Poor HF conditions during Field Day

[Larry N.]

Have you checked out Amateur TV? I'm with a club in Boulder that has a TV repeater runniing HDTV on 70cm, 1.2 GHZ, and others up to 10 GHz. Portions of this are home brew, especially on 10 GHz, though it's usually through inexpensive purchased components and/or scrounging from TV or microwave operations discarded equipment. But some keep it simple, such as a particular inexpensive drone transmitter (FM analog video) and receiver on the 5 GHz band.

Kinda neat.

There are a number of digital modes around these days for HF, for VHF/UHF repeaters and/or simplex, even tie-ins to the internet that can allow you to use an HT on 2M/70cm to speak to folks around the world, whether Great Britain, Australia, Africa, etc.

I'm on a 40M LSB HF net almost every morning (0700 mountain) with a group of folks (the 40-8ers) who use the internet as some help in coordinating folks from Colorado to Wisconsin to Florida to Texas (especially helps when propagation is poor) using a program called netlogger to track who's on, as well as using various SDR (Software Defined Radio) sites that often allow us to hear one of the members whose signal can't quite reach everyone on the net. There are something over a dozen of us, and all are welcome.

Hope you can soon find something of interest.

 

[DonTom]

Have you checked out Amateur TV?

No, but my buddy in NM in the middle of nowhere was into that type of thing. Paul, KM5SW. He mainly enjoys the weird bands. We used to be coworkers until he met his wife during a hike. He then moved to NM to be with her. She was a doctor, but now they are both retired.

73, -Don- AA6GA/7 Reno, NV

 

[Mark_K5LXP]

have yet to find a ham radio activity that has grabbed my interest

What motivated you to pass the exams? Something had to spark an interest.

For me the hook was this thread subject, Field Day. It was a different time, before internet and cell phones so communicating to other places was a pretty novel thing. Doing it off grid made it even more fun. Today I find it fun operating in spite of device connectivity. But what I find fun is secondary to what others like. What I've come to discover is despite vast media resources, there is precious little content of what hams do. So absent a what's-what of ham radio I've managed to stay engaged by simply participating and exploring new/different things as they're encountered. Waiting for something to inspire you might happen but involvement will make it quicker. I'm not a contester but I'll do contests. I'm not big on digital modes but I'll load them up and get them to play. I decided at one point to try satellites and that ended up being something I really liked. Try something, anything, and even if it's a dud it might take you to something really cool.

Mark K5LXP
Albuquerque, NM