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Old 22nd Oct 2018, 9:34 pm   #261
Biggles
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Sirius, all those spots you mention are regular haunts of mine, either on the way to somewhere else or during the working day. I also regularly travel south on the A68 with the day job and can receive HG from about Tow Law on the dual bander installed in the work's pickup. There does seem to be one or two regulars on HG, and it's worth mentioning that the sched on a Tuesday night at 8pm seems to be going well on HA, my local repeater. There's a lot of talk about network radio, but this doesn't really do it for me, being a circuitry, construction and analogue man.
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Old 23rd Oct 2018, 6:57 am   #262
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Now most people have "SatNav" in their cars, Amateur Radio rally Talk In stations on 2m are not used much, that is if the rally still has a talk in station.
If attending a rally and there is a talk in station I give them a call not for directions but just to say hello, ask if the rally is busy, and give them at least one contact!.

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Old 23rd Oct 2018, 8:02 am   #263
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The latest salisbury digital 70cm repeater is apparently well on course for licencing. The people concerned have put in commendable effort. The thing is already in situ (salisbury hopsital), just needs switching on. Another band, another mode albeit even less used that fm. I dont know but I am told that the southwest cluster, as it is called, is very underused as it is. Perhaps this will add life. I shall never know as I dont own a dmr radio. I think the bottom line is many folks are averse to mobile ops and many cars today are unsuitable...which leaves home use. If base users arent using 2m why would they splash hundreds on a dmr rig for one new repeater? I am doubtful about this otherwise enterprising venture.

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Old 23rd Oct 2018, 8:44 am   #264
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

I bought a nice new dual band rig when I bought a new car in 1997. With a hands-free setup it got a lot of use in the 9 years I ran the car. But in that period we lost all the wide coverage repeaters on the TV masts when the BBC and ITA sold them off to a commercial operator. 2 metre activity dropped like a stone. Then a member of the old Dunfermline club who lived on a hill went silent key and there was no-one left to rag-chew with.

So in 2006 when I bought my current car, I never bothered fitting the radio gear.

The eighties and into the nineties were a golden era, but the loss of the wide area repeaters pretty much killed mobile operation, and the drop in the active population of amateurs has pretty much killed the 2 metre band.

Let's treasure what operation there still is.

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Old 23rd Oct 2018, 6:05 pm   #265
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When I bought my last car I never bothered fitting a radio. In the past, I always had a permanent installation in any car I was using, and overcame the apprehension to drill holes in the roof of an otherwise unmarked new motor, which in part was due to the fact that one of the tasks at work was to regularly drill brand new vehicles of all description to fit aerials, so I was confident in making a neat job and also new all the tricks (removing interior lights to gain access to the roof etc.) That is all in the past but I did notice over the years when I was involved with fitting, that there was less and less space to actually fit anything. So in my present car I just use a magmount and cigar plug for power with the rig power turned down so as not to overload the accessory socket, and rest the whole thing on the passenger seat. Now I realise that this is a health and safety no-no, and would never do this for a "customer", but it's good enough for me. I have a permanently installed radio (theirs) in the work pickup and also have my trusty dual bander in there too. They don't mind me having my own kit in there as it's "part of the job".
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Old 23rd Oct 2018, 6:07 pm   #266
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I don't have 2m mobile now, haven't for years but take my IC706 to Scotland with me, nice and quiet on HF up there.
Next time you are up there during the sporadic 'E' season don't forget to try 10 metres because the far north and northwest of Scotland are sufficiently far away from the south / southeast UK for those areas to fall inside typical sporadic 'E' hop distance. I have had many interesting contacts to the south east UK on 10/11m from that area.

