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Hey folks, this is AI0J here with Ham Radio Village, and today we're going to go over a demo of a sort of basic ham station setup.

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We're going to cover both VHF, UHF setups, portable setups, handheld setups, as well as sort of a base station setup.

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So we've got a bunch of things to go through here.

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You know, let's start with sort of the most basic and very likely the first radio you may have as a ham would be like a handheld radio like one of these.

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The Baofengs are also very, very popular.

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They're like $35 for an entry-level radio.

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I have a couple upstairs.

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These are great, you know, handheld.

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You don't have to worry anything about them whatsoever in terms of external hookups.

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They come with their own little antenna right on top, affectionately called the rubber ducky.

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They have a self-contained battery, you know, power button inside, pretty straightforward.

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You turn it on, it's got a button just like a walkie-talkie you probably had when you were a kid.

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Push to talk, you're good to go.

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Simple.

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So not much to hold a lot to talk about there.

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Definitely if you're starting out, it's a great place to go.

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A technician license will grant you all the ability to use these on the VHF and UHF bands.

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You're good to go there.

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This is a very similar model to the other one.

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This does DMR, which is one of the newer digital modes.

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That's from Anytone.

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But it works other than that, you know, the same sort of way.

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Push to talk, simple.

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As you move up, you may decide to get something more what they call a mobile station.

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Sorry for the camera movement here.

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This is optionally designed to go into a vehicle, which is why it's called a mobile.

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It's not super portable, but it's also not super heavy either.

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You could definitely put that in a backpack or something of that sort if you didn't want to affix it into a vehicle.

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Has a separate detached microphone in this case.

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You know, this one is corded.

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You can actually, this radio actually even has Bluetooth because it's fancy.

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So you can even use a Bluetooth headset like it's 1990 and look all cool.

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This one also is VHF and UHF.

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It's got a very cool color screen on here.

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You can change channels, things like that.

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I know it's a little hard to read that on the live stream there.

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But you know, you can program this with your computer.

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It uses a USB cable.

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You hook it up and you can program it to have all the channel memories, you know, with fancy names, things like that.

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These have been around for a long time, mobile radios on VHF and UHF bands.

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The older ones obviously aren't quite as fancy in color screens, but they work just as well.

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Technology wise, you know, in terms of radio power and transmitting, they all are going to work the same, more or less, in the VHF and UHF bands.

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One thing to note is these also almost always need external power.

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So you can see this has a cable coming off the back for power.

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Almost all ham radio equipment runs on 13.8 volts, which is standard for a vehicle to provide.

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So it makes it really nice and easy to use a standard 12 volt system that you would have in a camper, an RV, car, maritime, any of those sort of setups.

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And you get to use 12 volt batteries.

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So, not a whole lot to say about those.

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The antennas that you use for VHF and UHF on a mobile, again, those are not integrated into the unit.

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So you would have something separate.

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You can get very small ones that can, you know, attach to the side of a vehicle and be fairly discreet.

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Or you can go large and put like a big mast on the side of your house, for example.

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If we slowly pan over here, past that HF radio there, that large white stick right there is actually a giant VHF, UHF, and actually that one's 220 as well.

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So that's about a good, I think, eight feet long or so fully assembled.

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That's actually in two sections right there.

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That's probably in the larger end of a VHF, UHF.

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Most, I'd say, most typical home installs probably use one that's literally about half that size, so about four feet tall, which is actually the VHF, UHF I have installed currently outside.

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Yeah, the comment, good Lord, absolutely.

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That is a very large antenna, but still generally small in terms of ham radio antennas.

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All right, we're going to slowly pan back over.

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Yes, in the city, you know, giant antennas are definitely out of reach.

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You know, your landlord is probably not going to be very happy of you sticking, you know, eight foot pole at the side of a window.

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But there are actually a ton of resources online about stealthy antennas.

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There's actually a whole books written about having stealth antennas for two meters.

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There's actually some really great ideas where you can use some copper pipe and you'd make a planter out of it.

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And so it looks just like a normal planter and your flowers growing on it.

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It's actually an antenna.

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Your neighbors don't even know you can put that out in the patio.

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All right, so those are pretty simple VHF and UHF radios.

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You know, as you get higher in license and you, you know, maybe get your general license or maybe you're, you know, love math and you wouldn't got your extra license.

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First off, congrats.

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You're going to want to get into the world of HF radios.

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Now here's actually an HF radio that's, that's fairly old by today's standard.

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This, I think, dates back to late 70s, 80s maybe.

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It's made by ICOM.

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This is a full HF radio can go from, you know, really lower bands, like 160 meters all the way.

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I think this one does up to, to I think 10 meter.

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And, you know, this is much more fully featured HF.

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You start to climb in price.

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Unfortunately, I know everyone, you know, the, the question is always, oh, hey, I want an HF radio, but I don't want to spend a couple hundred dollars.

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And that's, that's hard to do.

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It is possible.

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Usually you're probably going to look at something like a kit radio for that and not so much something pre-bought.

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You can also buy things like this that are older and used, and you get a good deal.

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I think this was my first HF radio I bought when I got my general license.

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I paid a few hundred dollars for it from another ham.

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Definitely be careful buying used equipment.

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Ideally, if you could get to, you know, a swap meet or something in person, which I know is a little difficult right now, where you can actually test the radio, plug it in, make sure it works.

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You know, it doesn't immediately just like, you know, let the magic smoke out of the box when you power it up.

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A radio like this, you know, still fully can work on everything today, even all the new digital modes that are available and very, very popular.

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You can use this with that.

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It's no problem.

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You can actually, even this radio, you can actually even control with a computer to set frequency and transmit and all that sort of stuff.

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You can actually still do that, even with this older radio.

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Some older radios you can, some of the older ones you can't.

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It definitely depends on the make and model.

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So, of course, do your research.

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Now, if we pan over here, we can see what I'm currently using is my day-to-day HF radio.

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And that is this right here.

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This is the newer ICOM.

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This is an ICOM IC7300.

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Very, very popular radio right now.

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If you are getting an HF and you can afford the around a grand on sale price tag, like it's a great radio.

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The feature set you get for that is pretty good, in my opinion.

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You know, almost as good as some of the much more expensive radios.

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This is a newer design.

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The actual innards of how the radio works.

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This is a move to an SDR architecture, whereas this other one that we were just looking at is a classic super heterodyning radio.

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So the actual method of working has been upgraded with a newer technology.

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You have a lot more availability in terms of, you know, digital filtering and things like that to pull weak signals out of noise.

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And so it's nice.

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Interfacing with a computer on the newer radios is also a lot easier.

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Almost all newer radios have a direct USB port.

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And so you just plug it into USB and you'll get an audio device.

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You'll get a microphone and a speaker output.

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That's how you send audio to and from the radio.

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And then usually you get a virtual serial driver as a virtual serial port that you can use your software to control the radio with.

