I am looking for a in ear speaker that also picks up your voice through the ear canal. I know that places make it (I have seen one for a cell phone, and another from "sportsCom" at www.atlanticsignal.com but they are not currently selling them).

I want something that will work for high noise situations, and not be combersome. I would like to use this with an HT for emergency communications, and also use it for use inside a full faced helmet (motorcycling and snowmobiling with my wife, also a ham).

any help would be greatly appretiated

-N0FI

That is EXACTLY the kind of Ideas I was looking for.

When trying to diagnose, I live close to my dad (a few miles away) so we sit on the phone and talk, and then I can listen to him when he transmits and tell him what I hear. I probably should just drag my radio to his house...

we will check the mic jack tonight.

thanks,

N0FI

My dad recently purchased a used Kenwood TS-430 and is getting back into ham radio after a few years leave.

The radio seems to work fine, except the signal sounds sort of muffled and "choppy". We have been told by more experienced hams that it sounds like "RF in the Mic". We first tested it at my house, with a 80m, dipole, then moved it to his with a G5RV and antenna tuner, same results at either location (rules out antenna or Power supply problems). We then attached a good electrical ground to it, no change.

The problem occurs on 80m, 40m, 20m, but not 10m.

What should we do? what do we need to check? I plan on trying a different mike, but after that am unsure of what to do.

Any help would be apprecaited.

I think you bought the wrong radio :-(

I have a 2100H, and it is a good, simple radio, but I don't believe it has a removable face. Because of this, all of the controls and the display are mounted directly to the main board. it would be very hard to unsolder everything and make new mounts to hold the diplay and dials in the correct place, and then add an extention wire in between.

I would recomend selling the 2100 and buying a radio with a detachable face.

hope it helps,

N0FI

Unfortuantley, ditching the videos is not a good options. With the videos we can effectively cover All of the material needed in one weekend (8 hours saturday, 4 hours sunday, with testing the following saturday so they have time to study as needed). Without the videos and their efficent arrangement of topics, and effective animations, it would take drasticly longer. Also, we would hate to make drastic changes to our format, as we have been having wonderfull success. We hold a class twice a year, usually have a dozen or more people in it (not bad for Fargo ND) and over the past 2 years, have had an almost 100% success rate (and many of the people have no electroncs background)!

So that is why we just want to make sure we pick up the extra details of the changes... so we can cover that after each video section.

thanks,
   N0FI

Does anyone know what the changes were to the new tech question pool? A fellow ham and I teach a class to help others get thier tech license. We got the new books, but the club opted not to get new videos.

So, we want to know what questions were added, modified or removed so we can make sure we include the new info (or drop the old) in our class. We haven't had any luck finding the info online, and don't want to spend the time it would take to go through each question (we are volunteers, after all). We are trying to continue to provide as informative of a class as possible.

Any help would be appretiated
 - N0FI

This is a great link for helping you be the most prepared for the test. I wish I had seen something like this back when I took the code test.

http://www.qsl.net/wj5o/mcode.htm

-N0FI

I am curious about what weather variables affect VHF and UHF Propagation. I live out of town, and frequently us an HT. I find that some days/nights I can hit the repeater fine, while others I can't.

Is there certain weather conditions that help or hurt (other than the obvious impact of a storm).

Does the time of day, or sunspots effect it?

I didn't think there would be a lot of variables in line of site propagation, but when I am pushing the limits, I see a lot of variation.

thanks,
    N0FI

Thanks for all the advice. I guess I didn't really consider the dangers of having the battery charging and discharging there. The battery sits on a wood shelf right below the radio, so It actually is sitting right infront of my lap :-0   Not a good location, and although I do have the radio directly connected, I am hooking up the charger with aligator clips, another no-no.

I guess I have decided to continue using the battery, but to move it to the other side of the wall that the shelf is on (and into a large, empty closet), and run wires thru the wall to the power block, so I can hook up the radio and charger away from the battery. It will also prevent any serious damage should an explosion occur.

Thanks for the advice,
As it turned out, I had a entirely different potential problem than I was concerned about, and now can get it resolved before it is a problem.

N0FI

This is a fascinating discussion, since I have been doing the same thing myself. I have 2 antennas in my attic, a copper J-pole and a 1/4 GP. I found they both worked good, with a slightly stronger advantage to the J-pole. When our local repeater power amp was broken and it was transmitting at 1/4 watt, the signal was about 1.5 S units stronger on the J-pole. The j-pole is mounted slightly higher (3 feet higher at the tip).

I live on the ND-MN boarder, so I have no elevation differences to work with... everything is flat here.

N0FI

I have recently become active in ham radio, and bought my first HF radio. Due to cost constraints (and the fact that I bought it used) I did not buy a power supply.

When I first purchased the radio, I needed a quick fix so I dug around the garage for a while and found a deep cycle battery. I hooked that up and it has worked very well, too well possibly, because I am not sure if I need to buy a PS now.

Here are the advantage...
  1) Super Clean
  2) No Power Surges
  3) No Power Cutouts
  4) No need for a UPS (I wouldn't NEED one anyway)

Disadvantages...
  1) Must be charged occationally (I have a second battery if I need to charge when I want to talk)
  2) LOWER VOLTAGE

The second one is what I am concerned about. Every radio seems to be designed for 13.something volts, and this puts out ~12.5 Volts. Where is the minimum voltage where a radio will start having problems, and a lower power output? I am using a Yaesu FT900, but that shouldn't make a difference. I assume this question is also important to those who operate in thier car with the engine of to eliminate noise.

Is there any other reasons why I should move to a Power supply? This battery seems to be working a lot better than I had hoped.
Thanks,
   N0FI

Where I wouldn't discourage you from talking with your local frequency coordinator first, since you are in a rural area, you probably won't have any problems. As long as you are ~100 miles from a repeater on the same frequency, you should be ok, and if you are truly rural, and not within 100 miles of a major metropolitan area, you probably don't have much to worry about. I live in a fairly rural area (MN) and although we have pretty good repeater coverage (with a linked repeater network that is awesome) there is still room for more.

Good luck,
   Matt Carlson - N0FI

Thanks WB2WIK,

For a little more background, the house is 100 years, old, there is no insulation (it is in the floor below the antenna) no wiring, vinal siding. All good points that I hadn't thought of mentioning. It still has very thick rough cut lumber and shingles (maybe even 2 layers). And of course, wiring in the floor below could cause some interference.

It is common in this part of the world (MN) to put your TV antennas in the attic, but I am willing to bet there is a lot bigger sacrifice than most people realize.

The loss you experienced is enough to convince me to brave the cold and put it on the roof.

thanks-
Matt Carlson  N0FI

I recently have been playing around building Homebrew VHF and UHF antennas, as I am far enough in the country where I can't always hit the repeaters with an HT.

Here is the problem. I am trying to determine the best place to put the antennas. I live in an old 2 story house with a big attic.  If I mount them In the attic, they will be slightly lower (less than 10 ft) but shielded from the weather, more accessable (I can access them easily at any time, any weather) and have a shorter (20-30') feed line. If I mount them on the roof, it will be hard to access (I live MN, and am not going on an icy roof).

How much loss can I expect from having the antennas in the attic? I have been looking around, but have found nothing that addresses this issue. I will be putting up a tower in a few years, but in the mean time, want to make the most of what I have.

Thanks,
Matt Carlson   N0FI