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MFJ is ceasing its on-site production

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Re: MFJ is ceasing its on-site production

#111

Post by hnthrowaway0328 »

firesteelrain wrote: post #77
germinator wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. It might be a part of it, but the hobby just lost its luster. It used to be this magical way to connect with friends and strangers. Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical. Other aspects of the hobby aged poorly too. The ham community (and the regulators) were slow to embrace use cases that might have been interesting to younger people in the 21th century - say, mesh networking. Instead, the…

It’s all what you make of it. I have built antennas to talk to Amateur Radio satellites, launched PicoBalloons (one went over Iran just as the attack was kicking off a couple weeks ago), NOAA APT and GOES LRIT capture, SDRs, Parks on the Air (which honestly has reinvigorated ham radio ALOT), WSPR, FT8/4, Shortwave Radiogram, etc Then there is Ham Radio Crash Course, Long Island CW Club (Morse code has made a big come…

Pico ballons seem to be extremely interesting. Is it legal to release such?

Re: MFJ is ceasing its on-site production

#112

Post by blahyawnblah »

topspin wrote: post #31
cogman10 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am surprised that someone didn't want to buy them. I mean... how big is the market for ham radios? I've not really met an enthusiast that wasn't at least 10 years older than I am.

One thing to remember about ham radio is that there is a bit of natural bias in the demographic: a lot of the stuff involved requires a certain minimum amount of things that older people tend to have. Property being one of the keys. HF antennas, towers, etc. are essentially outlawed by HOAs and entirely infeasible for renters. Some of the equipment is pricey as well. You can do a lot at low cost and without property,…

Pretty sure federal law says HOAs can't do anything to prevent HAM radio antenna installations

Re: MFJ is ceasing its on-site production

#113

Post by teeray »

bnpxft wrote: post #99
sidewndr46 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This continued piece of disinformation is incredibly destructive to the hobby. You don't need a tower or a huge piece of property to get involved with ham radio. I do most of my operation portable, sometimes operating out of a backpack and have plenty of fun with it. If you want to put up an antenna as a renter you can easily do so on a small freestanding tripod.

I second this. You can get on HF with very little space. If you have 16ft of space, you can easily put up a temporary 10 meter dipole. I have an HOA, so every time want to get on HF at home I put up the 10m dipole. I stick three 7ft wooden stakes in the ground, tie the dipole to them with paracord, and talk to people all over the world. That dipole is just 2 pieces of 8 foot wire soldered to a SO-329 connector. It pr…

> Admittedly, I'm currently making contacts all over the world right now on Hacker News.

It’s the difference between crossing the ocean in an airliner vs. in a sailboat. The end results are the same, but the methods and skills are wildly different.

Re: MFJ is ceasing its on-site production

#114

Post by ahazred8ta »

defrost wrote: post #78
minetest2048 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reverse engineering the early Navstar GPS packets before they were public Any write ups on this? GNSS reverse engineering seems interesting

Possible but unlikely on the net, I was very young at the time although happy to tackle the puzzle parts, the people doing the hardware and other projects of that time were a kind of post war loose knit quango of former commonwealth | european south east asian post z-forces collective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Wong_Sue * was in and out and round about, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Beadell dropped in an…

When my dad was in Thule in the 1950s, the base engineers built a full double rhombic for HAM / MARS. It was glorious.

Re: MFJ is ceasing its on-site production

#115

Post by topspin »

blahyawnblah wrote: post #112
topspin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to remember about ham radio is that there is a bit of natural bias in the demographic: a lot of the stuff involved requires a certain minimum amount of things that older people tend to have. Property being one of the keys. HF antennas, towers, etc. are essentially outlawed by HOAs and entirely infeasible for renters. Some of the equipment is pricey as well. You can do a lot at low cost and without property,…

Pretty sure federal law says HOAs can't do anything to prevent HAM radio antenna installations

This is not the case. Federal laws preclude HOA bylaws, municipal and state law from blocking antennas for satellite TV and radio service and antennas for terrestrial fixed internet service. It says nothing about antennas for amateur radio service. As such, almost all HOAs ban antennas for amateur, CB or any other purpose not protected by federal law.

The ARRL tried for years to obtain the same protected status for amateur radio antennas and failed. They've since ceased lobbying for this as it is costly. Occasionally one legislator or another tries to get the language passed and it is always shot down.

Re: MFJ is ceasing its on-site production

#116

Post by topspin »

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #103
markemer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s just because I’m an EE, but I really got into the data modes too. Like did you know how stupid simple old school pagers are to create signals for? You have to make some slight modifications get them into the Ham Bands (or buy a new one, apparently a thing!) but after that it’s just 512 baud FSK.

Fascinating! Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment? What band do you use? Now I want to try this.

> Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment?

There are many cases of overlap. The "upper" pager band is 929-931 MHz. There is a lot of adaptable commercial 900 MHz equipment knocking around. There are also agile transceivers ICs like STM32WL than can tune 150-960 MHz continuous, for example. The lower pager bands are at the lower end of VHF. You can make transceivers at those frequencies from through-hole parts and cheap tools.

The great thing that has emerged recently is low cost RF tools. You can get cheap, hobbyist grade RF instruments for a song today. NanoVNC, TinySA, affordable antenna analyzers and more can do things that cost thousands of dollars only 10 years ago.

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