Newbie Getting Set Up

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Newbie Getting Set Up Anonymous 04/24/15 (Fri) 16:47:22 No.274

Total greener here from Canada. How do I get set up for the first time? No license, no equipment, and the whole process looks like a maze to me.

Can someone give me a quick step-through on how to get licenced, what are some good first books to read, and what is the best kind of equipment for me to cut my teeth on?

Anonymous 04/24/15 (Fri) 18:27:11 No.276

For getting licensed refer to here:

https://www.rac.ca/

The process varies by country, but currently all require a test you need to pass.

For equipment, well I have no idea about what you want to do or what your budget is. But before having a license many people listen to the bands. A cheap and capable reciever is the RTL-SDR stick.

It covers 24-1700MHz stock and costs under 10usd. So it covers the hambands:

12m, 10m, 6m, 4m(EU only), 2m, 1.25m(usa only), 70cm, 33cm(usa only) and 23cm.

More info on those here:

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide/

and here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR

there is also an irc channel over at freenode

##rtl-sdr

You can also listen to online receivers here:

http://websdr.org/

LF-30MHZ http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

After you get licensed the chinese 2m/70cm handheld radios are a popular thingto pick up first. The value for money is good, but these are out performed by more expensive radios.

Currently the GT-3 Mark2 from SainSonic or Cheap chinese garbage (cheap chinese garbage (baofeng)) seems to be the best chaise.

The Cheap chinese garbage (cheap chinese garbage (baofeng)) UV-B5 and UV-82 are also popular. UV-5R is most popular by sheer legacy, but newer handhelds have surpassed it in performance.

And this is just scratching the surface to all of this.

Anonymous 06/03/15 (Wed) 09:24:08 No.342

If I got a RTL2832U stick, would I need a convertor to get more frequencies?

Anonymous 06/03/15 (Wed) 12:54:18 No.343

>>342

Well you can crudely mod it to do LF-14.4MHz.

But you get far better HF performance with a good up converter. I would suggest avoiding up converters with SA612/SA602/NE602/NE612 and instead get something with a good mixer like ADE-1.

Ham it up and the SV1AFN are currently the two best in my opinion.