WEBVTT 00:00.890 --> 00:08.470 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. 00:08.630 --> 00:16.130 We're going to cover both VHF, UHF setups, portable setups, handheld setups, as well as sort of a base station setup. 00:16.270 --> 00:18.530 So we've got a bunch of things to go through here. 00:19.110 --> 00:27.850 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. 00:28.510 --> 00:30.970 The Baofengs are also very, very popular. 00:30.970 --> 00:33.510 They're like $35 for an entry-level radio. 00:33.510 --> 00:35.250 I have a couple upstairs. 00:35.790 --> 00:37.530 These are great, you know, handheld. 00:37.570 --> 00:41.690 You don't have to worry anything about them whatsoever in terms of external hookups. 00:41.690 --> 00:45.670 They 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 --> 00:56.270 You turn it on, it's got a button just like a walkie-talkie you probably had when you were a kid. 00:56.570 --> 00:58.470 Push to talk, you're good to go. 00:58.530 --> 00:59.290 Simple. 01:00.070 --> 01:02.070 So not much to hold a lot to talk about there. 01:02.070 --> 01:04.450 Definitely if you're starting out, it's a great place to go. 01:04.450 --> 01:10.250 A technician license will grant you all the ability to use these on the VHF and UHF bands. 01:10.250 --> 01:11.510 You're good to go there. 01:11.910 --> 01:14.490 This is a very similar model to the other one. 01:14.490 --> 01:17.610 This does DMR, which is one of the newer digital modes. 01:17.610 --> 01:19.030 That's from Anytone. 01:19.430 --> 01:22.010 But it works other than that, you know, the same sort of way. 01:22.010 --> 01:23.610 Push to talk, simple. 01:24.330 --> 01:29.830 As you move up, you may decide to get something more what they call a mobile station. 01:29.830 --> 01:31.910 Sorry for the camera movement here. 01:32.450 --> 01:38.170 This is optionally designed to go into a vehicle, which is why it's called a mobile. 01:38.570 --> 01:42.350 It's not super portable, but it's also not super heavy either. 01:42.350 --> 01:47.870 You could definitely put that in a backpack or something of that sort if you didn't want to affix it into a vehicle. 01:48.890 --> 01:52.550 Has a separate detached microphone in this case. 01:53.410 --> 01:54.870 You know, this one is corded. 01:54.870 --> 01:58.150 You can actually, this radio actually even has Bluetooth because it's fancy. 01:58.150 --> 02:02.570 So you can even use a Bluetooth headset like it's 1990 and look all cool. 02:03.250 --> 02:05.410 This one also is VHF and UHF. 02:05.410 --> 02:08.130 It's got a very cool color screen on here. 02:08.350 --> 02:10.830 You can change channels, things like that. 02:10.830 --> 02:13.950 I know it's a little hard to read that on the live stream there. 02:14.250 --> 02:16.610 But you know, you can program this with your computer. 02:16.610 --> 02:17.930 It uses a USB cable. 02:17.930 --> 02:24.190 You hook it up and you can program it to have all the channel memories, you know, with fancy names, things like that. 02:24.190 --> 02:30.310 These have been around for a long time, mobile radios on VHF and UHF bands. 02:30.650 --> 02:34.930 The older ones obviously aren't quite as fancy in color screens, but they work just as well. 02:35.010 --> 02:44.250 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. 02:46.010 --> 02:49.850 One thing to note is these also almost always need external power. 02:49.850 --> 02:52.450 So you can see this has a cable coming off the back for power. 02:52.970 --> 03:00.470 Almost all ham radio equipment runs on 13.8 volts, which is standard for a vehicle to provide. 03:00.570 --> 03:08.730 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. 03:09.170 --> 03:10.770 And you get to use 12 volt batteries. 03:14.040 --> 03:16.640 So, not a whole lot to say about those. 03:16.640 --> 03:22.040 The antennas that you use for VHF and UHF on a mobile, again, those are not integrated into the unit. 03:22.280 --> 03:23.640 So you would have something separate. 03:23.640 --> 03:28.000 You can get very small ones that can, you know, attach to the side of a vehicle and be fairly discreet. 03:28.000 --> 03:32.540 Or you can go large and put like a big mast on the side of your house, for example. 03:32.540 --> 03:44.160 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. 03:44.620 --> 03:48.520 So that's about a good, I think, eight feet long or so fully assembled. 03:48.520 --> 03:50.720 That's actually in two sections right there. 03:50.720 --> 03:54.300 That's probably in the larger end of a VHF, UHF. 03:54.660 --> 04:03.880 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. 04:04.620 --> 04:06.460 Yeah, the comment, good Lord, absolutely. 04:06.460 --> 04:12.200 That is a very large antenna, but still generally small in terms of ham radio antennas. 04:12.200 --> 04:14.960 All right, we're going to slowly pan back over. 04:17.620 --> 04:21.880 Yes, in the city, you know, giant antennas are definitely out of reach. 04:21.880 --> 04:26.620 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. 04:27.200 --> 04:32.080 But there are actually a ton of resources online about stealthy antennas. 04:32.080 --> 04:36.120 There's actually a whole books written about having stealth antennas for two meters. 04:36.120 --> 04:41.620 There's actually some really great ideas where you can use some copper pipe and you'd make a planter out of it. 04:41.620 --> 04:44.680 And so it looks just like a normal planter and your flowers growing on it. 04:44.680 --> 04:45.920 It's actually an antenna. 04:45.920 --> 04:48.240 Your neighbors don't even know you can put that out in the patio. 04:51.540 --> 04:55.580 All right, so those are pretty simple VHF and UHF radios. 04:55.760 --> 05:04.580 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. 