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Every Monday Evening at 8pm Eastern Time, the W3GMS/R Crew get together on the repeater at 146.985Mhz and discuss technical questions and sometimes do lessons related to Ham Radio for newer Operators to learn from experienced Elmers. The Workbench was set up to be a safe place for any technical questions to get asked and good answers to be given.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Newcomers are very welcome, and we encourage all stations to check in.
Please take a look at the repeater website located at www.w3gmsrepeater.com.
It has lots of information, including technical articles, pictures of 95 users in action, and repeater etiquette and history.
Please be aware that on occasion the repeater experiences intermode interference.
Please run maximum power to be prepared to check in or be prepared to check in digitally through Echolink or AllStar.
We definitely want to hear you.
To be able to use Echolink or AllStar on 985, a.k.a. the digital modes, you need to register with us.
Directions for doing so can be found on the repeater website at www.w3gmsrepeater.com.
Also, when the intermod is present, before starting a transmission, give a short call, something to the effect of,
Hey, am I getting in okay? I'll confirm that you're getting in okay, and at that point, feel free to share your longer comments.
Here on the workbench, we focus on answering general technical questions of radio theory and operation.
Additionally, we invite each station to briefly comment on your amateur radio activity in the past week.
Amateur radio activity in the past week.
When checking in, please indicate if you have a question for the workbench.
If you do not have a question, still check in.
After all stations have checked in, we will first share what we've done this past week using a roundtable format.
So, when you check in, if you have a question after giving your call, so example, W3DIB, question, or W3DIB, no question.
Please write down the call of the station that checks in right after you.
When you've finished your comments, turn over the mic to that station.
And judging by the end of that squelched tail, sounds like the Intermod might be back.
Once we've made all of our comments, we will start the question and answer portion of the workbench operating in the directed net.
I will call on a station that indicated having a question and then for stations who wish to respond to that question.
Wait to be recognized by net control, me, before beginning a transmission.
This helps us handle the questions efficiently and keeps the net running smoothly.
At times, it helps for two stations to pass the mic back and forth to help clarify the situation and pass information.
Feel free to do that as needed, then pass it back to me net control.
Some things to remember.
Please don't be too quick to talk.
Pause a couple of seconds before hitting the press to talk switch.
Not only is it good repeater etiquette, the pauses are especially helpful for those on the digital modes, All Star and Echo Link.
When you do click the push to talk button, please wait a minute before, I'm sorry, please wait a second before getting to talk.
We definitely want to hear what you have to say and it takes a moment for the repeater to process your PL tone.
So if you speak too quickly right after pressing push to talk, it will lop off the first syllable or possibly the first word of what you have to say.
Also, the repeater has a three minute timer.
If you talk more than three minutes without letting up on your mic button, the repeater completely shuts down until you release your PTT switch.
So every two to three minutes, release the mic button just for a moment, like this.
And then you can pick it up and continue from where you left off.
Before we begin, I'd like to say thank you to all of our Workbench hosts.
They are the ones who actually make this happen.
If you may be interested in hosting Workbench, please contact Jim, AF3Z, or any of us, and we'll help you get started.
Lastly, please join Joe, W3GMS, this Thursday at 8 p.m. for the 985 roundtable.
At this time, we're going to start the check-in process.
So, we'll start off with the digital stations.
Again, please indicate whether you have a question by saying question, or no question by saying no question after your call.
While checking in.
At this time, all digital stations using Echolink or All Star.
Please call now.
Whiskey 8, Charlie Romeo Whiskey, CR, no question.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
John, no question.
Actually, yes, I have a question.
Kilo Delta 3, Lima Hotel.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
Alpha Alpha 3, Echo Echo.
Alpha Alpha 3, Lima Hotel.
No question.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
No questions.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
Okay, so far I've got W8 CRW.
John, I missed the beginning of your call.
I know it was a 3 Delta Echo Echo.
I missed the first.
Was that a KC3 Delta Echo Echo?
Or just keep, yeah, come back with your call if you have a chance.
Sorry, I got too quick on the key.
It's Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
Thank you.
Got it that time.
No, actually it wasn't you.
I completely, you said it and it came through just fine.
and my brain just had a wrinkle.
Or the lack of a wrinkle.
I think they say if you have a smooth brain it doesn't store as much.
Anyway.
Alright, so far we've got W8, Whiskey 8, CRW, CR, no question.
KD3, Echo Echo.
John, question.
KC3SQI, Wayne, no question.
AA3LH, Leon, no question.
Alright, at this time we will move over to RF check-ins.
regular RF check-ins for the Monday Night Workbench.
Please call now and indicate whether you have a question or not.
Whiskey Alpha 3, Victor Echo Echo, WA3, VEE, no question.
KD3SQI, Kilo Charlie 3, Sierra Charlie Yankee, no question.
KD3SQI, Kilo Charlie 3, Sierra Charlie Yankee, no question.
KC3RFG, Jim in Malvern, no questions, Greg.
NA3CW, no questions.
W3, KZG, no question.
KC3, MAI, Joe in Downingtown, no question.
KC3, MAI, Joe in Downingtown, no question.
Kilo Delta 3, Alpha India, Sierra, KD3AIS, Tim in Malvern with a question.
Okay, we have a pretty good list tonight. I'm going to go from the top. We have W8CRW, no question.
KD3, Echo Echo, with a question. KC3SQI, no question. AA3LH, no question. WA3VEE, no question. KC3SCY, no question. KC3RFG, Romeo Fox Tretton, no question.
KD3, Kilo Delta 3, Alpha, India, Sierra, with a question. Are there any other stations that would like to check in for tonight's Monday night workbench? On the 985, please call now.
Hey, Craig, did you get me W3MF bait?
KC3NZT, no question.
I got missed as well.
Alright, I knew I had heard a few doubles there. And then there was one station that actually keyed up, and all I heard was kind of like a, uh, just a tone almost.
Um, so, gotcha there. We got Mike, uh, W3MFB, um, assuming Mike, you didn't have a question. Is that true?
Yeah, no, I had a question.
Alright, we have W3MFB, with a question.
Then we have Harvey, no question. KC3NZT.
Then, KB3ILS, the real ILS, with no question.
Are there any other stations that would like to check in, please call now.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
...fight at that station, you didn't quite make it into the repeater.
If you want to come, try again, try to increase your power to full.
If you've got more power, try and give it all you've got.
If you want to come back, please call now.
KFT, he's on a vertical now, but he's not making it.
Ah, I guess Harvey can hear him direct.
Ah, KFT, John, it sounds like you're not quite making it into the repeater.
Harvey said it sounds like you're on a vertical.
I will put you in at the end of the list, and we'll try you again when I get back down to where you are on the list.
So we'll put you in there.
It's WA3KFT.
WA3KFT.
Had to check it on QRZ to make sure.
Are there any other stations that would like to check in for the workbench with or without a question?
Please call now.
All right, nothing heard.
