Amateur Radio Stack Exchange
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1500 questions
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Does mixed-mode operation qualify as a QSO?

Working the bands it's quite possible to work in mixed-mode, albeit I doubt whether it is ever done. Call this a thought experiment: Station A operates CW, Station B operates SSB. I find myself wondering What is the legal status of such a QSO?…
VU2NHW
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Do you need a radio licence to use ZigBee/Xbee?

I want to make a application with my Raspberry Pi along with a XBee module. I am going to use it in public places and in my own home. The question is, do I need a radio licence (UK) to use the XBee in my home and/or in public places? I want to know…
iProgram
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History and significance of term "lid"

What is the history on the term “lid” when referring to a telegrapher’s capability? How did it originate and what is the significance if any of each letter?
W8AWT
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How does a folded balun work?

A folded balun is made from two quarter-wavelength, parallel conductors. A picture is worth a thousand words: Here are some pictures of an actual construction from Gisela & Joe Noci on diydrones.com: Sometimes they are printed on a PCB, so the…
Phil Frost - W8II
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“Repeater” vs. “reflector”

In various topics on repeaters, IRLP, D-Star and EchoLink, I see people refer to these 'nodes' (for lack of a better word) as reflectors. A quick Internet search for these terms comes up with all sorts of ambiguities. I've always called my local 2m…
captcha
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How is RF a radio receives just not a mishmash of eletromagnetic energy?

So at any given time, electromagnetic waves of many different frequencies are flooding the space around me. I have a little 2 meter radio. Are not all these electromagnetic waves exciting the electrons in the antenna at the same time? Let's just go…
mikew
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HT programming software alternative to Chirp and RT-Systems

I have been using Chirp to try to program my Baofeng UV-5R but have been having one problem after another. I was wondering if there was an alternative to Chirp and RT-Systems programming software for use in programming my UV-5R.
W8AWT
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Yaesu exceeding power limit under certain conditions

I noticed something fairly interesting today, under certain operating conditions my FT857D will exceed the power limit, the highest I saw it go was around 150W! This happened when the power was set to 8W or below on 20m 17m 15m 10m etc (but not…
s3c
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How do I power my radio in a vehicle mobile install?

I want to install a 30W mobile UHF radio in my car. I already have an antenna and mounting bracket - but how do I get power to this radio? It has an SAE bullet connector on the back - do I just need a cigarette lighter adapter, or do I have to wire…
Dan KD2EE
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How to find the front-to-back ratio given an antenna radiation pattern diagram?

I know that the front-to-back ratio is 18dB in the below antenna radiation pattern diagram, but I don't know how to read the diagram to obtain this result. How does one read and understand such diagrams?
Dan
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Can I listen to hams on a standard AM/FM broadcast receiver?

I am very much out of practice with amateur radio (like many others), so to some, this question may seem obvious. I don't have any specialised amateur radio equipment, but I do have a Sanyo AM/FM broadcast receiver (240V, 50 Hz, model no. MCD…
user17
6
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3 answers

Impedance Matching Different Feedlines

(I promise there will be a question in this wall of text. I'm just giving context.) I've been wanting to try my hand at building my own antenna system for the last few weeks and in doing research, a number of questions came up. In particular,…
Italic_
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Identifying signals in the satellite exclusive band

I have just started playing with SDR so I downloaded the relevant amateur band plan for my location, the UK. Tuning around I found things like POCSAG/FLEX pagers as expected and amateur radio (e.g. FM repeaters) at frequencies matching the band…
David
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Choosing capacitor for high-pass filter with cutoff of about 160 MHz

A strong (100 kW) local FM transmitter causes interference to or overloading of receivers in the VHF/UHF bands. It seems like a single, properly chosen, capacitor could make an effective passive high-pass filter. I would like the filter to pass 200…
Jamie Cox
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What is the velocity factor of a wire?

This is Belden 9223. It is a 50-ohm coaxial cable, velocity factor 0.56 This is Belden 8524. It is a 22 AWG hookup wire. No velocity factor in the datasheet. Why does the coax datasheet have a velocity factor, while the hookup wire datasheet…
Phil Frost - W8II
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