05:04.580 --> 05:06.140 First off, congrats. 05:06.620 --> 05:09.820 You're going to want to get into the world of HF radios. 05:09.820 --> 05:14.140 Now here's actually an HF radio that's, that's fairly old by today's standard. 05:15.240 --> 05:18.540 This, I think, dates back to late 70s, 80s maybe. 05:19.380 --> 05:20.940 It's made by ICOM. 05:20.980 --> 05:29.100 This is a full HF radio can go from, you know, really lower bands, like 160 meters all the way. 05:29.240 --> 05:32.600 I think this one does up to, to I think 10 meter. 05:34.140 --> 05:36.160 And, you know, this is much more fully featured HF. 05:36.160 --> 05:37.440 You start to climb in price. 05:37.480 --> 05:44.780 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. 05:44.780 --> 05:46.300 And that's, that's hard to do. 05:46.300 --> 05:47.120 It is possible. 05:47.120 --> 05:51.880 Usually you're probably going to look at something like a kit radio for that and not so much something pre-bought. 05:51.880 --> 05:56.560 You can also buy things like this that are older and used, and you get a good deal. 05:56.560 --> 05:59.680 I think this was my first HF radio I bought when I got my general license. 05:59.680 --> 06:02.540 I paid a few hundred dollars for it from another ham. 06:03.540 --> 06:05.960 Definitely be careful buying used equipment. 06:06.120 --> 06:15.760 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. 06:15.780 --> 06:20.740 You know, it doesn't immediately just like, you know, let the magic smoke out of the box when you power it up. 06:21.880 --> 06:29.280 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. 06:29.320 --> 06:30.540 You can use this with that. 06:30.540 --> 06:31.500 It's no problem. 06:33.040 --> 06:38.660 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. 06:38.660 --> 06:42.460 You can actually still do that, even with this older radio. 06:42.660 --> 06:45.040 Some older radios you can, some of the older ones you can't. 06:45.040 --> 06:46.560 It definitely depends on the make and model. 06:46.560 --> 06:48.420 So, of course, do your research. 06:49.960 --> 06:55.260 Now, if we pan over here, we can see what I'm currently using is my day-to-day HF radio. 06:57.920 --> 06:59.660 And that is this right here. 06:59.660 --> 07:01.080 This is the newer ICOM. 07:01.080 --> 07:03.340 This is an ICOM IC7300. 07:03.340 --> 07:05.300 Very, very popular radio right now. 07:05.500 --> 07:13.520 If you are getting an HF and you can afford the around a grand on sale price tag, like it's a great radio. 07:13.960 --> 07:17.540 The feature set you get for that is pretty good, in my opinion. 07:17.640 --> 07:21.020 You know, almost as good as some of the much more expensive radios. 07:21.040 --> 07:22.200 This is a newer design. 07:22.200 --> 07:24.320 The actual innards of how the radio works. 07:24.320 --> 07:31.680 This is a move to an SDR architecture, whereas this other one that we were just looking at is a classic super heterodyning radio. 07:31.680 --> 07:37.800 So the actual method of working has been upgraded with a newer technology. 07:37.800 --> 07:44.040 You have a lot more availability in terms of, you know, digital filtering and things like that to pull weak signals out of noise. 07:44.040 --> 07:46.000 And so it's nice. 07:46.000 --> 07:50.340 Interfacing with a computer on the newer radios is also a lot easier. 07:50.340 --> 07:53.400 Almost all newer radios have a direct USB port. 07:53.900 --> 07:56.740 And so you just plug it into USB and you'll get an audio device. 07:56.740 --> 07:59.020 You'll get a microphone and a speaker output. 07:59.020 --> 08:01.480 That's how you send audio to and from the radio. 08:01.500 --> 08:08.400 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. 08:08.400 --> 08:10.300 And we'll talk more about that in a minute. 08:11.440 --> 08:14.000 And so with this, again, you need separate power. 08:14.140 --> 08:20.640 You know, again, it still runs on that 12-volt system, 13.8, you know, nominal, perfect, perfect world voltage. 08:21.200 --> 08:22.720 So yeah, you know, you can run it. 08:22.720 --> 08:24.520 You don't need, you don't need wall power. 08:24.520 --> 08:27.360 I'm actually not running any of this station, any of this equipment you see here. 08:27.360 --> 08:28.960 None of this is running off of wall power. 08:28.960 --> 08:31.740 This is actually all running off of a giant battery that's behind there. 08:32.700 --> 08:36.240 And then it actually gets charged by a solar panel that I have sitting outside. 08:36.280 --> 08:41.700 Just a small 100-watt panel sitting outside just charges all day when I'm not using it. 08:41.840 --> 08:43.560 And the battery keeps me going. 08:43.800 --> 08:44.780 So that's kind of nice. 08:44.780 --> 08:46.100 You don't even have to worry about that. 08:49.300 --> 08:53.020 You may know some stuff next to it and be wondering what these magic doohickeys are. 08:53.100 --> 08:55.120 So, you know, you definitely need the radio. 08:55.180 --> 08:56.860 You definitely need a power source. 08:56.860 --> 09:01.640 The next sort of thing you're going to want to look at is either you get away with either one of these. 09:01.640 --> 09:03.480 You don't necessarily need them. 09:03.520 --> 09:06.040 This bottom unit here is what's called an antenna tuner. 09:06.040 --> 09:15.100 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. 09:15.100 --> 09:25.000 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. 09:25.000 --> 09:34.540 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. 09:34.540 --> 09:38.320 So you always want to get your antenna as ideal as possible. 09:39.940 --> 09:46.700 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. 09:48.220 --> 09:53.580 And a lot of radios have antenna tuners built in, especially the larger desktop units. 