At this time, we'll do the quick roundtable form, and let's keep it, I guess, briefer than longer in this sense, because we've got a few questions tonight, and then the whole focus of the workbench is to get to the questions.
So maybe talk about your past week in ham radio.
Actually, we'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
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We'll do the quick roundtable.
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We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
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We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
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We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
We'll do the quick roundtable.
This is W3C-IB on the Monday Night Workbench.
Very good, Greg.
Thanks for taking the chair tonight.
Good evening all.
This is CR.
And this week in ham radio was pretty standard.
985 and some other nets.
I did make it over to Bill's for the antenna.
and computer fest.
I'll call it that.
I don't think I did a whole lot, but it was a good being there and seeing people and having
a chance to have some conversation.
John, pick it up.
W--oh boy, I forgot your new call.
John, your turn.
WHCRW.
Thanks, W8CRW.
This is Katie 3EE, John in Landisville.
In the last week, I took down the random wire that I had stretched out.
It's, what, 73 feet long.
And I took that down and replaced it with the 80 meter, put that--or the 80 meter and fed half-wave back up.
because it finally kind of clicked for me that it being resonant for the frequencies I'm trying to hear
might be what everybody's been telling me about random wires being noisy,
because they're tuned, they're resonant at other noisy places, and not the things I'm trying to hear.
So I have that up to play around, and I just accept that sometimes I'll hit the tuner on it for certain parts of the band.
I did work some contests. There was a PSK contest.
I got 15 contacts in that.
And the RIDI Roundup, I got 70 in that one.
I didn't work too hard on it, but it's fun to do digital modes.
Next up is Wayne, KC3SQI. This is KD3EE.
Thank you, John. KD3EE, this is KC3SQI.
Not much in the way of radio for the last week.
I've been doing boats and dogs.
So with that, we'll turn it over to Leon, AA3L8. This is KC3SQI.
Thank you, Wayne. Oh my goodness.
I've been playing around bowens this past week. Different one-to-one bowens that I put on a G5RV I have up in the air right now just to see where I get the most kick out of it.
So when I go travel with them, I can talk back to them back here in Lancaster County.
I'm playing with that. I did find out that having different one-to-one bowens, there is a difference in the antenna performance over several days.
It didn't take one day and say, "Oh, this works so good. This is better than the other one." This is over like a week or more.
I had different bowens I was putting on. A quicksilver. A quicksilver bowens. Really. Really. It's just somehow and other. I don't understand it. It just seemed to work real well.
I had another one that I had up that just didn't perform. But I was playing around bowens. It did a lot of bowening. It was at the holidays. I didn't get to play a lot of radio over the holidays. But we got to play with some bowens and checking them out. They seem well. Especially early in the morning. They got 80 meters of that. Tending to play around with like a rooster's net in places like that.
Yeah. Alright. Let's see what I wrote down here. I don't know. My pen'd in the right. No. There's no call sign wrote down here. Terrible situation. So where was next? Go ahead. A308.
Good, Leon. Well, thank you so much. It's great to hear, everybody. This is WA3VE over here in Westchester. Turned down my monitor a bit here. All very good. Well, first of all, it's still not too late to say Happy New Year for...
...to everyone who I didn't have a chance to say that to before. And we had a little delayed holiday here because we were sick over Christmas. But now, hail and hearty. And looking forward to getting some work done with the crew up at the Field Day site this week, I hope. And all very good. And looking forward to our Zoom meeting on Wednesday night at 1900 hours for sure. I'm very happy to do that for the group.
...and put a new case. I ended up getting a brand new, a brand new older model, if you will, of a Raspberry Pi 3B Plus. And put that in a really nice fan-cooled case. And that was a little bit of a challenge because it comes in layers.
So if anybody wrestles with that, let me know.
I've got a couple really quick hints to put that together.
But that's for the All-Star note, of course.
And a phenomenal, phenomenal weekend in ham radio for me and some other VEs.
We had a young lady.
Her name is Kiana.
You may hear her here on 985 if I have anything to say about it.
She walked into the Pottstown Amateur Radio Club meeting VE session on Friday night
and walked out 100% on her tech.
And she is already starting to work on her general.
My key student at Drexel, so a fellow Drexel Dragon.
Since I'm a Drexel alumnus as well.
So I will be her Elmer.
She lives over in Chesterbrook, so she should be able to easily be able to get into 985.
Especially, like I said, if I have anything to say about it.
She's very excited to be on ham radio.
And the projects she's working on at Drexel happen to involve balloons, weather balloons, and astrophysics.
So there's more to the story, but we'll see how this all develops.
Very, very much so.
On Saturday, another great, great VE session down in Claymont, Delaware.
We had 10 applicants.
Eight showed up.
All eight walked out with something.
And one walked in with nothing and ended up acing the general.
So, very satisfying to do this stuff.
And very satisfying to do the Elmering.
It takes me right back to the classroom.
There's no question about it.
And you guys know how much I love that.
So, I'm going to stop there.
There's more, but I'm going to stop there.
And just say this.
We always say at the pre-rambles on the workbench and the roundtable, if anyone is interested in hosting.
And, of course, very much so.
But I'm also going to throw this out there.
If anybody is interested in becoming a VE, a volunteer examiner, I've been doing this since 2002 and absolutely love it.
It is very, very rewarding.
No question about it.
And it is not that hard to get into.
The only major requirement is that you need to be at least a general so that you can evaluate techs.
Preferred extra.
So, any of you guys are extras out there or working on your extra and you'd like to consider being a VE, send me an email or contact me somehow.
And I'll be delighted to tell you how that all works.
I'm a VE in three different groups.
And I've got another VE session coming up on January 11th.
So, anyway, with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Luke.
KC3SCY.
And thanks, Luke, for letting me ask you that question.
KC3SCY WA3VEE.
Like I said, Ron, no problem at all.
And thanks for turning it over to me.
And, Greg, thanks for hosting tonight.
So, this week at Ham Radio, I've been working on Bill WF1L's transmitter I'm building for him.
He lives down in Newark, Delaware.
And he hired me to build him a 1929 transmitter and power supply.
So, basically, I'm all done with the transmitter.
Now that I've got all the parts, all I have to do is put a bigger screw in one of the holes and attach this coil of wire I have mounted to the air variable.
And then I just got the power supply all laid out.
So, tomorrow I can start drilling that.
So, transmitter is basically done.
And, anyways.
So, good to hear everybody on the net tonight.
Hopefully, the intermod goes away.
I know there was a little bit, but hopefully there's not much more left of the intermod.
And then I've just been doing some organizing here.
And I've been on 75 AM a little bit lately.
And I was over at Joe's for a good bit of my winter break here off school.
And we got a lot of work done.
The riser, I can say, officially is all done.
So, on Saturday, that's going to be brought over here and assembled.
So, I'll be real glad to get that all done.
And I have, we have a DX100 on the bench that we got a new switch for.
So, we're going to wire in the switch.
We already waxed the panel.
And we're going to clean the chassis.
But that's it.