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And we'll talk more about that in a minute.

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And so with this, again, you need separate power.

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You know, again, it still runs on that 12-volt system, 13.8, you know, nominal, perfect, perfect world voltage.

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So yeah, you know, you can run it.

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You don't need, you don't need wall power.

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I'm actually not running any of this station, any of this equipment you see here.

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None of this is running off of wall power.

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This is actually all running off of a giant battery that's behind there.

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And then it actually gets charged by a solar panel that I have sitting outside.

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Just a small 100-watt panel sitting outside just charges all day when I'm not using it.

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And the battery keeps me going.

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So that's kind of nice.

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You don't even have to worry about that.

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You may know some stuff next to it and be wondering what these magic doohickeys are.

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So, you know, you definitely need the radio.

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You definitely need a power source.

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The next sort of thing you're going to want to look at is either you get away with either one of these.

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You don't necessarily need them.

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This bottom unit here is what's called an antenna tuner.

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And so what this does is this actually helps if your antenna is not perfect, you know, at whatever frequency you're trying to operate it, it'll actually try to match that.

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Now, it's important to note that antenna tuners are great at matching, you know, whatever you have for an antenna to your radio so your radio is happy, but you're going to lose power.

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If your antenna is not good, you know, if your antenna is not resonant, the tuner will make it match, but you're actually just going to be wasting a lot of power in the form of heat into the antenna tuner.

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So you always want to get your antenna as ideal as possible.

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This actually is a built-in power meter, so when you're transmitting, you could actually see how many watts you're sending out the door, which is useful.

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And a lot of radios have antenna tuners built in, especially the larger desktop units.

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Oftentimes, the standalone ones can deal with worse antennas than the internal ones.

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They can accommodate much, much higher, you know, mismatches.

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Again, your trade-off is, of course, you're going to put a lot of power into the tuner just to get a small bit of signal out if it's not very matched.

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And then finally, this piece back here... let me turn the light on.

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It doesn't really come up on camera.

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This is a standing wave meter, an SWR meter, and a power meter all in one.

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And so this will actually just has a very old-school analog instrument.

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Let me see if I can get it up close here.

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Sorry for the reflection there.

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So you can see it's kind of got two needles there.

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It's what's called a crossed needle display.

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And so when you transmit these meters, these needles will come up.

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The one on the left is actually the power that you're sending out, and the one on the back is actually telling you how much reflected power you have, how much is coming back.

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Ideally, if you had a perfectly resonant antenna, you'd have no power coming back and you'd be sending all your power out the door.

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That's what you want.

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So you want to see generally this needle on the right down to the bottom and the other one at your power level.

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But, you know, this will tell you if you're not doing that.

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So especially if you don't have a tuner , you definitely at least want a meter like this so that you can see if you have a problem and go , oh, I need to go adjust my antenna, things like that.

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So let's keep on moving back here.

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So you can actually see some power distribution back here.

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So this is a power distribution block.

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You obviously don't have to have anything as fancy as this.

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You can twist wires together with wire nuts to start.

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That's totally fine.

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Or you can get a bit more fancy.

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Excuse me.

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And yeah, use something like this.

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You'll notice these connectors back here, these red and black connectors are called Anderson Power Pole.

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They've kind of become the de facto standard across Amradio.

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They're not required.

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Each radio manufacturer kind of puts their own connector on their radios.

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So typically you'll just take that, adapt it to Power Pole, and then you can connect that to your power distribution.

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It is a standard for the radio emergency services groups, the areas groups.

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They have standardized on Power Pole and pretty much the entire community has standardized on these.

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And you can actually get the tools and you can make these connectors yourself.

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Yeah, they're pretty straightforward.

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Let me pull one out real quick.

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Yeah, so you can see kind of the edge there, you know, it's just a red and black.

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Very, very simple to have sort of a spring-loaded tongue in there.

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The cool thing about these is these are genderless.

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So there is no male connector, there is no female connector.

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The Power Pole connectors will just plug into each other.

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Pretty awesome.

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There goes the radio.

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So really, really recommend doing that when you get a chance.

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Again, it's not something that you have to urgently do when you first get your radios and set up, but it's something you want to do, especially for a long-term installation.

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It also makes it really nice when you go out into the field and, you know, you're like, oh, hey, I need to plug in this.

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Anyone got a spare battery?

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Almost everyone is using them.

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So you can go, oh, yeah, I have one.

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And you don't have to, you know, try to finagle some connectors or jury-rig something with some duct tape and baling wire.

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Not that we've ever done that.

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So in HF, the antennas are much, much bigger.

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We are inside.

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My antenna, of course, is outside.

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So, you know, you have a lot of options for HF antennas.

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There are, you know, of course, Yagi antennas.

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You know, a lot of people, of course, in their mind have a big picture of, you know, the hammer operator is, you know, the giant Yagi antenna on a, you know, 200-foot tower with a big rotator.

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And there are certainly hands that have that, and I'm jealous of them.

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But you definitely don't need anything that complex.

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So, you know, you can get away with just literally a random wire.

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It's called a random wire antenna.

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And you just can put out a random length of wire and get a good ground, plug it in.

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You would want to tune it with that.

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A very, another very popular starting antenna is what's called a dipole , which is literally just two pieces of wire, equal length.

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And the cut is specific lengths for whatever band you're trying to tune in.

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You throw that up, you know, in the air as high as you can get, throw it up in a tree or throw each end up in a tree, run some coax cable back to your radio, and you can be good.

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And it's really actually pretty small.

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I'm looking on the back of the radio just to go over some connectors you might see.

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I'll go pan real quick.

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So this is the older radio, but the newer radios are going to be very, very similar.

214
00:14:37,570 --> 00:14:40,670
So this right here is called the UHF connector.

215
00:14:40,850 --> 00:14:45,210
This was, if anyone has done CB in the past, this was the CB connector as well.

216
00:14:45,910 --> 00:14:50,030
That's pretty much what all desktop radios are going to have for an antenna connection.

217
00:14:50,210 --> 00:14:53,110
The Ham Radio Hobby is pretty much the only one that uses this connector anymore.

218
00:14:53,110 --> 00:14:57,210
It's actually a little outdated, but for whatever reason, the Hobby has stuck with it.

219
00:14:57,910 --> 00:15:00,250
On mobile rigs, sometimes you'll see this.

220
00:15:01,010 --> 00:15:04,990
Sometimes on mobile rigs, you'll see a BNC connector as well.

221
00:15:06,230 --> 00:15:08,190
And you can, of course, make adapters to all these.

222
00:15:08,190 --> 00:15:09,650
I actually have one right here.

223
00:15:09,650 --> 00:15:11,910
You can actually see this is a small little adapter.

224
00:15:12,090 --> 00:15:16,170
You can plug it right in, and then you can use a BNC antenna.

225
00:15:16,190 --> 00:15:21,910
Again, there's no sort of exact standard in the field.