09:53.660 --> 09:58.460 Oftentimes, the standalone ones can deal with worse antennas than the internal ones. 09:58.460 --> 10:02.720 They can accommodate much, much higher, you know, mismatches. 10:02.800 --> 10:10.120 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. 10:11.060 --> 10:14.780 And then finally, this piece back here... let me turn the light on. 10:14.780 --> 10:17.540 It doesn't really come up on camera. 10:17.540 --> 10:23.020 This is a standing wave meter, an SWR meter, and a power meter all in one. 10:23.080 --> 10:28.060 And so this will actually just has a very old-school analog instrument. 10:28.060 --> 10:29.880 Let me see if I can get it up close here. 10:33.440 --> 10:34.880 Sorry for the reflection there. 10:34.880 --> 10:37.140 So you can see it's kind of got two needles there. 10:37.300 --> 10:39.780 It's what's called a crossed needle display. 10:39.840 --> 10:43.520 And so when you transmit these meters, these needles will come up. 10:43.660 --> 10:51.820 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. 10:52.020 --> 10:57.420 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. 10:57.420 --> 10:58.560 That's what you want. 10:59.040 --> 11:04.280 So you want to see generally this needle on the right down to the bottom and the other one at your power level. 11:04.280 --> 11:07.800 But, you know, this will tell you if you're not doing that. 11:07.800 --> 11:16.300 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. 11:18.260 --> 11:20.220 So let's keep on moving back here. 11:20.220 --> 11:23.780 So you can actually see some power distribution back here. 11:24.660 --> 11:26.360 So this is a power distribution block. 11:26.360 --> 11:28.600 You obviously don't have to have anything as fancy as this. 11:28.600 --> 11:31.440 You can twist wires together with wire nuts to start. 11:31.440 --> 11:32.640 That's totally fine. 11:32.640 --> 11:34.720 Or you can get a bit more fancy. 11:34.900 --> 11:36.120 Excuse me. 11:36.180 --> 11:37.920 And yeah, use something like this. 11:38.040 --> 11:42.860 You'll notice these connectors back here, these red and black connectors are called Anderson Power Pole. 11:42.860 --> 11:47.880 They've kind of become the de facto standard across Amradio. 11:47.880 --> 11:49.480 They're not required. 11:50.260 --> 11:54.940 Each radio manufacturer kind of puts their own connector on their radios. 11:54.940 --> 12:01.200 So typically you'll just take that, adapt it to Power Pole, and then you can connect that to your power distribution. 12:01.420 --> 12:05.600 It is a standard for the radio emergency services groups, the areas groups. 12:05.600 --> 12:11.420 They have standardized on Power Pole and pretty much the entire community has standardized on these. 12:11.420 --> 12:14.420 And you can actually get the tools and you can make these connectors yourself. 12:15.480 --> 12:16.900 Yeah, they're pretty straightforward. 12:16.920 --> 12:18.440 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 --> 12:29.620 Very, very simple to have sort of a spring-loaded tongue in there. 12:29.620 --> 12:32.380 The cool thing about these is these are genderless. 12:32.900 --> 12:35.760 So there is no male connector, there is no female connector. 12:35.760 --> 12:38.500 The Power Pole connectors will just plug into each other. 12:38.920 --> 12:39.740 Pretty awesome. 12:39.740 --> 12:40.700 There goes the radio. 12:42.540 --> 12:45.480 So really, really recommend doing that when you get a chance. 12:45.480 --> 12:53.460 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. 12:53.940 --> 12:59.560 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. 12:59.560 --> 13:00.980 Anyone got a spare battery? 13:01.440 --> 13:02.760 Almost everyone is using them. 13:02.760 --> 13:04.060 So you can go, oh, yeah, I have one. 13:04.060 --> 13:09.080 And you don't have to, you know, try to finagle some connectors or jury-rig something with some duct tape and baling wire. 13:09.220 --> 13:10.860 Not that we've ever done that. 13:13.200 --> 13:17.080 So in HF, the antennas are much, much bigger. 13:17.900 --> 13:18.880 We are inside. 13:18.880 --> 13:20.460 My antenna, of course, is outside. 13:20.640 --> 13:23.600 So, you know, you have a lot of options for HF antennas. 13:24.060 --> 13:26.680 There are, you know, of course, Yagi antennas. 13:26.680 --> 13:36.120 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. 13:36.160 --> 13:39.320 And there are certainly hands that have that, and I'm jealous of them. 13:39.540 --> 13:42.420 But you definitely don't need anything that complex. 13:45.220 --> 13:48.040 So, you know, you can get away with just literally a random wire. 13:48.040 --> 13:50.400 It's called a random wire antenna. 13:50.780 --> 13:55.980 And you just can put out a random length of wire and get a good ground, plug it in. 13:55.980 --> 13:57.860 You would want to tune it with that. 13:58.020 --> 14:05.020 A very, another very popular starting antenna is what's called a dipole , which is literally just two pieces of wire, equal length. 14:05.140 --> 14:08.820 And the cut is specific lengths for whatever band you're trying to tune in. 14:09.020 --> 14:17.660 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. 14:17.660 --> 14:20.340 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 --> 14:32.550 I'll go pan real quick. 14:32.890 --> 14:37.410 So this is the older radio, but the newer radios are going to be very, very similar. 14:37.570 --> 14:40.670 So this right here is called the UHF connector. 14:40.850 --> 14:45.210 This was, if anyone has done CB in the past, this was the CB connector as well. 14:45.910 --> 14:50.030 That's pretty much what all desktop radios are going to have for an antenna connection. 