We're getting 100 watts carrier out.
So, 400 watts at full modulation on peaks.
So, I'll keep it.
Moving here, I guess.
And I'll turn it over to KC3RFG.
This is KC3SCY.
KC3SCY.
Thank you, Luke.
This is Jim in Malvern, KC3RFG.
Not much ham activity lately because the flu has flown through this house as well since right after Christmas.
So, we kind of lost a week there.
Today's the first day, I think I can say I feel normal, normal.
So, just normal nets and stuff.
But, Ron, since you mentioned the Pi cases, I just recently replaced my Pi 4 case that runs the ham clock with a clear stackable case.
And the only thing I was very careful to do because it comes assembled, the six or seven stacks are bolted together, was to not knock that pile of stacks out of order.
But I was very careful to take it a piece at a time.
And it was pretty easy, pretty quick.
A 20-minute changeover.
And now I have a clear fan-cooled case that I can see my activity lights on wall mounted back behind the shack.
So, that was a nice little project.
I would definitely do it again for any of the Pi's.
All right.
That being said, I will send it over to Chuck.
NA3CW from KC3RFG.
Leaving a little pause for the cause.
This is NA3CW.
Good evening, everybody.
Got a good list.
I'll make it short.
985 activities and the MAM net.
And working on the final testing phases of the ever-ongoing Joe tuner project.
Everything upstream of the actual tuner plate has been debugged.
Appears to be working fine.
So, today and will be into tomorrow, working on a wooden test stand to hoist the tuner plate up onto.
So, it's accessible on both sides.
A good positioning.
And easy to work on.
So, I can ring out the wiring to make sure everything is A-OK before I hook up everything else.
And that can actually be run on the stand.
And then, in the future, the stand will live at Joe's for times when you need to do, like, roller inductor maintenance.
Where you can just sit it out on the stand and exercise the roller inductor as well, doing lubrication and cleaning.
So, it's going to be a long-term thing.
So, it's nothing dramatic.
But, I think it will be a lot handier and safer for the thing if it can sit on a proper stand while I'm working on it.
Without having it flop over and do damage.
It's got a vacuum variable in it.
So, there was quite expensive and two roller inductors that were not cheap either.
So, I wanted to try to take good care of this thing while it's being worked with.
But, the good news is everything upstream of the tuner plate, which is the controller, the interface that will be at the patch panel, and the driver box that will live at the tuner.
All that electronic stuff is all checked out and working.
So, over to Scott, W3KZG, NA3CW.
W3KZG.
Thanks for taking the chair tonight, Greg.
And, Happy New Year, everybody.
So, my week in ham radio was, last week, I guess we'll do it, was working on my ham shack over the New Year holidays.
And, then we did on Saturday, we were up at Bill's building antennas and checking out the computer system for field day.
So, that's about it for me.
So, I'll keep it short and sweet here.
So, over to KC3MAI.
This is W3KZG.
KC3MAI, hello to the group.
And, Greg, thank you for hosting this evening.
It's good to hear everyone's voice.
Saturday, pretty much, as Scott said, spending the time down at Bill's house.
Bill, if you're listening, thank you for hosting us.
We appreciate it.
I had a chance to run some measuring tape myself and learn how to solder.
So, I found that interesting.
And, then this evening, I took those antennas up to George WA3LVR's house.
So, for the record, he now has them.
So, Tim, I'll turn it over to you with your question.
Thank you, Joe.
KC3MAI.
Thank you, Joe.
KC3MAI.
This is KD3AIS, Tim in Melbourne.
Like others, I really appreciated Bill's hospitality and being able to go down there and learn how to make a dipole, at least the beginning of it, and solder and understand how to connect the wires.
So, I had a great learning experience.
And, thank you to everybody who shared their knowledge, and Chuck, especially with his guidance.
So, I will turn it over to Mike, W3MFB.
This is KD3AIS.
W3MFB in the group, W3MF.
I just said that.
Sorry.
Don't mind.
Just thinking of something else.
I hope everybody's doing well.
Had a happy new year.
Nice vacation, maybe.
Just playing radio.
Basically, just sideband contacts on 80 meters.
I was doing those old mist nets down in the lower portion of the general portion where you could work all states and stuff.
Made a few contacts there.
And those people are always cool because if you need to work states, they'll get back to you on QRZ.
Some people use Logbook of the World.
Maybe both.
I don't know.
But they'll confirm your QSOs.
So, that's cool.
Also, I was on the Friendly Bunch over the weekend on 3919 from 7 to 11.
They're on every night.
And we were chit-chatting.
And this one guy, Bobby, he's down in Virginia.
And he was saying, hey, Mike, I can hear you down.
Or I'm listening on an SDR, he said, in Nevada, you know, by Vegas.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, let me pull up my Kiwi thing and I'll listen to hear myself in him.
And we heard each other real well.
And so that was on 3919.
And then, so they were talking about whatever.
And so I was looking up and I went up to this island off Massett Island or Massett, British Columbia.
And I heard the boys, the net controller or whatever, and the guys talking and then myself.
Because I popped in again and said, hey, Bobby, I'm hearing this up in British Columbia.
And I thought that was neat.
I know the group's kind of like centralized from like the Mississippi line over to the east coast.
But I never heard 75, 80 meters up that far.
So that was pretty cool.
Conditions were good over the weekend for that.
And I know you can get in Europe.
I'm sure the old heads would probably be like, oh, yeah, you can do that.
I did make a contact on 40 meters to Slovenia over the weekend as well.
The 4th of July.
Jeez, what am I thinking about this?
The New Year's weekend.
So that was cool.
That was my furthest 40 meter contact.
So, yeah, just playing radio.
So that's it for me.
I think I passed it over to Harvey, KC3NZT, W3MFP.
Hey, Mike, this is Harvey, KC3NZT in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
I made it up to Bills for a split second, said hi to some people, played around with the computers.
And that was about it for my week at AM radio.
Over to you, Keith.
This is KC3NZT.
KC3NZT in the group, KB3ILS, also known as your 985-2026 Winter Field Day chairman.
Winter Field Day is January 24th and 25th, just a few weeks away.
If you're interested in joining us, to think more about it, drop me an email.
I'm good on QRZ, or everyone at 985 probably has it as well.
Lots of active planning, dipole building, testing of laptops and things.
You heard about the graciousness of Bill, KC3OOK, who hosted us at his workshop.
Worked out very well.
What they have not let you know is that he actually had coffee, pastry, and donuts to make sure the people were very energized and ready to go.
I think we had as many as 14 people at one time.
Chuck and A3CW and Scott W3KZG got the dipoles built.
And when I looked at the back room, Chuck was putting on a master class on how to solder and set up dipoles.
Given the reliability of my dipoles, I probably should have been back there paying attention to Chuck.
Our illustrious host tonight, Greg W3DIB and Dylan K3DZM.
They brought in a portable data center with about five different ways to get to the internet wirelessly at high speed.
I quit counting.
A lot of good testing.
