[00:00.890 --> 00:05.730]  Hey folks, this is AI0J here with Ham Radio Village, and today we're going to go over
[00:05.890 --> 00:12.050]  a demo of a sort of basic ham station setup. We're going to cover both VHF, UHF setups,
[00:12.050 --> 00:16.790]  portable setups, handheld setups, as well as sort of a base station setup. So we've
[00:16.790 --> 00:21.790]  got a bunch of things to go through here. You know, let's start with sort of the most
[00:21.790 --> 00:26.270]  basic and very likely the first radio you may have as a ham would be like a handheld
[00:26.270 --> 00:31.850]  radio like one of these. The Baofengs are also very, very popular. They're like $35
[00:31.850 --> 00:37.530]  for an entry-level radio. I have a couple upstairs. These are great, you know, handheld.
[00:37.570 --> 00:41.770]  You don't have to worry anything about them whatsoever in terms of external hookups. They
[00:41.770 --> 00:45.670]  come with their own little antenna right on top, affectionately called the rubber ducky.
[00:46.270 --> 00:51.010]  They have a self-contained battery, you know, power button inside, pretty straightforward.
[00:51.790 --> 00:55.410]  You turn it on, it's got a button just like a walkie-talkie you probably had when you
[00:55.410 --> 01:01.590]  were a kid. Push to talk, you're good to go. Simple. So not much to hold a lot to talk
[01:01.590 --> 01:04.910]  about there. Definitely if you're starting out, it's a great place to go. A technician
[01:04.910 --> 01:10.390]  license will grant you all the ability to use these on the VHF and UHF bands. You're
[01:10.390 --> 01:16.110]  good to go there. This is a very similar model to the other one. This does DMR, which is
[01:16.110 --> 01:20.790]  one of the newer digital modes. That's from Anytone. But it works other than that, you
[01:20.790 --> 01:26.970]  know, the same sort of way. Push to talk, simple. As you move up, you may decide to
[01:26.970 --> 01:31.910]  get something more what they call a mobile station. Sorry for the camera movement here.
[01:32.450 --> 01:38.950]  This is optionally designed to go into a vehicle, which is why it's called a mobile. It's not
[01:38.950 --> 01:44.070]  super portable, but it's also not super heavy either. You could definitely put that in a
[01:44.070 --> 01:49.370]  backpack or something of that sort if you didn't want to affix it into a vehicle. Has
[01:49.590 --> 01:55.570]  a separate detached microphone in this case. You know, this one is corded. You can actually,
[01:55.570 --> 01:59.390]  this radio actually even has Bluetooth because it's fancy. So you can even use a Bluetooth
[01:59.390 --> 02:06.010]  headset like it's 1990 and look all cool. This one also is VHF and UHF. It's got a very
[02:06.010 --> 02:11.310]  cool color screen on here. You can change channels, things like that. I know it's a
[02:11.310 --> 02:15.730]  little hard to read that on the live stream there. But you know, you can program this
[02:15.730 --> 02:21.310]  with your computer. It uses a USB cable. You hook it up and you can program it to have
[02:21.310 --> 02:25.090]  all the channel memories, you know, with fancy names, things like that. These have been around
[02:25.090 --> 02:32.050]  for a long time, mobile radios on VHF and UHF bands. The older ones obviously aren't
[02:32.050 --> 02:36.510]  quite as fancy in color screens, but they work just as well. Technology wise, you know,
[02:36.510 --> 02:41.810]  in terms of radio power and transmitting, they all are going to work the same, more
[02:41.810 --> 02:49.250]  or less, in the VHF and UHF bands. One thing to note is these also almost always need external
[02:49.250 --> 02:54.170]  power. So you can see this has a cable coming off the back for power. Almost all ham radio
[02:54.170 --> 03:01.410]  equipment runs on 13.8 volts, which is standard for a vehicle to provide. So it makes it really
[03:01.410 --> 03:06.590]  nice and easy to use a standard 12 volt system that you would have in a camper, an RV, car,
[03:06.590 --> 03:15.720]  maritime, any of those sort of setups. And you get to use 12 volt batteries. So, not a whole lot
[03:15.720 --> 03:20.680]  to say about those. The antennas that you use for VHF and UHF on a mobile, again, those are not
[03:20.680 --> 03:24.920]  integrated into the unit. So you would have something separate. You can get very small ones
[03:24.920 --> 03:28.760]  that can, you know, attach to the side of a vehicle and be fairly discreet. Or you can go
[03:28.760 --> 03:35.060]  large and put like a big mast on the side of your house, for example. If we slowly pan over here,
[03:35.060 --> 03:41.960]  past that HF radio there, that large white stick right there is actually a giant VHF, UHF, and
[03:41.960 --> 03:48.080]  actually that one's 220 as well. So that's about a good, I think, eight feet long or so fully
[03:48.080 --> 03:53.240]  assembled. That's actually in two sections right there. That's probably in the larger end of a VHF,
[03:53.240 --> 03:58.140]  UHF. Most, I'd say, most typical home installs probably use one that's literally about half that
[03:58.140 --> 04:03.880]  size, so about four feet tall, which is actually the VHF, UHF I have installed currently outside.
[04:04.620 --> 04:10.080]  Yeah, the comment, good Lord, absolutely. That is a very large antenna, but still generally small
[04:10.080 --> 04:19.460]  in terms of ham radio antennas. All right, we're going to slowly pan back over. Yes, in the city,
[04:19.460 --> 04:23.280]  you know, giant antennas are definitely out of reach. You know, your landlord is probably not
[04:23.280 --> 04:27.780]  going to be very happy of you sticking, you know, eight foot pole at the side of a window. But there
[04:27.780 --> 04:32.520]  are actually a ton of resources online about stealthy antennas. There's actually a whole
[04:32.520 --> 04:36.920]  books written about having stealth antennas for two meters. There's actually some really
[04:36.920 --> 04:42.000]  great ideas where you can use some copper pipe and you'd make a planter out of it. And so it
[04:42.000 --> 04:46.040]  looks just like a normal planter and your flowers growing on it. It's actually an antenna. Your
[04:46.040 --> 04:53.320]  neighbors don't even know you can put that out in the patio. All right, so those are pretty simple
[04:53.320 --> 05:00.200]  VHF and UHF radios. You know, as you get higher in license and you, you know, maybe get your
[05:00.200 --> 05:04.580]  general license or maybe you're, you know, love math and you wouldn't got your extra license.
[05:04.580 --> 05:10.620]  First off, congrats. You're going to want to get into the world of HF radios. Now here's actually
[05:10.620 --> 05:17.360]  an HF radio that's, that's fairly old by today's standard. This, I think, dates back to late 70s,
[05:17.360 --> 05:26.460]  80s maybe. It's made by ICOM. This is a full HF radio can go from, you know, really lower bands,
[05:26.460 --> 05:32.600]  like 160 meters all the way. I think this one does up to, to I think 10 meter.