14:50.210 --> 14:53.110 The Ham Radio Hobby is pretty much the only one that uses this connector anymore. 14:53.110 --> 14:57.210 It's actually a little outdated, but for whatever reason, the Hobby has stuck with it. 14:57.910 --> 15:00.250 On mobile rigs, sometimes you'll see this. 15:01.010 --> 15:04.990 Sometimes on mobile rigs, you'll see a BNC connector as well. 15:06.230 --> 15:08.190 And you can, of course, make adapters to all these. 15:08.190 --> 15:09.650 I actually have one right here. 15:09.650 --> 15:11.910 You can actually see this is a small little adapter. 15:12.090 --> 15:16.170 You can plug it right in, and then you can use a BNC antenna. 15:16.190 --> 15:21.910 Again, there's no sort of exact standard in the field. 15:21.910 --> 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. 15:33.230 --> 15:35.830 And then just carrying a bag of adapters. 15:36.010 --> 15:40.470 Another connector you might see is an N connector, which is slightly different than the UHF. 15:40.470 --> 15:41.930 Of course, not quite compatible. 15:41.930 --> 15:43.690 Again, there are plenty of adapters. 15:43.710 --> 15:45.050 You can pull this out. 15:47.530 --> 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. 15:55.650 --> 15:58.870 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 --> 17:28.540 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. 17:28.680 --> 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. 17:36.280 --> 17:38.460 So we've got a bunch of things to go through here. 17:39.100 --> 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. 17:48.500 --> 17:50.980 The Baofengs are also very, very popular. 17:50.980 --> 17:53.580 They're like $35 for an entry-level radio. 17:53.580 --> 17:55.280 I have a couple upstairs. 17:55.780 --> 17:57.560 These are great, you know, handheld. 17:57.720 --> 18:01.680 You don't have to worry anything about them whatsoever in terms of external hookups. 18:01.680 --> 18:05.680 They come with their own little antenna right on top, affectionately called the rubber ducky. 18:06.320 --> 18:11.140 They have self-contained battery, you know, power button inside, pretty straightforward. 18:11.720 --> 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. 18:16.460 --> 18:18.480 Push to talk, you're good to go. 18:18.500 --> 18:19.300 Simple. 18:19.900 --> 18:22.080 So not much to hold a lot to talk about there. 18:22.080 --> 18:24.460 Definitely if you're starting out, it's a great place to go. 18:24.460 --> 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. 18:31.920 --> 18:34.520 This is a very similar model to the other one. 18:34.520 --> 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. 18:41.980 --> 18:43.600 Push to talk, simple. 18:44.400 --> 18:49.820 As you move up, you may decide to get something more what they call a mobile station. 18:49.820 --> 18:51.880 Sorry for the camera movement here. 18:52.500 --> 18:58.120 This is optionally designed to go into a vehicle, which is why it's called a mobile. 18:58.580 --> 19:02.440 It's not super portable, but it's also not super heavy either. 19:02.480 --> 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. 19:09.200 --> 19:12.580 Has a separate detached microphone in this case. 19:13.020 --> 19:14.820 You know, this one is corded. 19:14.820 --> 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. 19:23.260 --> 19:25.420 This one also is VHF and UHF. 19:25.420 --> 19:28.140 It's got a very cool color screen on here. 19:28.340 --> 19:30.840 You can change channels, things like that. 19:30.840 --> 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. 19:36.600 --> 19:37.900 It uses a USB cable. 19:37.900 --> 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. 19:44.120 --> 19:50.440 These have been around for a long time, mobile radios on VHF and UHF bands. 19:50.660 --> 19:55.000 The older ones obviously aren't quite as fancy in color screens, but they work just as well. 19:55.020 --> 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. 20:06.040 --> 20:09.840 One thing to note is these also almost always need external power. 20:09.840 --> 20:12.460 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 --> 20:21.940 So it makes it really nice and easy. 20:21.940 --> 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. 20:34.640 --> 20:36.660 So not a whole lot to say about those. 20:36.660 --> 20:42.080 The antennas that you use for VHF and UHF on a mobile, again, those are not integrated into the unit. 20:42.280 --> 20:43.660 So you would have something separate. 20:43.660 --> 20:48.020 You can get very small ones that can, you know, attach to the side of a vehicle and be fairly discreet. 20:48.020 --> 20:52.560 Or you can go large and put like a big mast on the side of your house, for example. 20:52.560 --> 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. 21:01.800 --> 21:04.180 And actually that one's 220 as well. 21:04.840 --> 21:08.540 That's about a good, I think, eight feet long or so fully assembled. 21:08.540 --> 21:10.480 That's actually in two sections right there. 21:10.700 --> 21:14.320 That's probably on the larger end of a VHF-UHF. 21:14.620 --> 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. 21:24.640 --> 21:26.460 Yeah, the comment, good Lord, absolutely. 21:26.460 --> 21:32.240 That is a very large antenna, but still generally small in terms of ham radio antennas. 21:32.240 --> 21:35.060 All right, we're going to slowly pan back over. 21:37.570 --> 21:41.910 Yes, in the city, you know, giant antennas are definitely out of reach. 21:41.910 --> 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. 21:47.190 --> 21:51.990 But there are actually a ton of resources online about stealth antennas. 21:51.990 --> 21:56.090 There's actually whole books written about having stealth antennas for two meters. 