They always made some big decisions to get underway.
We do have two more big activities this week.
A Zoom call at 7 o'clock on Wednesday to go over the next set of activities and planning levels of detail.
If you'd like to join and you don't have the Zoom thing, get hold of me and Rod.
We can get you the link for that.
And then we're targeting Thursday morning, not quite sure of exactly what time to do dipole installation.
So we're not doing winter field day.
For me, it's all about straight key.
All about straight key.
My first chance to work straight key night since I learned he's a straight key in the spring.
I've been practicing with Pota and DX.
I had a great time doing straight key contacts on New Year's Day, which I had done earlier.
And I got to work at an amazing station, AF3Z.
Jim, you guys may know him.
I had a great contact on New Year's Day.
My last contact of straight key night was with him.
And I got a wonderful QSL card today all the way from Mount Joy, Pennsylvania.
So that's it for me.
And I'm going to turn it over to WA3KFT if he's got his vertical working better.
Over to you, John.
KB3ILS.
WA3KFT.
All right.
Well, I got 100 watts into the wire.
So, I don't know.
I learned a lesson about soldering on antennas and dipoles and so forth a long time ago.
Stranded wire is nice stuff.
But when you solder it, it makes a weak point.
And especially if you're soldering it at the center insulator or an end insulator or something like that, it'll break.
It becomes brittle and it'll break.
So, I have gone to copper clad steel for my antennas, for my wire antennas.
Yeah, when you let go of it, it's like a clock spring.
It springs out all over the place.
But I had one up for more than 20 years before it came down.
And what happened was eventually the copper plating ate away.
And it was rusted steel and it finally broke.
So, it got replaced again with copper clad steel.
Very strong.
Much stronger than copper.
And I have been in this QTH for 50 years.
And I've had a 40 meter dipole up for probably 45 of those 50 years.
And I've only had to repair it once.
So, one end is anchored to my tower and the other end is anchored to a telephone pole.
This is WA3KFT.
And back to our net control tonight.
Go ahead, Greg.
Excellent, John.
WA3KFT, 100 watts into the wire.
Boy, you were full quieting that time.
Let's see, are there any other stations that would like to check in?
Please call now and I'll offer a few comments.
Once again, any stations that would like to check in, please call now.
And indicate if you have a question or not.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Mike Sierra listening.
No question.
All right.
We picked up Chris.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Mike Sierra.
Do you want to go ahead and give us a brief summary of your last week in ham radio for the round table portion?
KD3 EMS, W3DIV.
Sure.
Yeah, last week, unfortunately, I didn't have much time on the radio because of the amount of time we spent traveling.
Between going to in-laws and other parents' house and this and that.
And with the kids having off school for the whole entire week, that definitely gives time to actually go do things and do some things as a family and stuff.
So, we spent most of the time just going out and, like I said, meeting with family and stuff like that.
So, Christmas and New Year's came by really quick.
They came and gone.
So, yeah, that's about it.
So, I'll hand it back to you, KD3 EMS.
KD3 EMS.
All right, excellent.
Well, we will turn over to the question portion of the evening.
So, tonight so far, I believe I have three questions.
Starting with John, Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
Then we'll go over to Tim, Kilo Delta 3, Alpha India Sierra.
And finally, to Whiskey 3, Mike Froxtrot, Bravo.
Mike has a question.
So, let's turn it over to John.
Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo.
This is W3DIB.
Please share your question.
Thanks, Greg.
This is KD3EE.
My question for the evening is, I'd like suggestions for a two-meter antenna that I can build that's simple, sturdy,
and I can pull it up and drag it up into a tree, you know, on a rope or something.
I have right now a quarter wave ground plane antenna and a Slim Jim made with ladder line pulled up into the tree.
But I'm starting to feel the itch for something new.
I saw this flower pot antenna that's built on a PVC pipe.
That seems like I could drag that up in the tree and it would be pretty sturdy.
Today, if I have any thoughts or recommendations.
Thank you.
KD3EE.
Okay.
All right.
We have John so far.
WA3KFT.
Is there anybody else?
I'm going to try and collect the calls up front and then we can pass them around.
Is there anybody else that has a comment that would like to throw their call in now?
WA3VE.
Alright, we'll see if you guys like that method of collecting calls up front.
John, we'll turn it over to you.
WA3KFT, WA3DIB.
A couple of old timers, yes.
I started my 2 meter activity with a J-POL antenna.
It's made out of half-inch copper water pipe.
One tee, one elbow, and four pieces of copper pipe.
Very, very sturdy.
It survives almost anything you can throw at it.
And you tune it using an SWR meter.
The dimensions and so forth are published in numerous places at ARRL publications.
And easy to make.
Sweatshaw to the joints, and you're good to go.
I have had, like I said, that was my first 2 meter vertical antenna.
And I think I probably had it up for 3 or 4 years before I got a tower and other antennas up in the air.
As I said, very easy to make.
The instructions, like I said, are well published.
And the antenna is easy to make.
One elbow, one tee, and you're in business.
And you, and, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4 pieces of copper pipe.
You buy one 10-foot section, and you've got all the pieces, a tee and an elbow, and you're good to go.
WA3 KFT.
Take it away, Ron.
WA3 VEE W3 DIB.
Very good, Greg.
W3 DIB WA3 VEE over here in Westchester.
Very good.
Well, John took the very first idea I had.
They're a very good, John.
I agree.
J-POL, for sure.
And all you do is you just drill a small hole in the long element, the long vertical element,
and you put your little bit of cord or whatever it is through that,
and that will just throw that over the tree and you'll be able to hoist it directly right up that way.
Another possibility, of course, is an X-50 antenna.
It already has a ground plane on it, so that's always possible.
You have to kind of fiddle and finagle maybe with a hose clamp or something on the very tip of that
to be able to hoist that up.
But that's very clean as well.
So I'll leave it with that if anybody else has any other comments.
W3 DIB WA3 VEE.
Excellent.
Thanks, Ron.
I'm going to look up an X-50 antenna and the J-POL.
I'm curious if anybody knows, but actually it's probably published out there,
what the gain looks like on the J-POL or the radiation pattern, all that good stuff.
Other air stations that would like to offer a comment, please call now.
W3 MFB, comment.
C3 NZT.
C3 RFG.
All right.
We'll send it over to Mike.
W3 MFB.
W3 DIB.
Thanks, Greg.
Yeah.
I like Ron's idea with the X-50.
But you could always, you know how the bottom of the main antennas, they have the U-clamps.
You could always put a 5-foot, 10-foot piece of conduit, you know, the light metal conduit you get at the Homeless Depot.
And use that as a counterpoise.
Not so much a counterpoise.
A counterbalance is the word.
I got a buddy of mine, Ray KC3QWD, quality whiskey drinker.
That's how I always remember his name or his call sign.
But anyway, he pulled up a tree, a Solarcom IMAX 2000, 24-foot vertical, you know, 10, 11, 12-meter antenna, right, up the tree.
