Taking a Radio Camping
Evan Pratten successfully combined camping with amateur radio on a recent trip, improvising an antenna and achieving numerous contacts, including a new distance record to North-Western Europe from Ontario.
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Evan Pratten recounts a recent camping trip with his father to a provincial park, where he aimed to combine his love for camping with amateur radio. Having previously wished for a radio during a past camping experience, he brought his HF rig along this time. However, he faced a challenge as he did not have an antenna. To resolve this, he built a new antenna using lamp wire after failing to find speaker wire at a local store. Despite the wire being shorter than ideal, he improvised and tested the setup in a grocery store parking lot, achieving satisfactory results.
Once at the campsite, he effectively set up the antenna by securing one end to a tree and tent-pegging the other end to the ground. The low noise floor in the forest allowed for better communication, and he was able to make numerous contacts, primarily on the 20m band. Although he initially planned to operate using FT8 and CW modes, he found enjoyment in using FT4 instead. He set a new distance record for contacts, reaching North-Western Europe from Ontario, Canada, and received excellent signal reports when he finally accessed a network connection. Overall, the trip was a success, blending his interests in camping and amateur radio.
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10 commentsThe amateur radio community is very aware of the problems and several initiatives have been launched to quantify the effects. One of them is the DARC's ENAMS, which is described in detail here:
https://web.tapr.org/meetings/DCC_2020/DK5HH/F_ENAMS-DCC-DK5...
Side note: if you read Hacker News, enjoy tinkering with electronics, and want to meet/talk to more people like you, I recommend becoming a Ham. The Technician and General exams from the FCC are relatively easy if you have any technical background and it's a great outlet for experimenting.
Let's say "radio 1.0" is as it existed since radio was invented: convert raw analog or digital packets into a signal of a given wavelength as assigned by the FCC for the "type" i.e. nautical, hobby, aero, etc. Roughly associated with physical distance.
It's obvious we have the technology at this point where multiple streams of information can be reconstructed from one wire/pipe. My cable internet is mixed with thousands of other users and yet the cable internet system delivers me just my data.
Why is the airwaves not just another physical medium (metal wire, fiber optic, air)?
If I want to build an amateur transmitter to airstream my Twitch to my friend in Brazil, the FCC would say no, because
1. Can't clutter up the airwaves (the FCC manages the wavelengths) 2. For "safety" (government wants to monitor the stream)
In "radio 2.0" I can build my hobby hardware to whatever transmit power I want and use whatever wavelength I want because air is just another medium for the same signal. My question is roughly, why cant the organizing principles of my router, isp cable internet system, etc apply to over the air transmission?
Is it a physics limitation? Or a "we always did it this way therefore you can't have it" (FCC, etc)
Let's say I hypothetically have a high power handheld transmitter in my pocket powered by modern batteries, the FCC doesn't exist, and the power is the best that the modern batteries can provide, with the only tradeoffs being weight of the transmitter and duration of batteries, i.e. physics based tradeoffs.
Don't we have the technology to mix thousands of such handheld transmitters so that everyone can carry one, broadcast their own stream, and intermix the streams, and deconstruct the stream back to my own data?
Basically just want a glorified walkie talkie with a bit more range (a few miles through woods and across hills of possible).
I just got my GMRS license and some cheap 5W handhelds to experiment with, but I'm not sure if that is the best option.
We might also have the option of setting up a "base station" at the trailhead (our cars or someone relaxing at a picnic table) to act as a higher powered repeater if that would help.
How much of it is frequency (radio type), wattage, line of sight, operator skill. etc.?
As a non-radio enthusiast, I was following along until this sentence.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_wire_antenna
There are also commercially available products that are fairly portable and probably give you a better SWR; e.g.:
* https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Buddipole
From one of the photos, seems like the author is using an Elecraft KX-2, which is really a clever bit of kit that packs a big bunch in small package:
* https://elecraft.com/products/kx2-ssb-cw-data-80-10-m-transc...
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