. All right, Steve, you have a good day there. And like I said, this KN6SLM6 7 is your wife. Run the red luck. See you.

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Local. Good morning.

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And x, y and z. Mobile, sacramento.

N6yng mobile sacramento.

K7 is easy. Q testing.

N6yng mobile and listening. Carla 16.

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K7zzq testing with david and butch on the mesquite receder. K7zzq. Wat wa7kqs. You guys copy? Okay, I'll jump in here. Johnny, you got a quick keying, buddy. Quick keying. K0wwt. I can hear you both just fine here. K0wwc, This is K7VCQ. Holding the microphone down for a second. Is this any better? It.

Ka0wwt, wa7kqs. Butch, I copy you fine on this end. I don't hear Johnny. Go back to david, johnny. Wa7 kqs. K7bgq. I could not hear you on the m2 speaker. Well, Butch, I don't know. I don't hear any audio from Johnny at all. Okay, wow, that's wild, because I can hear you both fine. Okay, Johnny, sounds like there's something mucked up on your end. Ka0wwt, but I can hear you.

Good simplex, guys. K0wwt.

Wa7kqs back on.

Ka0wwt.kwzq.ka0wwt. You're a little bit fuzzy, but you're still very readable. Very readable. Well, nothing I can do about location, but that's okay. But at least. Okay, we're on my Kenwood.

Radio right now. And so I think this is working a little better. Maybe then, I don't know. We'll see. So, anyway, he's got something to work with. It's perfectly usable. There's no doubt about that. K0WWC. Alrighty. Well, thank you so much for the test. And I'll be clear. K7ZZQ.

N6yng mobile listening to system 16 in lodi. Station in San Francisco. Good late morning. This is Essex Point and G Shock Mobile. I'm based in Los Angeles, but on my way driving stop.

From Sacramento. Audio is a bit low, but I'm not sure if that's a LinkedIn thing or on your end. Audio lows. That's my end. I'm not talking up into the microphone. I just woke up and turned the radio on and. Okay, well, there's somebody mobile they need somebody to talk to, so I'm here. Well, I appreciate you coming back to me. I called like a few times, actually, earlier this morning and was unable to raise anyone. So. Can you talk on the system regularly? Normally I'm up at about 6 somewhere right around there, and I talk a couple people to work and then I get back to bed generally.

And I kind of hang here normally all day long. You know, once around the van, up and down, check things out, see what's going on, maybe find somebody else who needs a radio check or whatnot. And I'm always there. Terrible. Some kiddos. Oh, I'm trying my best not to. So I used to listen to this system a lot more back in like 2020, and then kind of hopped around the airwave. This didn't make it into the scan list. Radios. And then as I'm mobiling, I'm like, huh. Well, now that I'm out of range, my normal LA repeater. Might as well see what else works. I know there's car led just about everywhere in the state, so figured I'd put it in. Sure enough.

This thing works quite well. What's your name again? And call. I didn't quite get it the first time. Is George. And let's see, what else? November 6th. Green, yellow, red. You won't see any AC here on the freeway because. Traffic. Flights. That's an easy way to remember Ngyr. Okay, well, great. Great to meet you, George. So you said you talk to people on the way to work. What do you do?

I'm retired. I used to be a radio technician with something called RJ Network. And I was also the station security manager. Air Force missile contract Vandenberg. Lots of fun. You know, you go through the countdown and, you know, launching all kinds of weird hours we bring in to heat ourselves silly. While we watch all the recording instruments go off and whatnot. Basically, we're just receiving stations. That sounds like quite the interesting role, especially if you're into space exploration and rockets. I'm trained.

Semiconductor. And some of the trains I've worked on are the ones that run up by Vandenberg. And there have been a few times where we've had to hold outside the limits of the base for a rocket launch. And yeah, it's pretty cool having a front row seat, watch that thing shoot up over the ocean and pretty beautiful background too. That was probably me with one of my launches. Anyways, I retired from that, you know, everything was boring. After a while, I retired.

