User Panel
Posted: 1/20/2022 8:26:21 PM EDT
What was the first frequency you ever made contact on?
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VHF, 146.96 MHz, local repeater.
HF, 7070 KHz, PSK31. Using a FT-718 and a buddiestick set up on my front patio. |
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21.120 MHz - I had a DX-60B and IIRC a crystal for 7.040 MHz which was outside of the novice band on 40 meters but which tripled nicely into the 15 meter novice band.
(Or maybe I’m just misremembering - 1968 was a long time ago.) |
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Local VHF repeater, 145.105. QSO with a crane operator on a tower crane at a construction site. Eventually met him face to face when we were working at adjacent sites.
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40m CW -- 7.1317 mHz on August 25, 1976 at 2330Z with WA1OZW.
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Quoted: Somewhere between 7.100 and 7.150 MHz in 1954, running ~5 Watts from a homebrew one tube transmitter into a folded dipole antenna made from TV twinlead. This is a replica: https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/353196/92485.JPG View Quote Now THAT is radio badassery. Me, local 70cm repeater, 444.750. |
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Probably 27.185 sometime around 1973. On the ham bands 146.54 FM simplex in 1998.
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2M simplex with my cousin 12 miles away.
My first HF was on 20M phone with a guy from Oregon. |
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7.113 MHz, 40m CW. 1961. Novice license. 60 watts CW from an EICO 723 xtal controlled transmitter from my home in upstate NY to Ohio.
I remember it well. Wish I still had that QSL card. |
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155.175..the local fire dispatcher wasn't near as excited as I was lol. A friend of mines dad gave me a box of old mobile radios. I kept hooking them up and trying different channels until someone answered me.
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Back in '82 after getting the Tech Plus license, a local repeater on 2 meters.
I made a Novice CW contact soon after getting licensed using another ham's station, but I don't remember the particulars after this long. It was a 5 wpm QSO, and I used his CW keyboard to send the code. Several years later, 20 meters phone contact with an event station outside Nashville TN. |
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2m on repeaters.
HF was on 80m. Went camping with a guy and we talked to some folks back home. |
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My first qso was in 1972 on cw using a xtal on 7.187 mhz.
The transmitter was a Knight Kit T-60 and the receiver was a Heathkit GR-64. I nearly fell out of my chair when a local ham replied to my shaky CQ. Good times! |
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2m on local repeater.
My antenna has never worked properly for HF....working on that now. |
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From my log book, on 10-18-08, 14.293 mHz, 13:27 to 13:30 UTC. 100 w SSB. 5-9 both ways. 1016 miles.
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First HF was to Gyprat checking into the ARF net for the first time in October. Haven't been to get through ever since.
Might've done a local 2m net before that. I don't remember. |
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2m repeater as a tech. I was the idiot calling CQ.
20m Into Texas on 5 watts from PA on an end fed as my general 40m into Georgia as an extra. My first DX was after I hiked up to the cooks forest fire tower from Cooksburg in PA with my 817 to do a park activation, I think it was Sweden with 5 watts and A dipole. I think I only made 11 contacts up there. |
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CB channel 19, when I was 7. My Dad was huge into CB back in the 70s.
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Quoted: @jduncan1 What's it doing -- or not doing? Maybe ArfHams can help fix it. View Quote It's an OCFD with a balun, built it myself with advise from this very website. But I didn't have the resources to get it up in the air high enough so I could listen but no one could hear me. The local ham groups are not very helpful to newbies so it just languished. The closest club changed hands several times in the first couple of years so there was no consistent contact. So I just let it be for a few years and am picking it up again now. I will probably build another dipole and it will be an inverted V with the center 30+ feet up. |
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First amateur contact was on 223.5 with my elmer a few miles away. The only radio I had was a borrowed 220 HT.
First HF contact was Spain on 10m SSB, on an HTX100 I got a few days later. |
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Whatever frequency the Montgomery Ward walkie-talkies had that I got for Christmas when I was about 6 or 7.
I don't remember the first frequency as a licensed Ham, but it was most likely a local 2M repeater. Or possibly 146.52 to a Ham friend a mile or so away. On HF, 28.355 to Calif. eta: first DX 7.164 to New Zealand |
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Quoted: It's an OCFD with a balun, built it myself with advise from this very website. But I didn't have the resources to get it up in the air high enough so I could listen but no one could hear me. The local ham groups are not very helpful to newbies so it just languished. The closest club changed hands several times in the first couple of years so there was no consistent contact. So I just let it be for a few years and am picking it up again now. I will probably build another dipole and it will be an inverted V with the center 30+ feet up. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: @jduncan1 What's it doing -- or not doing? Maybe ArfHams can help fix it. It's an OCFD with a balun, built it myself with advise from this very website. But I didn't have the resources to get it up in the air high enough so I could listen but no one could hear me. The local ham groups are not very helpful to newbies so it just languished. The closest club changed hands several times in the first couple of years so there was no consistent contact. So I just let it be for a few years and am picking it up again now. I will probably build another dipole and it will be an inverted V with the center 30+ feet up. OCFD's are almost impossible to work on/tune without an analyzer that can show resistance and reactance separately. DIYing can be a challenge, especially for newcomers. Just looking at SWR is an almost hopeless exercise. A center fed dipole will be a lot easier to work with, maybe save the OCFD for a future project. |
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Quoted: OCFD's are almost impossible to work on/tune without an analyzer that can show resistance and reactance separately. DIYing can be a challenge, especially for newcomers. Just looking at SWR is an almost hopeless exercise. A center fed dipole will be a lot easier to work with, maybe save the OCFD for a future project. View Quote I'll drag out the antenna book and look at one. It's deciding which bands to favor that is the next hurdle. I do have an antenna tuner. |
