martin77

Ah ! s/existe/hesite !

Si OP peut trouver quelqu'un pour lui ramener un T480 des états unis alors qu'il n'hésite pas : j'ai acheté un T480 il y a quelques moins pour 180 USD et il y en a des centaines a ce prix là sur eBay.

Et comme Collioure n'a pas qu'un clocher, en voici une autre prise il quelques jours du chateau !

My first radio purchased second hand when I first got my license was a Yaesu FT-480R. It’s a multimode 144 MHz transceiver outputting 10W. I love this radio and as much as I know it was still working last time I turned it on. On one occasion I was also able to purchase the FT-780R it’s 70cm brother, a few years back. Both of those radios are almost 40 years old now. It used that FT480 a lot for packet radio as well together with a home built BayCom modem. Those were the days !

As I got hooked into packet radio, together with a small group we wanted to get into 9600 bauds on 70cm and we got different type of equipment dedicated to packet radio : First using ( i believe) Teck 1000 transceiver imported from the US and later assembling half a dozen T7F 70cm transceiver from DF2FQ ( I was fortunate to have an internship in Munich Germany, and Holger was so kind to align them personally !). We also had to upgrade our game on the modem side since the BayCom was only 1200 bds so we got a few Baycom USCC>4 cards that could take up to 4 modems and had to be installed in an ISA port on your PC ! The Linux 2.0 kernel had native support for those !

The first radio I could afford to buy new was when I got my first job in the US and that was an IC-706MKG2 with it’s AT-180. I loved that radio and used it a lot both on HF and on VHF / UHF after I finally got access to HF privilege in the early 2000 and was among the last ones to take a CW test in France.

As time passed I spent more and more time working CW and the IC-706MKG2 wasn’t cutting it anymore. I sold it and got an Elecraft K2 together with most accessories, 100W PA and 100W AT. It built the 100W PA and AT into a separate enclosure so that I could either use the K2 as a QRP transceiver on the road or as a 100W one when at the shack. I remember spending about 150 hours putting together this transceiver and seeing it’s still sold today I would recommend it to anyone. It’s a fantastic kit and a terrific radio.

The very last HF radio I bought and which continues to serve me to this date is the Elecraft K3. It was the radio I had with me when leaving in 9V and I worked thousands of DX qsos with it, most of them in CW. Due to the regulation in place in HS I could unfortunately not import it when I last relocated so it’s now back in F ( you can basically not import any modern transceiver if it has 6m and even if you get to import your transceiver you must have it checked wich will set you down by 30k THB or about 1000 USD …)

The K3 was actually not the latest HF transceiver : When leaving in 9V I got myself an FT-817ND as it was more convenient when traveling back to Europe during summer holidays. I love this little transceiver especially with the CW filter but it doesn’t has the charm of the K2. The plan has always been to use it as an IF for a 23cm transverter or eventually a QO-100 station.

A decade ago I also built a 23cm station dedicated exclusively for contesting. It’s fully mast mounted around a DB6NT 28 > 1296 MHz module outputting about 2w that drives a 7w pre-amplifier who drives a 120W 28V PA. The RX path goes through a G4DDK LNA with about 15 dB amplification and a measured NF of just 0.3 dB. The whole transverter in a weatherproof enclosure is mounted during contests using about 5 feets of coax right behind a 2m large dish at 15 feet. I have often worked over 600 km with that station.

I have spoken much about antennas. Since I have relocated so many times, I have always been renting and never had the luxury of putting up massive towers and huge yagis. I have as a rule to always keep it very simple and usually focus on very simple mono band designs. I have extensively used vertical dipoles and moxon antennas. I have a dipole for every band from 40-10m and built wire moxons from 17m to 10m using bamboo rods in 9V ! None of those very simple designs cost more than 10 dollars to build and they serve me very well !

What about you ?

I usually try to support the local association wherever I leave. I have been a member of the REF in France, the DARC in Germany, the SARTS in Singapore and now RATS in Thailand. I don't really care for what they offer ( indeed I don't even applied for a reciprocal Thai callsign) but it's more so they have the funds to support and lobby for our bands. They are the voice of our hobby against telcos who are willing to pay billions in fees for our frequencies especially in the SHF and up landscape. If no one defends those bands, we can say bye bye to anything above 70cm within a couple of years.

Yes CQRLOG is great and graphically very pleasant. For some reasons I have never managed to fully switch my desktop to Linux but if was ever, this would most likely become my application of choice for general logging.

Thanks for sharing about cloudlog. I'm not a fan of subscription based applications but as I see you can self host I will definitely start a docker instance to see how it runs.

Thanks for sharing about flecli ! I'm also a VIM and FLE user but didn't know about that one !

When I first ot licensed back in the early 90's I started logging on paper. Back then I only had a novice licence allowing me 10w on 2m. Nevertheless I made thousands of QSOs over the years on FM and SSB.

