Amateur Radio Cross-Country

weirdjim

weirdjim

Ejection Handle Pulled
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Jul 8, 2008
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Grass Valley, CA (KGOO)
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weirdjim
So, for US it will be I-80 from Sacramento to Lincoln, then down to Kansas City on 29, back up to Des Moines on 35, across to Iowa City on 80 again, up cross-country to Madison, and then the usual into Oshkosh.

Not just for us, but other than 2 meter simplex, can any of you locals suggest a good 2m/70cm BUSY repeater that REPLIES TO VISITORS as a lot of us trek from hither to OSH this summer? Not just on our route, but on other heavily travelled arterials?

Thanks,
Jim
WX6RST (Weather 6, Readability Signal Tone)
 
Honestly, no. Local systems are ghost-towns almost everywhere when I've tried during trips, and people don't answer calls for the most part. Linked systems that cover massive areas are better because you're likely to actually be heard by someone, but they also tend to be "aloof" to strangers, even more so than standalone systems.

Virtually linked systems (like IRLP, EchoLink, etc...) where you already know some folks say on a particular reflector, that you can link and unlink yourself along the way, usually work out "best".

Around here, by far the most daily traffic is on the new-ish Statewide (including extensions into NM and WY) DMR system. It's an "island" due to the nature of digital modes not being standardized and creating a "Tower of Babel" type scenario whereas analog FM was always "lingua franca" for repeaters until these newer systems started taking off.

The high mountain analog systems that cover massive territory, for the most part, sit idle. Our "ragchew" system that's the "busiest" only sees about two hours of solid use per day, unless the night owls show up, and then maybe four. The system has always been the busiest in town. You'll hear an occasional friend to friend ragchew on UHF, and the VHF machines that aren't ragchew sit idle for days until some "Net" comes on.

I can put a scanner with 50 or so local repeaters in it on scan and never here it stop for hours on anything other than automated ID's and club announcements.

I found that if I really want my ham gear to help me stave off boredom, mobile... on a long XC... I need to put the best possible HF antenna I can muster on the vehicle, and work DX, county hunting nets, and stuff like that. Calling on anything other than massive analog FM linked repeater systems pretty much ends up in two or three calls, no answer, and turning it off to wait for the next town to come over the horizon -- especially in the flatland.

Hand out rare counties on an HF county hunting net? You'll be the recipient of a pile-up. Way more interesting. Until you drive into a town and a common county again, that is.

Be interesting to see if your experience is any different. I answer calls I don't recognize on multiple machines around here, but often with the changes that removed any meaning from the call district number long ago, I'm just talking to some dude who moved here (like half of the planet) who lives five miles away but has a 6 call who decided to dig a radio out of a junk drawer and see if it still works.
 
Yeah, I'm aware that most 2 meter repeaters are good for room warmers and little else. I was hoping to get some stuff to program into the ht for a little time waster going across the flyover states. I'll announce that I'm going to Oshkosh and see if that engenders any activity.

Thanks,

Jim
 
If you came down to Texas first, the Saltgrass repeater network is usually pretty busy and folks will welcome a stranger. It's a bit out of your way just for a contact, though.
 
Cell phones have pretty much got rid of a lot of traffic on the repeaters. I've not really carried a 2M rig in years. Used to be our standard mode of communication at Oshkosh, but now we just text.
 
I haven't put a VHF/UHF in my last two vehicles. All the traffic seems to me moving to linked systems, IRLP, EchoLink - which I find as enticing as cell phone texting :(
 
flyingron said:
Cell phones have pretty much got rid of a lot of traffic on the repeaters. I've not really carried a 2M rig in years. Used to be our standard mode of communication at Oshkosh, but now we just text.
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Are any of the OSH repeaters still up? I thought I saw some on Jim's list last year but forgot to bring an HT.
 
147.24 (Tx +.6) is still listed in the repeater directory. I might be inclined to play. My Vertex Standard airband xcvr has 2M as well.
 