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Quoted: It's an OCFD with a balun, built it myself with advise from this very website. But I didn't have the resources to get it up in the air high enough so I could listen but no one could hear me. The local ham groups are not very helpful to newbies so it just languished. The closest club changed hands several times in the first couple of years so there was no consistent contact. So I just let it be for a few years and am picking it up again now. I will probably build another dipole and it will be an inverted V with the center 30+ feet up. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: It's an OCFD with a balun, built it myself with advise from this very website. But I didn't have the resources to get it up in the air high enough so I could listen but no one could hear me. The local ham groups are not very helpful to newbies so it just languished. The closest club changed hands several times in the first couple of years so there was no consistent contact. So I just let it be for a few years and am picking it up again now. I will probably build another dipole and it will be an inverted V with the center 30+ feet up. Good idea. Off-center-fed antennas are vexing enough for experienced hams. There are several options, depending on the bands you want to work. If you're limited in space, a 40/20 Meter fan dipole is a good start. The 40 meter element will also load up on 15 Meters. The SWR will be a little high (mine's ~3:1), but well within the matching capabilities of a wide range tuner. FWIW, the tuners in my IC-746, IC-7300, and K3 handle it with ease. The G5RV is another option. The SWR on 80 is pretty high, but a wide-range tuner should be able to handle it. I work a lot of hams using them and they get out okay. If you're limited in space,the G5RV-Jr (40-10) is an option. Alpha-Delta makes several fan dipoles you might want to consider. Quoted: ...I do have an antenna tuner. If it contains a 4:1 balun, a ladder line fed dipole is a possiblilty. Or you could use just enough coax to get the feedline outside the house and put the balun at the junction of the coax and ladderline. Cut it for a half-wave on the lowest frequency band you want to operate and it will work on all bands higher in frequency. |
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Probably CB channel 19 then 146.610 local repeater. HF was probably 75 meters (3915 khz) on the SC single side band net.
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18.115 guy in CT on mobile according to my logbook.
Hadn't looked in a long time. Next day got Czech Republic, Lithuiania, Esonia, Cuba and Canada. Not a bad first month, also got W4A Apollo moon landing event, W1AW, and Indy 500 event. |
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Quoted: Whatever frequency the Montgomery Ward walkie-talkies had that I got for Christmas when I was about 6 or 7. I don't remember the first frequency as a licensed Ham, but it was most likely a local 2M repeater. Or possibly 146.52 to a Ham friend a mile or so away. On HF, 28.355 to Calif. eta: first DX 7.164 to New Zealand View Quote I was just going to post the same thing about the 49 MHz walkie talkies..I had a pretty cool set of GI Joe ones. Then there was CB on Ch 8 My first Ham would have been as a Pirate on 147.435 repeater in Southern California ( look up the history of that one if you dont know)... I did it for a couple of years, before I got a license. First HF would have been to Australia, but I dont recall the details. |
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Quoted: I was just going to post the same thing about the 49 MHz walkie talkies..I had a pretty cool set of GI Joe ones. Then there was CB on Ch 8 My first Ham would have been as a Pirate on 147.435 repeater in Southern California ( look up the history of that one if you dont know)... I did it for a couple of years, before I got a license. First HF would have been to Australia, but I dont recall the details. View Quote |
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Quoted: Not sure if it was 147.435 or not, but the one time I brought my 2m handheld with me to L.A., I tuned to a repeater and I heard so many Fuck You's I thought I'd picked up the broadcast of a bestiality competition at a sheep farm. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: I was just going to post the same thing about the 49 MHz walkie talkies..I had a pretty cool set of GI Joe ones. Then there was CB on Ch 8 My first Ham would have been as a Pirate on 147.435 repeater in Southern California ( look up the history of that one if you dont know)... I did it for a couple of years, before I got a license. First HF would have been to Australia, but I dont recall the details. Thats the one |
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Quoted: Dammit! Now where'd I put that screen cleaner? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: ...I heard so many Fuck You's I thought I'd picked up the broadcast of a bestiality competition at a sheep farm. Dammit! Now where'd I put that screen cleaner? https://www.broadcastify.com/webPlayer/14747 |
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7.192
I crashed the Brothers Net. Hilarity ensued. I apologized and told them I was a newbie and didn't know any better. Instead of an ass chewing Net Control passed me around and I made about a dozen QSOs and on top of that a couple days later the QSL cards came flooding in from all who worked me. A week later my personal cards came in the mail and I sent them one. |
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I would have to try to find my old logbook, but 145.something.
No repeaters in those days. Most people ran crystal controlled transmitters - put out a fairly long CQ, then tune the receiver from end to end of the band listening for a reply. It worked fairly well. I used a 1W transistor transmitter (AM) with a 6 over 6 yagi at about 25'. Receiver was a FET front-end converter, feeding into an old R1155 receiver. |
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Lets see it would have been a local repeater. Probably 442/447.800, 145.33/144.73 or 146.76/146.16 repeaters. Those were my hangouts way back when.
Radio Man |
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Quoted: 155.175..the local fire dispatcher wasn't near as excited as I was lol. A friend of mines dad gave me a box of old mobile radios. I kept hooking them up and trying different channels until someone answered me. View Quote LOL My Dad got some old equipment from the US Navy (MARS). He didn't know he wasn't tuned in on the ham bands. A week later he got a letter from the FCC stating that he'd used his callsign on the LAX approach frequency! He wrote a humble pie letter back to them, explaining all the above, and vowed to keep the equipment off the air until it was properly modified. Never used them again! |
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147.000 Mhz. It was also the most recent frequency I made contact on. It's an awesome repeater with a great coverage area.
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2M somthing.
First HF contact was 14.265 and I have the QSL card framed in the shack. |
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