[05:34.140 --> 05:37.840]  And, you know, this is much more fully featured HF. You start to climb in price. Unfortunately,
[05:37.840 --> 05:43.040]  I know everyone, you know, the, the question is always, oh, hey, I want an HF radio, but I don't
[05:43.040 --> 05:47.640]  want to spend a couple hundred dollars. And that's, that's hard to do. It is possible. Usually you're
[05:47.640 --> 05:51.880]  probably going to look at something like a kit radio for that and not so much something pre-bought.
[05:51.880 --> 05:56.900]  You can also buy things like this that are older and used, and you get a good deal. I think this
[05:56.900 --> 06:00.600]  was my first HF radio I bought when I got my general license. I paid a few hundred dollars
[06:00.600 --> 06:07.280]  for it from another ham. Definitely be careful buying used equipment. Ideally, if you could get
[06:07.280 --> 06:12.460]  to, you know, a swap meet or something in person, which I know is a little difficult right now,
[06:12.460 --> 06:16.660]  where you can actually test the radio, plug it in, make sure it works. You know, it doesn't
[06:16.660 --> 06:20.740]  immediately just like, you know, let the magic smoke out of the box when you power it up.
[06:21.880 --> 06:26.340]  A radio like this, you know, still fully can work on everything today, even all the new
[06:26.340 --> 06:30.800]  digital modes that are available and very, very popular. You can use this with that. It's no
[06:30.800 --> 06:36.700]  problem. You can actually, even this radio, you can actually even control with a computer to set
[06:36.700 --> 06:41.580]  frequency and transmit and all that sort of stuff. You can actually still do that, even with this
[06:41.580 --> 06:45.740]  older radio. Some older radios you can, some of the older ones you can't. It definitely depends
[06:45.740 --> 06:51.680]  on the make and model. So, of course, do your research. Now, if we pan over here, we can see
[06:51.680 --> 07:00.200]  what I'm currently using is my day-to-day HF radio. And that is this right here. This is the
[07:00.200 --> 07:07.060]  newer ICOM. This is an ICOM IC7300. Very, very popular radio right now. If you are getting an
[07:07.060 --> 07:14.740]  HF and you can afford the around a grand on sale price tag, like it's a great radio. The feature
[07:14.740 --> 07:19.220]  set you get for that is pretty good, in my opinion. You know, almost as good as some of the
[07:19.220 --> 07:24.020]  much more expensive radios. This is a newer design. The actual innards of how the radio
[07:24.020 --> 07:28.620]  works. This is a move to an SDR architecture, whereas this other one that we were just looking
[07:28.620 --> 07:35.700]  at is a classic super heterodyning radio. So the actual method of working has been upgraded
[07:36.380 --> 07:40.760]  with a newer technology. You have a lot more availability in terms of, you know,
[07:40.760 --> 07:46.000]  digital filtering and things like that to pull weak signals out of noise. And so it's nice.
[07:46.000 --> 07:51.680]  Interfacing with a computer on the newer radios is also a lot easier. Almost all newer radios
[07:51.680 --> 07:56.840]  have a direct USB port. And so you just plug it into USB and you'll get an audio device. You'll
[07:56.840 --> 08:02.000]  get a microphone and a speaker output. That's how you send audio to and from the radio. And then
[08:02.000 --> 08:06.820]  usually you get a virtual serial driver as a virtual serial port that you can use your software
[08:06.820 --> 08:12.680]  to control the radio with. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. And so with this, again,
[08:12.680 --> 08:17.780]  you need separate power. You know, again, it still runs on that 12-volt system, 13.8, you know,
[08:17.780 --> 08:23.360]  nominal, perfect, perfect world voltage. So yeah, you know, you can run it. You don't need,
[08:23.360 --> 08:26.680]  you don't need wall power. I'm actually not running any of this station, any of this equipment
[08:26.680 --> 08:30.280]  you see here. None of this is running off of wall power. This is actually all running off of a giant
[08:30.280 --> 08:35.960]  battery that's behind there. And then it actually gets charged by a solar panel that I have sitting
[08:35.960 --> 08:41.100]  outside. Just a small 100-watt panel sitting outside just charges all day when I'm not using
[08:41.100 --> 08:45.440]  it. And the battery keeps me going. So that's kind of nice. You don't even have to worry about
[08:45.440 --> 08:53.020]  that. You may know some stuff next to it and be wondering what these magic doohickeys are.
[08:53.100 --> 08:57.380]  So, you know, you definitely need the radio. You definitely need a power source. The next sort of
[08:57.380 --> 09:01.800]  thing you're going to want to look at is either you get away with either one of these. You don't
[09:01.800 --> 09:06.560]  necessarily need them. This bottom unit here is what's called an antenna tuner. And so what this
[09:06.560 --> 09:12.340]  does is this actually helps if your antenna is not perfect, you know, at whatever frequency you're
[09:12.340 --> 09:16.520]  trying to operate it, it'll actually try to match that. Now, it's important to note that antenna
[09:16.520 --> 09:22.600]  tuners are great at matching, you know, whatever you have for an antenna to your radio so your radio
[09:22.600 --> 09:27.400]  is happy, but you're going to lose power. If your antenna is not good, you know, if your antenna is
[09:27.400 --> 09:31.920]  not resonant, the tuner will make it match, but you're actually just going to be wasting a lot
[09:31.920 --> 09:35.940]  of power in the form of heat into the antenna tuner. So you always want to get your antenna
[09:35.940 --> 09:42.580]  as ideal as possible. This actually is a built-in power meter, so when you're transmitting, you
[09:42.580 --> 09:46.700]  could actually see how many watts you're sending out the door, which is useful.
[09:48.220 --> 09:53.580]  And a lot of radios have antenna tuners built in, especially the larger desktop units.
[09:53.660 --> 09:58.780]  Oftentimes, the standalone ones can deal with worse antennas than the internal ones. They can
[09:58.780 --> 10:05.520]  accommodate much, much higher, you know, mismatches. Again, your trade-off is, of course,
[10:05.520 --> 10:09.180]  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
[10:09.180 --> 10:16.620]  very matched. And then finally, this piece back here... let me turn the light on. It doesn't
[10:16.620 --> 10:23.020]  really come up on camera. This is a standing wave meter, an SWR meter, and a power meter all in one.
[10:23.080 --> 10:28.520]  And so this will actually just has a very old-school analog instrument. Let me see if I
[10:28.520 --> 10:36.400]  can get it up close here. Sorry for the reflection there. So you can see it's kind of got two needles
[10:36.400 --> 10:42.040]  there. It's what's called a crossed needle display. And so when you transmit these meters,
[10:42.040 --> 10:47.240]  these needles will come up. The one on the left is actually the power that you're sending out,
[10:47.240 --> 10:50.800]  and the one on the back is actually telling you how much reflected power you have, how much is
[10:50.800 --> 10:55.260]  coming back. Ideally, if you had a perfectly resonant antenna, you'd have no power coming
[10:55.260 --> 10:59.880]  back and you'd be sending all your power out the door. That's what you want. So you want to see
[10:59.880 --> 11:04.280]  generally this needle on the right down to the bottom and the other one at your power level.