Try 146.850 192.8 tone W0JV ICARC on I-80 near Iowa City. Also try 146.745 192.8 W0GQ CVARC near Cedar Rapids. Can also try 147.150 192.8 W0FDA Coralville repeater near Iowa City. No guarantees. I'll by in OSH on Saturday so don't know if that will fit.
NO0B
 
denverpilot said:
FM? I haven't seen any that will do that.
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Yep the VXA-700 does 2M ham NFM. It will also receive up into the business bands in NFM mode. It does WFM on the broadcast bands (obviously no transmission). I believe they make a variant of the same radio (almost certainly just a software change) that transmits in the business band in NFM.
 
flyingron said:
Yep the VXA-700 does 2M ham NFM. It will also receive up into the business bands in NFM mode. It does WFM on the broadcast bands (obviously no transmission). I believe they make a variant of the same radio (almost certainly just a software change) that transmits in the business band in NFM.
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NFM as in commercial definition of "N" or Amateur? ;) "N" these days is 2.5 KHz not 5.

(Hams waste a lot of spectrum. Luckily nobody seems to want VHF and we're secondary on UHF or FedGov would find a way to auction some of it to some billionaire to sit on it and not use it like much of the cellular spectrum these days... Which is equally wasteful. I wonder how UPS' big 220 MHz project is coming along. LOL!)
 
It's 5KHz. Narrow only when compared to FM broadcast.

Yeah what a debacle that 220 thing was. The ARRL and UPS were both pawns in that idiocy. Of course around where I was, there was nothing on 220 any how. I carried individual 2M and 70cm radios until the dual banders came out.

Any FM is pretty wasteful these days anyhow.
 
flyingron said:
It's 5KHz. Narrow only when compared to FM broadcast.
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Heh. Just checking. Every new ham buying a cheap Chinese radio these days shows up on the local repeaters with 1/2 of the deviation necessary because they bought the PC programming software or got it free, and they don't know what the "narrow" checkbox means these days.

When you tell them they programmed their deviation wrong, they have no idea what you're talking about.

So you dumb it down and say, "Somewhere in that silly software there's a checkbox for narrowband for all the stuff you programmed in. Go load the programming file back into your PC, turn off all those checkboxes, and shove all of that stuff back into the radio and we'll be able to hear you." :)
 
Interesting topic, I was thinking of bringing my handi or my 817 with me and see about talking to people.. If you hear me on any local repeaters during Osh give me a shout.. G1KOT.. Cheers..
 
denverpilot said:
Heh. Just checking. Every new ham buying a cheap Chinese radio these days shows up on the local repeaters
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You mean ALL the repeaters at once, no? Baofeng to the rescue!

flyingron said:
It's 5KHz. Narrow only when compared to FM broadcast.

Yeah what a debacle that 220 thing was. The ARRL and UPS were both pawns in that idiocy. Of course around where I was, there was nothing on 220 any how. I carried individual 2M and 70cm radios until the dual banders came out.

Any FM is pretty wasteful these days anyhow.
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Yeah, what a mess. I got a 220 repeater license when they were handing them out like candy & had a site at 3000' elevation. Never turned it on, and sold it for a few hundred to some larger operator. They never did anything with it either.
 
flyingron said:
Yeah what a debacle that 220 thing was. The ARRL and UPS were both pawns in that idiocy. Of course around where I was, there was nothing on 220 any how. I carried individual 2M and 70cm radios until the dual banders came out.
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Wait a second, didn't nothing come from the planned 220 reallocation? I have been out of the game a while and only vaguely remember talk of something happening to 220. I had a tri-bander and used to play with 220 just because nobody else did... and we had a 220 repeater in the fleet at Purdue!
 