226
00:15:21,910 --> 00:15:33,230
You know, my personal recommendation is using BNC connectors on all your antennas that are portable and using UHF or connectors for everything in your house for HF.

227
00:15:33,230 --> 00:15:35,830
And then just carrying a bag of adapters.

228
00:15:36,010 --> 00:15:40,470
Another connector you might see is an N connector, which is slightly different than the UHF.

229
00:15:40,470 --> 00:15:41,930
Of course, not quite compatible.

230
00:15:41,930 --> 00:15:43,690
Again, there are plenty of adapters.

231
00:15:43,710 --> 00:15:45,050
You can pull this out.

232
00:15:47,530 --> 00:15:55,650
You can actually see here on this device here, this is a UHF connector on the left, and this is an N connector on the right.

233
00:15:55,650 --> 00:15:58,870
So N, you generally only see at VHF and above.

234
00:15:59,810 --> 00:16:01,590
Not so much for HF.

235
00:16:03,790 --> 00:16:06,450
Moving on again, sort of power connectors you can see.

236
00:17:20,940 --> 00:17:28,540
Hey folks, this is AI0J here with Ham Radio Village, and today we're going to go over a demo of a sort of basic ham station setup.

237
00:17:28,680 --> 00:17:36,020
We're going to cover both VHF, UHF setups, portable setups, handheld setups, as well as sort of a base station setup.

238
00:17:36,280 --> 00:17:38,460
So we've got a bunch of things to go through here.

239
00:17:39,100 --> 00:17:47,880
You know, let's start with sort of the most basic and very likely the first radio you may have as a ham would be like a handheld radio like one of these.

240
00:17:48,500 --> 00:17:50,980
The Baofengs are also very, very popular.

241
00:17:50,980 --> 00:17:53,580
They're like $35 for an entry-level radio.

242
00:17:53,580 --> 00:17:55,280
I have a couple upstairs.

243
00:17:55,780 --> 00:17:57,560
These are great, you know, handheld.

244
00:17:57,720 --> 00:18:01,680
You don't have to worry anything about them whatsoever in terms of external hookups.

245
00:18:01,680 --> 00:18:05,680
They come with their own little antenna right on top, affectionately called the rubber ducky.

246
00:18:06,320 --> 00:18:11,140
They have self-contained battery, you know, power button inside, pretty straightforward.

247
00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:16,260
You turn it on, it's got a button just like a walkie-talkie you probably had when you were a kid.

248
00:18:16,460 --> 00:18:18,480
Push to talk, you're good to go.

249
00:18:18,500 --> 00:18:19,300
Simple.

250
00:18:19,900 --> 00:18:22,080
So not much to hold a lot to talk about there.

251
00:18:22,080 --> 00:18:24,460
Definitely if you're starting out, it's a great place to go.

252
00:18:24,460 --> 00:18:31,500
A technician license will grant you all the ability to use these on the VHF and UHF bands, so you're good to go there.

253
00:18:31,920 --> 00:18:34,520
This is a very similar model to the other one.

254
00:18:34,520 --> 00:18:41,980
This does DMR, which is one of the newer digital modes that's from AnyTone, but it works other than that, you know, the same sort of way.

255
00:18:41,980 --> 00:18:43,600
Push to talk, simple.

256
00:18:44,400 --> 00:18:49,820
As you move up, you may decide to get something more what they call a mobile station.

257
00:18:49,820 --> 00:18:51,880
Sorry for the camera movement here.

258
00:18:52,500 --> 00:18:58,120
This is optionally designed to go into a vehicle, which is why it's called a mobile.

259
00:18:58,580 --> 00:19:02,440
It's not super portable, but it's also not super heavy either.

260
00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:07,860
You could definitely put that in a backpack, something of that sort, if you didn't want to fix it into a vehicle.

261
00:19:09,200 --> 00:19:12,580
Has a separate detached microphone in this case.

262
00:19:13,020 --> 00:19:14,820
You know, this one is corded.

263
00:19:14,820 --> 00:19:22,580
You can actually, this radio actually even has Bluetooth because it's fancy, so you can even use a Bluetooth headset like it's 1990 and look all cool.

264
00:19:23,260 --> 00:19:25,420
This one also is VHF and UHF.

265
00:19:25,420 --> 00:19:28,140
It's got a very cool color screen on here.

266
00:19:28,340 --> 00:19:30,840
You can change channels, things like that.

267
00:19:30,840 --> 00:19:36,600
I know it's a little hard to read that on the live stream there, but you know, you can program this with your computer.

268
00:19:36,600 --> 00:19:37,900
It uses a USB cable.

269
00:19:37,900 --> 00:19:43,920
You hook it up and you can program it to have all the channel memories, you know, with fancy names, things like that.

270
00:19:44,120 --> 00:19:50,440
These have been around for a long time, mobile radios on VHF and UHF bands.

271
00:19:50,660 --> 00:19:55,000
The older ones obviously aren't quite as fancy in color screens, but they work just as well.

272
00:19:55,020 --> 00:20:04,260
Technology wise, you know, in terms of radio power and transmitting, they all are going to work the same, more or less, in the VHF and UHF bands.

273
00:20:06,040 --> 00:20:09,840
One thing to note is these also almost always need external power.

274
00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:12,460
So you can see this has a cable coming off the back for power.

275
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:20,480
Almost all ham radio equipment runs on 13.8 volts, which is standard for a vehicle to provide.

276
00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:21,940
So it makes it really nice and easy.

277
00:20:21,940 --> 00:20:30,760
You start a standard 12-volt system that you would have in a RV, car, maritime, any of those sort of setups, and you get to use 12-volt batteries.

278
00:20:34,640 --> 00:20:36,660
So not a whole lot to say about those.

279
00:20:36,660 --> 00:20:42,080
The antennas that you use for VHF and UHF on a mobile, again, those are not integrated into the unit.

280
00:20:42,280 --> 00:20:43,660
So you would have something separate.

281
00:20:43,660 --> 00:20:48,020
You can get very small ones that can, you know, attach to the side of a vehicle and be fairly discreet.

282
00:20:48,020 --> 00:20:52,560
Or you can go large and put like a big mast on the side of your house, for example.

283
00:20:52,560 --> 00:21:01,800
If we slowly pan over here past that HF radio there, that large white stick right there is actually a giant VHF-UHF.

284
00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:04,180
And actually that one's 220 as well.

285
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:08,540
That's about a good, I think, eight feet long or so fully assembled.

286
00:21:08,540 --> 00:21:10,480
That's actually in two sections right there.

287
00:21:10,700 --> 00:21:14,320
That's probably on the larger end of a VHF-UHF.

288
00:21:14,620 --> 00:21:23,860
Most, I'd say, most typical home installs probably use one that's literally about half that size, so about four feet tall, which is actually the VHF-UHF I have installed currently outside.

