CB'ing and Ham radio in the 21st Century - Page 4

Russ · 08-03-2012, 19:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Added Ham radio to the title as you can;t really discuss CB without having ham radio as a progression

Well you can, it's just that Radio Hams always like to monopolise the conversation

Uncle Peter · 08-03-2012, 19:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon T

Nice display of the logbook from HRD you've got there!........and the TS480(excellent radio, got one myself)

Ta, that's the TS480HX, the 200W version with dual power feeds although the alc is very tight and it only peaks at about 160W on the thruline.. I tend to use it on six in the house though but we take it portable in the summer with one of those YP3 yagi-in-a-bag jobbies.

Jon T · 08-03-2012, 19:38

I have the 480SAT, and a sandpiper MV-V6 multiband short vertical on the clothes line support pole at the bottom of the garden.

I'm also a member of the test team for HRD and moderator of the forums. The splash screen of Peter Halpin that comes up when you start HRD is my work!(although HRD's new owners have removed it)

Kymmy · 08-03-2012, 19:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russ

Well you can, it's just that Radio Hams always like to monopolise the conversation

Hurry up and get the Cobra plugged in then

Uncle Peter · 08-03-2012, 19:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon T

I have the 480SAT, and a sandpiper MV-V6 multiband short vertical on the clothes line support pole at the bottom of the garden.

I'm also a member of the test team for HRD and moderator of the forums. The splash screen of Peter Halpin that comes up when you start HRD is my work!(although HRD's new owners have removed it)

Top man... The version I am running is from way back in 2009. Haven't updated it because I managed to get rotator working and DM780 working with my homebrew psk/data soundcard cable without any problems.

data0002 · 08-03-2012, 19:48

i use the ft-7800 which is normally tune to my local repeater on the isle of white, with the 23cm video repeater (listening not transmitting as only an m6 call sign)

watzizname · 08-03-2012, 20:56

Last setup i had way back when, was a Nato 2000, Sadelta Echo Master Plus, Thunderpole III with an original Firestick and a Zetagi b300p.

Having been on air since before it was legalised in 81, i sold everything but the aerial.

The aerial i lost when one of the scafold poles (i'd swiped off a building site one night) snapped during a massive snow storm, and my landlord ripped it to pieces as it was blocking the public footpath, and because i wasn't around to deal with it

Had been planning on getting a President Lincoln as a replacement to the Nato as well, but in the end i just never got around to it and haven't keyed a mike since.

Had a look on ebay earlier, and i see they're going for about £160 now.. I'm feeling quite tempted to bid on one, see if i can't get it a little cheaper.

Uncle Peter · 08-03-2012, 22:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by watzizname

Last setup i had way back when, was a Nato 2000, Sadelta Echo Master Plus, Thunderpole III with an original Firestick and a Zetagi b300p.

Having been on air since before it was legalised in 81, i sold everything but the aerial.

The aerial i lost when one of the scafold poles (i'd swiped off a building site one night) snapped during a massive snow storm, and my landlord ripped it to pieces as it was blocking the public footpath, and because i wasn't around to deal with it

Had been planning on getting a President Lincoln as a replacement to the Nato as well, but in the end i just never got around to it and haven't keyed a mike since.

Had a look on ebay earlier, and i see they're going for about £160 now.. I'm feeling quite tempted to bid on one, see if i can't get it a little cheaper.

Have a listen down the old phone section on 40m any given evening and chances are you'll hear a couple of Russian blokes using Echomasters and judging by the signals, old broadcast transmitters running in excess of 5KW

Jimmy-J · 08-03-2012, 23:22

I really enjoyed CB'ing in the late 70's and early 80's. I had about 3 different rigs over that time and the one that I remember and liked the most was a little AM Jaws Mk2. One of the others was a Midland.

Blackened · 09-03-2012, 14:45

Great thread, Kymmy.

Can't even begin to list the different rigs I had. I used to change monthly. Went through what must have been every make & model of the UK 40 units, everyone was always swapping. Rubbish Amstrads with the rubbish bleeps, the even worse Binatones, Fidelity's & Mustangs, Yorks and Rotels, Midlands, Harriers and Harvards (weren't they Dixons & Currys brand?) - the list goes on. Most were pretty much the same with the Cybernet chassis that were dreadful for image rejection. You needed to go with the Realistic/Uniden/Audioline rigs with the Uniden chassis to get a decent image rejection when muppets went huge.
I think the first rig in the late 70's was a Sharp small window and then a Colt 1200DX (which was a great rig with a unique bleep!), a Marko Excalibur MK11 copper/bronze coloured home base and a modified channel President Madison with the analogue alarm clock, SWR meter and the separate speaker in a huge long box!

Messing about on SSB and wiping out TV's with in-line burners.. All good fun. The best part back then was how simple the boards were for modding and tweaking. Even someone with no experience could pop the top off and tweak a pot to get a bit more juice or piggy back a board if you were a bit more handy.

My Superstar 2000 super low to super high with Alpha's was easily my favourite. I coveted it for years and was over the moon when I finally got a pristine one. I wish I still had it I loved it that much. That and the Leson/Turner desk mic. But because of the bleed over on it's Cyber chassis I eventually settled with a Cobra 148GTLDX with the Uniden chassis - I loved messing about with the KC shift and the channel 9 button to get to gaps within the freq's and a little bit higher into the legal FM channels than high band would take you. It was all about trying to DX for me at the end and when I moved and couldn't have my Sigma IV up I lost touch with it all.

All I have now are two pristine (1 boxed) 410T's and a realistic scanner with more freq gaps than it's worth putting batteries in for these days unless you want to listen to the odd cleaner or security guard on nights.