21:56.090 --> 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. 22:01.630 --> 22:04.710 And so it looks just like a normal planter and your flower is growing on it. 22:04.750 --> 22:05.950 It's actually an antenna. 22:05.950 --> 22:08.230 Your neighbors don't even know you can put that out in the patio. 22:11.610 --> 22:15.550 All right , so those are pretty simple VHF and UHF radios. 22:15.790 --> 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. 22:24.630 --> 22:26.150 First off, congrats. 22:26.630 --> 22:29.830 You're going to want to get into the world of HF radios. 22:29.830 --> 22:34.410 Now here's actually an HF radio that's fairly old by today's standard. 22:35.290 --> 22:38.550 This, I think, dates back to late 70s, 80s maybe. 22:39.590 --> 22:40.970 It's made by ICOM. 22:41.030 --> 22:42.610 This is a full HF radio. 22:42.610 --> 22:49.110 It can go from, you know, all the really lower bands, like 160 meters all the way. 22:49.390 --> 22:52.590 I think this one goes up to, I think, 10 meter. 22:54.170 --> 22:56.190 And, you know, this is much more fully featured HF. 22:56.190 --> 22:57.450 You start to climb in price. 22:57.490 --> 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. 23:04.910 --> 23:06.350 And that's, it's hard to do. 23:06.350 --> 23:07.170 It is possible. 23:07.170 --> 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. 23:11.930 --> 23:16.590 You can also buy things like this that are older and used and you get a good deal. 23:16.590 --> 23:19.690 I think this was my first HF radio I bought when I got my general license. 23:19.690 --> 23:22.570 I paid a few hundred dollars for it from another ham. 23:23.570 --> 23:25.850 Definitely be careful buying used equipment. 23:26.170 --> 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. 23:41.810 --> 23:45.410 But a radio like this, you know, still fully can work on everything today. 23:45.410 --> 23:49.150 Even all the new digital modes that are available and very, very popular. 23:49.310 --> 23:50.550 You can use this for that. 23:50.550 --> 23:52.150 It's no problem. 23:52.730 --> 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. 23:58.670 --> 24:02.530 You can actually still, still do that even with this older radio. 24:02.590 --> 24:05.070 Some older radios you can, some of the older ones you can't. 24:05.070 --> 24:06.510 It definitely depends on the model. 24:06.510 --> 24:08.550 So, of course, do your research. 24:09.810 --> 24:15.230 Now, if we pan over here, we can see what I'm currently using is my day-to-day HF radio. 24:17.970 --> 24:19.650 And that is this right here. 24:19.650 --> 24:21.110 This is the newer ICOM. 24:21.110 --> 24:23.350 This is an ICOM IC7300. 24:23.350 --> 24:25.510 Very, very popular radio right now. 24:25.590 --> 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. 24:33.990 --> 24:37.510 The features that you get for that is pretty good, in my opinion. 24:37.710 --> 24:40.770 You know, almost as good as some of the much more expensive radios. 24:40.870 --> 24:42.230 This is a newer design. 24:42.230 --> 24:46.830 The actual innards of how the radio works, this is a move to an SDR architecture. 24:47.010 --> 24:51.690 Whereas this other one that we were just looking at is a classic super heterodyning radio. 24:51.690 --> 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. 25:04.130 --> 25:06.130 And so it's nice. 25:06.230 --> 25:10.370 Interfacing with a computer on the newer radios is also a lot easier. 25:10.370 --> 25:13.430 Almost all newer radios have a direct USB port. 25:13.870 --> 25:16.770 And so you just plug it into USB and you'll get an audio device. 25:16.770 --> 25:19.030 You'll get a microphone and a speaker output. 25:19.030 --> 25:21.490 Then that's how you send audio to and from the radio. 25:21.610 --> 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. 25:28.450 --> 25:29.870 And we'll talk more about that in a minute. 25:31.430 --> 25:34.050 And so with this, again, you need separate power. 25:34.170 --> 25:40.670 You know, again, it still runs on that 12 volt system, 13.8, you know, nominal, perfect, perfect world voltage. 25:41.210 --> 25:44.550 So yeah, you know, you can run, you don't need, you don't need well power. 25:44.550 --> 25:47.390 I'm actually not running any of this station, any of this equipment you see here. 25:47.390 --> 25:48.910 None of this is running off of wall power. 25:48.910 --> 25:51.870 This is actually all running off of a giant battery that's behind there. 25:52.710 --> 25:56.290 And then this actually gets charged by a solar panel that I have sitting outside. 25:56.290 --> 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. 26:03.990 --> 26:04.810 So that's kind of nice. 26:04.810 --> 26:06.110 You don't even have to worry about that. 26:09.410 --> 26:13.010 You may know some stuff next to it and be wondering what these magic doohickeys are. 26:13.210 --> 26:15.050 So, you know, you definitely need the radio. 26:15.130 --> 26:16.850 You definitely need a power source. 26:16.850 --> 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. 26:21.650 --> 26:23.470 You don't necessarily need them. 26:23.510 --> 26:26.090 This bottom unit here is what's called an antenna tuner. 26:26.090 --> 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. 26:35.110 --> 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. 26:45.030 --> 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. 26:54.550 --> 26:58.050 So you always want to get your antenna as ideal as possible. 26:59.950 --> 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. 27:08.250 --> 27:13.470 And a lot of radios have antenna tuners built in, especially the larger desktop units. 