And he used a 10-foot counterbalance pipe.
And he pulled it up by the pipe.
And then he had also at the top of the antenna a little bit of, or the top or three-quarters up, a little bit of bracing there up the tree as well to kind of keep it centered.
And he pulled it up into like a silver birch or something like that.
So just to have that balance to keep the antenna vertical so she doesn't tip over and not sway too much up there.
Because the swaying is going to loosen your coax.
If you don't have your coax silicone wrapped, well, even when it is wrapped, with all the breezing around and blowing around, it could loosen everything up.
And, you know, you're going to have to bring it back down, fix it, and pull it back up again.
So just a thought.
But two more fellas to make a comment.
So back to you, Greg.
And then this is W3MFB.
And we'll send it over to Harvey, KC3NZT.
Then just feel free to pass it over to Jim and Malbert, KC3RFG.
W3DIB.
Thank you very much.
This is Harvey, KC3NZT.
We have some cheaters on the workbench tonight offering commercially made options.
So I will stick within the parameters here.
On Build Your Own, there's a great website by a hand that's been published many times before.
I've attempted to build a couple of his designs.
He seems to be very legit.
His call sign is W6NBC.
And a couple of homemade antennas I've seen on there are slot designs.
One in particular that I actually built, which is very robust and easy to make, inexpensive to make.
He has a design on there for a slot antenna that you can make with aluminum foil tape that you get at Home Depot and PVC.
And it is a vertical antenna.
And he has all the designs in there.
The antenna is both vertical and vertically polarized, even though it's a horizontal slot.
But it is omnidirectional around a PVC section of piping.
And it's not very big.
It could very well be a scrap you have laying around.
So I'd give that a look.
Another homemade antenna design that could be fun to play with because it has gain and is easy to make yourself and hoist in a tree could be a delta loop.
There are a lot of homemade gain antennas.
But hoisting in a tree, that is a constraint there.
I'm thinking a delta loop could work pretty well and might be fun to compare against your homemade omnidirectional antenna since it's giving you gain in a direction.
That could be a fun experiment.
So those two come to my mind in addition to everything else everyone else says.
I'm actually talking to you right now on a copper J-pole that's only up about eight feet above my head in the attic of the garage.
So not even up high at all.
So they work very well but I did want to throw out there that the J-pole antennas tend to radiate on the feed line as well.
So a choke at the feed point would be advisable.
That's all I have.
Over to you Jim.
KC3RFG.
This is KC3NZT.
KC3RFG.
Thank you Harvey.
All I was going to do was to really put a strong second on the WA3KFT John's idea of the half inch copper pipe J-pole.
That's the first one that I built.
It's easy to make.
It's really, really rugged for being outside.
Nearly indestructible.
The big diameter of the half inch pipe seems to work well bandwidth wise for the two meter.
So all in all that was a really good fun project and easy to build.
And the plans are ubiquitous all over the internet for that one.
So I strongly recommend that as a builder.
Okay.
With that we'll send it back to that KC3RFG back to W3DIB.
Thank you.
Thanks Jim.
Are there any other stations that have a comment?
Please call.
Alright.
Nothing heard.
I think we'll turn it back over to John at this point.
So we've got a lot of recommendations there.
Everything from a J-pole.
Which sounds like it's the most rugged.
And I had to look up the X-50 run.
That looks like a pretty cool antenna.
Pretty good gain.
What was it?
4.5 dB on 2 meter.
Like 7 something on 70 centimeters.
Which is pretty cool.
And Harvey.
Yes.
W6NBC.
I googled that.
And he has W6NBC.com.
But he doesn't have like all of his antenna designs kind of indexed on a single page.
So you have to use Google to find them.
I think he has them as like PDF'd PowerPoint presentations.
But lots of explanation and very professor-like going to a lecture type explanation.
So it's pretty cool.
And he goes into the theory.
Yeah.
John, back over to you.
KD3.
Echo, echo.
W3DIB.
Thank you, everyone, for the suggestions.
Mike, I especially like this idea of counterbalancing and hoisting it higher than even the point width that the rope is looped through.
I was sort of curious about that because I need all the height I can get.
So that seems pretty cool.
I did have like a flagpole with a yaggy for a while.
But it was very stressful watching it whip around in the wind and eventually break.
So I don't want to be responsible for so much stuff being in the air unsupported.
But pulled slightly higher than the tree?
That might be cool.
And Harvey, I also, thanks for the suggestion of that website.
I have a lot of those pieces already.
So I could probably have something built by daybreak.
Thank you.
This is KD3EE.
Back to net.
KD3, echo, echo.
John, thank you.
W3DIB.
Next we have Tim with a question.
So over to Kilo Delta 3, Alpha India, Sierra.
W3DIB.
Thank you, Greg.
W3DIB.
This is KD3AIS, Tim in Melbourne.
My question is with regard to Intermod.
Because when I was listening to the check-ins earlier, I was surprised that I was hearing Intermod on the digital check-in.
And I started thinking about that, and I don't know why that is.
At first I thought maybe I could, if I could listen to it on the input, there wouldn't be Intermod.
But I don't think it's coming in through the air.
Or maybe it is.
So I don't know.
Why or why did I actually hear Intermod when I was listening to the digital check-ins?
And if so, why?
Back to net.
Yes.
I, actually, if it's okay, if everybody be okay with it, I'll take a crack at why you heard the Intermod.
Because I kind of know the setup of Echo Link and have seen it at GMS's place.
But any stations that would like to comment, I'll just give a quick explanation.
So, I believe, yes, you are hearing the Intermod on the Echo Link or All-Star side.
Because there is a receive radio that is receiving the output of the repeater.
So, if the repeater's output, if you're hearing Intermod, it's making its way back into the input and putting that noise or competing with the signal that you want to hear on the input, you're going to hear it on the output.
Since the Echo...
Since the Echo...
Since the Echo...
I'm really fumbling over my words tonight.
I don't know what's going on.
Brain's not working.
Since Echo Link is just hearing the output of a radio that's listening to the repeater's output, you're going to hear it the same way as everybody else.
It's not like Echo Link is tapped directly into the repeater.
It's just a radio receiving the signal.
With that, I will turn it over to any stations that would like to give a way better explanation than I gave.
Please call now.
Save me, Ron.
Not much saving needed, actually.
You're pretty much right on point.
The advantage I have is I can hear Tim on the input over here, so I know he's listening to us on his radio.
So, just to clarify, what you're hearing is the output of the repeater directly.
That's...
You're listening to 985.
So, you are hearing the...
Even though you hear the signals on Echo Link or All Star, it doesn't matter if the input to the repeater is on All Star or Echo Link or RF.
You're hearing the intermod that is present on the output of the repeater.
So, that's...
I hope that helps clarify what's going on there.
Greg, back to you again.
Oh, by the way, Greg, one comment for you.
I'm going to send you a SmugMug file of about maybe three or four pictures.
That is my X-50 on my deck.
It's not what you're hearing now.
That's the X-300.