All the fun of scanning was gone for me anyway when the police went TETRA. I use the walkies now and again when we go away and the kids go off to the beach because there's no phone signal where we stay. They get a kick out of it but refuse to say 'over'.

Kymmy · 27-03-2012, 17:09

Lived in Rusholme, Manchester many years ago and it was great fun listening to the GMP chasing the cars round Hulme/Moss-Side/Longsight in the pre-Tetra days.

Talking of radio just made myself a nice little (well about 14ft) dual band antenna (just used some 1/2 and 1/4 coaxial(RG-213)/copper_tubing sections and put it all inside part of a fibreglass fishing pole. Nice low SWR just need now a pole/bracket to put it on.

@Blackened... We bought a load (about a dozen with chargers) of PMR446 radios as a job lot of ebay a couple of years ago.. Used them for bike to bike and bike to car work as not everyone here is licensed for ham and cb radios/antennas tend to be too big. Great also for beach usage.

Also been fixing one of the my yaesu radios microphone. Kept scanning instead of PTT'ing.. Turned out it was the microswitch contacts has oxidized across..Tiny little fiddle thing to disassemble but a contact polish later and it's back to 100% working.

Graham M · 27-03-2012, 17:50

This is about as exciting as my radio career goes, ICOM VHF/UHF radio (our license is for a pair of VHF frequencies - which is very unusual these days, but we have had the license for 20 or more years), broadcasts to our repeater on top of a steep hill, and out to the cars as far out as Weymouth in one direction and Ringwood in the other on a good day, not bad for 25W

IMG_20120327_174250.jpg

Blackened · 28-03-2012, 00:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

@Blackened... We bought a load (about a dozen with chargers) of PMR446 radios as a job lot of ebay a couple of years ago.. Used them for bike to bike and bike to car work as not everyone here is licensed for ham and cb radios/antennas tend to be too big. Great also for beach usage.

I have a pair! I don't know why I forgot to mention them. Great little things they are too.
The CB walkie's antennas are h u g e.

The twig you've built is interesting. Can you share any more info?
I need to build/buy something I can install indoors really, but I've a fairly large loft space.

Kymmy · 28-03-2012, 08:19

The "twig" is dual band for ham radio... Based on a W7lpn design but insead of using wastepipe and aluminium tube I just made the three mid sections out of thick (RG0213 coax) (all half wave for 2m * .66 (v factor of the coax)), the top section is enammelled copper wire (quarter wave *.95 (v factor of wire in air)) and the bottom section is 15mm copper tube (again quarter wave *.95). Then a few ferrite rings placed about half wave down from the feed point. Tuning is done by moving up/down the ferrites but found it to be a bit low on freq so chopped a couple of inches off the two 1/4 wave sections which then brought the SWR down to less than 1.5:1 on both bands.. 70cm is a bit narrow but only wanted it to cover the repeaters and simplex channels, on 2m it covers the whole band and even covers 446.

Co-ax was from Knights on ebay for £20 delivered for 15m (though only 3m max is for the antenna construction the rest is feed and also for my HF feed) and the 7m fishing pole (only half used and of course it's not carbon but purely GRP) was £13 delivered on ebay and the copper tube we had from removing an old radiator.

Construction ideas were taken from these two sites
Design of antenna
How to cut/connect the coax together

So all together I've got a roughly a 6db(2m)/9db(70cm) antenna for about £15 which if bought from an antenna supplier would cost me £70+

Not sure it would be practical for CB usage as this is basically a one 1/4 over three 1/2 and then another 1/4 waves which in CB usage would be 22meters long

You're better off using a single band cobweb antenna (normaly a half size g5rv (can be bought from a lot of cb/radio shops/ebay for about £20+) and feed that in a square design round the loft space (about half way up) so that the free ends nearly meet. You way need to add a foot or two or both ends to bring it upto 11m from the 10m it'll be tuned to or just use a cheap ATU/Matcher.

Uncle Peter · 28-03-2012, 10:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackened

I need to build/buy something I can install indoors really, but I've a fairly large loft space.

If you have enough vertical free space in your loft (around 10ft) the trusty quarter wave groundplane won't let you down. This will give you a nice low-ish angle of radiation for dx and keep your polarisation in the vertical plane so you can talk to local good buddies.

In it's simplest form this consists of a quarter wave radiating element and four ground plane or counterpoise elements (each a quarter wave long*) at the feedpoint which are physically connected to the coaxial outer.

Any reasonable gauge of enamelled solid core should be fine for the construction materials, even cheapo, multi-strand speaker wire works well. Suspend the radiating element from your top beam preferrably via a ceramic insulator which you probably won't have so just use a couple of cable ties

The feed-point you can make from a strip of perspex and attach the dangly bits using nuts, bolts and crimp-on ring terminals. Try to feed it via a choke or "ugly balun" (6-8 turns of RG8 coax around a scrap bit of waste pipe should do) which will help prevent any nasty common-mode current coming back down your feeder and minimise potential for interference.

For resonance at the mid point between both sets of UK CB frequencies you'll be cutting for 2.6m - just over 8 and a half feet. Tuning you may achieve from simply varying the length of the radiating element.
Now this is the quick and dirty way to do it - the "correct" way to do it is find the correct resonant length of the radiating element by using a dip oscillator to find the current nodes then use a matching circuit (matching transformer) to adjust the swr.

*in reality it doesn't matter how large the ground planes but bigger they and more they are the better to the point where you reach a condition of diminishing returns but the net effect of adding loads of them is that you'll competely screw up the feedpoint impedance so we use 4 as a compromise.