Anyone wanna help a newbe get started ?

[543_Dallas]

There are bad eggs everywhere. I hear more jamming on the amateur bands than cb these days. Enjoy the hobby and ignore the trouble makers. You will see some fairly intelligent people get sucked into these games and become part of the problem. Just ignore it.

The best advice I can give to someone thats just starting out is that hams are often as misguided as cbers. Ham myths are usually more complex and hundreds of other hams on the internet will back up someone giving bad advice. It makes it hard for the newcomers to get off to a good start. Do your own research and experiment with different things.

End fed antennas seem to be all the rage these days but they are poor antennas. Someone will eventually recommend one. Your neighbors will hear you better on their electronics than the person youre trying to talk to.

The cheapest and easiest bands to get on are 2 meters and 440. There's usually someone to talk to there or a local repeater. If the people there aren't welcoming or don't interest you don't give up. Once you have a general ticket it opens up another world.

Antennas for hf bands can take up quite a bit of room. If you have room to string up a doublet you can cover most or all of the hf bands with a single doublet antenna and a good tuner.

Maybe this will help you.

http://hamuniverse.com/hfbands.html

 

[tba02]

You could even try an end-fed antenna!
(there, we got that out of the way)

 

[Riverman]

[QUOTE="543_Dallas, post: 627534, member: 21044"
End fed antennas seem to be all the rage these days but they are poor antennas. Someone will eventually recommend one. Your neighbors will hear you better on their electronics than the person youre trying to talk to.[/QUOTE]

Have one in my attic. Have made 25 contacts to 13 states and 3 to South America on 10, 20, and 40 meters. All on 25 watts or less (I usually run 10). A wet noodle might work better but I haven't tried one.

Only problem I've had is my wife thought she could hear my voice rather than Bob Odenkirk's one night when she was watching Better Call Saul on her iPad.

 

[543_Dallas]

[QUOTE="543_Dallas, post: 627534, member: 21044"
End fed antennas seem to be all the rage these days but they are poor antennas. Someone will eventually recommend one. Your neighbors will hear you better on their electronics than the person youre trying to talk to.

They do work. That's the beauty of hf and good conditions, you can put out a signal with almost anything. If you have some room and creativity you can do better. I understand if you just dont have the room.

My first hf antenna was a zs6bkw. It was too long for the small space I had to work with. It was down in the bushes with the ends dropped straight down but I made a lot of contacts with it. After putting up a shorter doublet that I could get up in the clear and building a balanced tuner I am heard as well if not better barefoot than I was with 700 to 800 watts. Since the new antenna is actually balanced the common mode on the feedline is no longer an issue and it picks up less noise from the neighborhood.

There are people trying to run amplifiers through these half antennas causing rfi in their neighborhoods and homes. Their fellow hams tell them ist the neighbor's problem or they try to put ferrite beads on everything. Treating the symptoms instead of focusing on the cause. I had the same issues with my zs6bkw down in the bushes. These days I can run legal limit without bothering anyone.

Thats my reasoning for avoiding end fed wires if at all possible.

 

[binrat]

I have done the whole end feed 1/2 wave, random wire thing with my KX2 during SOTA activations. I've had better luck with a tuned inverted V supported with an avi probe.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[w9cll]

I've had better luck with a tuned inverted V supported with an avi probe.

I second this, just put up a V and have at it. If you want to be fancier build a Fan inverted V

 

[543_Dallas]

Its hard to beat a simple coax fed dipole for the lower hf frequencies. If you only want to work a couple of bands the fan dipole will get you there.

Get your feet wet and see what you like. Then you can decide how simple or elaborate your antennas need to be. Are you interested in operating base mobile or both?

 

[StrangeBrew]

A basic SDR receiver will let you listen in on everything with a minimum of fuss, then once you know what's going on with the various bands you can decide what you really want to pursue.

 

[543_Dallas]

Someone mentioned listening to sdr receivers online. Here are a couple of links.

http://www.websdr.org

https://sdr.hu/?q=kiwisdr