[11:04.280 --> 11:09.340]  But, you know, this will tell you if you're not doing that. So especially if you don't have a
[11:09.340 --> 11:13.780]  tuner, you definitely at least want a meter like this so that you can see if you have a problem
[11:13.780 --> 11:20.500]  and go, oh, I need to go adjust my antenna, things like that. So let's keep on moving back here. So
[11:20.500 --> 11:27.000]  you can actually see some power distribution back here. So this is a power distribution block. You
[11:27.000 --> 11:30.480]  obviously don't have to have anything as fancy as this. You can twist wires together with wire nuts
[11:30.480 --> 11:36.920]  to start. That's totally fine. Or you can get a bit more fancy. Excuse me. And yeah, use something
[11:36.920 --> 11:41.340]  like this. You'll notice these connectors back here, these red and black connectors are called
[11:41.340 --> 11:48.300]  Anderson Power Pole. They've kind of become the de facto standard across Amradio. They're not
[11:48.300 --> 11:55.540]  required. Each radio manufacturer kind of puts their own connector on their radios. So typically
[11:55.540 --> 12:00.220]  you'll just take that, adapt it to Power Pole, and then you can connect that to your power
[12:00.220 --> 12:05.640]  distribution. It is a standard for the radio emergency services groups, the areas groups. They
[12:05.640 --> 12:11.200]  have standardized on Power Pole and pretty much the entire community has standardized on
[12:11.200 --> 12:14.420]  these. And you can actually get the tools and you can make these connectors yourself.
[12:15.480 --> 12:18.440]  Yeah, they're pretty straightforward. Let me pull one out real quick.
[12:23.120 --> 12:26.460]  Yeah, so you can see kind of the edge there, you know, it's just a red and black.
[12:26.460 --> 12:30.720]  Very, very simple to have sort of a spring-loaded tongue in there. The cool thing about these is
[12:30.720 --> 12:35.760]  these are genderless. So there is no male connector, there is no female connector.
[12:35.760 --> 12:40.700]  The Power Pole connectors will just plug into each other. Pretty awesome. There goes the radio.
[12:42.540 --> 12:46.440]  So really, really recommend doing that when you get a chance. Again, it's not something
[12:46.440 --> 12:51.100]  that you have to urgently do when you first get your radios and set up, but it's something you
[12:51.100 --> 12:55.900]  want to do, especially for a long-term installation. It also makes it really nice when you go out into
[12:55.900 --> 13:00.980]  the field and, you know, you're like, oh, hey, I need to plug in this. Anyone got a spare battery?
[13:01.440 --> 13:04.820]  Almost everyone is using them. So you can go, oh, yeah, I have one. And you don't have to,
[13:04.820 --> 13:08.220]  you know, try to finagle some connectors or jury-rig something with some duct tape and
[13:08.220 --> 13:17.080]  baling wire. Not that we've ever done that. So in HF, the antennas are much, much bigger.
[13:17.900 --> 13:22.820]  We are inside. My antenna, of course, is outside. So, you know, you have a lot of options for HF
[13:22.820 --> 13:27.640]  antennas. There are, you know, of course, Yagi antennas. You know, a lot of people, of course,
[13:27.640 --> 13:31.500]  in their mind have a big picture of, you know, the hammer operator is, you know, the giant Yagi
[13:32.540 --> 13:37.100]  antenna on a, you know, 200-foot tower with a big rotator. And there are certainly hands that
[13:37.100 --> 13:42.420]  have that, and I'm jealous of them. But you definitely don't need anything that complex.
[13:45.220 --> 13:49.380]  So, you know, you can get away with just literally a random wire. It's called a random wire
[13:49.380 --> 13:56.180]  antenna. And you just can put out a random length of wire and get a good ground, plug it in. You
[13:56.180 --> 14:01.220]  would want to tune it with that. A very, another very popular starting antenna is what's called a
[14:01.220 --> 14:06.760]  dipole, which is literally just two pieces of wire, equal length. And the cut is specific
[14:06.760 --> 14:11.060]  lengths for whatever band you're trying to tune in. You throw that up, you know, in the air as
[14:11.060 --> 14:15.080]  high as you can get, throw it up in a tree or throw each end up in a tree, run some coax cable back
[14:15.080 --> 14:20.340]  to your radio, and you can be good. And it's really actually pretty small.
[14:21.780 --> 14:25.860]  I'm looking on the back of the radio just to go over some connectors you might see.
[14:30.790 --> 14:35.810]  I'll go pan real quick. So this is the older radio, but the newer radios are going to be
[14:35.810 --> 14:42.210]  very, very similar. So this right here is called the UHF connector. This was, if anyone has done
[14:42.210 --> 14:47.730]  CB in the past, this was the CB connector as well. That's pretty much what all desktop radios
[14:47.730 --> 14:51.830]  are going to have for an antenna connection. The Ham Radio Hobby is pretty much the only one
[14:51.830 --> 14:55.970]  that uses this connector anymore. It's actually a little outdated, but for whatever reason,
[14:55.970 --> 15:01.870]  the Hobby has stuck with it. On mobile rigs, sometimes you'll see this. Sometimes on mobile
[15:01.870 --> 15:08.190]  rigs, you'll see a BNC connector as well. And you can, of course, make adapters to all these. I
[15:08.190 --> 15:12.750]  actually have one right here. You can actually see this is a small little adapter. You can plug it
[15:12.750 --> 15:21.090]  right in, and then you can use a BNC antenna. Again, there's no sort of exact standard in the
[15:21.090 --> 15:26.630]  field. You know, my personal recommendation is using BNC connectors on all your antennas that
[15:26.630 --> 15:33.790]  are portable and using UHF or connectors for everything in your house for HF. And then just
[15:33.790 --> 15:39.090]  carrying a bag of adapters. Another connector you might see is an N connector, which is slightly
[15:39.090 --> 15:43.690]  different than the UHF. Of course, not quite compatible. Again, there are plenty of adapters.
[15:43.710 --> 15:52.090]  You can pull this out. You can actually see here on this device here, this is a UHF connector
[15:52.090 --> 15:58.870]  on the left, and this is an N connector on the right. So N, you generally only see at VHF and above.
[15:59.810 --> 16:01.590]  Not so much for HF.
[16:03.790 --> 16:06.450]  Moving on again, sort of power connectors you can see.
