Today, I finally installed my very first antenna. Borrowed it from a good friend who introduced me to ham radio!

It's mounted at ~10 meters in height with dipoles for the 10m and 15m bands. My first tests went great, tough bands seem a bit quiet at the moment.

Never tried any contact with this setup, normally i work from the Netherlands.

Olá senhores, tudo certo?

Estava dando uma olhada na web e encontrei o radio HT Baofeng DM32, um rádio digital (DMR) com algumas configurações interessantes do meu interesse. Acontece que aqui no Brasil, o DM32 tem uma diferença significativa quanto o UV32, que é apenas analógico.

Visualmente são os mesmos rádios.

A pergunta que faço aos colegas Radioamadores. Dá pra modificar a firmware do UV para deixá-lo digital?

Caso alguém conheça algum procedimento e possa compartilhar ficarei agradecido.

Hello

I recently got my Technician license and have joined my local HAM club. I’m currently using a Baofeng UV-5R Mini with a roof-mounted dual-band jpole antenna.

I’m studying for General now and want to buy something I can grow into instead of replacing right away. My budget is around around $300 , and I’m fine with older gear if it’s reliable.

I'd like to learn HF while i'm studying, and use the 10m band where i can.  eventually im thinking i may learn CW, but for now will stick to phone .  

I was looking at building a QMX+, but once I added everything up, I started wondering if I’d be better off putting that money toward a used radio instead. I like the idea of doing some POTA work in the future but need to focus on one thing to start I suppose. 

If you had around $300 to spend, what radios would you keep an eye out for? Any models that are especially reliable or good for a first HF rig? Also open to any buying tips for older radios. Ii intend to build my first few antennas.

Thanks , KF8GSO

Saw these while walking around my neighborhood

Hello.

My nephew just found out he is getting his HAM radio license (he passed a test). His birthday is coming up, and his parents are struggling a bit right now.

I want to provide him with a good setup, but I dont know where to start... nor do I know anything about HAM radio.

I am hoping there is some equivalent of a Toyota 4Runner in the HAM world that will be good to get my nephew going for a while before needing to buy anything else, but that will also be modular to the extent that if he presumably wants to hook an antenna to the side of my sister's house one day he will be able to without having to start from scratch.

Any advice or tips would be really appreciated.

Arguably my budget would be $1,000 or less, but if thats a "whats a banana cost anyways, $10?" type of amount and it could be done for 1/3 or less I dont want to spend money unnecessarily.

Thank you!

I'm interested in learning more about MARS listening. So far all I've picked up are a brief transmission a few weeks ago, with the speaker telling someone to let them know if they needed more help, and the tail end of a weather forecast a few hours ago. Both were on 13927 kHz.

I'm in an urban area in Ohio, but I often take my radio to a nearby lake and get much better HF and SW reception there. I'm using a Tecsun PL-330 with a Tecsun AN-48X antenna. I also have an XHDATA AN-80 reel antenna that I rarely use.

Are there certain frequencies that are more active than others? Certain times of day to listen?

I realize my setup is limited, but I'm curious what I can pick up with it.

Thanks.

I’d like to make a 12v (13.8v actual) to 16v boost converter so I can charge my battery while driving. On the input end would be a cigarette lighter style plug and the other end would be PowerPoles. The output would feed a charge controller which in turn would feed the battery.

To prevent accidentally draining my vehicle’s battery I want it to work at 13.8v input, but not 12v.
Is there a kit I could use to make my own? Would it comparable to a ready to use

Title says it. I’ve loved playing around with APRS. But Ansrvr no longer sends back a list of active groups. So I’m just trying to see what’s out there.

I recently moved back to WA from WI and set up my GAP Titan DX at the new QTH. Before, it would tune on 40m at a reasonable 2:1 SWR. Testing it now I find that the resonant freq is about 7.275 where it's 1:1 (or very close) and at the lower end of the band 7.00 - 7.100 (roughly) where I usually hang out on FT8/CW, the SWR is close to 3:1.

I installed the counterpoise with the 44 inches, 2 inch loop, and 11 inch dacron as mentioned in the manual. I then see this other "enhanced" manual (which is better than than the factory one), says that they shortened the wire by about 80 inches to resonate on 40 meters in the center of the band. That seems like a lot to shorten it, but if it works I'll give it a try at least.

It seems generally it should resonate below the 40m band, and bring the freq up to the 40m band, but mine is resonant at the higher end of the band. I did try changing length, but probably not enough since it didn't seem to move. I'll double check that I don't have the gray caps on backwards, but I don't think I do.