289
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:26,460
Yeah, the comment, good Lord, absolutely.

290
00:21:26,460 --> 00:21:32,240
That is a very large antenna, but still generally small in terms of ham radio antennas.

291
00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:35,060
All right, we're going to slowly pan back over.

292
00:21:37,570 --> 00:21:41,910
Yes, in the city, you know, giant antennas are definitely out of reach.

293
00:21:41,910 --> 00:21:46,650
You know, your landlord is probably not going to be very happy of you sticking, you know, eight foot pole at the side of a window.

294
00:21:47,190 --> 00:21:51,990
But there are actually a ton of resources online about stealth antennas.

295
00:21:51,990 --> 00:21:56,090
There's actually whole books written about having stealth antennas for two meters.

296
00:21:56,090 --> 00:22:01,630
There's actually some really great ideas where you can use some copper pipe and you'd make a planter out of it.

297
00:22:01,630 --> 00:22:04,710
And so it looks just like a normal planter and your flower is growing on it.

298
00:22:04,750 --> 00:22:05,950
It's actually an antenna.

299
00:22:05,950 --> 00:22:08,230
Your neighbors don't even know you can put that out in the patio.

300
00:22:11,610 --> 00:22:15,550
All right , so those are pretty simple VHF and UHF radios.

301
00:22:15,790 --> 00:22:24,610
You know, as you get higher in license and you, you know, maybe get your general license or maybe you're, you know, love math and you wouldn't get your extra license.

302
00:22:24,630 --> 00:22:26,150
First off, congrats.

303
00:22:26,630 --> 00:22:29,830
You're going to want to get into the world of HF radios.

304
00:22:29,830 --> 00:22:34,410
Now here's actually an HF radio that's fairly old by today's standard.

305
00:22:35,290 --> 00:22:38,550
This, I think, dates back to late 70s, 80s maybe.

306
00:22:39,590 --> 00:22:40,970
It's made by ICOM.

307
00:22:41,030 --> 00:22:42,610
This is a full HF radio.

308
00:22:42,610 --> 00:22:49,110
It can go from, you know, all the really lower bands, like 160 meters all the way.

309
00:22:49,390 --> 00:22:52,590
I think this one goes up to, I think, 10 meter.

310
00:22:54,170 --> 00:22:56,190
And, you know, this is much more fully featured HF.

311
00:22:56,190 --> 00:22:57,450
You start to climb in price.

312
00:22:57,490 --> 00:23:04,910
Unfortunately, I know everyone, you know, the question is always, oh, hey, I want an HF radio, but I don't want to spend more than a couple hundred dollars.

313
00:23:04,910 --> 00:23:06,350
And that's, it's hard to do.

314
00:23:06,350 --> 00:23:07,170
It is possible.

315
00:23:07,170 --> 00:23:11,930
Usually you're probably going to look at something like a kit radio for that and not so much something pre-bought.

316
00:23:11,930 --> 00:23:16,590
You can also buy things like this that are older and used and you get a good deal.

317
00:23:16,590 --> 00:23:19,690
I think this was my first HF radio I bought when I got my general license.

318
00:23:19,690 --> 00:23:22,570
I paid a few hundred dollars for it from another ham.

319
00:23:23,570 --> 00:23:25,850
Definitely be careful buying used equipment.

320
00:23:26,170 --> 00:23:41,070
Ideally, if you could get to, you know, a swap meet or something in person, which I know is a little difficult right now, where you can actually test the radio, plug it in, make sure it works, you know, and it doesn't immediately just like, you know, let the magic smoke out of the box when you power it up.

321
00:23:41,810 --> 00:23:45,410
But a radio like this, you know, still fully can work on everything today.

322
00:23:45,410 --> 00:23:49,150
Even all the new digital modes that are available and very, very popular.

323
00:23:49,310 --> 00:23:50,550
You can use this for that.

324
00:23:50,550 --> 00:23:52,150
It's no problem.

325
00:23:52,730 --> 00:23:58,670
You know, you can actually, even this radio, you can actually even control with a computer to set frequency and transmit and all that sort of stuff.

326
00:23:58,670 --> 00:24:02,530
You can actually still, still do that even with this older radio.

327
00:24:02,590 --> 00:24:05,070
Some older radios you can, some of the older ones you can't.

328
00:24:05,070 --> 00:24:06,510
It definitely depends on the model.

329
00:24:06,510 --> 00:24:08,550
So, of course, do your research.

330
00:24:09,810 --> 00:24:15,230
Now, if we pan over here, we can see what I'm currently using is my day-to-day HF radio.

331
00:24:17,970 --> 00:24:19,650
And that is this right here.

332
00:24:19,650 --> 00:24:21,110
This is the newer ICOM.

333
00:24:21,110 --> 00:24:23,350
This is an ICOM IC7300.

334
00:24:23,350 --> 00:24:25,510
Very, very popular radio right now.

335
00:24:25,590 --> 00:24:33,390
If you are getting an HF and you can afford the around a grand on sale price tag, like it's a great radio.

336
00:24:33,990 --> 00:24:37,510
The features that you get for that is pretty good, in my opinion.

337
00:24:37,710 --> 00:24:40,770
You know, almost as good as some of the much more expensive radios.

338
00:24:40,870 --> 00:24:42,230
This is a newer design.

339
00:24:42,230 --> 00:24:46,830
The actual innards of how the radio works, this is a move to an SDR architecture.

340
00:24:47,010 --> 00:24:51,690
Whereas this other one that we were just looking at is a classic super heterodyning radio.

341
00:24:51,690 --> 00:25:04,130
So the actual method of working has been upgraded with a newer technology, have a lot more availability in terms of, you know, digital filtering and things like that to pull weak signals out of noise.

342
00:25:04,130 --> 00:25:06,130
And so it's nice.

343
00:25:06,230 --> 00:25:10,370
Interfacing with a computer on the newer radios is also a lot easier.

344
00:25:10,370 --> 00:25:13,430
Almost all newer radios have a direct USB port.

345
00:25:13,870 --> 00:25:16,770
And so you just plug it into USB and you'll get an audio device.

346
00:25:16,770 --> 00:25:19,030
You'll get a microphone and a speaker output.

347
00:25:19,030 --> 00:25:21,490
Then that's how you send audio to and from the radio.

348
00:25:21,610 --> 00:25:28,450
And then usually you get a virtual serial driver as a virtual serial port that you can use your software to control the radio with.

349
00:25:28,450 --> 00:25:29,870
And we'll talk more about that in a minute.

350
00:25:31,430 --> 00:25:34,050
And so with this, again, you need separate power.

351
00:25:34,170 --> 00:25:40,670
You know, again, it still runs on that 12 volt system, 13.8, you know, nominal, perfect, perfect world voltage.

352
00:25:41,210 --> 00:25:44,550
So yeah, you know, you can run, you don't need, you don't need well power.