[17:20.940 --> 17:26.160]  Hey folks, this is AI0J here with Ham Radio Village, and today we're going to go over a demo
[17:26.160 --> 17:33.020]  of a sort of basic ham station setup. We're going to cover both VHF, UHF setups, portable setups,
[17:33.020 --> 17:37.840]  handheld setups, as well as sort of a base station setup. So we've got a bunch of things to go through
[17:37.840 --> 17:44.980]  here. You know, let's start with sort of the most basic and very likely the first radio you may have
[17:44.980 --> 17:50.980]  as a ham would be like a handheld radio like one of these. The Baofengs are also very, very popular.
[17:50.980 --> 17:56.800]  They're like $35 for an entry-level radio. I have a couple upstairs. These are great, you know,
[17:56.800 --> 18:01.800]  handheld. You don't have to worry anything about them whatsoever in terms of external hookups. They
[18:01.800 --> 18:07.080]  come with their own little antenna right on top, affectionately called the rubber ducky. They have
[18:07.080 --> 18:12.900]  self-contained battery, you know, power button inside, pretty straightforward. You turn it on,
[18:12.900 --> 18:17.440]  it's got a button just like a walkie-talkie you probably had when you were a kid. Push to talk,
[18:17.440 --> 18:22.620]  you're good to go. Simple. So not much to hold a lot to talk about there. Definitely if you're
[18:22.620 --> 18:27.520]  starting out, it's a great place to go. A technician license will grant you all the ability to use
[18:28.180 --> 18:33.920]  these on the VHF and UHF bands, so you're good to go there. This is a very similar model to the
[18:33.920 --> 18:39.520]  other one. This does DMR, which is one of the newer digital modes that's from AnyTone,
[18:39.520 --> 18:45.580]  but it works other than that, you know, the same sort of way. Push to talk, simple. As you move up,
[18:45.580 --> 18:50.800]  you may decide to get something more what they call a mobile station. Sorry for the camera
[18:50.800 --> 18:58.120]  movement here. This is optionally designed to go into a vehicle, which is why it's called a mobile.
[18:58.580 --> 19:03.700]  It's not super portable, but it's also not super heavy either. You could definitely put that in a
[19:03.700 --> 19:07.860]  backpack, something of that sort, if you didn't want to fix it into a vehicle.
[19:09.200 --> 19:15.560]  Has a separate detached microphone in this case. You know, this one is corded. You can actually,
[19:15.560 --> 19:19.400]  this radio actually even has Bluetooth because it's fancy, so you can even use a Bluetooth
[19:19.400 --> 19:26.380]  headset like it's 1990 and look all cool. This one also is VHF and UHF. It's got a very cool
[19:26.380 --> 19:31.680]  color screen on here. You can change channels, things like that. I know it's a little hard to
[19:31.680 --> 19:36.840]  read that on the live stream there, but you know, you can program this with your computer. It uses
[19:37.000 --> 19:42.460]  a USB cable. You hook it up and you can program it to have all the channel memories, you know,
[19:42.460 --> 19:48.560]  with fancy names, things like that. These have been around for a long time, mobile radios on
[19:48.560 --> 19:54.000]  VHF and UHF bands. The older ones obviously aren't quite as fancy in color screens, but they work
[19:54.000 --> 19:59.940]  just as well. Technology wise, you know, in terms of radio power and transmitting, they all are
[19:59.940 --> 20:07.620]  going to work the same, more or less, in the VHF and UHF bands. One thing to note is these also
[20:08.020 --> 20:12.460]  almost always need external power. So you can see this has a cable coming off the back for power.
[20:13.000 --> 20:20.480]  Almost all ham radio equipment runs on 13.8 volts, which is standard for a vehicle to provide.
[20:20.600 --> 20:24.220]  So it makes it really nice and easy. You start a standard 12-volt system that you would have in a
[20:24.760 --> 20:30.760]  RV, car, maritime, any of those sort of setups, and you get to use 12-volt batteries.
[20:34.640 --> 20:39.960]  So not a whole lot to say about those. The antennas that you use for VHF and UHF on a mobile,
[20:39.960 --> 20:44.040]  again, those are not integrated into the unit. So you would have something separate. You can get
[20:44.040 --> 20:48.020]  very small ones that can, you know, attach to the side of a vehicle and be fairly discreet.
[20:48.020 --> 20:52.720]  Or you can go large and put like a big mast on the side of your house, for example. If we
[20:52.720 --> 20:59.200]  slowly pan over here past that HF radio there, that large white stick right there is actually
[20:59.480 --> 21:06.820]  a giant VHF-UHF. And actually that one's 220 as well. That's about a good, I think,
[21:06.820 --> 21:11.220]  eight feet long or so fully assembled. That's actually in two sections right there. That's
[21:11.220 --> 21:17.040]  probably on the larger end of a VHF-UHF. Most, I'd say, most typical home installs probably use
[21:17.040 --> 21:21.660]  one that's literally about half that size, so about four feet tall, which is actually the VHF-UHF
[21:21.660 --> 21:27.280]  I have installed currently outside. Yeah, the comment, good Lord, absolutely. That is a very
[21:27.280 --> 21:32.720]  large antenna, but still generally small in terms of ham radio antennas. All right, we're going to
[21:32.720 --> 21:41.910]  slowly pan back over. Yes, in the city, you know, giant antennas are definitely out of reach. You
[21:41.910 --> 21:45.430]  know, your landlord is probably not going to be very happy of you sticking, you know, eight foot
[21:45.430 --> 21:51.550]  pole at the side of a window. But there are actually a ton of resources online about stealth
[21:51.550 --> 21:56.090]  antennas. There's actually whole books written about having stealth antennas for two meters.
[21:56.090 --> 22:00.950]  There's actually some really great ideas where you can use some copper pipe and you'd make a
[22:00.950 --> 22:05.150]  planter out of it. And so it looks just like a normal planter and your flower is growing on it.
[22:05.150 --> 22:12.250]  It's actually an antenna. Your neighbors don't even know you can put that out in the patio.
[22:12.250 --> 22:17.950]  All right, so those are pretty simple VHF and UHF radios. You know, as you get higher in license
[22:17.950 --> 22:23.050]  and you, you know, maybe get your general license or maybe you're, you know, love math and you
[22:23.050 --> 22:27.770]  wouldn't get your extra license. First off, congrats. You're going to want to get into the
[22:27.770 --> 22:34.410]  world of HF radios. Now here's actually an HF radio that's fairly old by today's standard.