But I put up the X-50 to hook up to the rig on my bench so that you'll actually see what it looks like.
Back to you.
W-3-DIB, net control, W-A-3-V-E-E.
W-3-G-M-S for the real explanation.
Take it away.
Both of you guys are pretty close, but there was one minor thing.
Number one, you should not hear intermod if somebody is on digital.
Sometimes people will check in on digital, but they're actually running analog.
Here's the sequence.
For the digital side, I don't pick up the output of 985 and pump it through the Internet.
I do something which I feel is a lot better.
The 146385 receiver at the repeater site, there's a downlink, or I should say an uplink.
And the 146385 receive audio gets sent to a link, and that link gets sent to my house.
The link, which has no intermod on it, by the way, because the transmitter is not on.
And the link on the receiver then goes out over the Internet.
It's processed through what we call a DMK sound interface card assembly.
That goes into a Raspberry Pi, and then that goes into the Internet.
And the reverse is true.
When somebody comes in on the digital side, what happens is the signal comes in off the Internet,
that goes through the Raspberry Pi, gets audio processed initially with the DMK audio interface,
and then it goes into a bunch of other stuff.
I have a DBX processor in there to do downward and upward expansion and peak limiting and all that kind of stuff.
And then that signal gets sent up on the same link.
It's a simplex link.
It's not a dual link.
So you'll notice that if there's intermod on the repeater and somebody comes in on the digital side,
the 385 receiver is not active.
That 385 receiver will have intermod on it when the 385 or the 985 transmitter is on.
So, you know, what I need to do is I need to do a block diagram and put it on the 985 website and things like that.
But there's no picking off the output of the repeater with signal plus intermod and pumping it into the Internet.
It's strictly off the 146385 receiver.
And that's that on that.
Back to you, Greg.
W3DIB, W3GMS.
Love you.
Go ahead, Chuck.
Chuck.
Yeah, I was going to pipe in.
We actually did have a couple of guys that came in on digital, but there were several others, at least two others,
that kind of jumped the gun and came in on RF.
And that may be confusing things.
Initially said it's impossible to have intermod on All Star or Echolink.
But a lot of times we have people that jump the gun and they break in on analog during the digital input request.
So, anyway, you guys did good, though.
But, as I said, I need to do a block diagram, stick it up on the website, and people will have a better conceptualized view with how we get audio up and back and where we pick the audio up.
Great job, Greg.
Great job, Greg.
W3DIB, W3GMS.
I'll be listening, but clear.
Excellent.
Excellent explanations all around.
I didn't consider all of the options, and it's funny.
It reminds me of, like, the system architecture block diagrams I draw at work.
And there it's usually TCP and UDP ports and numbers and firewalls and all that good stuff.
But it's funny that it's the same thing.
It's the same exact thing, except it's just RF signals and frequencies, inputs and outputs.
It's the same thing.
And, actually, some of it is TCP and UDP, at least on the All Star dark side.
Because if somebody is transmitting All Star and another person is listening All Star, technically, that's nothing more than a giant voice over IP conference.
That's digital to digital completely across the Internet.
It never makes it to RF, at least between the two digital stations.
It does, obviously, make it to RF because it does key up the transmit radio and go back to the repeater over the uplink and downlink frequencies, or I should say the uplink frequency in that case.
But, anyway, yeah, wow.
That really does illustrate how complex things get when you throw the digital Moe's into the mix.
Tim, I am rambling.
Hopefully, we answered your question in that crazy amount of I was definitely stumbling all over my words, so I apologize.
Tim, over to you.
KD3AISW3DIV.
Thank you, Greg, and everybody, and Joe, and Chuck, and Ron, and whoever else answered.
Maybe, Joe, when you draw up the block diagram, you could add a comment for a follow-up question that I have, which is, it sounds like if you don't have any radio, any RF connection at all, like you said, it's a voice over IP conversation.
So, I guess, is it possible to introduce RF with digital if your primary goal is to eliminate Intermod?
Could you set it up that way and still interact with RF?
And if that's too long of a question, you don't have to answer it.
KD3AIS, back to NetControl W3DIV.
One-on-one about that.
I'm busy here right now, but I can explain all that to you.
The basic thing is, when you're on the digital mode, okay, and you're transmitting on the digital mode, there's nothing coming in on the 146385 input receiver.
And if there was, then you would have Intermod, because then you would have the mixing product of 985 plus this other signal landing on 385.
But during the digital time, when you're talking on All-Star or Echo Link, there's nothing on the input.
So, that's why we hear you or hear somebody on the digital side without any Intermod.
Now, when it goes to receive, and you're on All-Star or Echo Link, you will, if somebody is coming in on the analog side on 146385, when they're transmitting,
and if the Intermod is present, you have the mixing product of the transmitter plus this other source landing on 385, that gets repeated on the air, analog-wise, on 985.
And it also, because, you know, the receiver is on 385, that also comes down the downlink from the site and will go out over the digital side.
So, if there's guys talking on analog and there's Intermod, you will hear them on the digital side.
But if you're talking on the digital side, they will never hear any Intermod on your signal, because the 146385 receiver is inactive.
Hopefully, that explains it.
Got to run, guys.
Take care.
W3DIV, W3GMS.
Back to you, Tim.
KD3AIS.
Is that, uh, cover it?
Thank you, Joe and Greg.
Back to you.
KD3AIS.
Thank you, KD3AIS.
W3DIV.
That's a good question.
I actually like that kind of stuff, because it's fascinating to me how all of these rows converge.
All the inputs and outputs and how it all works so seamlessly.
And, uh, I don't know.
It's also handy when you're transmitting RF, like I am right now, and I have a headphone in that I hear myself back at, I don't know, about a half a second delay, which is fun to train your brain to talk as you hear yourself back delayed.
It's harder than you think.
All right, let's turn it over to Mike.
Uh, W3MFB for your question for the workbench.
W3DIV.
W3MFB.
W3MFB grabbing the wrong microphone again.
I use paper clips and kind of tie them around the, uh, the handles of the, uh, the desk here.
I got an old writing desk here.
Anyway, question.
Hopefully a simple one.
History question, actually.
All right, so, uh, Mars Mod.
What's the history of the Mars Mod as with amateur radio?
Um, I know I could look it up, but I'd like to ask some of the guys here if they have any experience with Mars Mods and why they have it.
Like, what, what bands are you going on?
Like, if I was, well, my ASUS Mars Mod is, I guess, if you can call it that.
I use it to get on an 11 meter.
No big deal.
A lot of people do that.
But, like, if, is there training?
Is there a history with that?
Um, that's what I'm looking for.
Like, what bands would you be working if you had an HF Mars Mod or even a VHF UHF Mars Mod?
I know, uh, HRO will do it for you down there.
Gigaparts will do it for you.
Uh, I just don't know what, what you're, what you're trying to do.
Or maybe it's something that isn't really done anymore.
Like, you're not helping other agencies out because everybody's on 700, 800 megahertz nowadays.
