Re: Good idea...


Message posted by ham wolf on October 13, 2004 at 22:32:00 PST:

My license doesn't cover HF (in the US, that requires code proficiency), but I have seen the buddy pole in use just once. I don't recall it being very compact. [I'm getting useless hits trying to google buddy pole.]

One thing to consider is that in the desert, you are not exactly limited in real estate, i.e. you can put up a long wire. The hardest part is finding trees of any significant height. [It's hard to find trees high enough to hide your er um never mind.] I've brought a long wire antenna for short wave receiving a few times (center fed to a magnetic balun). The desert has so few noise sources that the long wire is not a problem. Long wire kits are relatively cheap and would be easy to "geocache" if you decide it is to bulky to carry back. [I switched from the long wire to an untuned vertical loop with a wellbrook amp, a bit off topic.]

With HF, height doesn't exactly make right. Rather, it is having the low angle radiation not being blocked. Much of the ET highway is a valley, with the Groom range on west side and various ranges on the east side. You might want to study the topo maps if you are really serious about making contacts. If you are interested in just one direction (say just to the west), then the task is a bit simpler. For instance, the mountains towards the west are quite far away if you are located near the intersection of Groom Lake Road and the ET highway. To transmit to the east, you could be located in Rachel, which would make the first obstruction be the Worthingtons. Transmitting to the west would be fun if you wanted to talk to Art Bell, who often hangs out on 3840 lsb. (Sometimes 3842lsb if there is QRM on 3840)

I noticed that the FT817 goes down to 100khz. I just discovered that Basecamp runs an NDB at 210Khz (unlicensed of course). It's an interesting beacon to monitor since unlike most NDBs, this one has voice. The first word to pop out is "Basecamp", so they have nothing to hide. There is quite a bit of audio on the NDB not really meant for the general public, such as the NDB saying it has a crystal missing and the radio tech recording "testing 1 2 3 4 5" as part of the audio. This clearly does not inspire confidence. I heard the same voice on the Groom Lake clearance/departure frequency this morning, also doing some testing, er not that Basecamp and Groom Lake are related or anything... ;-)

Oh yeah, callsign of the month sounds like either Pumkin or maybe Falcon, but I'll go with Pumpkin since this is October.


In Reply to: Good idea... posted by Richard on October 12, 2004 at 9:11:17 PST:

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