27:13.630 --> 27:18.490 Oftentimes, the standalone ones can deal with worse antennas than the internal ones. 27:18.490 --> 27:22.430 They can accommodate much, much higher, you know, mismatches. 27:22.590 --> 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. 27:31.050 --> 27:35.290 And then finally, this piece back here... let me turn the light on it. 27:36.050 --> 27:37.550 That doesn't really come up on camera. 27:37.550 --> 27:43.070 This is a standing wave meter, an SWR meter, and a power meter all in one. 27:43.090 --> 27:48.070 And so this will actually just has... it's a very old-school analog instrument. 27:48.070 --> 27:49.950 Let me see if I can get up close here. 27:53.400 --> 27:54.900 Sorry for the reflection there. 27:54.900 --> 27:57.220 So you can see it's kind of got two needles there. 27:57.220 --> 27:59.760 It's what's called a crossed needle display. 27:59.820 --> 28:03.480 And so when you transmit these meters, these needles will come up. 28:03.720 --> 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. 28:12.080 --> 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. 28:17.440 --> 28:18.500 That's what you want. 28:19.100 --> 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. 28:24.800 --> 28:27.780 But, you know, this will tell you if you're not doing that. 28:27.780 --> 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. 28:38.260 --> 28:40.240 So let's keep on moving back here. 28:40.240 --> 28:43.800 So you can actually see some power distribution back here. 28:44.660 --> 28:46.380 So this is a power distribution block. 28:46.380 --> 28:48.620 You obviously don't have to have anything as fancy as this. 28:48.620 --> 28:51.420 You can twist wires together with wire nuts to start. 28:51.420 --> 28:52.660 That's totally fine. 28:52.660 --> 28:58.000 Or you can get a bit more fancy, excuse me, and use something like this. 28:58.080 --> 29:02.860 You'll notice these connectors back here, these red and black connectors are called Anderson Power Pole. 29:02.860 --> 29:07.900 They've kind of become the de facto standard across Amradio. 29:07.900 --> 29:09.540 They're not required. 29:10.280 --> 29:14.920 Each radio manufacturer kind of puts their own connector on their radios. 29:14.920 --> 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. 29:21.480 --> 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. 29:31.440 --> 29:34.440 And you can actually get the tools and you can make these connectors yourself. 29:35.500 --> 29:36.900 They're pretty straightforward. 29:37.080 --> 29:38.460 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 --> 29:49.640 Very, very simple to have sort of a spring loaded tongue in there. 29:49.640 --> 29:52.440 The cool thing about these is these are genderless. 29:52.960 --> 29:58.500 So there is no male connector, there is no female connector, the Power Pole connectors will just plug into each other. 29:58.900 --> 29:59.760 Pretty awesome. 29:59.760 --> 30:00.780 There goes radio. 30:02.520 --> 30:05.480 So really, really recommend doing that when you get a chance. 30:05.480 --> 30:10.380 Again, it's not something that you have to urgently do when you first get your radios and set up. 30:10.460 --> 30:13.520 But it's something you want to do, especially for a long term installation. 30:13.980 --> 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. 30:19.540 --> 30:21.020 So anyone got a spare battery? 30:21.460 --> 30:22.700 Almost everyone is using them. 30:22.700 --> 30:24.020 So you can go, oh, yeah, I have one. 30:24.020 --> 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. 30:29.220 --> 30:30.880 Not that we've ever done that. 30:33.300 --> 30:37.100 So in HF, the antennas are much, much bigger. 30:37.920 --> 30:40.540 We are inside, my antenna, of course, is outside. 30:40.720 --> 30:43.680 So, you know, you have a lot of options for HF antennas. 30:43.680 --> 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. 30:55.980 --> 30:57.620 And there are certainly hams that have that. 30:57.620 --> 30:59.360 And I'm jealous of them. 30:59.600 --> 31:02.420 But you definitely don't need anything that complex. 31:05.180 --> 31:08.100 So, you know, you can get away with just literally a random wire. 31:08.100 --> 31:10.480 It's called a random wire antenna. 31:10.480 --> 31:15.960 And you just can put out a random length of wire and get a good ground, plug it in. 31:15.960 --> 31:17.880 You would want to tune it with that. 31:18.140 --> 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. 31:25.100 --> 31:28.820 And it cuts to specific lengths for whatever band you're trying to tune in. 31:29.020 --> 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. 31:37.610 --> 31:40.350 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 --> 31:52.550 Go pan real quick. 31:52.930 --> 31:57.430 So this is the older radio, but the newer radios are going to be very, very similar. 31:57.590 --> 32:00.670 So this right here is called the UHF connector. 32:00.870 --> 32:05.210 This was, if anyone has done CB in the past, this was the CB connector as well. 32:05.950 --> 32:10.030 That's pretty much what all desktop radios are going to have for an antenna connection. 32:10.030 --> 32:13.110 The Hammer Radio Hobby is pretty much the only one that uses this connector anymore. 32:13.110 --> 32:17.230 It's actually a little outdated, but for whatever reason, the Hobby has stuck with it. 32:17.930 --> 32:20.270 On mobile rigs, sometimes you'll see this. 32:21.050 --> 32:25.010 Sometimes on mobile rigs, you'll see a BNC connector as well. 32:26.250 --> 32:28.250 And you can, of course, make adapters to all these. 32:28.250 --> 32:29.670 I actually have one right here. 32:29.670 --> 32:31.930 You can actually see this is a small little adapter. 32:32.170 --> 32:36.170 You can plug it right in, and then you can use a BNC antenna. 