Uh, so, yeah, what's the history of the Mars Mod with, uh, amateur radio?
W3DIB, W3MFB.
W3MFB.
Alright, let's turn it over to John.
W3MFB.
This is W3MFB.
I was in Air Force Mars for quite a long time.
And, the Mars frequencies, whether it's Navy Mars, Air Force Mars, or Army Mars,
the frequencies are near the amateur radio bands.
But they're outside the amateur radio bands.
And, with the new technology of microprocessors in the radios and so forth,
they are basically programmed specifically for the amateur radio frequencies.
The Mars Mod, in the ICOM 706 Mark II G,
was to remove a diode.
And, once you did that,
the radio could now receive and transmit on any frequency.
Literally, from, uh, I will say, uh, 1.6 to 30, 32 megahertz.
And, everything in between.
Mars frequencies are all outside the amateur bands.
So, uh, getting a 706 or a 7300 stock,
uh, it only works on hand bands.
And, you can't get outside.
And, uh, on the 706, it was,
remove a diode,
and it opened it up so that it both received and transmitted
continuous frequency.
Uh, from, uh, I'll say, 1.6 megahertz to 30 megahertz.
You know, pick a frequency, and it would work there.
Now, uh, you could have SWR because the antennas aren't cut to those frequencies,
and so on and so forth.
But, uh, it basically, uh, converted a ham transmitter only
to a broad-banded transmitter for any frequency.
This is WA3KFT.
All right, John.
Excellent, uh, explanation.
I was gonna, I was gonna say,
the first thing I thought of was,
like, I remember everything was usually either desoldering
or cutting a diode or cutting a trace off of a circuit board.
And, I don't know, Mike,
what your, um, understanding of digital logic is,
but as soon as I hear diode and microprocessor,
basically the first thing I think, I think,
is if the diode's in place,
that's probably gonna tie a input line on said microprocessor,
either high or low,
depending on whether it's active high or active low logic.
And all that's doing is literally clearing a bit,
and then the software can take it from there.
It does shock me, though, John, that they would, um,
with as fancy and as much memory as microprocessors have had since the 90s,
I would think they would just make two different sets of rules and say,
okay, if Mars gives you an extra couple of megahertz in each direction or here and there,
I would think they would have kind of like the ham-restricted mode,
and then if you clear this bit or set this bit high for Mars,
say, all right, now we'll add the Mars frequencies,
but that's crazy that it actually opened up the oscillator for transmit on basically broadband,
like the entire range of the radio.
Excellent.
Are there any other stations you'd like to offer a comment?
Please call now.
283VE.
Take it away, Ron.
Very good.
First of all, let's define what Mars is.
We're throwing this acronym around, and that's all fine, well, and good,
but Mars, M-A-R-S, has nothing to do with the planet.
It has everything to do with Military Auxiliary Radio System,
and what it was generally used for was backup communications for the U.S. Armed Forces,
as John had indicated.
I had radios in the military.
When Joe and I were in the Signal Corps together,
he was across the street in one armory, and I was in the headquarters company,
and we had radios, commons equipment,
that actually was capable of doing the military affiliate bands, those portions.
What they were generally used for is they were used for phone patches
and providing essential communications.
I don't know that we ever did any operations, any real tactical military operations using those frequencies.
We were always down in the 5 megahertz range, but in any event, or others,
Joe may even remember better than me.
We had the same systems, but those Mars frequencies, Military Auxiliary Radio System,
those were used for phone patches providing essential backup communications.
Just so I clarify, put some definition into this, that's what we're talking about here.
W3DIB, WA3VEE.
Excellent, Ron. You're right. We were just throwing around that acronym, and I knew what it was for.
I was close. I thought it was Military Amateur Radio System, but it turns out it's Military Auxiliary Radio System.
And it makes sense, yeah, phone patches, I guess, to make all kinds of maybe domestic communications
or possibly relay a message through at Ham.
Very cool. Are there any other stations that would like to offer a comment? Please call now.
GMS for a second time. Over to the good music station.
To expand a little bit on the Mars, the reason that the rigs, the transceivers, do not come through as an open rig, so to speak.
Open meaning they'll transmit on any frequency from 160 meters to 10 meters, is they will not pass type acceptance like that.
To get type acceptance on the amateur equipment, it is required to transmit only on the amateur bands.
So that's why they're not shipped like that. Otherwise, we would have a disaster on our hands.
Now, you might argue the point, well, okay, so Ham buys it, and he does the Mars mod, and it opens it up, and then he puts it on CB.
Until legal. You're not supposed to do it by the letter of the law, but people do it.
So that's the reason they don't have, like, an A-B switch or something like that, Greg, on the transceiver for Mars and amateur band only.
It would never get past the type acceptance. Go ahead.
Excellent. Yeah, I was thinking not necessarily an A-B switch, but I was thinking just two sets of rules.
So what you guys are explaining is when you cut the diode and you basically tell the software in the microprocessor,
hey, this is for Mars, the radio is like, okay, no rules.
You can transmit on any frequency, including CB.
I would think they would have written the software a little more conservative.
Like, if I was writing the software and I knew that Mars was a fixed set of frequencies,
when you trim that diode out and the bit goes low, I would write the software so that it says, okay,
now you can transmit on the ham bands and the Mars frequencies.
But you can't take it down into 11 meters and transmit on CB because that's just illegal and you shouldn't be doing that anyway.
I'm surprised they just made it.
But maybe they had resource limitations in the microprocessor and the software and they just didn't feel,
or maybe they just didn't feel like doing that.
And they just made it so that once you trim the diode, they're like, hey, if you're in trimming the diode out of the radio,
you better know what you're doing or you're risking doing something illegal or damaging your radio by going high SWR and getting a ton of reflective power.
With that, I will stop rambling.
Are there any other stations that would like to offer comment?
Please call now.
And over to Chuck.
The big manufacturers sell way more gear to other commercial interests than just hams.
My Kenwood TS-140S had, you know, clipped the wire modification.
You had to get in and pull the processor board out of the front panel, clip the thing, and put it back together again.
It was done because I was working for a linear amplifier company, and we used this TS-140S as our driver for testing amplifiers that were going to, like, embassies and, you know,
maritimes and all kinds of people were buying the amplifiers, and they work on all these different frequencies that are not ham bands.
So my TS-140S is kind of like a 100-watt HF signal generator.
It could go anywhere up and down from, you know, 1.65 up to, like, 32 megahertz.
And so, yeah, they made it so that the average appliance operator is not going to go in and do that, and not easily.
In the case of, like, Corbin's, I forget if it was his DX10, maybe, that was a matter of removing a very small surface mount resistor, resistor or diode, I forget which,
which, you know, had to be done under a microscope, and I know this because it was done on my bench.
And he got the, found out what the Mars mod was because he's on Mars.
And so it was intended to be not something that, you know, the average here, hold my bear kind of guy is not likely to be able to do successfully.
Back to you, NA3CW.