[22:35.290 --> 22:42.790]  This, I think, dates back to late 70s, 80s maybe. It's made by ICOM. This is a full HF radio. It can
[22:42.790 --> 22:49.830]  go from, you know, all the really lower bands, like 160 meters all the way. I think this one
[22:49.830 --> 22:56.510]  goes up to, I think, 10 meter. And, you know, this is much more fully featured HF. You start
[22:56.510 --> 23:01.570]  to climb in price. Unfortunately, I know everyone, you know, the question is always, oh, hey,
[23:01.570 --> 23:05.650]  I want an HF radio, but I don't want to spend more than a couple hundred dollars. And that's,
[23:05.650 --> 23:09.150]  it's hard to do. It is possible. Usually you're probably going to look at something like a kit
[23:09.150 --> 23:13.270]  radio for that and not so much something pre-bought. You can also buy things like this
[23:13.270 --> 23:18.530]  that are older and used and you get a good deal. I think this was my first HF radio I bought when
[23:18.530 --> 23:24.250]  I got my general license. I paid a few hundred dollars for it from another ham. Definitely be
[23:24.250 --> 23:29.110]  careful buying used equipment. Ideally, if you could get to, you know, a swap meet or something
[23:29.110 --> 23:34.070]  in person, which I know is a little difficult right now, where you can actually test the radio,
[23:34.070 --> 23:37.950]  plug it in, make sure it works, you know, and it doesn't immediately just like, you know,
[23:37.950 --> 23:42.890]  let the magic smoke out of the box when you power it up. But a radio like this, you know,
[23:42.890 --> 23:48.090]  still fully can work on everything today. Even all the new digital modes that are available and
[23:48.090 --> 23:53.870]  very, very popular. You can use this for that. It's no problem. You know, you can actually,
[23:53.870 --> 23:57.870]  even this radio, you can actually even control with a computer to set frequency and transmit
[23:57.870 --> 24:02.530]  and all that sort of stuff. You can actually still, still do that even with this older radio.
[24:02.590 --> 24:05.950]  Some older radios you can, some of the older ones you can't. It definitely depends on the
[24:05.950 --> 24:11.870]  model. So, of course, do your research. Now, if we pan over here, we can see what
[24:11.870 --> 24:20.690]  I'm currently using is my day-to-day HF radio. And that is this right here. This is the newer
[24:20.690 --> 24:27.770]  ICOM. This is an ICOM IC7300. Very, very popular radio right now. If you are getting an HF and you
[24:27.770 --> 24:35.050]  can afford the around a grand on sale price tag, like it's a great radio. The features that you
[24:35.050 --> 24:39.570]  get for that is pretty good, in my opinion. You know, almost as good as some of the much
[24:39.570 --> 24:44.330]  more expensive radios. This is a newer design. The actual innards of how the radio works,
[24:44.330 --> 24:49.110]  this is a move to an SDR architecture. Whereas this other one that we were just looking at is
[24:49.250 --> 24:55.730]  a classic super heterodyning radio. So the actual method of working has been upgraded
[24:56.430 --> 25:00.770]  with a newer technology, have a lot more availability in terms of, you know,
[25:00.770 --> 25:06.130]  digital filtering and things like that to pull weak signals out of noise. And so it's nice.
[25:06.230 --> 25:11.690]  Interfacing with a computer on the newer radios is also a lot easier. Almost all newer radios
[25:11.690 --> 25:16.850]  have a direct USB port. And so you just plug it into USB and you'll get an audio device. You'll
[25:16.850 --> 25:21.490]  get a microphone and a speaker output. Then that's how you send audio to and from the radio.
[25:21.610 --> 25:26.250]  And then usually you get a virtual serial driver as a virtual serial port that you can use your
[25:26.250 --> 25:29.870]  software to control the radio with. And we'll talk more about that in a minute.
[25:31.430 --> 25:36.250]  And so with this, again, you need separate power. You know, again, it still runs on that 12 volt
[25:36.250 --> 25:42.710]  system, 13.8, you know, nominal, perfect, perfect world voltage. So yeah, you know, you can run,
[25:42.710 --> 25:46.150]  you don't need, you don't need well power. I'm actually not running any of this station,
[25:46.150 --> 25:49.350]  any of this equipment you see here. None of this is running off of wall power. This is actually
[25:49.350 --> 25:55.090]  all running off of a giant battery that's behind there. And then this actually gets charged by a
[25:55.090 --> 25:59.810]  solar panel that I have sitting outside. Just a small hundred watt panel sitting outside just
[25:59.810 --> 26:04.810]  charges all day when I'm not using it and the battery keeps me going. So that's kind of nice.
[26:04.810 --> 26:11.370]  You don't even have to worry about that. You may know some stuff next to it and be wondering what
[26:11.370 --> 26:15.830]  these magic doohickeys are. So, you know, you definitely need the radio. You definitely need
[26:15.930 --> 26:20.730]  a power source. The next sort of thing you're going to want to look at is either you get away
[26:20.730 --> 26:24.990]  with either one of these. You don't necessarily need them. This bottom unit here is what's called
[26:24.990 --> 26:29.790]  an antenna tuner. And so what this does is this actually helps if your antenna is not perfect,
[26:30.410 --> 26:35.370]  you know, at whatever frequency you're trying to operate it, it'll actually try to match that. Now,
[26:35.370 --> 26:39.950]  it's important to note that antenna tuners are great at matching, you know, whatever you have
[26:39.950 --> 26:45.470]  for an antenna to your radio, so your radio is happy, but you're going to lose power. If your
[26:45.470 --> 26:50.430]  antenna is not good, you know, if your antenna is not resonant, the tuner will make it match,
[26:50.430 --> 26:53.830]  but you're actually just going to be wasting a lot of power in the form of heat into the
[26:53.830 --> 26:58.050]  antenna tuner. So you always want to get your antenna as ideal as possible.
[26:59.950 --> 27:03.350]  This actually is a built-in power meter, so when you're transmitting, you could actually see
[27:03.350 --> 27:06.750]  how many watts you're sending out the door, which is useful.
[27:08.250 --> 27:14.290]  And a lot of radios have antenna tuners built in, especially the larger desktop units. Oftentimes,
[27:14.290 --> 27:19.810]  the standalone ones can deal with worse antennas than the internal ones. They can accommodate much,
[27:19.810 --> 27:27.750]  much higher, you know, mismatches. Again, your trade-off is, of course, you're going to put a
[27:27.750 --> 27:33.950]  small bit of signal out if it's not very matched. And then finally, this piece back here... let me
[27:33.950 --> 27:40.250]  turn the light on it. That doesn't really come up on camera. This is a standing wave meter,
[27:40.250 --> 27:46.930]  an SWR meter, and a power meter all in one. And so this will actually just has... it's a
[27:46.930 --> 27:53.800]  very old-school analog instrument. Let me see if I can get up close here.
[27:53.800 --> 27:57.220]  Sorry for the reflection there. So you can see it's kind of got two needles there.
[27:57.220 --> 28:02.060]  It's what's called a crossed needle display. And so when you transmit these meters,
[28:02.060 --> 28:07.220]  these needles will come up. The one on the left is actually the power that you're sending out,
[28:07.220 --> 28:10.820]  and the one on the back is actually telling you how much reflected power you have, how much is
[28:10.820 --> 28:15.260]  coming back. Ideally, if you had a perfectly resonant antenna, you'd have no power coming
[28:15.260 --> 28:19.900]  back, and you'd be sending all your power out the door. That's what you want. So you want to see
[28:19.900 --> 28:24.240]  generally this needle on the right down to the bottom, and the other one at your power level.