Veering back on topic - doesn't the IC706 have 2 metres all mode? Or was it only the later versions which had that? I know some early versions definitely didn't have 70cms, as the later ones do.
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Old 23rd Oct 2018, 6:21 pm   #267
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I have a permanently installed radio (theirs) in the work pickup and also have my trusty dual bander in there too. They don't mind me having my own kit in there as it's "part of the job".
When I worked (for about 13 years) as a field service engineer / technician I was probably the most content I have ever been in any job - wasn't well paid but I got given a new car to drive around in every couple of years and there was no problem with my putting AR gear in them - it sped the passage of many an hour travelling from job to job, often on callouts late at night or in the small hours and in all weathers.

When I was first doing that job mobile phones 'for all' were still some way off over the horizon and I often worked in places which were sometimes very remote, sometimes urban and rough, and it was reassuring to know that I was nearly always within reach of one of the amateur repeaters which in those days were often mounted on main broadcast masts and had enormous coverage.
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Old 23rd Oct 2018, 11:11 pm   #268
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Our club has just started using DMR as a net. I haven't joined, haven't got DMR and have zero interest in it but what saddens me is with DMR the SWL is wiped out. No new amateurs from SWLing then, not on VHF anyway.

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Old 24th Oct 2018, 7:53 am   #269
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Let's treasure what operation there still is.
I use 2 metres to talk to a couple of mates on a ‘sked’ basis when I’m on my regular journeys in the car.

One thing we could all do is try and remember to carry a 2m handie whenever we attend a swapmeet, auction or other vintage radio event. The length of this interesting thread proves that there are plenty of licenced Forum members, and that we largely mourn the lack of activity on the band, so it’s highly likely that we’ll find someone similarly equipped.
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 9:24 am   #270
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I just use a magmount and cigar plug for power with the rig power turned down so as not to overload the accessory socket, and rest the whole thing on the passenger seat.
Same as you with the drilling holes and permanent mount thing back in the day. But my TR7500 has two convenient holes for the mobile mount, which I don't possess, so I've attached a couple of keyring-type spring rings to them to which I clip the big strap from a camera case, and the whole lot hangs, speaker outwards, from the passenger headrest with the display up.

My Revco mag-mount is a bit worse for wear since I encountered a 'bird-strike' causing the aerial to detach itself from the roof and scud across the tarmac, sparking as it went. The coax is still intact, though.

There's more talk about two metres on here than there is talk about two metres on two metres!
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 9:53 am   #271
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Last night, I caught part of a long exchange on the GB3HA (Hexham) repeater which is a fair signal here on Tyneside. Already three people involved and my FIFO buffer is too small to cope in a 'net' without taking notes, but as Biggles mentioned there seems to be at least one person with an evangelical interest in 'Network Radio'.

I looked into it. It seems an interesting hybrid - network radios are essentially android phones packaged in a 2-way radio-like box and get their connection to the 'other end' via wi-fi or GSM. But I share Biggles's view that it's not really radio as we know it. If nothing else, it's one more distraction competing to drain people away from the actual operation of radios on 2m.

Last edited by SiriusHardware; 24th Oct 2018 at 10:07 am.
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 10:23 am   #272
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

On the subject of DMR, which I don't like much, SWL is possible and actually quite cheap if you have a PC and Digital TV SDR dongle - not much more than £10.

You tune the dongle to the DMR frequency and pipe the SDR receive audio to DSD+ (I think it was). One timeslot of two on the DMR carrier comes out on Left Speaker the other on Right. Worth doing to prove it can be done but not that interesting once you have done it.
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 1:38 pm   #273
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter.N. View Post
I don't have 2m mobile now, haven't for years but take my IC706 to Scotland with me, nice and quiet on HF up there.
Next time you are up there during the sporadic 'E' season don't forget to try 10 metres because the far north and northwest of Scotland are sufficiently far away from the south / southeast UK for those areas to fall inside typical sporadic 'E' hop distance. I have had many interesting contacts to the south east UK on 10/11m from that area.

