I played with the radios on Friday for a few hours. I only work a half-day on Friday, because I work four 9-hour shifts the rest of the week. So, when I got home and took care of a few minor tasks, I decided to spend a little time on the radio. I put my new 6 meter J-pole on my new 13-foot telescoping mast and tried a few configurations to eliminate the interference and keep the SWR low. The band wasn't particularly awesome, but I still hope to be able to work it without the stereo picking up the signal, so I need to figure out the best way to set up the antenna. The mast at full height can suspend the J-pole at the coax end, and the free end is attached to the other side of the balcony with a string held by a magnet. This gets me a horizontally-polarised antenna, though it faces to the East and the West is blocked by the building. The SWR is perfect at the low end, but not great at FM frequencies. Unfortunately, this arrangement still gets transmit audio in the stereo. Anything over 20 watts RF output comes through clean and strong on the stereo - and, I must assume, the neighbour's electronics. A coaxial RF choke didn't help that much on six meters, but it did on ten meters. I tried a few other J-pole arrangements, but none were the perfect situation. Having the J-pole vertical and pulled somewhat away from the metal mast worked great on FM.
With the re-purposed Sirio magnetic mount converted to NMO, I tried out the 10 meter vertical. The Sirio mount has a much better ground-plane, and the coaxial RF choke works well on HF, so there's hardly any interference and the SWR is perfect. I am still thinking about getting a second 10 meter "hamstick" and setting up a horizontal dipole on the new mast, because that would let me get above the building and rotated to the north/south. I still think that a horizontal antenna is going to interfere less, because I could use a balun. The problem with this arrangement is that it's not easy to attach two big antennae to the mast when it's down and I'm restricted to the space on the balcony. And, obviously, this is no "stealth" antenna. It's night-time use only, and with calm winds. For now, though, the vertical whip is working well
So, I took off the NMO adapter and dusted off my Nagoya MAG-79EL-3W, which has a UHF mount. Normally, I don't use it because its size makes it conspicuous, but I had already blown that for the day by setting up the 13-foot mast and the 10 meter vertical whip in broad daylight. Now that the Browning dual-band is on my car, I don't have a really good antenna for home use. Instead, I'm using the Nagoya NL-R2 with the PL-259 Sirio mount. It has decent SWR on both bands (though better on VHF), and is low-profile, but it doesn't have great range. The 79El-3W has great range, but really doesn't tune up well on UHF, so I sat down for the late Friday afternoon to work some of the more distant VHF repeaters in the area that I normally ignore.
I threw out my sign a few times on the VHF repeater (145.13-, 110.9) in Hudson, WI. Nobody was biting, though. I always wonder about repeaters like this -- who uses them? You're within the range of the UHF repeater in River Falls (which is linked to the whole State) and on the edge of the Twin Cities repeater (also linked to the entire State of Wisconsin). Maybe you just don't like UHF. There's really not a WINET VHF repeater near Hudson, I suppose. Still, you would think that there would be commuters or boaters or locals -- someone actually using these repeaters -- to justify their existence. When it breaks or needs to be taken down for a water tower replacement (or whatever), that will probably be the end of it. WINET would be smart to take it over, in that case, and add it to their VHF network. It covers the St. Croix boating and the I-94 traffic, and would reach into St. Paul easily.
I also tried the Northfield (147.360+, 136.5) repeater, without much expectation. Nothing there on a late Friday afternoon. I think this repeater is technically in Hampton, MN and is run by just one guy instead of a club. Certainly, if someone in the metro had even a mediocre 2 meter ground plane and 10-15 watts, they could work this repeater regularly. As it was, I had a mobile antenna on a mag mount and 20 W and I hit it without any trouble from Plymouth, MN.
