any ham radio ops onboard?

[Grizz]

i'm straying back into with some qrp gear intended for a long boat ride.

anyone currently on air?

73

[fatboy]

Yup but not on a regular basis; I'm part of the county ARES group so most of my on air hours have to do with various state or local nets. My only access to HF gear is when I'm at my emergency comm center Tuesday and Saturday mornings.
Bob
KE7HZB

[Grizz]

Thanks Bob. I had two novice tickets that timed out. I operated a cw station at home while going to high school, and cw + voice on my commercial fishing boat as /mm. I am planning a longish world cruise in a sailboat, and bought some qrp kits that run on very low power. I have a RasPi that I am setting up as the navigation unit, including WEFAX for forcasts. All designed to minimize power consumption. solar will keep a house battery charged for the electronics.
stuff like that. i like cw and the basic station will be cw on 80, 40, and 15. I am looking for a qrp kit for ssb, and a rx kit for the satellites and HF wx broadcasts. If you have any suggestions for doing that I would appreciate your input

ex KN7RKO
ex WL7BDN

tnx es 73

[wecsoger]

Most of my time only did VHF/UHF, bought in on a nice older Kenwood TS-120 about two years ago.

Of course, The Plague and it's in a back bedroom stacked high with my wife's things. (sign)

Bands were pretty quiet back then. I'm hearing the sunspot cycle is kicking in again and things are warming up on the higher frequencies.

Post pictures of your gear, would be interesting how the ocean-going side works.

N4xxx, general class here...

[Grizz]

My hf radios are in deep storage right now. a Yaesu 757 that i had on the boat feeding trolling wire dipoles. steel hull in the Pacific Ocean > ultimate ground plane. I also have a furuno HF radio with antenna tuner. a radio tech said it could tune a coathanger! I don't plan to take either radio next trip because I plan to cut down the consumption to barely any. Had lots of interesting conversations around the world. Before internet.

https://www.qrpkits.com/tribander.html this is the cw kit I got. Won't start building for a while. This thing is golden and the couple who make it at Pacific Antenna are also. 5w into 50 ohms on 80, 40, and 15.
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tribander.png

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it is hard to believe how tiny this thing is, and the potential for contacts from the ocean. i am mainly into rag-chewing, and love cw. I got the Pacific Antenna SWR indicator kit and a 15W dummy load kit to protect the tx and to practice my lilliputian welding skills. er,
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Screenshot (7563).png

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this is the RasPi case. Has a fan, and has a 500Gb M2 SSD in the bottom of the case. That unit is about 2/3 the volume of the HF rig!

Thanks for the feedback.

[fatboy]

Will you be doing any packet work?
Bob

[Grizz]

Will you be doing any packet work?
Bob

I would like to, i want to learn about it. is that with modem and software? seems like there are a LOT of different types and sub types. I would like to be able to download weather fax, but that's rx only.

are you into it? what do you suggest that would fit my context?

ty es 73

[Rusty]

KE4VBB here

I'm not on the air much any more except for 2 meters. A buddy of mine called me today and was telling me that 10 meters is alive and well here locally. If you want to know more about QRP get in touch with GUNNY. He has a QRP rig that is state of the art.

[Grizz]

Thanks Rusty. 10M was hot hot hot when we were fall fishing for king salmon. I was running to a different anchorage when i hooked up with a sheep rancher in New Zealand. We were home schooling the kids and we got the atlas out and found a road intersection near the ranch. But the amazing thing was that the rag chewing went on for over a half hour, but the really amazing thing was that the signal was better than the average cell call, with no wavering or pulsing or distortion. it was a pipeline. rig was yaesu 757 running 100W into a trolling wire vertical dipole cut to the frequency. so much fun

[Rusty]

During WWII there were people sitting here in the states that were listening to German tanks on 10 meters while the battle of the bulge was going on.

[Ray]

I know absolutely nothing about them. You all are essentially speaking punjab or romulan or vulcan to me....

But I will always remember and be grateful to the the volunteers who made it possible

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar ... dio_System

for me to briefly communicate with mom and pop back in the day when I was deployed in uncle ronnie's yacht club. It is now seldom used for phone patching anymore due to the prevalence of email and cell/satellite phones but is still kept going for national security purposes.

[Grizz]

Thanks Ray. there are still hf nets going to patch calls from mariners to their friends and families. not everyone is on the internet, and satellite comms are still too expensive for backpack level mariners.

[Grizz]

During WWII there were people sitting here in the states that were listening to German tanks on 10 meters while the battle of the bulge was going on.

I never heard that! Thanks for the info. I wonder if the American tankers got timely and useful intel out of that. At the very least they would be simple to locate.

[fatboy]

Grizz,
sent a telenet message to two ham friends who are far more knowledgeable about packet than me and one is also a boat guy. Will let you know if they come up with good info. Me? I'm more appliance user than techie and I don't much care for water!
Bob

[Grizz]

Thanks so much! It is good therapy even to talk about this. I used vhf radios on the boat as appliances. They squawked all the time. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the happy fishing grounds. The radios grew silent. And cell phones privatized conversations so there was no gossip, or fish reports, or much else. It was pre-plandemic but foreshadowed it by removing the community of fishermen whose voices and jokes and stories and BS, and info, and ready assistance to whomever was all linked by marine vhf radio, and the "spook", local jargon for the CB radios. tricky fishermen desiring some kind of privacy used HF SSB frequencies to get some social distance, and tricky fishermen wanting to listen tracked them down to their "secret" channels. so much fun.. and some of the funniest things any human has ever heard. perhaps.

[hfcable]

KL4JD almost never use it. got my first license age 13

but i am finally retiring from work in mid december and will actually get to do some ham activity

[Grizz]

KL4JD almost never use it. got my first license age 13

but i am finally retiring from work in mid december and will actually get to do some ham activity

yeah that's my plan too, but being retired makes it hard to fit in all the stuff i'm trying to do!!

I have a friend who lives in SE and he recently had a direct contact with someone in Anchorage on 6M. sounds like the bands are opening up. i like rag-chewing and prefer cw to voice, but still plan to have an ssb rig for the tech phone segments.

thanks for responding. maybe we can connect over the air some day. i still have to get a ticket first.


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