353
00:25:44,550 --> 00:25:47,390
I'm actually not running any of this station, any of this equipment you see here.

354
00:25:47,390 --> 00:25:48,910
None of this is running off of wall power.

355
00:25:48,910 --> 00:25:51,870
This is actually all running off of a giant battery that's behind there.

356
00:25:52,710 --> 00:25:56,290
And then this actually gets charged by a solar panel that I have sitting outside.

357
00:25:56,290 --> 00:26:03,550
Just a small hundred watt panel sitting outside just charges all day when I'm not using it and the battery keeps me going.

358
00:26:03,990 --> 00:26:04,810
So that's kind of nice.

359
00:26:04,810 --> 00:26:06,110
You don't even have to worry about that.

360
00:26:09,410 --> 00:26:13,010
You may know some stuff next to it and be wondering what these magic doohickeys are.

361
00:26:13,210 --> 00:26:15,050
So, you know, you definitely need the radio.

362
00:26:15,130 --> 00:26:16,850
You definitely need a power source.

363
00:26:16,850 --> 00:26:21,650
The next sort of thing you're going to want to look at is either you get away with either one of these.

364
00:26:21,650 --> 00:26:23,470
You don't necessarily need them.

365
00:26:23,510 --> 00:26:26,090
This bottom unit here is what's called an antenna tuner.

366
00:26:26,090 --> 00:26:35,110
And so what this does is this actually helps if your antenna is not perfect, you know, at whatever frequency you're trying to operate it, it'll actually try to match that.

367
00:26:35,110 --> 00:26:45,030
Now, it's important to note that antenna tuners are great at matching, you know, whatever you have for an antenna to your radio, so your radio is happy, but you're going to lose power.

368
00:26:45,030 --> 00:26:54,550
If your antenna is not good, you know, if your antenna is not resonant, the tuner will make it match, but you're actually just going to be wasting a lot of power in the form of heat into the antenna tuner.

369
00:26:54,550 --> 00:26:58,050
So you always want to get your antenna as ideal as possible.

370
00:26:59,950 --> 00:27:06,750
This actually is a built-in power meter, so when you're transmitting, you could actually see how many watts you're sending out the door, which is useful.

371
00:27:08,250 --> 00:27:13,470
And a lot of radios have antenna tuners built in, especially the larger desktop units.

372
00:27:13,630 --> 00:27:18,490
Oftentimes, the standalone ones can deal with worse antennas than the internal ones.

373
00:27:18,490 --> 00:27:22,430
They can accommodate much, much higher, you know, mismatches.

374
00:27:22,590 --> 00:27:30,190
Again, your trade-off is, of course, you're going to put a small bit of signal out if it's not very matched.

375
00:27:31,050 --> 00:27:35,290
And then finally, this piece back here... let me turn the light on it.

376
00:27:36,050 --> 00:27:37,550
That doesn't really come up on camera.

377
00:27:37,550 --> 00:27:43,070
This is a standing wave meter, an SWR meter, and a power meter all in one.

378
00:27:43,090 --> 00:27:48,070
And so this will actually just has... it's a very old-school analog instrument.

379
00:27:48,070 --> 00:27:49,950
Let me see if I can get up close here.

380
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:54,900
Sorry for the reflection there.

381
00:27:54,900 --> 00:27:57,220
So you can see it's kind of got two needles there.

382
00:27:57,220 --> 00:27:59,760
It's what's called a crossed needle display.

383
00:27:59,820 --> 00:28:03,480
And so when you transmit these meters, these needles will come up.

384
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:11,780
The one on the left is actually the power that you're sending out, and the one on the back is actually telling you how much reflected power you have, how much is coming back.

385
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:17,440
Ideally, if you had a perfectly resonant antenna, you'd have no power coming back, and you'd be sending all your power out the door.

386
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:18,500
That's what you want.

387
00:28:19,100 --> 00:28:24,240
So you want to see generally this needle on the right down to the bottom, and the other one at your power level.

388
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:27,780
But, you know, this will tell you if you're not doing that.

389
00:28:27,780 --> 00:28:36,360
So especially if you don't have a tuner , you definitely at least want a meter like this so that you can see if you have a problem and go , oh, I need to go adjust my antenna, things like that.

390
00:28:38,260 --> 00:28:40,240
So let's keep on moving back here.

391
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,800
So you can actually see some power distribution back here.

392
00:28:44,660 --> 00:28:46,380
So this is a power distribution block.

393
00:28:46,380 --> 00:28:48,620
You obviously don't have to have anything as fancy as this.

394
00:28:48,620 --> 00:28:51,420
You can twist wires together with wire nuts to start.

395
00:28:51,420 --> 00:28:52,660
That's totally fine.

396
00:28:52,660 --> 00:28:58,000
Or you can get a bit more fancy, excuse me, and use something like this.

397
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:02,860
You'll notice these connectors back here, these red and black connectors are called Anderson Power Pole.

398
00:29:02,860 --> 00:29:07,900
They've kind of become the de facto standard across Amradio.

399
00:29:07,900 --> 00:29:09,540
They're not required.

400
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:14,920
Each radio manufacturer kind of puts their own connector on their radios.

401
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:21,220
So typically, you'll just take that, adapt it to Power Pole, and then you can connect that to your power distribution.

402
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:31,440
It is a standard for the radio emergency services groups, the areas groups, they have standardized on Power Pole, and pretty much the entire community has standardized on these.

403
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:34,440
And you can actually get the tools and you can make these connectors yourself.

404
00:29:35,500 --> 00:29:36,900
They're pretty straightforward.

405
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:38,460
Let me pull one out real quick.

406
00:29:43,260 --> 00:29:46,480
So you can see kind of the edge there, you know, it's just a red and black.

407
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,640
Very, very simple to have sort of a spring loaded tongue in there.

408
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:52,440
The cool thing about these is these are genderless.

409
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:58,500
So there is no male connector, there is no female connector, the Power Pole connectors will just plug into each other.

410
00:29:58,900 --> 00:29:59,760
Pretty awesome.

411
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:00,780
There goes radio.

412
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:05,480
So really, really recommend doing that when you get a chance.

413
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:10,380
Again, it's not something that you have to urgently do when you first get your radios and set up.

414
00:30:10,460 --> 00:30:13,520
But it's something you want to do, especially for a long term installation.

415
00:30:13,980 --> 00:30:19,540
It also makes it really nice when you go out into the field and you're like, oh, hey, I need to plug in this.

416
00:30:19,540 --> 00:30:21,020
So anyone got a spare battery?

417
00:30:21,460 --> 00:30:22,700
Almost everyone is using them.

418
00:30:22,700 --> 00:30:24,020
So you can go, oh, yeah, I have one.

419
00:30:24,020 --> 00:30:29,100
And you don't have to try to finagle some connectors or jury rig something with some duct tape and baling wire.

420
00:30:29,220 --> 00:30:30,880
Not that we've ever done that.