Currently on uhf, the HF band, so I get to play around on all the computers and stuff. I haven't really had much of a reason to explore the other bands, especially because I live in an apartment and putting up an HF antenna would probably be a little bit difficult. And prior to moving out to my own place after college, I lived in college dorms and at my parents place. I don't think any of those places would want an HS are kind of going up either. So I decided to do a lot of P25 back home in Los Angeles. Probably my favorite digital mode. Don't use digital don't use digital voice. I'm old school, gotta use the voice analog and gotta play with it, you know, gotta talk to it digital play through.

But you know, I've done all that. I used to bounce signals off the APRS signals off of the space station as it went by, and I did that for a long time and was quite successful at it, more or less. After that I just started doing new computer time and the old one crashed. Oh yeah. Now we need new software, we need this and we need that. Never got there again. I've never played much with a hrs, although it does sound fine. So since you operate a lot of HF and Mitch ultimately do a lot of pw, No.

I like toss up to cw, but my ears don't work efficiently enough. Fast enough to decode. But I'm still trying. It's one of those things, you know, I've been tried. Didn't do it. Just keep battering my head off the wall until I figured it out in my head. But I was starting to listen to more cheap musicals on SBM lightly, so, you know, still a chance.

Well, I don't do much vw, obviously, on repeaters, but I did learn the code, picked it up pretty fast. I was given a practice talk later, and we practice on and got pretty decent descending and started, you know, learning the whole Alphabet. But it was one of those things where if you don't use it, you lose it. Well, I haven't really been using it. Best use case, though, is a lot of these commercial repeaters and amateur radio repeaters. They all IG in cw. So I'd like to get my copies back up so I can quickly identify with repeaters without having to first copy down smart, edgy, and then translate it or, you know, even haw over it first. I'd like to be able to know what repeater's going off anywhere with stress. When you do a lot of commercial band scanning or not useful.

Definitely be useful. No question about it. That's why I keep banging my head on the wall listening to it over and over and over. Yeah, I guess go practice oscillator over here. But MSJ used to make really nice memory gear. Memory gear over here for a co practice oscillator. It looks pretty nice. Yeah, I got electronic gears open, but makes a great co practice. So what type of radio are you talking on right now?

Ya ckd800r. A model that I've heard of. I know a lot of H2 Volks. I think I've heard a 2. 7 and then also. What else? 991 I don't own anything these new though unfortunately. I just have to play it with a lot of Motorola. Commercial stuff. Yeah, good old Motorola. As far as Motorola goes, infrared module that puts on one of the.

Boulder at? I think that's about it. No, I got two of these radios. I got an ST89, 7000. I also got 7900, 7950 over here on the floor, got that display in it. And two more radios up garage hd and, you know, Sounds like quite the collection. So is amateur radio the main retirement hobby? She passed her time with her.

Do some other things as well. Kind of weird stuff the X Xyl is. Our kids destroyed the place. I'm still playing with it and cleaning it up, fixing it and whatnot. Most of the time it's. Yeah, I would say between computers and radio, that's more or less my thing. Got lots of computers, got lots of radios. What are all types of croppy? Oh, good question. Quite junk. I'm also quite good at accumulating junk.

And yeah, amateur radio, for me, my activity comes in ways, you know, I'll be very active and talking a bunch and then I kind of, you know, life gets busy and then I don't talk on the radio as much. The topic that we came during COVID when everyone was staying home, I was talking on the radio just about every day. And now it's kind of mainly something I do when I pass the time while driving. So again, thanks for picking up my call because the long road ahead of me is either listening to my music, which I definitely enjoy, I love listening to, but every now and again I feel like I need to chat it up for a little while. So, yeah, amateur radio has kind of been a driving pastime, but just these past few days, I've been programming my radios a little bit more and sitting in front of a computer, working on the software and updating things that I've been putting off for months.

Yeah, I got a whole bunch of computers. Computers keep everything straight. Trying to keep it organized but I'm finding more and more that I look at it, it's not worth bothering out the pile. I got a trunk in a car out in the driveway and I use it for my electronically garbage can full to the brim. Ah, you would have loved it back when I worked at went to school at ucla. The e waste pile they had there. Tons and tons of keyboards and printers, fax machines, all these various electronic dismos that collect. Unfortunately it is trust me, I check.