[28:24.800 --> 28:29.340]  But, you know, this will tell you if you're not doing that. So especially if you don't have a
[28:29.340 --> 28:33.800]  tuner, you definitely at least want a meter like this so that you can see if you have a problem
[28:33.800 --> 28:40.500]  and go, oh, I need to go adjust my antenna, things like that. So let's keep on moving back here. So
[28:40.500 --> 28:47.020]  you can actually see some power distribution back here. So this is a power distribution block. You
[28:47.020 --> 28:50.340]  obviously don't have to have anything as fancy as this. You can twist wires together with wire
[28:50.340 --> 28:56.940]  nuts to start. That's totally fine. Or you can get a bit more fancy, excuse me, and use something
[28:56.940 --> 29:01.340]  like this. You'll notice these connectors back here, these red and black connectors are called
[29:01.340 --> 29:08.320]  Anderson Power Pole. They've kind of become the de facto standard across Amradio. They're not
[29:08.320 --> 29:15.720]  required. Each radio manufacturer kind of puts their own connector on their radios. So typically,
[29:15.720 --> 29:20.240]  you'll just take that, adapt it to Power Pole, and then you can connect that to your power
[29:20.240 --> 29:25.560]  distribution. It is a standard for the radio emergency services groups, the areas groups,
[29:25.560 --> 29:30.860]  they have standardized on Power Pole, and pretty much the entire community has standardized
[29:30.860 --> 29:34.440]  on these. And you can actually get the tools and you can make these connectors yourself.
[29:35.500 --> 29:38.460]  They're pretty straightforward. Let me pull one out real quick.
[29:43.260 --> 29:46.480]  So you can see kind of the edge there, you know, it's just a red and black.
[29:46.480 --> 29:50.740]  Very, very simple to have sort of a spring loaded tongue in there. The cool thing about these is
[29:50.740 --> 29:55.720]  these are genderless. So there is no male connector, there is no female connector,
[29:55.720 --> 30:00.780]  the Power Pole connectors will just plug into each other. Pretty awesome. There goes radio.
[30:02.520 --> 30:06.460]  So really, really recommend doing that when you get a chance. Again, it's not something
[30:06.460 --> 30:11.100]  that you have to urgently do when you first get your radios and set up. But it's something you
[30:11.100 --> 30:15.560]  want to do, especially for a long term installation. It also makes it really nice when you
[30:15.560 --> 30:20.220]  go out into the field and you're like, oh, hey, I need to plug in this. So anyone got a spare
[30:20.220 --> 30:24.840]  battery? Almost everyone is using them. So you can go, oh, yeah, I have one. And you don't have to
[30:24.840 --> 30:29.100]  try to finagle some connectors or jury rig something with some duct tape and baling wire.
[30:29.220 --> 30:38.900]  Not that we've ever done that. So in HF, the antennas are much, much bigger. We are inside,
[30:38.900 --> 30:43.680]  my antenna, of course, is outside. So, you know, you have a lot of options for HF antennas.
[30:43.680 --> 30:47.660]  There are, you know, of course, Yagi antennas that, you know, a lot of people, of course,
[30:47.660 --> 30:51.540]  in their mind have a big picture of, you know, the hammer operator is, you know, the giant Yagi
[30:52.480 --> 30:57.120]  antenna on a, you know, 200 foot tower with a big rotator. And there are certainly hams that
[30:57.120 --> 31:02.420]  have that. And I'm jealous of them. But you definitely don't need anything that complex.
[31:05.180 --> 31:10.480]  So, you know, you can get away with just literally a random wire. It's called a random wire antenna.
[31:10.480 --> 31:16.700]  And you just can put out a random length of wire and get a good ground, plug it in. You would want
[31:16.700 --> 31:21.640]  to tune it with that. A very, another very popular starting antenna is what's called a dipole, which
[31:21.640 --> 31:27.440]  is literally just two pieces of wire, equal length. And it cuts to specific lengths for whatever band
[31:27.440 --> 31:31.420]  you're trying to tune in. You throw that up, you know, in the air as high as you can get,
[31:31.420 --> 31:36.070]  throw it up in a tree or throw each end up in a tree, run some coax cable back to your radio,
[31:36.070 --> 31:40.350]  and you can be good. And it's really actually pretty small.
[31:42.070 --> 31:45.870]  Looking on the back of the radio, just to go over some connectors you might see.
[31:50.870 --> 31:56.410]  Go pan real quick. So this is the older radio, but the newer radios are going to be very,
[31:56.410 --> 32:02.490]  very similar. So this right here is called the UHF connector. This was, if anyone has done CB
[32:02.490 --> 32:07.910]  in the past, this was the CB connector as well. That's pretty much what all desktop radios are
[32:07.910 --> 32:11.850]  going to have for an antenna connection. The Hammer Radio Hobby is pretty much the only one
[32:11.850 --> 32:15.990]  that uses this connector anymore. It's actually a little outdated, but for whatever reason,
[32:15.990 --> 32:21.890]  the Hobby has stuck with it. On mobile rigs, sometimes you'll see this. Sometimes on mobile
[32:21.890 --> 32:28.250]  rigs, you'll see a BNC connector as well. And you can, of course, make adapters to all these. I
[32:28.250 --> 32:32.770]  actually have one right here. You can actually see this is a small little adapter. You can plug it
[32:32.770 --> 32:41.110]  right in, and then you can use a BNC antenna. Again, there's no sort of exact standard in the
[32:41.110 --> 32:46.650]  field. You know, my personal recommendation is using BNC connectors on all your antennas that
[32:46.650 --> 32:53.810]  are portable, and using UHF or connectors for everything in your house for HF. And then just
[32:53.810 --> 32:59.110]  carrying a bag of adapters. Another connector you might see is an N connector, which is slightly
[32:59.110 --> 33:03.710]  different than UHF. Of course, not quite compatible. Again, there are plenty of adapters.
[33:03.710 --> 33:11.770]  I'm just going to pull this out. You can actually see here on this device here, this is a UHF
[33:11.770 --> 33:17.970]  connector on the left, and this is an N connector on the right. So N, you generally only see at VHF
[33:17.970 --> 33:27.350]  and above. Not so much for HF. Moving on again, sort of power connectors. You can see, again,
[33:27.350 --> 33:31.710]  all the manufacturers sort of do their own power connector on the radio. And this is a big,
[33:31.710 --> 33:37.110]  scary-looking six-pin block. It actually just uses two pins, positive and negative. And then,
[33:37.110 --> 33:42.210]  almost all desktop HF radios will have an accessory port of some kind. This one's an old
[33:42.210 --> 33:46.850]  Molex. A lot of radios use a variation of a DIN connector. And in the manuals, of course, we'll
[33:46.850 --> 33:52.570]  have all the pinouts. You often don't need to worry too much about these, unless you need some
[33:52.570 --> 33:57.290]  of the signaling out of here. This older radio, if you want to pull audio out to use digital modes,
[33:57.290 --> 34:01.170]  you can pull the audio off of this connector and not even have to tap into the microphone
[34:01.170 --> 34:07.070]  connector on the front, which is nice. And most radios have some sort of control port.
