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cables, cables, cables and a dipole
Saturday May 3rd 2008
Today at Pop’s we finally got around to setting up his dipole. Contrary to one would think, a dipole doesn’t have any physical pole in it. Essentially it’s the pos/neg thing that’s used for a ham radio rig.
The afternoon was spent mowing the lawn first, then jumping up on a ladder several times to position the cable between three trees. After that a secondary cable was soldered to the first one and the end of that cable was snaked thru a window to the Kenwood rig.
The result: Success. Pop got a quick contact in Maine. This means the dipole is set up correct and “pointed” properly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The life of a ham radio op is sorta/kinda similar to anyone who tinkers with computers, with the exception that the ham radio guy does a lot of stuff outside. The effort it takes just to get a rig working right is difficult, time consuming and outright frustrating. However, once working the rig pretty much stays “in tune” for a good long while.
Amateur radio equipment is ridiculously expensive. If you thought computers were expensive, ha! Try buying a top-of-the-line Icom rig. It’ll run you back about $10,000 and I’m not kidding. And yeah, that’s just for the rig. Pop has an older Kenwood setup but hey, it works and he can operate; that’s all that counts.
Interesting side note: I was actually able to scan and find a frequency strictly from memory from watching Pop do it years ago. Turn the knob, listen for the freq to tune.. adjust squelch.. adjust RF for volume.. and then break in. Pop did the breaking in obviously because he’s got the call sign and I don’t.
Well anyway.. mission successful. The rig works. Tomorrow will be cleaning up the cables outside (a few are sprawled on the ground).
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2 Responses to “cables, cables, cables and a dipole”
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Hi Rich;
Ham Radio is still good stuff. As your dad would tell you when all other communications go down a ham will be on the air. With private repeater networks, and portable power we never stop. Remember when the big one comes ie; 9/11
Your cell is trash.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Ham radio is the last bastion of courteous communication as far as I’m concerned (and I’ve been saying that for years.) Whether you’re bouncing off the repeater or going direct, it has always and will always be better than those 900MHz crap-job wireless (formerly known as cellular) networks.
I have always been of the opinion that telecom wireless networks are absolute junk - even when they ARE working. :-)
And yes, you’re correct. If all communications in the world went down as we know it, someone somewhere will lug out a battery, hook up a rig and start operating (even if just morse code.)
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