Well, I've done a lot of things in my life. Working with missiles out of Annenberg. That was the last part before I retired. And before that I was retired from the US Army Corps of Engineers. I was a network administrator. I was a guy he used to plane to if you're stuff didn't work and we fix it, what did I do before that? I was a contractor. And I was a contractor. I used to work for Litten Industries. Used to make night vision goggles, all kinds of crap like that. And what else did I do? I've done all kinds of things. Sounds like you've led some fulfilling careers, man. And.

They have lots of experience in your Belgium. I take it you're probably collecting at least a couple retirement pensions now.

Both working on them earlier, so who knows, maybe they want to talk back to each other and test again. Anyhow, thanks for answering my call and pleasure getting to know you. Hopefully we cross paths on the air again. Maybe I'll have to hop on the trip a little more back when I'm in sunny SoCal. N6G yr this is N6Y N Z. It's been a pleasure. Problem? Sure. Glad to keep you away for a while anyways. 73 Drive carefully.

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Hpdh connected.

This is macdh. Is anybody around for a radio check, please? Hello? Hello? Radio check. This is november 6th golf yankee romeo system 32 south san francisco. Go ahead. And the tall is November Delta Hotel. I'm in Forklay and I'm trying to put Echo lynch on my tablet.

And I just got this tablet, and I'm just hooking this up here so that I can use it in case of a backup. But you're coming in peeping my needle, so you got a pretty good strong signal yourself. Unless you're listening to the input. I got a fairly decent signal, but out high altitude on the coast range, and we should work pretty darn good into Berkeley anyways. Yeah, you're. You're working just fine there. Everything sounds good.

Maybe one or two of these things at a time on this tablet. I don't want to over, over convince myself, overwork myself on this stuff. So I'm. I got a phone that I got to replace. I have a tablet that I replaced and I got. I just got my Yajuvs, this is back from Yeaju, and I have to totally program them. So it's going to keep me busy for a while to program everything. So I just do a little at a time and eventually I'll get everything back up again. All right, thank you. The name on this is Keith Ul Echo India Tango Hotel. And again, I'm in Berkeley. And thank you for the radio set. Remember.

Use a computer, you're supposed to back it up, right? Well, once you get the radio program, you get a little program called matter of fact, the program can help help you program makes it really easy. Called Chirp. C H I R P Chirp. Anyways, you download it, it's free. Then you download your radio into Chirp. And so that way it gets the format of whatever it is, how your format works on your radio, and then you input all the various frequencies off, tones and subsets, etc. Etc. And then save it. Now, yeah, if your radio goes south, you just go back to that file and load it up again after you get the radio fixed and you're good to go. Saves you a lot of time programming too. That's the main thing.

We'll try that. Is it an app or is it a program that I have to get online? The program, it works under Windows. I don't know what else it works under, but I use it under Windows. Works good. I just take my biofang and download whatever's on the biofang into the chirp, then edit it, add all the stuff I want, take all the stuff out that I don't want, set the configuration up the way I want it, and then save it. And that'll load it into the radio. And so I got a backup coffee on the computer. It's quite convenient. I mean, it's like 10.

Takes a lot of time to find those repeaters and dig up all the subtones and the offsets and all that stuff. So, yeah, I would use that program if I were you, just for the heck of it. I might look into that. Like you say, it takes an awful lot of time to look that up. And then I'm looking up for GMRS video, too, and to find out that the one up here in Oakland has a, you know, uses a PL cell phone, and it uses digital. What do you call that? DCS tones as well as next gen. That was a real hard thing to program into the radio just to listen to it. I just.

Program it to listen. I don't use it to talk. I got a regular GMRS radio to talk on. But you know, just to have it programmed in there to need it. But I don't use it. It's something else. So you're right. That is when you get into campus programming, just a little hair raising and head scratching. Lots of programming software up that you can buy and trip is free. They're constantly updating it, so I don't know how.

To work with CRMs or various digital voice radios and whatnot. But I'm sure those people thought of everything, so that's like that. I would give that one a first try on virtually anything. Seems to work quite well. Anyways, gotta go. M6GYR. I'm back for the radio test and the name on this is Keith. And I'll probably be coming back out here tomorrow. Every once in a while we'll use kyla. When I go up to Fairfield, I'll use kyla and then radio station in Jacksonville I can. And then Donna can be down here in. In Berkeley and I can hit her from there. All right, thank you.

And acdh. 73z6, qr. And kvdh disconnected.

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