Anyone have any tips on this? 20m is totally flat and perfect tuned, and I know this could affect that band.

Thanks, 73!

I've managed to snag 2 baofeng UV-21 pro's and 1 iradio uv-98 plus for just 70 Euro's, I live in the Netherlands btw. All three of them have seen so little use that the plastic foil is still on the display. You can imagine that I'm very happy, even if I can't use them to send yet. I'm going to take my novice exam on the 11th of august.

The cable for the Baofengs is already plugged into my laptop, by which cable do I need for the iradio UV98 plus? The display claims Radtel when I turn the power on. Is it the same cable as for a radtel 880? Or do I need to order the one for the radtel 950? The iradio is equiped with a USB-C port (I take that a regular usb-c cable won't work for programming) and a number of contactpoints hidden under a plastic cover secured with a screw. Any advice would be appreciated.

Any tips on how to get the most out of these radio's would also be very welcome. I've got the CHIRP software installed to use for programming.

Thanks in advance and cheers from the Netherlands!

for now i have 3 analog radios but recently i became interested in DMR so a question
is the TYT MD-UV380 good beginner DMR radio?

I plan to put my radio in my garage, I have close access to my house ground rod(which I'm planning to run all my coax cables(roughly 200ft) to onto a plate with lighting arrestors on it. Then I plan to run a 10-15ft gauge 6 cable from the house ground rod to my bus bar(to ground all my equipment) - First of all does this sounds right so far? **My second question is IF lightening were to hit one of my wire antennas could it fry my entire breaker panel and go into my house just by traveling down my KMR400 coax?

I found it on 5450 kHz USB, if you want to check it out for yourself go ahead, I don't know how often it's active though, heres the notes I took in my journal:

LOG #003

Date: 7/21/26

Time: 12:09

Frequency: 5450 kHz

RMT: USB

Type: Utility / Weather

Signal Strength: Strong

What I Heard: Automated English voice reading measurements. Mentioned "over 1,200 feet" and temperatures. Also heard the phrase "NASA International."

Notes: Possibly a weather, aviation, or scientific information transmission. Voice was automated and repeated.

Identification not confirmed, but Data seemed to change such as temparature and other numbers as time goes on, also mentions things such as Visibilty and clouds.

If your wondering what RMT means, It stands for Radio Modulation Type, I just use it to differ between CW, LSB, USB, AM, FM, and AMsync.

Hello Ham folks!

Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask about this. I figured y'all would have the right knowledge base to help me out.

I've noticed there's about a mile long stretch of my local freeway where Bluetooth connection always gets disrupted. Not occasionally. Every single day when I drive through that stretch, my phone's BT connection drops out.

I figure there must be some radio source in the area causing the issue and I'd really like to track it down.

Does anyone have suggestions on what kit I'd need to do this? Would I use a spectrum analyzer for this?

I know BT is in the 2.4GHz band.

I already shared a few month back our snowy setup for French contests. After some improvement I think you might appreciate the new setup.

We increased the mast height up to 4m and added the 23cm band. This was for the French "Bol d'or des QRP" VHF/UHF contest last weekend. We expended our two operator team with an SWL, so carrying a band by person for the hike.

The 23cm antenna tree mounted this time but allowed us to do 4 QSOs.

No HF propagation predictions, but real live measured data from your nearest ionosonde and some terrestrial observatories and geostationary satellites. See: https://hamwaves.com/swx

There is also a free and open MQTT server for integration into any non-commercial software application.

With enough support, an Android app will be soon released.

Can I use this method for ground rod placement? In this picture the coax shield is only going to the ground rod in the upper left but each of the other ground rods would be connected with a 6 gauge wire. Each ground rod would be roughly 25-30 ft apart. - Note, there wouldn't be a ground rod right where the coax goes into the house - is this ok?

I did not think this was interesting enough to post. But hey, auto-bot SSB was a hot topic.
Here is an auto-bot? CW transmission just above the 21 MHz edge.

This persisted for at least at hour. This was take at 8:36 PDST, 2026-07-19.
Seemingly random text sent with random character spaciing:

W W L S L V L W W W K W <AS> W V <AS> W <AS> W V W K K S <AS> W W L V W K <AS>

I'm looking for a detailed user manual for the Radtel 950. PRO. It's a complicated radio. There are some videos on YouTube, but they are more reviews than demos.

Thanks.

Now I wait for the email to pay the registration fee… in the mean time I’m adding more and more to various shopping carts online…
If you could start all over what would you do different from the begining?