Well, Chuck, I'd say it sounds like you sent radios down to the Virgin Islands to have that Mars mod done.
Just kidding.
Tongue in cheek, if you remember that from field day.
All right, that makes sense.
I didn't realize that other people in commercial operations and other radio uses, that makes a lot of sense because then you could buy these radios and use them for lab gear, like you said.
With that, Mike, I'm rambling.
W3MFB, back over to you for your final comments.
W3MFB, thank you, Ron, Chuck, Joe, and John, for all your input.
Yeah, I was hoping you guys would comment.
And that makes sense now about passing the traffic.
Ron, for the military auxiliary radio system.
We did write that down.
And then when Chuck was saying about going to other places, it just made me think that also, I guess, if, say, you had lots of money and you had a nice yacht and you were a ham, but you also were out in the middle of the ocean, say the Pacific,
and you needed to get on the HF portion for the maritime frequencies, which are like 2 megahertz, 4 megahertz.
They got their little portions on the chart.
So that makes sense.
You could use your radio for that, you know, for calling whoever you got to call.
Hopefully not in an emergency.
But you know what I mean?
Okay.
So, yeah, no, I'm going to look up the history of that a little bit more so I know a little bit more about it.
But thank you, Ron, for spelling out the acronym.
And I was just curious if it was still being done to this day, seeing that everybody's digital.
Now, I know not everybody.
You know, the planes are VHF AM when they're close to the continents.
And then they hit HF when they're out in the middle of the ocean, you know, when they get far away from land.
So, on AM anyway.
So, yeah, no, I was just curious.
So, I guess it is still used.
I guess I answered my own question.
So, thank you, thank you, thank you.
I appreciate it.
And I got more to read.
So, thank you, 985.
W3DIB, W3MSB.
Okay, quick follow-up.
This is Casey 3NZOT.
Go for it, Harvey.
Running late, guys.
This will be quick.
I'm just curious.
If the radio is opened up like Chuck's 140, is it just using the next highest ham band low-pass filter in order to filter that signal?
Or are those out-of-band signals unfiltered?
I'm just curious from someone that's done Mars or played around with that inside the radio at the component level.
Are they applying a filter to that signal?
Casey 3NZOT.
Take it, Chuck.
NA3CW.
Yes, they are.
They're absolutely filtered.
They may be on the edge of a filter on some of the frequencies.
So, the spectral purity isn't going to be necessarily equally good all portions of the spectrum.
But, absolutely.
And since they're low-pass filters, yeah, you can.
And they're low-Q.
Then, they got a lot of.
They're fairly broad.
They got a lot of latitude in them.
So, yeah, they're filtered.
Back over to you, Harvey, if you have any comments.
The answer, thank you so much.
Casey 3NZOT.
Cool.
And, Chuck, I don't know if you know the answer to this.
I can remember back when I was doing, when I was in, uh, CPEG at UD.
In a long time ago.
I remember we had chips that could do filtering, um, digitally.
I don't, they probably don't do that with RF.
But I was wondering, I know these chips would filter analog signals, decimation filters, I think.
And we could control what frequency they rolled off at just by sending in a square wave oscillator at a different frequency that was multiplied by, like, eight or four or something like that.
Would they do it through any kind of fireable filter like that? Are we talking, like, literally hardware, old school, uh, inductor capacitive? Or, I should say, RC networks. Or, RLC networks.
Uh, NA3CW, W3DM.
Uh, the, NA3CW, these are out, hang on.
These are RF output filters at power.
So, we're talking L's and C's here.
What you're talking about is like a switch capacitor audio filter.
And that's all done at very low level.
But, this is filtering, filtering out, uh, waveform distortion in the output amplifier before it gets out to the antenna.
Because distortions are harmonics.
That makes sense.
And I didn't think I was dealing with low level, line level signals.
And you're talking about at power.
Big, big difference.
Thank you.
And, Mike, thank you for letting me glom on to the end of your question.
Um, I guess at this point, I will ask, are there any other stations that would like to check in at the very end of this workbench?
I wish you'd at least get your name on the log.
If so, please call now.
Please call now.
Alright, nothing heard.
Uh, Mike, I'll give you a final comment.
Just make sure you're good with all the answers and me glom on to the end.
Everything good?
Uh, W3MFB, W3DIB.
W3MFB.
W3MFB.
No, no, you guys, you guys answered my question.
I was just gonna, gonna read into the history of it a little bit.
Um, the wife, you know, a couple years back got me a lot of, uh, ham radio history books. I got one sitting on the desk here. I'm still reading by Richard A. Bartlett. The world of ham radio from 1901 to 1950. So that's, uh, that's interesting stuff. So, but I was curious about the, uh, the Mars mod. Cause, uh, somebody mentioned it the other day.
Um, and, uh, I know it's illegal, but a lot of people do it. And there's a lot of people worse than me. But that's not, that's not to say what I did was not illegal. But the FCC ain't gonna do anything about it, to be honest with you. Um, I wish they would, to be honest with you. There's a lot of CBers out there talking on 7300s and, uh, 706s, uh, John was talking about.
And everything else. And, uh, it's easily modded. Uh, you just solder out or take it off the board or you could just short it out with some solder and it works and you're done.
It's just like Joe said, not the everyday average guy is going to be able to do it. Uh, taking the head off this radio wasn't fun. So it wasn't fun to watch either. So, but, uh, yeah. So a lot of people do it. And I couldn't tell you how many hams I've talked to on 11 meters that are using their rigs or whatever else.
So, uh, it's, uh, I don't know. I think it's a, it's a fun band to go over and have some fun and not be, uh, regulated, uh, with call signs and everything else.
But anyway, I was just curious about the history of, uh, of the Mars. So we're going to look into that a little more.
I got an on key here. I got to remember my three minute timeout. All right. So thank you. Thank you. And happy new year to everybody. And, uh, I guess we'll be, uh, closing up here. So I'll pass it back to Greg. Thank you for hosting, Greg. I appreciate it. I know you're filling in though for, uh, Jim.
Uh, W3DFB, W3MFB. Excellent. All right. Yeah, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm just making up for missing my hosting duties the previous Monday. So I apologize to everybody for missing. I'm sure you guys started and waited. Eight o'clock came and went. And you're like, huh, no host. Greg flaked out. Anyway, I'm getting my, uh,
getting back in. So trying to, uh, make up for missing. With that, before we close down, actually, we did the last check-in. Let me move to the next part of the document. Thank you to all stations for checking into the 985 workbench. And a big thank you to Joe W3GMS for making the 985 repeater available for the workbench. You're invited to use the repeater often. That's a great way to show you appreciate the gift of 985 to the amateur radio community. Finally, we hope to hear you again on Thursday evening at 8 p.m.
for the 985 roundtable hosted this week by Joe W3GMS himself. This concludes the workbench for tonight. Feel free to stick around and continue the discussion on 985. Have a good night and a great weekend ahead. 73. This is W3DIB. Clear.
Thank you.
Thank you.