Veering back on topic - doesn't the IC706 have 2 metres all mode? Or was it only the later versions which had that? I know some early versions definitely didn't have 70cms, as the later ones do.
It does but it doesn't work on mine, at least not on sideband. I got the info to repair it but that's just another job I haven't got round to yet.

2m is alive again today, Irish stations coming in.

Peter
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 3:14 pm   #274
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This tropo event is forecast to remain quite strong for the rest of the day (Wednesday 24th Oct) and into tomorrow morning but will begin to wane from tomorrow afternoon onwards. It's especially strong over Ireland at the moment, and should be enhancing propagation out in that direction from the west coast of Wales / England / Ireland for the next 24 hours or so.

In the meantime, we over here in the east are getting absolutely nothing.
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 3:23 pm   #275
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Took my nearly-30-year-old AOR AR1000 scanner and 1/4-wave whip with me on the lunchtime dog-walk (where we get up out of the mercilessly VHF-attenuating valley) - heard a couple of French-speaking QSOs and there was SSB around 144.4 breaking the squelch, but alas the AR1000 is AM/FM only....

Then the batteries went flat.
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 10:29 pm   #276
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Just been out for a drive up onto the Pennines between Durham and Cumbria to try to get a look at the tropo conditions over in the west. (One of the advantages of living up here in the arctic north - the UK isn't very wide at this point).

The first location I tried was Black Hill, the high point (609m ASL) close to where the Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham borders meet - just south east of Nenthead. I heard quite a bit of NI, EI, some on repeaters, some on simplex. I also heard a French QSO going on on a repeater on R0.

Best distant UK simplex station heard at that location was a G0 (G0UZ(?)L, I think) parked up at Barrow Hill in North Dorset - Not far from Blandford Forum, he said. He was at most strength 1, fading gently up and down, readability four - I heard him invite calls several times and did try to call back to him but it was always someone stronger, presumably nearer, who got in first.

After that I headed over to another well known high point in the area, Hartside on the A686 between Alston and Penrith - it's about 590 metres ASL with a good outlook to the north Cumbrian coast, Dumfries and Galloway, and northern Ireland and as expected there was a lot of traffic to be heard from that area and from Eire, but none of it really very strong.
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 10:37 pm   #277
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Just been out for a drive up onto the Pennines between Durham and Cumbria to try to get a look at the tropo conditions over in the west. (One of the advantages of living up here in the arctic north - the UK isn't very wide at this point).
Wish I'd have known beforehand! I'd have nipped upstairs for a natter. I can get in Co. Durham on 10 Watts. I'll catch you further down the log...
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 10:48 pm   #278
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I didn't actually put out any calls from Hartside, Russell, because by the time I got there the cloud base had come down to well below my altitude making the visibility for driving very poor, so I thought I'd better beetle off back home.
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 10:52 pm   #279
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'I didn't actually put out any calls from Hartside, Russell...'
I can see Hartside from our house. I could've used my Aldis lamp!
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Old 24th Oct 2018, 11:14 pm   #280
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Returning from a job in North Yorkshire around midday today I caught a couple of repeater morse idents which I didn't recognise, but they were fairly weak. Unfortunately I didn't catch their locations, as morse isn't one of my strong points. I listen to the local net on HA if I remember and if I have spare time but only occasionally join in as I too have difficulty remembering the multiple subjects people require answers to during long overs. You need a good memory to cope with a large number of operators. Very short overs and quick answers would be easier all round. On the subject of mobile installations of the past, I believe the FT101 had a mobile mounting kit. Best not park up with the engine stopped for too long. I would have thought you would need a RR Merlin engine and associated high output alternator to keep that alive on transmit. I know from repairing one or two in the past that they had a 12V input and invertor to run the TX. How things have changed.
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Edit; one of the stations on Tuesday night was accessing HA from somewhere near Keswick, readable about strength 1 or 2. Pretty good going I reckon. I switch to EV when across in Cumbria with work, but tend to lose it around about Carlisle.

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