A PC only became part of my amateur radio station when I got hooked by packet radio. That's also when I started logging on PC rather than on paper.

I could't remember all of the software I used to log but here are the ones I finally settled on :

• Fast Log Entry by DF3CB : Fast Log Entry isn't a logbook as such. Instead it's a piece of software designed to convert paper logs to digital logs. For every QSO you only have to enter the information that changed from the previsous QSO. I still use it to this day when I'm just going out for a few QSO's on portable and log them on a paper notebook. If you are into SOTA or POTA it's definitely something to look into. I used it to convert years of paper logbooks to digital logbooks. DF3CB is also the author of BV7 a fantastic software used by QSL Managers.

• Logger32 by K4CY has been my general purpose logbook. It's the one that's installed and that is used to log casual QSOs. It's full featured, interfaces with all my equipement and rather easy to use once setup. It also has support for LotW through an extension.

• WinTest by F5MZN is what I will use if I join an HF contest those days ( that's becoming rare). It has support for pretty much any contest and is the go to application for SSB/CW and also RTTY contests. It's also offten used by DX-Expedition due to it's simplicity. While I would not recommend WinTest as a general logging application, I did use it for that purporse when I was operating from 9V but I did mostly run pile-ups during that time which made it usable for that purpose but don't do it if you want something that register's the other's stations operator's name and QTH.

• Tucnak by OK1ZIA. Unlike the other applications listed above Tucknak is designed first and foremost for VHF+ contests. Initially develloped for Linux systems only, it since became available also on Windows, Android and even jailbraiked Kindle ! What makes Tucnak unique is the entry which is inheritaed from Taclog from OZ2M. Due to the bands conditions and the amount of information ( Callsign / report / QRA locator) it's not rare to miss a part of the exchange. Tucnak allows you to enter any information into a buffer and will automatically allocate it to the right field. Once all the information is completed a specific command stores the QSO. This associated to a large station database built over the years makes it a very strong application but with a steep learning curve. If you are going to use Tucnak during a contest, make sure to practice first so you don't loose a QSO during the contest. Tucnak has various functions dedicated to VHF+ contest, including networking allowing you to send skeds to other stations, ON4KST chat integration, log synchronisation, etc. It uses very little ressources so you can easily stick it on a Raspeberry PI behind a monitor.

That's it ! What do you use ?

Thanks to the ones who have answered already. As far as I'm concerned, over the years and due to a number of relocation accross 3 continents I have slowly moved to someone who rarely picks-up a microphone. I have however found interest in skimming activites that I tend to easily combine with a heavy work scheduele.

Over the years I have activated one of the rare RBN Skimmers in South East Asia first in 9V ( Singapore ) for close to a decade and in HS ( Thailand ) since 2021. The RBN runs on a Red Pitaya that can skimm up to 16 slots of 192 kHz at a time and I skimm CW, RTTY, FT8 and WSPR for almost all HF bands. That data is also use to run a WebSDR. Other than that I also skimm AIS on 162 MHz, ADSB on 1090 MHz and a local ( and the only ) CW / FT8 beacon in HS that's is located just north of Bangkok. I also have interest in skimming other bands such as satellites on VHF/UHF and when I relocate to EuropeI would definitely be someone that follows weather baloons.

I'm always interested in DIY projects and overall it's more about the journey than the destination. If it involves RF, 3D printing , Raspberry PIs and microcontrollers it's usually for me !

With no offence to anyone, and coming from r/amateur_radio I have no interest in knowing you just passed your licence, that you managed your first DX qso, or that the 20m is open in North America.

Not sure if you have already decided on what you want but I would personally stay away from anything from Heil. I have used one of their headset in a very humid environment ( 9V ) and the plastics deteriorated very quickly and became sticky.

What you need will depend on your operating conditions and it's going to be different if you operate alone in your shack versus being sharing 2 sqm in a trailer during a VHF / UHF / SHF contest with 2 other operators sitting next to you. If you are operating in such conditions you want something that is over the ear and blocking all the outside noise. We usually rely on second air pilot headsets such as the David Clark H20-10 combo headset ( if you don't need the mic, you can just lift the boom).

If you are going to operate from the quietness of your home ( as your choice for the Yeasu M1 would suggest), then I would simply trust one of the consumer hifi brands : Sennheiser, Sony, Bose come to mind. At the end of the end our needs as amateur radio are very limited and I would favor a light and comfortable headset I can wear for 30 hours over a contest over anything particullary fency.

Jimmy Carter, Céline Dion, Michael Gorbatchev, Bruce Springsteen, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many many more. One of the benefits of working in the luxury hotel scope for a few years.

Why on earth would you self host in 2023 when you don't have a reliable connectivity with some level of redundancy?