A weekend of radio adventure

I've spent a lot of time on the radio this weekend.

First, the 220 MHz mobile whip that I got from Ebay arrived. I hadn't mentioned this before, but I bought a BaoFeng UV-5RS. Yes, that's with an "S". It works on 220 MHz (1.25 M) and 2 meters. Being a Technician Class, I figured that I should all of the bands that others have deigned to permit me to use.

The BaoFeng didn't seem to work very well with the "rubber duck" on 220, so I thought it would improve with a "real" antenna. I ordered a pretty basic base-loaded NMO-mount whip that I could use on the car, or put on the balcony for base use. The whip tuned up pretty good, but that wasn't the issue.

Like all BaoFengs I have tried ( I own three now), the RF output on UHF is dismal. The new UV-5RS has a nice 4 watts out on VHF, but only 2.5 W on 220, which is what I bought it for. But BaoFeng has figured out a new way to cripple their product: make the receiver terrible, too.

There are only two 220 MHz repeaters in town that are actually working, which is two more than most places in the country have. I could hardly hear the repeater in Arden Hills, though it was full scale on the bogus signal meter. Sure, Arden Hills is far, but that's where the UHF WINET repeater is, and I can work that with a "rubber duck". The signal from the repeater was noisy and weak, but I got solid signal reports on my transmission.

One of the local 1.25 m repeaters is kinda, sorta linked to HandiHam. I don't hear the "nets" on the 223.940 that take place on the VHF and 440 MHz machines, but I hear the same signal on the VHF and 223 machines otherwise. It's nice that HandiHam covers three simultaneous bands, all cross-linked. On the other hand, my new radio allows me to hit a repeater network that I can already hit on 2 meters or 70 cm. I tend to doubt that there is any significant FM simplex activity on 1.25 m that I now will have access to.

The other repeater is the TCRC 224.540 machine in Burnsville. This isn't linked to anything, so I suppose this offers me something new. However, much like TCRC's (still off-air) 6 meter repeater, nobody is ever on the 224.540 machine. And Burnsville is pretty far from Plymouth.

So, my new BaoFeng is pretty much like the other two: two meter HTs that have marginal utility on their second band. I'm giving my brother one of the 2 m/70 cm HTs to use as a marine radio, because he's the only one that expressed a vague interest. I offered it, free of charge, to about ten of my friends in an email. Nobody wanted it at that price. See how much interest there is in two-way radio among non-hams?

After my disappointing 220 MHz adventure, I got on 10 meters. It was fun. I tried CW for about an hour, but had no luck. Then I went back to SSB and found that the band was active. I heard a lot of stations on the West Coast, but I didn't try them because they were contesting. Aside from that, I didn't think that I could reach them.

Let me explain how I am set up for 10 meters, and try not to laugh. I have a nice Yaesu FT-897D with a beautiful 30 amp linear power supply. I can run a solid 100 watts on 10 meters. The problem is that everyone in my condo building would be part of that QSO by way of their TV, clock radio, or computer speakers. So I have to keep it down to 15 watts. I don't hear any problem on my electronics at that level, and I'm the one closest to the antenna, after all. There are slight clicks on my computer speakers, but nothing for anyone to complain about or find suspicious. I can't string up a horizontal dipole, or the HOA would have a fit and fine me. Instead, I have a magnet mount on my balcony's sheet steel cap that I put various vertical whips on to. I have a loaded (not full length) vertical "Hamstick" type antenna that I use for 10 meters. Now, anything like SSB, AM, or CW (Morse code) uses a horizontal antenna. By using a vertical antenna, my signal -- which is already ridiculously weak by HF standards -- is reduced to less than one-fourth of it's strength for anyone using a horizontal antenna (i.e. everyone else). In other words, my BaoFeng is about as powerful in terms of effective power. Added to that is the decreased efficiency in using a loaded antenna with a lousy ground plane, and no RF ground.

Most people aren't familiar with CB radio any more, but it's kind of equivalent to a mobile CB radio setup in terms of antenna quality and effective RF power. You don't expect to talk to California on a regular mobile CB radio, folks.

But I listened. It was all contesting, which is boring to me. It's about getting someone's call sign and a number from them that you can report as a legitimate "contact". The person with the most contacts, or highest-quality contacts, wins a piece of paper or a plaque. Since I had no number to offer them, and I wasn't going to log the contact online, it would be pointless to reach them.

After a while, though, I kept coming back to listen to a guy on 28.500. He was coming in loud and clear, and running up contacts like crazy. He used crazy phonetics, and it took me a while to even figure out his call sign. Who uses "Oko" for the letter "O", anyway? Things quieted down at one point, and I came back to CO6LC. There was no way he could hear me, but I wouldn't be interfering with someone else trying to reach him.

Wow! He came back with my call sign. I had no number to offer, and that irritated him because I was wasting his time. But he was nicer than my last HF contact. Then I looked up his callsign online.

Unbelievably, CO6LC is in Cuba! That's about 1700 miles, loud and clear, with a joke of a station on my end. Had I known that, I probably would have irritated him more by trying to engage in conversation.

I also managed to tune up that 10 meter whip for 15 meters and tried some CW with no results.

Later last night, I got in on the HandiHam net. It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since I was last in on it. I enjoyed it, and heard a few other people that I had spoken with before on there. Of course, I mentioned my luck on 10 meters.

I also tried 10 meters again with no luck, but found 3 hams on CB SSB having a conversation when I was tuning on the low end of 10 meters looking for CW stations. There was nobody else on the whole band except for these guys. I wonder why they were on CB? Maybe one of the three wasn't a ham, but two were definitely. The Yaesu doesn't transmit on CB, and I wasn't about to dig up my old CB just to talk to them.

This morning I got on the 2 meter HandiHam repeater (145.450) and ran into a guy named Chad whose call sign was something like K0WZ, but was probably KD0UWZ upon a lookup. We had a chat about HF, and drew in two other people. I like doing that, but it seems like most don't know how to handle a conversation. They hammer on a weak topic that the other person clearly has no interest in, or they just repeat themselves until the other person makes up a lame excuse to get off the air.

There are some new people showing up on the air, and the HandiHam network is where they all gravitate to. It's where they're most likely to find someone to talk to, and they haven't had the time to get into the cliques and isolate themselves. That makes it a good place for me to hang out, too. I should spend more time there, instead of the large amount of time that I spend on distant and/or empty repeaters. You also get a lot of out-of-state hams on the network because of EchoLink, which makes it more interesting.