[34:07.070 --> 34:14.990]  This is a serial port here. It has a phone plug style. Newer radios will just have a USB port,
[34:14.990 --> 34:21.250]  which makes it super, super easy. And then, depending on your rig, you may have some
[34:21.250 --> 34:25.210]  additional ports or some stuff here that, as a beginner, you don't really need to worry a whole
[34:25.210 --> 34:30.790]  lot. You could actually have separate, basically, transverter boards. You could take a signal coming
[34:30.790 --> 34:34.310]  in, process it through a separate piece of equipment, and send it back to the radio.
[34:34.390 --> 34:38.170]  Not something you generally need to worry about as a new ham at all.
[34:40.070 --> 34:44.930]  Following up on a question on Twitch, this is a not... I'm not sure I understand the
[34:44.930 --> 34:48.510]  advantage of the power distribution block. Is it mostly for different connection types?
[34:48.970 --> 34:53.070]  Yeah, so one of the things we do have to be aware of when we're dealing with any
[34:53.070 --> 35:00.050]  power source is protection. And so, if we go back and take a look real quick, back at this block.
[35:01.550 --> 35:06.230]  On this one, you'll actually notice that, above these, these are all individual fuses,
[35:06.690 --> 35:10.710]  and they're actually all different values. So, when you're dealing with a big, large 12-volt
[35:10.710 --> 35:15.530]  battery or a 12-volt source, if you touch the two wires together, you're going to put a lot
[35:15.530 --> 35:19.350]  of current through that wire very, very quickly, and you could short things out, melt the wire,
[35:19.350 --> 35:25.370]  cause a fire. All bad things we don't want to happen. So, an advantage of a big block like this
[35:25.370 --> 35:30.170]  is you can actually have different level of fuses for each thing. So, like the ones in the left,
[35:30.170 --> 35:33.550]  the one all the way to the left is the input, and that thing is at the 40-amp fuse, and then I think
[35:33.550 --> 35:39.670]  it's 20-amp fuses for these larger HF radios, and then like the charging bases for the handhelds
[35:39.670 --> 35:44.050]  are like, you know, 1-amp fuses. So, that way, you just don't have to worry about it. Again,
[35:44.050 --> 35:48.370]  you don't necessarily need to go to that level, but you, at the very least, no matter what, if
[35:48.370 --> 35:53.670]  you're literally just, you know, wiring your battery directly to your radio, it's very, very,
[35:53.670 --> 35:57.930]  very important you at least put some sort of fuse in there. That way, if you have a short circuit,
[35:57.930 --> 36:04.130]  it just blows the fuse, it costs you 30 cents, and nothing gets damaged. Great, great question.
[36:07.410 --> 36:11.970]  So, yeah, so some other things to talk about. You know, the other really important sort of
[36:11.970 --> 36:16.570]  thing for a ham station is most people have a computer attached.
[36:18.670 --> 36:23.390]  Yeah, inline fuses on all the wires is also a totally valid option, nothing wrong with that.
[36:23.990 --> 36:27.810]  You know, you definitely want to have a computer attached if you want to do any of the digital
[36:27.810 --> 36:33.090]  modes. And, you know, any computer, a lot of the ham radio software is written for Windows,
[36:33.290 --> 36:37.570]  a fair amount of everyone does XP, but it still runs on Windows 10, no problem.
[36:37.570 --> 36:42.670]  There is totally software for Linux, and probably Mac is the least supported,
[36:42.670 --> 36:47.510]  although I think there is a larger and more diverse set of software for that now than there
[36:47.510 --> 36:54.530]  has been. The advantages of using a computer is not only just control the radio, so you can
[36:54.530 --> 36:59.530]  actually say, okay, I want to use my computer and say, go to this specific frequency. I want to,
[36:59.530 --> 37:03.510]  you know, have this generate the digital mode signals, things like that. You can also record
[37:03.510 --> 37:09.650]  directly off of that. For VHF and UHF radios, especially, you can use your computer to program
[37:09.650 --> 37:14.750]  memory, so you don't have to, like, try to program every frequency and offset, like with the two
[37:14.750 --> 37:18.850]  knobs in the front of your radio, because that's just not very fun, especially if you want to
[37:18.850 --> 37:24.430]  program a bunch of stuff. And not a whole lot to say about that, it does not have to be a very
[37:24.430 --> 37:29.150]  powerful computer, you know, any laptops, totally fine, as long as you get some USB.
[37:30.970 --> 37:36.790]  And so now I just want to talk about a couple accessories. Again, we talked about power a bit,
[37:36.790 --> 37:43.610]  so let me pull this off here. And as I mentioned before, I'm running this setup entirely off a
[37:43.610 --> 37:49.870]  solar panel and a large battery. There's a very, very large battery hiding here in the corner.
[37:49.870 --> 37:56.070]  I think it's Duracell's largest AGM battery they make. But you certainly don't need anything that
[37:56.070 --> 38:01.330]  big at all. You can use a regular, any 12-volt battery, things from, you know, even like a
[38:01.330 --> 38:05.910]  motorcycle ATV. If you're going to be doing portable operations, something like a lithium
[38:05.910 --> 38:11.650]  battery. Lithium is a lot lighter than that giant lead-acid battery. That battery is super heavy,
[38:11.650 --> 38:16.550]  you know, this battery I can hold up with a finger, which is nice. The downside is,
[38:16.550 --> 38:21.350]  of course, lithium batteries cost a lot more money than a lead-acid battery or an AGM.
[38:26.550 --> 38:30.530]  And, of course, you don't have to run off a battery at all. You can absolutely buy any sort
[38:30.530 --> 38:36.470]  of, you know, 12-volt supplies. This is the one that I sometimes use with my station here. This
[38:36.470 --> 38:41.650]  is actually designed for an RV. This is an RV power supply, so it's actually designed to charge
[38:41.790 --> 38:47.770]  a battery and provide 12 volts for a camper. It actually works really, really well. You can,
[38:47.770 --> 38:52.630]  of course, get fancy made, you know, ones for ham radio that have, you know, very cool dials in the
[38:52.630 --> 38:57.790]  front or gauges, you know, power meters, things like that. A lot of them even have
[38:58.350 --> 39:04.250]  powerbolt connectors now on the front directly, which is convenient. But you don't definitely
[39:04.250 --> 39:09.350]  have to go that route. Really, anything that gives you 12 volts is good or 13.8 nominal.