421
00:30:33,300 --> 00:30:37,100
So in HF, the antennas are much, much bigger.

422
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,540
We are inside, my antenna, of course, is outside.

423
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:43,680
So, you know, you have a lot of options for HF antennas.

424
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:55,980
There are, you know, of course, Yagi antennas that, you know, a lot of people, of course, in their mind have a big picture of, you know, the hammer operator is, you know, the giant Yagi antenna on a, you know, 200 foot tower with a big rotator.

425
00:30:55,980 --> 00:30:57,620
And there are certainly hams that have that.

426
00:30:57,620 --> 00:30:59,360
And I'm jealous of them.

427
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,420
But you definitely don't need anything that complex.

428
00:31:05,180 --> 00:31:08,100
So, you know, you can get away with just literally a random wire.

429
00:31:08,100 --> 00:31:10,480
It's called a random wire antenna.

430
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:15,960
And you just can put out a random length of wire and get a good ground, plug it in.

431
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:17,880
You would want to tune it with that.

432
00:31:18,140 --> 00:31:25,020
A very, another very popular starting antenna is what's called a dipole, which is literally just two pieces of wire, equal length.

433
00:31:25,100 --> 00:31:28,820
And it cuts to specific lengths for whatever band you're trying to tune in.

434
00:31:29,020 --> 00:31:37,610
You throw that up, you know, in the air as high as you can get, throw it up in a tree or throw each end up in a tree, run some coax cable back to your radio, and you can be good.

435
00:31:37,610 --> 00:31:40,350
And it's really actually pretty small.

436
00:31:42,070 --> 00:31:45,870
Looking on the back of the radio, just to go over some connectors you might see.

437
00:31:50,870 --> 00:31:52,550
Go pan real quick.

438
00:31:52,930 --> 00:31:57,430
So this is the older radio, but the newer radios are going to be very, very similar.

439
00:31:57,590 --> 00:32:00,670
So this right here is called the UHF connector.

440
00:32:00,870 --> 00:32:05,210
This was, if anyone has done CB in the past, this was the CB connector as well.

441
00:32:05,950 --> 00:32:10,030
That's pretty much what all desktop radios are going to have for an antenna connection.

442
00:32:10,030 --> 00:32:13,110
The Hammer Radio Hobby is pretty much the only one that uses this connector anymore.

443
00:32:13,110 --> 00:32:17,230
It's actually a little outdated, but for whatever reason, the Hobby has stuck with it.

444
00:32:17,930 --> 00:32:20,270
On mobile rigs, sometimes you'll see this.

445
00:32:21,050 --> 00:32:25,010
Sometimes on mobile rigs, you'll see a BNC connector as well.

446
00:32:26,250 --> 00:32:28,250
And you can, of course, make adapters to all these.

447
00:32:28,250 --> 00:32:29,670
I actually have one right here.

448
00:32:29,670 --> 00:32:31,930
You can actually see this is a small little adapter.

449
00:32:32,170 --> 00:32:36,170
You can plug it right in, and then you can use a BNC antenna.

450
00:32:36,230 --> 00:32:41,930
Again, there's no sort of exact standard in the field.

451
00:32:41,930 --> 00:32:53,250
You know, my personal recommendation is using BNC connectors on all your antennas that are portable, and using UHF or connectors for everything in your house for HF.

452
00:32:53,250 --> 00:32:55,850
And then just carrying a bag of adapters.

453
00:32:56,050 --> 00:33:00,470
Another connector you might see is an N connector, which is slightly different than UHF.

454
00:33:00,470 --> 00:33:01,970
Of course, not quite compatible.

455
00:33:01,970 --> 00:33:03,710
Again, there are plenty of adapters.

456
00:33:03,710 --> 00:33:05,070
I'm just going to pull this out.

457
00:33:07,550 --> 00:33:15,670
You can actually see here on this device here, this is a UHF connector on the left, and this is an N connector on the right.

458
00:33:15,670 --> 00:33:18,910
So N, you generally only see at VHF and above.

459
00:33:19,830 --> 00:33:21,610
Not so much for HF.

460
00:33:23,830 --> 00:33:25,690
Moving on again, sort of power connectors.

461
00:33:25,690 --> 00:33:31,070
You can see, again, all the manufacturers sort of do their own power connector on the radio.

462
00:33:31,070 --> 00:33:33,790
And this is a big, scary-looking six-pin block.

463
00:33:33,790 --> 00:33:36,410
It actually just uses two pins, positive and negative.

464
00:33:36,430 --> 00:33:41,410
And then, almost all desktop HF radios will have an accessory port of some kind.

465
00:33:41,590 --> 00:33:42,730
This one's an old Molex.

466
00:33:42,730 --> 00:33:45,610
A lot of radios use a variation of a DIN connector.

467
00:33:45,670 --> 00:33:48,030
And in the manuals, of course, we'll have all the pinouts.

468
00:33:48,110 --> 00:33:53,990
You often don't need to worry too much about these, unless you need some of the signaling out of here.

469
00:33:54,150 --> 00:34:03,170
This older radio, if you want to pull audio out to use digital modes, you can pull the audio off of this connector and not even have to tap into the microphone connector on the front, which is nice.

470
00:34:04,070 --> 00:34:07,070
And most radios have some sort of control port.

471
00:34:07,070 --> 00:34:09,510
This is a serial port here.

472
00:34:09,510 --> 00:34:12,610
It has a phone plug style.

473
00:34:13,330 --> 00:34:16,970
Newer radios will just have a USB port, which makes it super, super easy.

474
00:34:17,790 --> 00:34:25,450
And then, depending on your rig, you may have some additional ports or some stuff here that, as a beginner, you don't really need to worry a whole lot.

475
00:34:25,450 --> 00:34:29,730
You could actually have separate, basically, transverter boards.

476
00:34:29,730 --> 00:34:34,310
You could take a signal coming in, process it through a separate piece of equipment, and send it back to the radio.

477
00:34:34,390 --> 00:34:38,170
Not something you generally need to worry about as a new ham at all.

478
00:34:40,070 --> 00:34:46,290
Following up on a question on Twitch, this is a not... I'm not sure I understand the advantage of the power distribution block.

479
00:34:46,290 --> 00:34:48,510
Is it mostly for different connection types?

480
00:34:48,970 --> 00:34:55,850
Yeah, so one of the things we do have to be aware of when we're dealing with any power source is protection.

481
00:34:55,850 --> 00:35:00,050
And so, if we go back and take a look real quick, back at this block.

482
00:35:01,550 --> 00:35:08,510
On this one, you'll actually notice that, above these, these are all individual fuses, and they're actually all different values.

483
00:35:08,510 --> 00:35:20,270
So, when you're dealing with a big, large 12-volt battery or a 12-volt source, if you touch the two wires together, you're going to put a lot of current through that wire very, very quickly, and you could short things out, melt the wire, cause a fire.

