VE3MAL

VE3MAL , 7 months ago to amateur_radio in Baud rate replaced by bandwidth limit

On HF, unfortunately, physics is going to keep you from having high speed data. The Shannon–Hartley theorem puts a ceiling on the maximum bitrate of a channel in the presence of noise. If you are on HF with your 100w transceiver and a dipole antenna, your signals are always going to be weak enough on the other end of a skywave contact to limit your data throughput. Even given a magical ham prodigy that invents the best mode imaginable, it’s going to be Kbps, not Mbps. If you want to learn about the development of open source, higher throughput digital modes for HF, I highly recommend David Rowe’s blog on the development of FreeDV over the years. There’s even a recent move to general data in addition to digital voice. However, we are talking about single digit Kbps digital. There are some other modems used by the Winlink folk that are a little higher. The drop of the baudrate limit will just remove an artificial contraint, and headache, on that development.

On line-of-sight VHF and up connections, it gets easier and easier as you have higher gain antennas pointed at each other and lower natural noise figures.

VE3MAL , 7 months ago to amateur_radio in Baud rate replaced by bandwidth limit

Bandwidth doesn’t put a hard limit on bitrate either. It’s one variable, but there’s also SNR (See Shannon). With a fixed bandwidth, you can have low bitrate and excellent low-SNR performance (think of Olivia), or you can have higher bitrates, and require stronger signals. For practical purposes though, you are not going to get highspeed internet on HF. But that’s what sharing is like. 🤷‍♂️

VE3MAL , 8 months ago to amateur_radio in How to build/mount horizontal dipole antennas between two houses?

50 meters is enough for a 80m 1/2w dipole. And yes, google a “fan dipole” - you can hang multiple dipoles below each other with as little as a few inches of separation. However, the dipoles interact with each other, and getting it right gets more troublesome the more you do.

VE3MAL , 8 months ago to amateur_radio in Portable Yagi Antenna

Neat idea. Odd that those diagonal telescoping rods don’t interfere with the yagi pattern?

VE3MAL , 8 months ago to startrek in Just some fun size comparisons

God the Klingon thing was silly. Do we need an explanation as to why the TOS ship had plastic, 1960s themed furniture? Do we need an explanation for improved camera resolution over the years? Why did we need a silly explanation for the improvement in makeup artistry so many decades later? And the explanation doesn’t even work. Genetics don’t work like that. It’s taking themselves too seriously. Either ignore it, or hang a lantern on it with an inside joke once, and be done with it.

VE3MAL , 8 months ago to startrek in Just some fun size comparisons

It mirrored the contemporary idea of the “End of History”, where all the existational crises were done with, the federation (was basically moving into a time of refinement rather than having to worry that the experiment might still utterly and completely fail. TNG was basically one long, slow lesson of why that was a flawed notion. You don’t build a cruise liner, fill it with families, and then intentionally send it into the kind of peril that regularly befitted the Enterprise D. In retrospect, it was completely ridiculous.

VE3MAL , 8 months ago to amateur_radio in Learning morse code by tracing patterns

fyi, nearly everyone that succeeds in achieving morse proficiency recommend strongly against any sort of visual cues like this. It’s an auditory “language” and adding visual interpretation steps just adds cognitive load and hurts in the long run. It may be fine if your goal is to learn max 5 words per minute or something extremely slow.

VE3MAL , 8 months ago to amateur_radio in IC-7300 and similar - What does USB-D / LSB-D *definitively* do.

Yes. This is a setting in the menu. Audio source is selectable separately for -D and non-D, so one of them can use the mic and one can use the aux, or whatever you want. I believe it also recalls the various DSP settings as well, so you can set things up how you like for phone, and for digi and easily toggle back and forth.

It’s not about a pre-set per-se, but about having 2 custom U/LSB profiles.

VE3MAL , 9 months ago to amateur_radio in Redneck engineering manpack

Put the volt-meter in series with a switch or momentary button. They tend to draw a little power, so you don’t want it draining your battery when you are not using it. If you stick a cig (accessory) port in there too, you could plug in other things, or a usb charger or whatever if needed. I’ve used my pota battery to run a small 12v air compressor, for instance.

VE3MAL , 9 months ago to amateur_radio in Redneck engineering manpack

Amateur radios are generally spec’d at 13.8v plus or minus either 10% or 15% so that they work on a non-running car (12.something volts) or if an alternator is running a bit hot. A 100W radio like this is pretty much always going to require around 20amps at full power -but they have adjustable transmit power. They don’t transmit as well at the lower voltage range, but most people don’t worry about it.

VE3MAL , 9 months ago to amateur_radio in Redneck engineering manpack

It’s a (kind of silly) throwback to the radios that armies used in the first half of the 20th century that were large enough to necessitate a dedicated person backpacking them around everywhere. It’s still common in ham radio like other traditionalist terms. “Portable station” is more accurate, but maybe boring?

VE3MAL , 9 months ago to amateur_radio in Redneck engineering manpack

There’s negligible advantage in loss going from pl259 to N connectors on HF. You don’t have the kind of losses you do on VHF and especially UHF. The only time N is really nice is when you need an intrinsically weatherproof connector -but this is mounted inside the weatherproof box.

If you want slightly better loss specs AND a more convenient, quicker connector, BNC is great. But PL259, as I said, is fine.

VE3MAL , 9 months ago to amateur_radio in My new pota battery, 32ah 4s lifepo4

I would look at fabbing up a box that fits snugly, rather than “clamping” them. That could protect against puncture as well. A 3d print or thin plywood glued together would be fine.

VE3MAL , 9 months ago to startrek in Have watched TOS - Enterprise. Will watching Discovery-SNW increase my enjoyment of Lower Decks?

Star Trek discussion /usually/ tends toward anything new being bad, and always has. SNW and lower decks are exceptions because they do so much fan service and return to a more classic Trek format. Discovery was groundbreaking in a way that I’m sure Roddenberry would have enjoyed, but groundbreaking also implies jarring change and throwing away things that work for experiments that sometimes don’t.

VE3MAL , 9 months ago to startrek in Have watched TOS - Enterprise. Will watching Discovery-SNW increase my enjoyment of Lower Decks?

This is a really good take. I have enjoyed the serialized shows -but they are a juggernaut of emotion and intensity to watch. You tend to watch them once, and it’s a fairly wild ride, but then it’s done. I suspect that I will be re-watching episodes of SNW and lower decks for years to come, as I have for TOS and TNG. That’s how Trek wormed it’s way into my brain in the first place.