Free Republic

Before you can get on the air, you need to be licensed and know the rules to operate legally. US licenses are good for 10 years before renewal and anyone may hold one except a representative of a foreign government. In the US there are three license classes—Technician, General and Extra.

In the days since the U.S. Air Force shot down three unidentified objects out of the sky, questions linger about just what these objects actually were. On Thursday, a report by Aviation Week offered an intriguing hypothesis about what one of those three objects could be: a "missing in action" globe-trotting balloon belonging to an Illinois-based hobbyist club. The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade’s (NIBBB) silver-coated, party-style "pico balloon" reported its last position on Feb. 10 at nearly 40,000 ft. off the west coast of Alaska.

3Y0J DXPEDITION 2023 We are very proud to present you our new website after the resetting of the 3Y0J DXpedition. ​ After the announcement of the sale of the Braveheart we have discussed a way to continue this adventure and improve the cooperation between the team members. We have continuously looked for another vessel and finally found this gem. ​ The team and costs will be reduced which makes this adventure more likely to be funded with the same level of skills and security. ​ We are very happy to present our new team and our plans to make of...

Robert Glorioso, W1IS,who describes how he solved some problems in making dual-band J-poles(intended mostly for field use) function well on both 2 meters and 70 centimeters.

This talk should be of interest to anyone interested in building their own Yagi antennas for the VHF and UHF bands. The talk lasts for about 38 minutes with a short 10 minute Q&A session after it. WA5VJB also has his own website which has antennas and equipment for the microwave bands here... https://www.wa5vjb.com/index.html Posted by John, EI7GL at Thursday, February 18, 2021

On this super informative episode of Sound 101, Andrew talks us through 5 tips for better wireless audio. These are things EVERYONE can do to improve range and quality of your wireless system, whether you are using the Deity Connect or something else. We cover a variety of options that should solve any problems you're having with your wireless audio. Many people overthink how to get better wireless range but a lot of these tips are very simple. Transmitting audio at long range can be accomplished by using these tricks. We cover wireless antennas, range, distance from receiver, directional antennas,...

Over the weekend amateur radio tinkerers in Europe managed to decode some portions of the telemetry data broadcast by the second stage of the Falcon 9 when it's in orbit. This data was in a somewhat standard format, but decoding still required some custom tools to extract the bitstream from the signal and then some guesswork to figure out the exact format. There's still lots of unknown data, but most interestingly this gave access to the engineering cameras including one showing the interior of the liquid oxygen tank.

Build a dual-band low-noise amplifier for 2 meters and 70 centimeters" by kim kocsis WA9PYH is on page 48 https://amatortelsiz.com.tr/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/CQFeb2021Fiby2C5.pdf

Two Meter Ham Radio Keyboard to Keyboard with mail box capability. Here is Central California we have a 2 meter packet radio network on 145.050 MHz. There are 10+ separate nodes that can communicate with each other. Any Ham Radio station running packet that can hear and transmit to at least one of the nodes in the network and access all the nodes and any other station that can also hear at least one of the nodes.

WARNING: AMATEUR AND PERSONAL RADIO SERVICES LICENSEES AND OPERATORS MAY NOT USE RADIO EQUIPMENT TO COMMIT OR FACILITATE CRIMINAL ACTS The Enforcement Bureau (Bureau) of the Federal Communications Commission issues this Enforcement Advisory to remind licensees in the Amateur Radio Service, as well as licensees and operators in the Personal Radio Services, that the Commission prohibits the use of radios in those services to commit or facilitate criminal acts. The Bureau has become aware of discussions on social media platforms suggesting that certain radio services regulated by the Commission may be an alternative to social media platforms for groups to...

Open source RF hardware has been under development for several years, a boon for ham radio operators and academics. Open Research Institute anticipates that the Commerce Department will find that these technologies are unrestricted under the carve-out for open source in the EAR.

Free and cheap ham radio projects list by WA5VJB

I came across a post by abigkahuna N6TDG about having a Free Republic Ham Net for shut ins for the China Virus. I think it's a great idea. Big Kahuna mentioned 80 or 40 meters. I don't have an 80 meter antenna due to space restrictions so that won't work for me. We should keep it in the general frequencies of 40 meters so that more operators would be able to participate and Big suggested an evening net. I'm KC3OLY and I'm sure there are a lot of other Freepers out there with their amateur radio licenses. Come on everyone,...

Hello there fellow freepers! Thining about a net for us Kung Flu shut ins...Maybe 80m or 40m. Evenings might be best for all involved...what say anyone? N6TDG

It’s not cellphones or the Internet, but 127-year-old technology that helps to ease the burden of commuting around the Capital Region.Jock Elliott of Troy coordinates the Capital District Commuter Assistance Network, a group of volunteer amateur, or HAM, radio operators who provide information about travel hazards in an effort to ease traffic congestion. Commuter Net, as it’s called, is a 20-year-old system that has sustained itself without dues, bylaws or regular meetings.“When I started, I felt that if it were my wife or son out there, I would want there to be somebody to help,” said Elliott. “I got involved...

Elements of the US Department of Defense (DOD) will conduct a “communications interoperability” training exercise November 4-6, once again simulating a “very bad day” scenario. Amateur Radio and MARS organizations will take part. “This exercise will begin with a national massive coronal mass ejection event which will impact the national power grid as well as all forms of traditional communication, including landline telephone, cellphone, satellite, and Internet connectivity,” Army MARS Program Manager Paul English, WD8DBY, explained in an announcement. During the exercise, a designated DOD Headquarters entity will request county-by-county status reports for the 3,143 US counties and county equivalents,...

I Went to the Atlanta Hamfestival this weekend and passed the tests: Technician, General and Extra all in one sitting! This all started when I made an impulse buy of a cheap, dual-band HT back in April. I had planned on testing just for the Technician class, but the more I studied, the more I thought I stood a chance at going from "Zero-to-Extra". I'd always been intersted in radios, starting back in the 70's CB era. Growing up, I had a fire-fighter Uncle who worked on radios on the side. I was always fascinated by his radio workshop and...

Being able to effectively communicate with family and friends during an emergency is critical. In the past we’ve seen disasters quickly take down the infrastructure needed for cell phones to operate as well as situations where cell towers were undamaged but overloaded. When too many people try to use the same means of communication the cellular networks can quickly become overloaded and calls simply will not go through.

ince the radio-frequency emission from planets is expected to be strongly influenced by their interaction with the magnetic field and corona of the host star, the physics of this process can be effectively constrained by making sensitive measurements of the planetary radio emission. Up to now, however, numerous searches for radio emission from extrasolar planets at radio wavelengths have only yielded negative results. Here we report deep radio observations of the nearby Neptune-mass extrasolar transiting planet HAT-P-11b at 150 MHz, using the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT). On July 16, 2009, we detected a 3σ emission whose light curve is...

20 or so people in there, half of them under 30 going for their technician. I was one of 2 in there to upgrade to general, and one showed up for the highest class, amateur extra. Anyways, I ask this kid (22-25yo) "Why are you getting into ham radio"? He matter-of-factly said, "For the upcoming zombie apocalypse". I laughed and half the room turned around, glad to proclaim the same, hell even bragging about it! A couple more admitted that they were embarrased to say that but essentially that is why they were there. I found out with a little...