484
00:35:21,970 --> 00:35:23,670
All bad things we don't want to happen.

485
00:35:23,770 --> 00:35:28,930
So, an advantage of a big block like this is you can actually have different level of fuses for each thing.

486
00:35:28,930 --> 00:35:41,130
So, like the ones in the left, the one all the way to the left is the input, and that thing is at the 40-amp fuse, and then I think it's 20-amp fuses for these larger HF radios, and then like the charging bases for the handhelds are like, you know, 1-amp fuses.

487
00:35:41,130 --> 00:35:43,070
So, that way, you just don't have to worry about it.

488
00:35:43,670 --> 00:35:56,430
Again, you don't necessarily need to go to that level, but you, at the very least, no matter what, if you're literally just, you know, wiring your battery directly to your radio, it's very, very, very important you at least put some sort of fuse in there.

489
00:35:56,430 --> 00:36:02,250
That way, if you have a short circuit, it just blows the fuse, it costs you 30 cents, and nothing gets damaged.

490
00:36:02,830 --> 00:36:04,130
Great, great question.

491
00:36:07,410 --> 00:36:09,970
So, yeah, so some other things to talk about.

492
00:36:10,210 --> 00:36:16,570
You know, the other really important sort of thing for a ham station is most people have a computer attached.

493
00:36:18,670 --> 00:36:23,390
Yeah, inline fuses on all the wires is also a totally valid option, nothing wrong with that.

494
00:36:23,990 --> 00:36:28,590
You know, you definitely want to have a computer attached if you want to do any of the digital modes.

495
00:36:28,830 --> 00:36:37,570
And, you know, any computer, a lot of the ham radio software is written for Windows, a fair amount of everyone does XP, but it still runs on Windows 10, no problem.

496
00:36:37,570 --> 00:36:48,530
There is totally software for Linux, and probably Mac is the least supported, although I think there is a larger and more diverse set of software for that now than there has been.

497
00:36:49,790 --> 00:36:58,510
The advantages of using a computer is not only just control the radio, so you can actually say, okay, I want to use my computer and say, go to this specific frequency.

498
00:36:58,890 --> 00:37:02,550
I want to, you know, have this generate the digital mode signals, things like that.

499
00:37:02,550 --> 00:37:04,930
You can also record directly off of that.

500
00:37:05,990 --> 00:37:20,210
For VHF and UHF radios, especially, you can use your computer to program memory, so you don't have to, like, try to program every frequency and offset, like with the two knobs in the front of your radio, because that's just not very fun, especially if you want to program a bunch of stuff.

501
00:37:21,730 --> 00:37:29,150
And not a whole lot to say about that, it does not have to be a very powerful computer, you know, any laptops, totally fine, as long as you get some USB.

502
00:37:30,970 --> 00:37:33,850
And so now I just want to talk about a couple accessories.

503
00:37:33,910 --> 00:37:39,450
Again, we talked about power a bit, so let me pull this off here.

504
00:37:40,430 --> 00:37:44,950
And as I mentioned before, I'm running this setup entirely off a solar panel and a large battery.

505
00:37:44,950 --> 00:37:49,090
There's a very, very large battery hiding here in the corner.

506
00:37:49,690 --> 00:37:53,030
I think it's Duracell's largest AGM battery they make.

507
00:37:54,650 --> 00:37:56,490
But you certainly don't need anything that big at all.

508
00:37:56,490 --> 00:38:02,250
You can use a regular, any 12-volt battery, things from, you know, even like a motorcycle ATV.

509
00:38:02,330 --> 00:38:06,110
If you're going to be doing portable operations, something like a lithium battery .

510
00:38:06,110 --> 00:38:10,210
Lithium is a lot lighter than that giant lead-acid battery.

511
00:38:10,210 --> 00:38:15,510
That battery is super heavy, you know, this battery I can hold up with a finger, which is nice.

512
00:38:15,550 --> 00:38:21,350
The downside is, of course, lithium batteries cost a lot more money than a lead-acid battery or an AGM.

513
00:38:26,550 --> 00:38:29,110
And, of course, you don't have to run off a battery at all.

514
00:38:29,410 --> 00:38:32,350
You can absolutely buy any sort of, you know, 12-volt supplies.

515
00:38:33,710 --> 00:38:36,370
This is the one that I sometimes use with my station here.

516
00:38:36,370 --> 00:38:38,430
This is actually designed for an RV.

517
00:38:38,850 --> 00:38:44,490
This is an RV power supply, so it's actually designed to charge a battery and provide 12 volts for a camper.

518
00:38:44,610 --> 00:38:46,810
It actually works really, really well.

519
00:38:47,230 --> 00:38:56,250
You can, of course, get fancy made, you know, ones for ham radio that have, you know, very cool dials in the front or gauges, you know, power meters, things like that.

520
00:38:56,250 --> 00:39:01,870
A lot of them even have powerbolt connectors now on the front directly, which is convenient.

521
00:39:02,830 --> 00:39:05,290
But you don't definitely have to go that route.

522
00:39:05,290 --> 00:39:09,350
Really, anything that gives you 12 volts is good or 13.8 nominal.

523
00:39:10,150 --> 00:39:17,730
One thing to be aware of, you know, I've seen a lot of people, you know, use old computer power supplies, and that certainly can work.

524
00:39:17,730 --> 00:39:22,670
You do have to be careful with any power supply on the electrical noise that they make.

525
00:39:22,670 --> 00:39:30,070
Some power supplies can be very noisy electrically, and that'll make it much, much harder to tune signals at HF.

526
00:39:30,370 --> 00:39:32,810
VHF and UHF, it's usually not an issue.

527
00:39:32,990 --> 00:39:38,450
But as you start needing HF bands, you become much, much more sensitive to electrical noise.

528
00:39:38,450 --> 00:39:43,830
And that's actually why I try to operate off a battery all at all times, because then there's just no line noise at all.

529
00:39:43,830 --> 00:39:45,690
There's no connection to the grid.

530
00:39:48,530 --> 00:39:51,970
All right, so that pretty much covers what you need.

531
00:39:51,970 --> 00:39:53,650
A couple other nice things to have.

532
00:39:53,650 --> 00:39:57,110
If you can have something, this is called an antenna analyzer.

533
00:39:57,110 --> 00:39:58,490
I'm just getting real close here.

534
00:39:58,490 --> 00:39:59,990
Again, this is sort of a fancy one.

535
00:39:59,990 --> 00:40:02,750
You definitely don't need anything super fancy.

536
00:40:05,070 --> 00:40:11,010
If you are part of a local ham club, a lot of times your club will actually have one that, you know, you can take on loan.

537
00:40:11,010 --> 00:40:15,170
This is good when you're setting up new antennas, especially if you're building antennas.

538
00:40:15,170 --> 00:40:16,930
This becomes almost essential.

