I said "Sorry".  I too am approaching retirement.  You should see the faces on my students when I accidentally write E=IR on the board instead of V=IR.

Consider yourself lucky you don't have to deal with magnetism and have to deal with tesla's webers, gauss, and oersteds andwhich system of units they are.  It gets ugly.

W1BVV

At the risk of beating a dead horse and being too pedantic (I anm a Physics teacher and an Electrical Engineer), the E in older references to Ohm's law (I learned E=IR) also, came from the concept of electromotive force, or EMF sometimes written as a script E.  The electromotive force is actually the electrical potential created by a voltage source such as a chemical cells in a battery.  V, or Voltage or more accurately voltage drop or potential drop is a unit that is measured from a node to a reference (usually but not always) ground or across the two terminals of a resistor, or a battery.

Thus the voltage (V) of a battery is the voltage drop across the battery which would equal EMF (of the cell)- I*R where R is the internal resistance of the battery and I is the current being drawn from the battery.  Vb = EMF-IR.

So V, and what used to be E, and is now scriptE or EMF are very different.

There technically is no unit E, although E is the symbol for Electric Field.

Sorry,

W1BVV, Dave

It sounds like you don't really have a full understanding of the way VHF/UHF communication systems work.

Hams can operate (within the band plans) on any frequency within the 2m, 220 mhz, 440 mhz, etc bands.  To increase range, clubs and other organizations have built repeaters in various locations that operate on specific frequencies (an output frequency that you listen on, and an input frequency (a standard offset from the output) that you transmit on.  You usually program these into your radio, usually tagged with the repeater or club name and location.

Public service organizations (police, fire, etc) are licensed to use only specific frequencies.  There are repeaters on some of these frequencies (not all) and they work just like Ham repeaters.

To listen to PS stations you will have to find  their frequencies on an internet listing, and program into your radio.

Bear in mind that all PS systems have switched to Narrow Band FM, which has much small FM deviation than we use, so their volume may be low in your radio.

Also, its polite on EHAM, to use your call sign as your name.

73,

W1BVV, Dave

The Maritime Mobile Service Net (regardless of the name) on 14.300 1200 EST to band close, specifically asks for checkins or relays from deployed service personnel and well maritime mobiles and general checkins.  I monitor and checkin occasionally but have never heard traffic from military personnel.

Dave, W1BVV

Without lecturing me on the performance of the Opek hvt-400 antenna, can someone the problem and hopefully the fix to the common short circuiting problem with the mount?  I have the recommended trunk lip mount and it defies all my attempts to permanently fix problem.  I have added insulating spacers around the pin at the back of the pl-259 with no effect.  The only thing that works is a spacer between the shell of the antenna and the mount, effectively reducing the length of engagement of the plug to the socket.  But even that is only temporary and needs to be readjusted frequently.  Everything else I plug into the mount (cables, dummy loads etc) work perfectly.

When the connection is good, the antenna works acceptably for me considering its appearance factor.

Thanks,

Dave, W1BVV 

See my comment above in "Wasted Money".  I haven't seen a test report on the UV-5R but would be concerned about 2nd harmonic radiation.

Dave, W1BVV

I bought one when they first came out.  What I got was an inexpensive, fully functional 2W vhf/uhf HT.  Somewhat cheaply made, but very workable and definitely handy.  I used it as a backup on two major Public Service events hitting all the 2M and  UHF repeaters while my Yaesu was charging.  Then I found out from the ARRL that it has extremely excessive 2nd harmonic radiation on 2M (way outside FCC limits, based on a sample of two).  I verified that mine had the problem also.  UHF is ok though.  Sooo, as usual, you get what you pay for.

Dave, W1BVV

If your mic is an electret/condenser you'll need a bias supply of 6 - 9 volts DC.  Check past issues of QST for articles on using PC mics.  I use a 9volt rectangular battery for my headset running into my older Yeasu.

73  Dave

When you sign a file, if there are errors in the adif file it will stop at the error and give you an error message and tell you what field the error was in.  It will also throw out duplicate qso's.  It will fail for any error including typos, missing data or non-existent call signs.  Hope this helps.

Dave - W1BVV

It seems the bulk of the offenders are stations that are running a frequency.  They want stations to find them, hence splatter is good ( you can hear them +/- 5Khz and they certainly show up on a panadaptor), and most stations answering them have to wait a few qso's to get in through the pileup, so it doesn't matter if it takes a couple of id's to copy their call.  It just seems so counter to the standards of amateur radio to intentionally generate a poor signal.

73, Dave  W1BVV

Why do so many contest stations crank up the compression so high?  Sure you can find them easily while tuning, but after you do you can not understand them.  Am I missing something?

Dave, W1BVV

Don't know about dm780 but a benefit of Digipan over Multipsk is that Digipan will decode all all the signals in your audio passband simultaneously and you click on one and your freq shifts to it.  So you can scan them all for CQ's

Dave, W1BVV

The inverse square law only applies to fields radiating from point sources, uniformly radiating in all directions.  The basis unfortunately is from calculus, basically integrating in 3 dimensions with respect to r (radius) around the source.

Field strength from an infinitely long wire would be proportional to 1/r,  field strength from an infinite plane is constant (hence the field in a capacitor).

Antennas (other than a theoretical isotropic radiator) have complex radiation patterns making close integration solutions impossible and therefore the r dependence of radiation is very complicated, always falling somewhere between 1/r^2 and 1/r depending on pattern. 

Hope this helps.

Dave, W1BVV

Any comments on the new ARRL web site?  It seems to me that they went to great effort to fix something that wasn't broken.  Also I find the sliding side show on the home page very annoying.

I spent 10 minutes looking for a way to comment to them about the sight and gave up.  Any know if they have a feedback link that I missed?

73, Dave, W1BVV

There is a lot of good DXing in the general area of the bands.

If you talked to a ham that said Extras hangout above the General areas, get a new person to listen to.  The Extra frequency allocations are below the General limits.

Concentrate on antennas and operating skill.  You will know when your equipment limits your performance.