The Becker VHF repeater is still down, though it was supposed to be up a week after the Fourth of July. That's the conversation that I heard on the repeater between the trustee and some radio club or organisation that was considering a grant to get the whole network up and running. The VHF repeater would really allow the network to reach into the metro. In my car, driving around Plymouth, the Becker UHF repeater struggles to break squelch under the best conditions. If you could reliably reach that network from the metro, however, you have coverage from Mille Lacs down to Glencoe on UHF and out to Willmar. There are four UHF repeaters linked together by Echolink: Becker, Avon, Litchfield, and Little Falls. This means that, if you can reach one of them, you can talk to anyone within reach of any of the other repeaters. Of course, the repeaters are accessible by Echolink from anywhere. The area covered is a big recreational area, as well as covering the Interstate traffic, and rural farmland. This means that you can be reached while out in the boat, or on the freeway, camping, etc. from the city on Echolink. And, yes, a cell phone can do that. The idea, at least in my mind, is that you can get people who own radios to actually use them when they out by making coverage available in those areas. The trouble with repeater coverage in rural areas is that you have fewer people -- a smaller pool of people that have the time and inclination to talk on the radio. By increasing that pool of potential users by linking, you now increase the odds that two people will be on the repeater at once. Nothing can actually make them talk, of course, which seems to be a big part of the problem. Ideally, though, a metro area ham could still keep in touch with ham buddies at home while he spends the weekend at the lake or goes camping. That might encourage them to bring their radio along.
I was going to take a shot at a couple of SE metro repeaters, but instead I decided to try the Ramsey (145.37-, 107.2) VHF repeater, which I hadn't been able to get in my car. So I threw out my call sign and got someone immediately. It was KA0SDU (Dan), who I had spoken with back in March when I first discovered the .370 repeater. I paused for a moment to check my log, and sure enough, he was in Rosemount. I asked him what he was doing on the Ramsey repeater, as I thought he hung out at the .370. I was really surprised to hear him come back with, "This is the .370 repeater".
Apparently, when I was programming my FT-897D for the repeaters, I mis-labeled that preset. Instead, I was set up for the Minneapolis .370 (145.370-, 107.2) repeater and tagged it as "Ramsey". The MPL370 (as my HT has it marked), is (I've been told) on the top of the IDS tower for awesome coverage. I've never put that coverage to the test myself, but I've spoken to people in Rosemount and Farmington. Farmington is around 40 miles, after all. Hudson is about that far away, and Forest Lake, Elk River, and Delano are in that radius, too. The .370 is one of the prime VHF repeaters in the metro, and if was multi-receive it would blow away the others.
The others would be the TCRC's 147.21, the Oakdale .850 (146.850-), the TCFMC's .760 (146.76-), and the HandiHam .450, in no particular order.
The HandiHam network is especially impressive, in my opinion. Not only is it on Echolink and accessed from other countries commonly, it also is cross-band (you can talk on UHF, VHF, and 220 at the same time), and links up to other repeaters in Chaska (on UHF), Arden Hills (on 220), Albert Lea (on VHF), Ellendale (near Rochester) on UHF and 220, and out to Rapid City, SD (on VHF). There are also plans for a 10 meter FM repeater on 29.660, though I don't know how that will work. 10 meter FM is only allowed for General Class licences and above, so linking it to the rest of the network would most likely be illegal. Still, it would be the only 10 meter FM repeater in the metro area and would have great range.
TCFMC's VHF repeater at .760 (W0EF) also has Echolink, though it's not often used and hadn't been logged in for about four months until I mentioned it on the club forum. I've never put the "seven six" to the test. I've spoken to someone in Delano on it, but that's only 20 miles. It may very well be a case of hype, much like the range of the UHF repeater ("dot one"). I listed it mostly because of the traffic level - which is also not awesome.
The Oakdale .850 has several receive sites. I know that one of them are around Scandia, and I was able to keep in touch with the repeater almost up to North Branch because of this. I've heard that this used to be the focal point for most repeater activity in the metro "back in the day", but now it's kind of quiet.
Actually, all of these repeaters except for the HandiHam network are pretty quiet. If you can get someone to talk to you, however, a small crowd will emerge quickly. There are a lot of people, apparently, who scan the repeaters and like to listen more than they like to talk. They don't have a strong loyalty to any repeater, and they won't take the initiative to start a conversation. But once a conversation has started, people will jump in with tangential remarks, contributions, or relevant experiences. This, in turn, gets hams across the metro listening as their scans stop and they hear someone that they know toss in their two cents. And, more people then want to join in. It can snowball dramatically, depending on how interesting the discussion is, the time of day, and the coverage of the repeater.
As it so happened, I had stumbled on to the .370 (wide coverage), found someone to talk to right away (KA0SDU), during the start of the evening drive time on a Friday (good time of day), and I was ready to talk. And, so it unfolded. I'll relate it all in my next post.
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