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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 24th Aug 2018, 6:37 am   #61
G3VKM_Roger
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Default Re: Getting back in to Amateur Radio

No-one seems to have mentioned the PRC-320 being used on 5MHz. It's s good radio for that band, the decade switches and USB-only are much less of a problem. I think the O/P that was talking about getting back into the hobby held a Full licence, so will have access to 5MHz. An ideal band for inter-UK contacts and more and more countries are coming on now that there is an international frequency allocation. Frequently hear chirpy 320s around 5260kHz!

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Old 24th Aug 2018, 8:57 am   #62
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I now recollect that I do have an Alinco rig with CTCSS, so I'll dig it out and have a go.
As a matter of interest, Graham, the ADI AT-600 you moved on a year or so ago has CTCSS

Quite a high spec radio for its day, as CTCSS would have been an expensive optional plug-in extra on many of its contemporaries from Icom, etc.

I've just had it in bits to re-coat the button rubbers as some, especially the on-off button, were getting quite hard to press. Working nicely again now.
Good to know it's still going strong. I never had the courage to dismantle it.

The Alinco transceiver I have is a DR570T.

http://www.rigpix.com/alinco/dr570t.htm

I was listening to the local repeater all day yesterday on a non-CTCSS rig, but all I heard were idents and the CTCSS equivalent of the Phantom Bleeper.
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Old 24th Aug 2018, 1:04 pm   #63
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I had the AT-600 sitting on two of our local repeaters last night - the once mighty GB3TW 2m repeater which (when sited on a broadcast mast in its heyday) could be heard for 90 miles around is currently barely strong enough to break the squelch here in my urban Tyneside location. I don't know if the repeater's aerials are lying on the ground somewhere after some mishap.

I did hear a G7 calling through GB3NT, the Gateshead based 70cms repeater, but I was so startled that it had gone well beyond the 'reasonable time period in which to call back' by the time I remembered where the radio was.
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Old 24th Aug 2018, 4:53 pm   #64
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I will have to try monitoring TW again. I haven't heard it for ages and to be honest thought it had disappeared. Likewise the 70cms one. NT isn't it? I can't access either at work which is when I listen in mostly, but I can access HA on '750 and used to be able to access the Carlisle box when on high ground, but that has been moved a bit further north recently, and the coverage out this way doesn't seem to be as good. I can access the one at Selkirk from work. I think it's on 145.7875MHz, one of those 12.5KHz in between jobs. I am assuming TW is still on '725 and NT on 433.0?
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Old 24th Aug 2018, 5:04 pm   #65
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We're getting a bit 'local' here but briefly, yes, those details are correct. I'm not sure NT sends a morse ID any more, something to do with it being 'net connected. CTCSS for both is 118.8. Neither accepts 1750Hz now as far as I know.

HA (Near Hexham?) is actually a good signal here, probably because it is one of the very few still mounted on a decent mast which I assume to be on or around Stagshaw.
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Old 24th Aug 2018, 5:18 pm   #66
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Yes, without making this thread too personal/local HA is sited in a building not far from the BBC mast at Stagshaw. Although not on the mast itself (which is a live radiator) it is a very good location. Access from my house is very good, and a low power hand-portable will do the trick no problem.
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Old 28th Aug 2018, 6:48 pm   #67
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Well that's my licence renewed! Just need to get things up and running properly.

At present I can only run on 10FM and 2M. I'm sorted with a half wave dipole on 10, I made a quarter vertical for 2 which is sitting in the same room as the radio. That was mainly to see if it's still working. I think I'll put a mobile 5/8 in the loft on a ground plane, for me that will be enough for 2 as activity seems really low.

Still not decided about HF.
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Old 28th Aug 2018, 7:24 pm   #68
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Well that's my licence renewed! Just need to get things up and running properly.
Welcome back! I'm surprised we didn't put you off.

What we need is a good long blast of tropospheric propagation to engage everyone's enthusiasm for 2m / 70cms operation again.

