The title of this post sucks, but it's what I've got for now.
Ham radio is a multi-faceted hobby. There are just so many things you can do with a radio set and some math.
One of the things ham operators like to do is try to make contact with other stations that are far away, something known as "DXing" (in radio jargon, "DX" means "distant station"). The farther away a contact is, the better.
The weapon of choice for hunting distant contacts is usually an HF radio. This is because the HF bands (between 3 and 30MHz) will reach around the world thanks to the fact that the radio waves will skip off the ionosphere. This allows an operator to effectively bend his or her signal around the curve of the Earth.
My problem is that I don't have an HF set, and there's currently no room in my budget to buy one. So while my wife is pleased that she won't have to put up with a radio shack in the basement and the backyard suddenly sprouting a forest of antennas, I'm not going to be DXing over HF anytime soon.
However, there is another possibility. Many operators are talking to distant stations on VHF radios, in the 2m band. While the range is not as great (VHF signals punch right through the ionosphere, so they won't reach the other side of the planet,) operators are reporting contacts as far away as 1000km thanks to other atmospheric effects like tropospheric ducting.
I already have a pretty good VHF set, which I was thinking of installing in my RV trailer. However, that's going to limit me in terms of when and where I can use it (for example, I won't be using it in the winter and if we're camping, I can't get out of everyone's way to go play with my radio.) Ideally, I'd like something a little more portable so I can lug it up to a nearby mountaintop when I'm out camping. And since I'm not using HF, I don't need a huge antenna, so a portable radio shack is not out of the question.
Most portable VHF radios find themselves mounted in a vehicle. For various reasons, that won't work for me, so I'm thinking of building a portable radio shack. Basically, a box that can be lifted into or out of the back of a pickup truck by one or two people. It would house a radio (or eventually two), battery, and have space to store a portable antenna. A place to put a 20W solar panel would also come in handy and would make the rig ideal for emergency situations.
As for the antenna, my early research is pointing me in the direction of a Yagi-Uda. Something that I can easily disassemble to store inside the box. Same for the mast; I want some height, but it also needs to be portable (ideally, stowed in the box beside the antenna.) This means flimsy; hopefully I can come up with something that can be attached to the side of a vehicle for stability.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
HAM N00b
Last week, I became a ham radio operator.
Some people may ask, "why the heck would you wanna do that?" Well, there are a few reasons.
For starters, I'm a geek. I'd gone pretty much as far as I wanted to go with photography, and I needed another hobby that would give me reason to read books and absorb information. In comparison to other hobbies, (like say, restoring a car,) amateur radio has some real benefits. It takes up less space. At least, for now. It can (mostly) be done indoors, which is very helpful during the cold winter months. There's less of a chance I'll find myself laying under a car in the mud trying to force stubborn pieces to fit together. And overall, it doesn't cost as much. Again, for now.
Secondly, I like math. And while there's bucketloads of math in everything we do, a lot of it seems to have concentrated itself around radio. And it's the special kind of math, made of imaginary numbers and black magic that makes your head want to turn itself inside out. All of that math boils down to how long to make a certain piece of wire and where to put it so that you can talk to another geek on the other side of the planet. That may sound condescending, but it's not. Geeks are awesome. Without geeks, we wouldn't have cell phones. Or the internet. Which means we wouldn't have Angry Birds or Candy Crush, but it also means we wouldn't have a man-made object drilling holes in a comet.
And then, there's the Zombie Apocalypse. Or ice storms. Or aliens. Or anything else you can think of that can cause a large-scale disruption of the infrastructure that makes civilization work. One of the reasons the government sets aside portions of the radio spectrum for the use of amateur operators is that, given time and geeks being what they are, eventually a communications network springs up that is completely independent of any commercial venture. This comes in handy when those commercial networks fail, such as when a car crash on the highway knocks out a fiber optic cable. Or an ice storm brings down power lines and leaves whole communities without electricity for weeks at a time.
It also comes in handy when someone is lost out in the bush, where there's no cell service and the mountains are too close together to get a signal to a satellite phone. These are places where industry has no need to build a communications network because normally there isn't anyone out there to use it.
For all these reasons, and more, I wrote my test and got my ham license.
Now it's time to start learning.
Some people may ask, "why the heck would you wanna do that?" Well, there are a few reasons.
For starters, I'm a geek. I'd gone pretty much as far as I wanted to go with photography, and I needed another hobby that would give me reason to read books and absorb information. In comparison to other hobbies, (like say, restoring a car,) amateur radio has some real benefits. It takes up less space. At least, for now. It can (mostly) be done indoors, which is very helpful during the cold winter months. There's less of a chance I'll find myself laying under a car in the mud trying to force stubborn pieces to fit together. And overall, it doesn't cost as much. Again, for now.
Secondly, I like math. And while there's bucketloads of math in everything we do, a lot of it seems to have concentrated itself around radio. And it's the special kind of math, made of imaginary numbers and black magic that makes your head want to turn itself inside out. All of that math boils down to how long to make a certain piece of wire and where to put it so that you can talk to another geek on the other side of the planet. That may sound condescending, but it's not. Geeks are awesome. Without geeks, we wouldn't have cell phones. Or the internet. Which means we wouldn't have Angry Birds or Candy Crush, but it also means we wouldn't have a man-made object drilling holes in a comet.
And then, there's the Zombie Apocalypse. Or ice storms. Or aliens. Or anything else you can think of that can cause a large-scale disruption of the infrastructure that makes civilization work. One of the reasons the government sets aside portions of the radio spectrum for the use of amateur operators is that, given time and geeks being what they are, eventually a communications network springs up that is completely independent of any commercial venture. This comes in handy when those commercial networks fail, such as when a car crash on the highway knocks out a fiber optic cable. Or an ice storm brings down power lines and leaves whole communities without electricity for weeks at a time.
It also comes in handy when someone is lost out in the bush, where there's no cell service and the mountains are too close together to get a signal to a satellite phone. These are places where industry has no need to build a communications network because normally there isn't anyone out there to use it.
For all these reasons, and more, I wrote my test and got my ham license.
Now it's time to start learning.
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