5 ms·

And I get it. You've spent decades and $1000s acquiring HAM equipment, learning the craft, just so you can DX some guy in Kazahkstan. Then some amateur with a $

by yardie 8y ago

And I get it. You've spent decades and $1000s acquiring HAM equipment, learning the craft, just so you can DX some guy in Kazahkstan. Then some amateur with a $80 handheld and a bit of antenna wire manages to pull off the same thing. Without the years of experience and hundreds of dollars of equipment.

setquk 8y ago
It's worse than that really. A lot of people are like a acquaintance of mine. Bought a FT DX 5000MP, which wasn't cheap, has hundreds of books on the matter, boxes of cables and bits of antenna, speaks knowledgably on the subject but hasn't made a single contact yet after 5 years of having a license. But he hates 'feng scum like me.
sizzzzlerz 8y ago
Not with a Baofeng. Long distance DX is typically done with HF gear at lower frequencies. Baofeng is a 2-meter VHF radio where communications is basically line-of-sight.
- setquk 8y ago
  You can do satellites and ISS with a feng though. Don’t have to go across or round, up is good too :)
- iamatworknow 8y ago
  You're right in the context of Baofeng HTs, but people get equally furious about some Chinese HF radios as well, like the Xiegu X5105 or Recent RS-918 (though the argument with that one is that it ripped off the open design of the mcHF, but the fact that it's an all mode, all band QRP HF transceiver with better features than the likes of a Yaesu FT-818 costing hundreds of dollars more probably factors in as well).
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Very true, HF radios are nothing magical. Very common parts can make you as good HF radio as physically possible. $10k iComs are mostly unicorn poo, with exception of somewhat useful DSP filtering, for which the real cutting edge research in radio tech is said to be used.
    - setquk 8y ago
      So true. One of the first things I did was build a direct conversion receiver with decent audio filtering. It had 45 mostly discrete components and sounded as good as a top end Yaesu. Similar to this one: https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/using-the-nm0s-hi-per-mite-filter-from-4sqrp-to-make-a-simple-40m-dc-cw-rx/ https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/using-the-nm0s-hi-per...

by yardie 8y ago

setquk 8y ago

It's worse than that really. A lot of people are like a acquaintance of mine. Bought a FT DX 5000MP, which wasn't cheap, has hundreds of books on the matter, boxes of cables and bits of antenna, speaks knowledgably on the subject but hasn't made a single contact yet after 5 years of having a license. But he hates 'feng scum like me.

sizzzzlerz 8y ago

Not with a Baofeng. Long distance DX is typically done with HF gear at lower frequencies. Baofeng is a 2-meter VHF radio where communications is basically line-of-sight.

setquk 8y ago
You can do satellites and ISS with a feng though. Don’t have to go across or round, up is good too :)
iamatworknow 8y ago
You're right in the context of Baofeng HTs, but people get equally furious about some Chinese HF radios as well, like the Xiegu X5105 or Recent RS-918 (though the argument with that one is that it ripped off the open design of the mcHF, but the fact that it's an all mode, all band QRP HF transceiver with better features than the likes of a Yaesu FT-818 costing hundreds of dollars more probably factors in as well).
- baybal2 8y ago
  Very true, HF radios are nothing magical. Very common parts can make you as good HF radio as physically possible. $10k iComs are mostly unicorn poo, with exception of somewhat useful DSP filtering, for which the real cutting edge research in radio tech is said to be used.
  - setquk 8y ago
    So true. One of the first things I did was build a direct conversion receiver with decent audio filtering. It had 45 mostly discrete components and sounded as good as a top end Yaesu. Similar to this one: https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/using-the-nm0s-hi-per-mite-filter-from-4sqrp-to-make-a-simple-40m-dc-cw-rx/ https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/using-the-nm0s-hi-per...