32:36.230 --> 32:41.930 Again, there's no sort of exact standard in the field. 32:41.930 --> 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. 32:53.250 --> 32:55.850 And then just carrying a bag of adapters. 32:56.050 --> 33:00.470 Another connector you might see is an N connector, which is slightly different than UHF. 33:00.470 --> 33:01.970 Of course, not quite compatible. 33:01.970 --> 33:03.710 Again, there are plenty of adapters. 33:03.710 --> 33:05.070 I'm just going to pull this out. 33:07.550 --> 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. 33:15.670 --> 33:18.910 So N, you generally only see at VHF and above. 33:19.830 --> 33:21.610 Not so much for HF. 33:23.830 --> 33:25.690 Moving on again, sort of power connectors. 33:25.690 --> 33:31.070 You can see, again, all the manufacturers sort of do their own power connector on the radio. 33:31.070 --> 33:33.790 And this is a big, scary-looking six-pin block. 33:33.790 --> 33:36.410 It actually just uses two pins, positive and negative. 33:36.430 --> 33:41.410 And then, almost all desktop HF radios will have an accessory port of some kind. 33:41.590 --> 33:42.730 This one's an old Molex. 33:42.730 --> 33:45.610 A lot of radios use a variation of a DIN connector. 33:45.670 --> 33:48.030 And in the manuals, of course, we'll have all the pinouts. 33:48.110 --> 33:53.990 You often don't need to worry too much about these, unless you need some of the signaling out of here. 33:54.150 --> 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. 34:04.070 --> 34:07.070 And most radios have some sort of control port. 34:07.070 --> 34:09.510 This is a serial port here. 34:09.510 --> 34:12.610 It has a phone plug style. 34:13.330 --> 34:16.970 Newer radios will just have a USB port, which makes it super, super easy. 34:17.790 --> 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. 34:25.450 --> 34:29.730 You could actually have separate, basically, transverter boards. 34:29.730 --> 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. 34:34.390 --> 34:38.170 Not something you generally need to worry about as a new ham at all. 34:40.070 --> 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. 34:46.290 --> 34:48.510 Is it mostly for different connection types? 34:48.970 --> 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. 34:55.850 --> 35:00.050 And so, if we go back and take a look real quick, back at this block. 35:01.550 --> 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. 35:08.510 --> 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. 35:21.970 --> 35:23.670 All bad things we don't want to happen. 35:23.770 --> 35:28.930 So, an advantage of a big block like this is you can actually have different level of fuses for each thing. 35:28.930 --> 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. 35:41.130 --> 35:43.070 So, that way, you just don't have to worry about it. 35:43.670 --> 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. 35:56.430 --> 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. 36:02.830 --> 36:04.130 Great, great question. 36:07.410 --> 36:09.970 So, yeah, so some other things to talk about. 36:10.210 --> 36:16.570 You know, the other really important sort of 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 --> 36:28.590 You know, you definitely want to have a computer attached if you want to do any of the digital modes. 36:28.830 --> 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. 36:37.570 --> 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. 36:49.790 --> 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. 36:58.890 --> 37:02.550 I want to, you know, have this generate the digital mode signals, things like that. 37:02.550 --> 37:04.930 You can also record directly off of that. 37:05.990 --> 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. 37:21.730 --> 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. 37:30.970 --> 37:33.850 And so now I just want to talk about a couple accessories. 37:33.910 --> 37:39.450 Again, we talked about power a bit, so let me pull this off here. 37:40.430 --> 37:44.950 And as I mentioned before, I'm running this setup entirely off a solar panel and a large battery. 37:44.950 --> 37:49.090 There's a very, very large battery hiding here in the corner. 37:49.690 --> 37:53.030 I think it's Duracell's largest AGM battery they make. 37:54.650 --> 37:56.490 But you certainly don't need anything that big at all. 37:56.490 --> 38:02.250 You can use a regular, any 12-volt battery, things from, you know, even like a motorcycle ATV. 38:02.330 --> 38:06.110 If you're going to be doing portable operations, something like a lithium battery . 38:06.110 --> 38:10.210 Lithium is a lot lighter than that giant lead-acid battery. 38:10.210 --> 38:15.510 That battery is super heavy, you know, this battery I can hold up with a finger, which is nice. 38:15.550 --> 38:21.350 The downside is, of course, lithium batteries cost a lot more money than a lead-acid battery or an AGM. 38:26.550 --> 38:29.110 And, of course, you don't have to run off a battery at all. 38:29.410 --> 38:32.350 You can absolutely buy any sort of, you know, 12-volt supplies. 38:33.710 --> 38:36.370 This is the one that I sometimes use with my station here. 38:36.370 --> 38:38.430 This is actually designed for an RV. 38:38.850 --> 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. 38:44.610 --> 38:46.810 It actually works really, really well. 38:47.230 --> 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. 38:56.250 --> 39:01.870 A lot of them even have powerbolt connectors now on the front directly, which is convenient. 39:02.830 --> 39:05.290 But you don't definitely have to go that route. 39:05.290 --> 39:09.350 Really, anything that gives you 12 volts is good or 13.8 nominal. 