The Ham Radio has arrived !
- Filed under: Ham Radio
- Date: Feb 24,2008
I will go into more details later. I have spent the week getting supplies and learning how to build myself a J-Pole antenna for my Ham Radio that was now confirmed for arriving at my apartment on Saturday afternoon.
I had never used a blowtorch before, so I was a little nervous, but there’s nothing to it, it’s literally just like soldering … on a larger scale …
I’ve been getting GREAT reception and people are saying i’m coming in loud and clear from repeaters all over !
Here are a couple of pictures of the antenna that I built 100% on my own, as well as a bad pic of my new “ham shack” 
Notice the tops of the tree’s on the left. I’m on the 3rd Floor.
I’ll eventually post something about how i made the J-Pole, in detail, and a review of my Yaesu FT-2800M. Thanks for reading and 73’s from VE2RIF !
11 Responses for "The Ham Radio has arrived !"
Congrats!! I’ve read through most of your stuff on Ham. I have an electronics background myself and love the techy stuff.
A friend of mine said he could link to local phone systems via his radio and repeaters. Can you do that with the internet as well?
Cheers,
Ed
I’m not sure if you are asking if we can link to the internet via Ham Radio ?? I’ll assume it is, and yes it can be done. The repeater needs to be configured for it however, just like the phone patch you were mentioning. I don’t know of any repeaters here (Montreal) that have this feature, but I may be wrong.
ICOM Radio’s have a D-Star function which enables you to create your own network via ham radio connections instead of ethernet cable. Here’s a nice youtube video demonstrating this :
http://youtube.com/watch?v=q8dUJp0rc0g
If I misunderstood your question feel free to clarify !!
Yup, sorry I wasn’t clear. You understood correctly. I was asking if the Ham Radio can connect to the internet. The youtube video seemed to be more intranet, ie, a connection between a number of computers in a network.
By the way, just to close the loop for you, I’m Meghan’s (Neufeld) father-in-law, Aaron’s dad.
I’m very impressed with the set up you put together for Sharon and Calvin, and that got me thinking whether a connect with Ham and internet were possible. And from what you say, that’s very possible.
Ed
Hmmm .. now you’ve got ME thinking about internet over Ham Radio. Fact of the matter is, I have no clue how it works or how WELL it works. I do know that my new Ham Radio has an “internet” button on the front, but i’ve yet to play with it and see what I can do if anything. The youtube did just show sharing folders internally, an intranet like you say, but all it takes is one of those computers to have a connection to the internet and then all the others on the d-star wireless network would have access.
I’m gonna look into this now that you’ve peaked my curiosity. In Sharon and Calvin’s case though, if they choose to get internet, it would probably be through a cell phone.
Thanks for clearing up the loop Ed, I had noticed your last name and figured it was something along those lines. Even more thanks for taking the time to read my blog and leave a couple of comments !
I’m sure there are ways of connecting to the internet using a Ham Radio. I think the big question will be what kind of bandwidth can a person expect?
Ed
Yeah I doubt the bandwith would be anything impressive, although I could be (and REALLY REALLY hope I am) wrong on this one… Around here TELUS has cell phone plans with HIGH SPEED internet connected to it, more or less new technology in this area (Montreal) and you can connect the cellphone to your laptop and get high speed ASSUMING you have a working cell in that area.
I think the cell phone connection works here (Kingston) as well. Though I haven’t pursued it because I use only the pay ‘n talk plan, and that would be a very expensive way to go.
If those guys we refenced early with the intranet are able to exchange filess and such, I’m suspecting the bandwidth would be pretty good.
Since most of us use the internet for email and browsing, I bet it’s going to be just fine with the Ham radio connection.
yeah but someone somewhere is paying for the internet connection and adding it to the airwaves, so i’m sure you need to be part of a club with a repeater set-up that way that will give you access codes. I’m not sure if this is a common thing yet. (I don’t think it is) Although it would be pretty easy to rig something so that an office internet connection in town can be shared with you (and you only) through ham radio to wherever you live. Essentially making your own repeater.
I know in Kingston you can use a cell phone and get dial-up internet, but this TELUS thing is literally HIGH SPEED internet through the cell phone.
I think internet through Ham Radio is much harder than we both thought. I read a bit on it. D-Star, in VHF and UHF only goes at 1200 baud. (1.2kbs) on the 20 meter Band, (which involved a totally different radio, and maybe even licence) it can go to 128kbs which is reasonable.
The Internet button on my Radio seems to be more for an ECHOLINK kind of thing, where you can connect to remote repeaters via the internet and your ham radio. Not really for DATA.
Hey, Jason, Thanks for visiting my photo blog. Neat that you are a fellow geocacher. What’s your online name?
“Crosier” is mine, “MuddyFingers” is Jean’s
Yeah I thought that was pretty cool too that you were a geo-cacher !!
My Geocaching name is the same as here, DigitalMind
I wrote a little blog post about geocaching here :
http://www.techienation.com/?p=20
Although there’s nothing in there you don’t already know ..
Leave a comment