A short while after I was originally licensed in 1994, we had a tremendous tropo lift which lasted for days and played havoc with the VHF radio based systems we looked after at work because they only used three different frequencies country wide and they were suddenly all communicating with each other. Alarm receiving services in Derbyshire were receiving calls from clients on Tyneside which were being mistaken for Derbyshire clients and vice versa.

But as a radio amateur I was like a bee in clover. I remember walking on a Northumberland beach with a handheld, finding myself in conversation with an amateur with a Scottish accent / callsign and expecting to hear that he wasn't far north of the border, which was only about 10 miles to the north of my location. He turned out to be... in Shetland!
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Old 28th Aug 2018, 7:51 pm   #69
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No, not put off at all. A good well balanced discussion with opinions and reason put forward was much appreciated.

I have found one of my HB9CV's it's a 70cm one & the only 70cm set I have is a Storno CQP 863 that I converted onto 2local repeaters, GB3ML &GL. Strangely at the time, I could not access them from home as I was slightly out with their coverage, but it was a good set out & about. Those repeaters are now defunct.

My kit is way out if date!
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Old 28th Aug 2018, 8:12 pm   #70
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Although it's tempting to resurrect old crystal based gear, economics and the likely need to hunt for scarce traffic wherever you can find it would mean you would be better off getting a freely programmable modern radio - the Chinese cheapies (Boafeng, Wouxun) are popular and don't cost a lot.

If you would prefer something from an old school 'known name' and don't mind laying out a bit more the Yaesu FT-60R is a nice 2m / 70cms handheld radio and still just about available new, price around £100-£130 as I look around. You could download the manual and have a read through that first, that's what I always do.
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Old 28th Aug 2018, 10:12 pm   #71
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Not really interested in getting the Storno re crystalled. From memory, even in 1991 they were quite expensive crystals as they were an odd size. Even then 70 cm was quite quiet.

I hear you on the baofeng handies. I may buy one. Rude not to £25 on Amazon!

I may also be looking at this through rose tinted glasses, but I had a ball back in the day converting PMR sets and building stuff. I spent very little money on any of the gear I had and got really really good results.

I was 17 keen and skint!

Maybe I'm trying to recreate something that is no longer possible. My 'shack' was full of cobbled together stuff & that's what I enjoyed. Only commercial ham gear I bought was the AKD2001 for my car.
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Old 29th Aug 2018, 8:30 pm   #72
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I may also be looking at this through rose tinted glasses, but I had a ball back in the day converting PMR sets and building stuff. I spent very little money on any of the gear I had and got really really good results.
When there was lots of retired PMR stuff on the market you could indeed achieve a lot-of-RF by spending very little.

I once had a Pye ex-public-service rack-mount install I retuned-to-2M FM whose output-stage was a pair of CCS-1 conduction-cooled tetrodes; these were basically a version of the 4X150A and it was designed to run 300 Watts 24x7 continuous-carrier duty.

"throttled back" to comply with the then 150W-DC-Input UK licence of the era it was merely idling: In hindsight I must admit that my mechanism for measuring power-delivered-to-the-antenna [including a term for feeder-loss] - though addressing the later Home Office licence requirements-of-the-day - would these days be judged as having been deeply pessimistic.
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Old 29th Aug 2018, 9:55 pm   #73
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Default Re: Getting back in to Amateur Radio

In my younger days when I had little cash I converted CB radios to cover the ham bands.

The obvious band to convert to was 10m but I also converted a Sharp SSB CB radio to the 12m band and I also converted a couple of classic mk1 Cobra 148GTL-DX SSB CBs to the 40m band. This radio uses a 10.7MHz IF and a 17MHz LO to get 27MHz so the image falls on 7MHz. So it was quite easy to convert it to 7MHz. The only niggle is that USB becomes LSB and vice versa because of the frequency inversion. But it worked really well as a conversion and could transmit about 15W PEP. It could even be used in AM mode to listen to HF broadcast stations on the 6MHz or 7MHz SW bands. The IF filter was about 4.5kHz wide so it was a bit narrow for receiving broadcast AM but it sounded fine on the high tone setting on AM
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