Played on the local 220 repeater back in the early 90's. Was pretty much the same 5 or 6 people all day long

KG6TY
 
We were strong armed into giving up 2 MHz on 220 in exchange for exclusivity. Part of it was retaliation for the slavish adherence for the morse code requirement. UPS claimed they needed 2 MHz on 220 for their envisioned package tracking system (never ended up using it, it was a horrendous engineering problem on that band). They were playing along trying to get other concessions from the FCC.
 
I still want to stick a 220 machine way up high here and tell no one it's up there and see who notices it in the directory and shows up. At our mountain sites the noise floor on 220 is significantly lower (measured) than 144 or 432. You can get a really high quality pre-amp and do the filters right and make a 220 machine hear a gnat fart in the next state over. And you get some nice behavior of VHF and UHF including better antenna gain for the size but not as much mobile flutter as UHF at long ranges or as much bounce off of buildings and multipath. More in-building penetration too. It's a neat band.

We've been able to leave the tone requirement disabled for decades on sites that are so noisy that wouldn't be possible on V and U. Incredibly quiet because it's not a 3x multiple of any other common RF noisemakers.

Also love the band for weak signal work. Best contact to date is CO to FL on tropo and great when aurora gets that high. Aurora almost never makes it up to UHF but when it hits VHF it almost always is making 220 play also.
 
denverpilot said:
Also love the band for weak signal work. Best contact to date is CO to FL on tropo and great when aurora gets that high. Aurora almost never makes it up to UHF but when it hits VHF it almost always is making 220 play also.
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Holy cow. What was the setup that let you work that?
 
mkosmo said:
Holy cow. What was the setup that let you work that?
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Think it was a 10 or so element yagi at about 15' and 100W. The tropo duct did all the heavy lifting. Wasn't even CW.

It was June contest weekend, and we were all operating our usual W0KVA call the contest group uses for contests (Scott is an electrician by trade, so Kilowatts Volts and Amps is a pretty good call for him!)... We woke up Sunday morning and while one guy was grilling up breakfast, we started turning up volume knobs on rigs and realized 2m was wide open to both coasts.

And then I hear a 4 call talking like he's next door on the 220 rig speaker... I tell the guy sitting in the chair closest to that rig to grab that contact!

And... It's Florida. Lasted another ten minutes or so. Whole gulf coast and most of Florida, just like they were a few miles up the road. The MUF dropped after that and VHF worked for about another hour to the gulf states, but 220 died. 220 opened up to Texas and Oklahoma later that morning as I recall, though, since I had 220 duty later.

The upper frequency bands open up more than folks think, especially in summer with sporadic E and tropo.

These folks will send you email alerts of love spots in real time if you sign up, and their maps are great.

http://www.dxmaps.com/spots/map.php?Lan=E&Frec=144&ML=M&Map=NA&DXC=N&HF=N&GL=N

The VHF+ propagation type that has eluded me forever that I'd love to see work, is Trans-Equatorial -- that's a creepy cool one. Point south from the Northern Hemisphere and work someone at nearly the identical south Latitude as you are North. Very strange stuff.

Aurora (Borealis) propagation is also fairly rare, but I've worked some really big Aurora openings. Point north and your signal is refracted back toward you but scattered all over the place, east/west.

And the scattering does funky things to the signal. When it's strong enough for SSB, it sounds like everyone is whispering really loud, even though they're not. Creepy sounding and very very cool.

Here's the current world record list for the VHF and up world...

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/On the Air/Distance_Records_1June2016.pdf

Notice that many of the records are from the mainland to Hawaii via tropo ducting all the way out into the Pacific.

I never analyzed it completely, but I think I got Worked All States or dang close to it, in 2006 from my Jeep during June contest, on 50 MHz / 6 meters. All SSB. I definitely qualified for VUCC on six, in just two days. Ye Olde, "Magic Band"... Amazing when it opens.

That was a mother of a band opening that year. I was working three or four Q's a minute while driving I-80 in Wyoming with a one-ear headset, a hand switch PTT, and I had a pile up on me for over an hour. Everyone wanted/needed Wyoming, as always...
 
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