539
00:40:17,150 --> 00:40:22,890
You can plug your antenna directly into here and you can see if it tunes and see how good it is.

540
00:40:22,890 --> 00:40:26,490
We can grab one real quick and test.

541
00:40:26,490 --> 00:40:27,930
Let me put this little adapter back on.

542
00:40:27,930 --> 00:40:35,750
So we can actually pull the antenna off this radio or in my shirt here.

543
00:40:37,170 --> 00:40:40,370
All right, so we can actually hook up.

544
00:40:40,370 --> 00:40:46,510
This is my antenna to the side and you can immediately see atop these needles change, right?

545
00:40:46,510 --> 00:40:48,010
So they're infinite, right?

546
00:40:48,010 --> 00:40:49,770
We're definitely not getting anything.

547
00:40:50,730 --> 00:40:51,790
We connected it.

548
00:40:51,790 --> 00:40:55,650
And this works similar to the way the other meter we looked at earlier.

549
00:40:56,230 --> 00:41:00,190
The difference is this is, you know, you sort of connect it for testing.

550
00:41:00,450 --> 00:41:07,230
This one over here actually stays connected all the time and you run your signals through that, whereas this you do not.

551
00:41:08,590 --> 00:41:10,990
So you can see here we can actually adjust which frequency.

552
00:41:10,990 --> 00:41:13,310
I know it's a little hard to see that display.

553
00:41:14,190 --> 00:41:15,350
There we go a little bit.

554
00:41:16,130 --> 00:41:21,410
But this one's just a nice little LCD display at the bottom where it shows the frequency that you're trying to test.

555
00:41:23,590 --> 00:41:34,710
And then you can, you know, you can see as we move around and the band, if we get to somewhere right in the middle of the 20 meter band, which is 14 megahertz, you can see the SWR is really dropping down.

556
00:41:34,710 --> 00:41:36,270
It's still not perfect in this antenna.

557
00:41:36,270 --> 00:41:38,810
It's a 1.5 SWR.

558
00:41:38,810 --> 00:41:43,470
You'd ideally want that to be one, but you can see it is tuning right here at 50.

559
00:41:43,650 --> 00:41:50,490
So just a good thing that, you know, again, if you're building antennas, it's definitely something worth the investment to buy.

560
00:41:50,930 --> 00:41:53,170
You know, you don't find anything quite this fancy.

561
00:41:53,170 --> 00:41:57,110
There are plenty of things, plenty of options on the market.

562
00:41:57,150 --> 00:41:58,790
Again, used is totally fine.

563
00:41:58,790 --> 00:42:04,770
Ask around, you know, if you have a ham friend in the area or a club, they might have one and you can just borrow it.

564
00:42:04,770 --> 00:42:10,730
If you're using a commercial off-the-shelf antenna that you've bought, you can probably get away with that one for a bit.

565
00:42:11,090 --> 00:42:18,910
But it is important to know with even a pre-bought antenna that, you know, your installation conditions are going to affect that.

566
00:42:19,190 --> 00:42:26,310
So if it's not as high as ideal or, you know, it's not in the right shape, you know, you may actually not tune as well as you might think.

567
00:42:27,310 --> 00:42:32,310
All right, just looking at some questions.

568
00:42:32,350 --> 00:42:34,190
How much have you spent on all your gear?

569
00:42:34,190 --> 00:42:35,790
I don't have to answer that question.

570
00:42:35,790 --> 00:42:37,690
I assume you're a plant for my wife.

571
00:42:38,790 --> 00:42:48,070
No, I mean, you know, like any hobby, it can get expensive, you know, or, you know, you can try to be as cheap as you want and do a lot of kit building, things like that.

572
00:42:49,030 --> 00:42:53,550
So yeah, I mean, it's been over several years and probably, I don't know, several thousand dollars.

573
00:42:53,550 --> 00:42:53,990
I don't know.

574
00:42:53,990 --> 00:42:56,450
But yeah, yeah.

575
00:43:03,370 --> 00:43:04,510
I think that's about it.

576
00:43:04,510 --> 00:43:06,930
I don't see any other questions in the chat.

577
00:43:06,930 --> 00:43:08,570
So thanks for tuning in.

578
00:43:08,570 --> 00:43:09,530
Hopefully this was helpful.

579
00:43:09,530 --> 00:43:14,750
If you do have any further questions, we can... you can drop them in the chat and I'll answer you.

580
00:43:14,750 --> 00:43:16,170
Oh, actually, we do have one coming in.

581
00:43:16,170 --> 00:43:17,490
Do you use a grounding block?

582
00:43:17,490 --> 00:43:20,930
That is actually a great point I totally forgot about.

583
00:43:21,290 --> 00:43:31,870
No matter what you do, you definitely... system grounding is very, very important, both for lightning protection and to keep our stray RF currents in at bay.

584
00:43:32,170 --> 00:43:33,690
So yeah, that's a great question.

585
00:43:33,690 --> 00:43:35,150
So I do actually have a grounding block.

586
00:43:35,150 --> 00:43:37,410
It's on the outside of this house here.

587
00:43:37,410 --> 00:43:40,150
Let me go back.

588
00:43:40,510 --> 00:43:46,790
Now if we pan up, we can actually see my RF cable is going to a mysterious hole in the wall there.

589
00:43:47,050 --> 00:43:50,770
That actually goes to the outside walls and outside wall in front of us.

590
00:43:51,470 --> 00:43:57,730
And I have an entrance panel there that has a big copper sheet and actually has some lightning arresters mounted in there.

591
00:43:57,890 --> 00:44:03,130
So they do have a full grounding block and there's... it's tied to the house grounding system, to the grounding rods.

592
00:44:03,130 --> 00:44:04,470
Very, very important.

593
00:44:04,710 --> 00:44:09,630
You want good ground for your system and you want it to be the same ground as your house.

594
00:44:09,630 --> 00:44:14,550
You do not want to have your home electrical ground and your antenna grounds be different.

595
00:44:14,550 --> 00:44:18,370
That's just going to ask for trouble and or could be dangerous.

596
00:44:18,370 --> 00:44:24,730
So there definitely is a whole bunch of resources on grounding.

597
00:44:24,730 --> 00:44:32,310
The ARRL actually has a book out in a letter just called Grounding and Bonding for the Amateur Radio, I think is what it's called.

598
00:44:32,310 --> 00:44:33,710
And I highly recommend that.

599
00:44:33,710 --> 00:44:40,790
It goes into very, very deep detail on how to design ground systems that are effective and how to stay safe, things like that.

600
00:44:42,790 --> 00:44:45,570
All right, not seeing anything else.

601
00:44:45,570 --> 00:44:49,670
So if you have any questions, I will be on Discord, on the DEF CON Discord.

602
00:44:49,670 --> 00:44:52,810
So feel free to drop in, ask any questions and I'll follow up there.

603
00:44:53,110 --> 00:44:54,350
Thanks for watching, guys!