Here you will see some more pics of my station which recently got some new additions.
Below you will see my Packet Radio Station, soon i will have my 10 meter hf station up and running, which consists of a president hr 2600 radio, a sirio 2016 groundplane antenna ( which will be stupid-high up), a realistic desk style mic and a zetagi bv 131 tube type amplifier. Then I will finally be able to DX Worldwide again,and remember peeps since 2006 we are on the up side of the sunspot cycle again, meaning there is some mean dx coming! . A word about packet radio, some of you may wonder what it is, well very very simply put its like chatting on the internet, the only difference being: A modem called a terminal node controller or short TNC and a radio, in this case a 2Meter band vhf transceiver from Icom. What happens is this: You have a program on your PC, a "terminal program", this program sends ASCII data to your TNC, the TNC converts this into sound signals, keys your radio and the radio sends this to a Node (repeater station) then the node processes this signal and sends it on to the receiving station at which the tnc picks up the audio from the radios speaker and decodes it for the PC once again.Same proceedure when the other station sends data to you. But going the other way of course You may also connect to another station directly, if range permits this, this is called a "direct connect". Some of the fascinating aspects of Packet are: Error free communication(stations check each others status at all times)The ability to "node hop" which allows you to use several nodes in a link to cover very long distances(I talk to Salt Lake City all the time and thats 400Miles away from here ) Another cool thing is that TNCs have a mailbox feature, which is like email, you dont need to have the computer on to get mail, only the TNC and the rig, mine runs 24/7 so people can leave me messages. When you get mail, the mail led will light to let you know, cool huh? also putting up a repeater (node) is as simple as having power, a radio and a TNC! Also any station can be used as a node! Thats right, any station is a node, as long as they have a decent TNC. I love packet! The coolest thing you can listen to music while you talk to your buddy! Also you dont have to ask a what they said because something distracted or massive fading, he he ;-) Oh yeah! No static filled transmissions... O Happy Days!!!!! Ps. 145.010 is the main freq for Utah and the Slc path from St.George is as follows:: C Dixie/C cdc/C Mlf/C SLC
oh btw to see more pix of my radio shack, go to my myspace page: www.myspace.com/redneck_19_78
73 de Martin, KD7RGC |