[39:10.150 --> 39:15.830]  One thing to be aware of, you know, I've seen a lot of people, you know, use old computer power
[39:15.830 --> 39:20.310]  supplies, and that certainly can work. You do have to be careful with any power supply
[39:20.870 --> 39:24.350]  on the electrical noise that they make. Some power supplies can be very noisy
[39:24.350 --> 39:31.370]  electrically, and that'll make it much, much harder to tune signals at HF. VHF and UHF,
[39:31.370 --> 39:35.930]  it's usually not an issue. But as you start needing HF bands, you become much, much more
[39:35.930 --> 39:41.290]  sensitive to electrical noise. And that's actually why I try to operate off a battery
[39:41.290 --> 39:45.090]  all at all times, because then there's just no line noise at all. There's no connection to the
[39:45.090 --> 39:53.650]  grid. All right, so that pretty much covers what you need. A couple other nice things to have.
[39:53.650 --> 39:58.010]  If you can have something, this is called an antenna analyzer. I'm just getting real close
[39:58.010 --> 40:02.750]  here. Again, this is sort of a fancy one. You definitely don't need anything super fancy.
[40:05.070 --> 40:09.330]  If you are part of a local ham club, a lot of times your club will actually have one that,
[40:09.330 --> 40:12.890]  you know, you can take on loan. This is good when you're setting up new antennas,
[40:12.890 --> 40:16.930]  especially if you're building antennas. This becomes almost essential.
[40:17.150 --> 40:22.890]  You can plug your antenna directly into here and you can see if it tunes and see how good it is.
[40:22.890 --> 40:28.410]  We can grab one real quick and test. Let me put this little adapter back on. So we can actually
[40:28.410 --> 40:40.470]  pull the antenna off this radio or in my shirt here. All right, so we can actually hook up. This
[40:40.470 --> 40:47.010]  is my antenna to the side and you can immediately see atop these needles change, right? So they're
[40:47.010 --> 40:52.310]  infinite, right? We're definitely not getting anything. We connected it. And this works
[40:52.310 --> 40:57.890]  similar to the way the other meter we looked at earlier. The difference is this is, you know,
[40:57.890 --> 41:04.350]  you sort of connect it for testing. This one over here actually stays connected all the time and
[41:04.350 --> 41:09.830]  you run your signals through that, whereas this you do not. So you can see here we can actually
[41:09.830 --> 41:15.350]  adjust which frequency. I know it's a little hard to see that display. There we go a little bit.
[41:16.130 --> 41:20.170]  But this one's just a nice little LCD display at the bottom where it shows the frequency that
[41:20.170 --> 41:27.630]  you're trying to test. And then you can, you know, you can see as we move around and the band,
[41:27.630 --> 41:32.270]  if we get to somewhere right in the middle of the 20 meter band, which is 14 megahertz,
[41:32.270 --> 41:36.370]  you can see the SWR is really dropping down. It's still not perfect in this antenna. It's
[41:36.690 --> 41:43.470]  a 1.5 SWR. You'd ideally want that to be one, but you can see it is tuning right here at 50.
[41:43.650 --> 41:48.250]  So just a good thing that, you know, again, if you're building antennas, it's definitely something
[41:48.250 --> 41:53.670]  worth the investment to buy. You know, you don't find anything quite this fancy. There are plenty
[41:53.670 --> 41:59.850]  of things, plenty of options on the market. Again, used is totally fine. Ask around, you know,
[42:00.290 --> 42:04.770]  if you have a ham friend in the area or a club, they might have one and you can just borrow it.
[42:04.770 --> 42:08.810]  If you're using a commercial off-the-shelf antenna that you've bought, you can probably
[42:08.810 --> 42:14.630]  get away with that one for a bit. But it is important to know with even a pre-bought antenna
[42:15.190 --> 42:20.450]  that, you know, your installation conditions are going to affect that. So if it's not as high as
[42:20.450 --> 42:25.330]  ideal or, you know, it's not in the right shape, you know, you may actually not tune as well as
[42:25.330 --> 42:33.770]  you might think. All right, just looking at some questions. How much have you spent on all your
[42:33.770 --> 42:39.390]  gear? I don't have to answer that question. I assume you're a plant for my wife. No, I mean,
[42:39.390 --> 42:45.370]  you know, like any hobby, it can get expensive, you know, or, you know, you can try to be as cheap
[42:45.370 --> 42:50.970]  as you want and do a lot of kit building, things like that. So yeah, I mean, it's been over several
[42:50.970 --> 43:03.870]  years and probably, I don't know, several thousand dollars. I don't know. But yeah, yeah. I think
[43:03.870 --> 43:08.750]  that's about it. I don't see any other questions in the chat. So thanks for tuning in. Hopefully
[43:08.750 --> 43:14.230]  this was helpful. If you do have any further questions, we can... you can drop them in the chat
[43:14.230 --> 43:17.850]  and I'll answer you. Oh, actually, we do have one coming in. Do you use a grounding block? That is
[43:17.850 --> 43:24.030]  actually a great point I totally forgot about. No matter what you do, you definitely... system
[43:24.030 --> 43:29.150]  grounding is very, very important, both for lightning protection and to keep our stray RF
[43:29.150 --> 43:34.810]  currents in at bay. So yeah, that's a great question. So I do actually have a grounding
[43:34.810 --> 43:42.230]  block. It's on the outside of this house here. Let me go back. Now if we pan up, we can actually
[43:42.230 --> 43:48.350]  see my RF cable is going to a mysterious hole in the wall there. That actually goes to the
[43:48.350 --> 43:53.970]  outside walls and outside wall in front of us. And I have an entrance panel there that has a big
[43:53.970 --> 43:58.930]  copper sheet and actually has some lightning arresters mounted in there. So they do have a
[43:58.930 --> 44:03.130]  full grounding block and there's... it's tied to the house grounding system, to the grounding rods.
[44:03.130 --> 44:09.230]  Very, very important. You want good ground for your system and you want it to be the same ground as
[44:09.230 --> 44:14.090]  your house. You do not want to have your home electrical ground and your antenna grounds be
[44:14.090 --> 44:21.670]  different. That's just going to ask for trouble and or could be dangerous. So there definitely
[44:21.670 --> 44:28.530]  is a whole bunch of resources on grounding. The ARRL actually has a book out in a letter
[44:28.530 --> 44:32.710]  just called Grounding and Bonding for the Amateur Radio, I think is what it's called. And I highly
[44:32.710 --> 44:38.310]  recommend that. It goes into very, very deep detail on how to design ground systems that are
[44:38.310 --> 44:46.030]  effective and how to stay safe, things like that. All right, not seeing anything else. So if you
[44:46.030 --> 44:50.830]  have any questions, I will be on Discord, on the DEF CON Discord. So feel free to drop in,
[44:50.830 --> 44:54.350]  ask any questions and I'll follow up there. Thanks for watching, guys!