39:10.150 --> 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. 39:17.730 --> 39:22.670 You do have to be careful with any power supply on the electrical noise that they make. 39:22.670 --> 39:30.070 Some power supplies can be very noisy electrically, and that'll make it much, much harder to tune signals at HF. 39:30.370 --> 39:32.810 VHF and UHF, it's usually not an issue. 39:32.990 --> 39:38.450 But as you start needing HF bands, you become much, much more sensitive to electrical noise. 39:38.450 --> 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. 39:43.830 --> 39:45.690 There's no connection to the grid. 39:48.530 --> 39:51.970 All right, so that pretty much covers what you need. 39:51.970 --> 39:53.650 A couple other nice things to have. 39:53.650 --> 39:57.110 If you can have something, this is called an antenna analyzer. 39:57.110 --> 39:58.490 I'm just getting real close here. 39:58.490 --> 39:59.990 Again, this is sort of a fancy one. 39:59.990 --> 40:02.750 You definitely don't need anything super fancy. 40:05.070 --> 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. 40:11.010 --> 40:15.170 This is good when you're setting up new antennas, especially if you're building antennas. 40:15.170 --> 40:16.930 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 --> 40:26.490 We can grab one real quick and test. 40:26.490 --> 40:27.930 Let me put this little adapter back on. 40:27.930 --> 40:35.750 So we can actually pull the antenna off this radio or in my shirt here. 40:37.170 --> 40:40.370 All right, so we can actually hook up. 40:40.370 --> 40:46.510 This is my antenna to the side and you can immediately see atop these needles change, right? 40:46.510 --> 40:48.010 So they're infinite, right? 40:48.010 --> 40:49.770 We're definitely not getting anything. 40:50.730 --> 40:51.790 We connected it. 40:51.790 --> 40:55.650 And this works similar to the way the other meter we looked at earlier. 40:56.230 --> 41:00.190 The difference is this is, you know, you sort of connect it for testing. 41:00.450 --> 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. 41:08.590 --> 41:10.990 So you can see here we can actually adjust which frequency. 41:10.990 --> 41:13.310 I know it's a little hard to see that display. 41:14.190 --> 41:15.350 There we go a little bit. 41:16.130 --> 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. 41:23.590 --> 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. 41:34.710 --> 41:36.270 It's still not perfect in this antenna. 41:36.270 --> 41:38.810 It's a 1.5 SWR. 41:38.810 --> 41:43.470 You'd ideally want that to be one, but you can see it is tuning right here at 50. 41:43.650 --> 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. 41:50.930 --> 41:53.170 You know, you don't find anything quite this fancy. 41:53.170 --> 41:57.110 There are plenty of things, plenty of options on the market. 41:57.150 --> 41:58.790 Again, used is totally fine. 41:58.790 --> 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. 42:04.770 --> 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. 42:11.090 --> 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. 42:19.190 --> 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. 42:27.310 --> 42:32.310 All right, just looking at some questions. 42:32.350 --> 42:34.190 How much have you spent on all your gear? 42:34.190 --> 42:35.790 I don't have to answer that question. 42:35.790 --> 42:37.690 I assume you're a plant for my wife. 42:38.790 --> 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. 42:49.030 --> 42:53.550 So yeah, I mean, it's been over several years and probably, I don't know, several thousand dollars. 42:53.550 --> 42:53.990 I don't know. 42:53.990 --> 42:56.450 But yeah, yeah. 43:03.370 --> 43:04.510 I think that's about it. 43:04.510 --> 43:06.930 I don't see any other questions in the chat. 43:06.930 --> 43:08.570 So thanks for tuning in. 43:08.570 --> 43:09.530 Hopefully this was helpful. 43:09.530 --> 43:14.750 If you do have any further questions, we can... you can drop them in the chat and I'll answer you. 43:14.750 --> 43:16.170 Oh, actually, we do have one coming in. 43:16.170 --> 43:17.490 Do you use a grounding block? 43:17.490 --> 43:20.930 That is actually a great point I totally forgot about. 43:21.290 --> 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. 43:32.170 --> 43:33.690 So yeah, that's a great question. 43:33.690 --> 43:35.150 So I do actually have a grounding block. 43:35.150 --> 43:37.410 It's on the outside of this house here. 43:37.410 --> 43:40.150 Let me go back. 43:40.510 --> 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. 43:47.050 --> 43:50.770 That actually goes to the outside walls and outside wall in front of us. 43:51.470 --> 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. 43:57.890 --> 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. 44:03.130 --> 44:04.470 Very, very important. 44:04.710 --> 44:09.630 You want good ground for your system and you want it to be the same ground as your house. 44:09.630 --> 44:14.550 You do not want to have your home electrical ground and your antenna grounds be different. 44:14.550 --> 44:18.370 That's just going to ask for trouble and or could be dangerous. 44:18.370 --> 44:24.730 So there definitely is a whole bunch of resources on grounding. 44:24.730 --> 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. 44:32.310 --> 44:33.710 And I highly recommend that. 44:33.710 --> 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. 44:42.790 --> 44:45.570 All right, not seeing anything else. 44:45.570 --> 44:49.670 So if you have any questions, I will be on Discord, on the DEF CON Discord. 44:49.670 --> 44:52.810 So feel free to drop in, ask any questions and I'll follow up there. 44:53.110 --> 44:54.350 Thanks for watching, guys!