hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1036.txt

Episode: 1036
Title: HPR1036: Setting up Your First Ham Radio Station
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1036/hpr1036.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 17:44:51

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Hello and welcome to Act of Public Radio. Today we're going to talk about sitting up your
very first immature radio station.
Hello and welcome again to Act of Public Radio. This is W-3-R-A-Z or Whiskey-3 Romeo Alpha Zulu.
Otherwise known as Joel McLaughlin, from the Linux Link Tech Show and Life and Ohio podcast.
Today I'm going to talk about sitting up your very first immature radio station.
It's not as difficult as you might think or as expensive as you might think but I want to go over some of the little details you should probably worry about and some that you probably shouldn't worry about.
Now the first one I'm going to talk about is money. Now you can spend thousands of dollars on wonderful radios, wonderful microphones,
entertainers, entertainer systems, a tower, all that stuff and you still might actually not have a good setup for you.
Now what does that mean? Well money, now while money can't actually buy you a very good immature radio station, it's not always about money.
Sometimes it's just about convenience as well as just having the proper setup for what you want to do with regards to immature radio.
A lot of people think you need to have big antenna towers and stuff like that, not exactly the case.
We all want that stuff as immature radio operators. We all really want that kind of nice setup but it's not always in the cards for I want to say probably about 90 to 99% of immature radio operators.
There are a lot that actually can spend some money on it but most of us don't have that much put into our setup.
Now the first thing and by far the most important thing is the radio. What kind of radio you buy is going to depend on what you want to do.
If you want to work digital modes for example, you're going to want to have a radio where you can easily construct or purchase a cable that you can hook the radio up to your computer to work those digital modes.
Then if you want to work FM, well you're probably going to look at usually it can be 70 centimeters or 2 meters. That would be 440 megahertz or 144 megahertz.
So far center frequencies go. That's usually where I suggest people start out by that first handheld radio and you will probably really really be able to use that.
It's by far the easiest mode to work. FM repeaters, they're really forgiving and it's usually where I suggest hands first start.
Those kinds of radios can be kind of expensive but not really. No, what do I mean by that? Well there are in amateur radio there are three manufacturers that are by far the top manufacturers.
They are Kenwood, Icom and Yazoo. That is Y-A-E-S-U. Now they make very good radios but they also tend to be a little bit more pricey.
So you might want if you really really want a radio from one of those companies I would probably look at a used one of those unless you have the money to spend on a new radio from one of those companies.
But if you want to just get a radio just get your feet wet but don't want to spend a lot of money there are alternatives.
Like I said, used radios are a definite alternative. I'll get into that a little bit more later. But there are two companies that are relatively recent that have come to play in the amateur radio space from mainland China.
And they go by in the names Woxen and Balfeng. I hope I pronounced those right. I'll paste links to them in the show notes.
But these radios are typically the tube that I'm thinking of are two meter dual band handhelds with both 70 centimeters and two meters in them.
And they typically cost between 150 which is that's the Woxen radio. And the Balfengs cost a mere $60. Yes, you don't have to spend a lot of money to get on the air.
You buy one of those and you can definitely get on the air with the AM FM repeater. However, I know a lot of people are probably more interested in the HF fans because those are typically what everyone and their brother really recognizes as amateur radio.
Now, those would look like the radios that your grandpa might have used to use. And they still kind of do look like that. But, you know, they're actually getting more modern. There's a new rig from Kenwood that's going to be very pricey coming out this fall by the name of the TS990.
This radio actually has not one but two displays. One's a full color display similar to what you might have on a touchscreen device. And the other one is a plasma display that's used for the frequency. And on the back of that it had not only has a bunch of antenna ports, but it also has an ethernet port as well as USB for hooking up a keyboard to work digital modes right on the radio itself.
This radio is going to be probably close to, but I want to say it's between $1,500 and almost $2,000 if not more. Now, do you need to buy that radio? If you have the money, you might want to. But if you don't have the money, like the majority of hacker public radio listeners probably do not have the kind of cash to spend on something like that.
But, there are, like I said, alternatives in the HF land as well. Now, a big alternative place for finding amateur radio gear that's affordable is the use market. Now, one of the places I would look for a used ham radio is eBay.
The only thing with eBay is you risk possibly purchasing what I would like to term a brick that is you might spend send them $100 or so or more and you get it and it doesn't actually work because some reason maybe he was just trying to offload the rig for parts be very careful when you go to buy a ham radio off of eBay.
Make sure you buy off of highly rated people. And again, be very careful. And if you're at all late, then I would suggest looking at the next alternative, which would be the used equipment rack in your favorite local ham radio store. Now, I know not everyone has one of those. I am fortunate enough to live in a city here in Ohio that actually has one.
The Columbus, Ohio candy store as we have, we'll call it or radio store is goes by the name of universal radio. It's in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. And it's basically in the Columbus metro area. So it's very easy for me to go over there and take a look at their used equipment.
Now, because you are going to a reputable company like Universal or AES ham radio outlet R&L, there's a bunch of different ones all across the country, you go to these companies and now you still have the possibility of buying a brick radio.
It's severely limited because they have texts that will go over these radios and make sure that they are working in functional, you know, the finals are good, all that.
Otherwise, they wouldn't sell them because they depend on people coming to buy used as well as new radios. And if they sell someone a bad radio, that's definitely going to be hit against the reputation in the amateur radio community.
So, again, those are two good sources for used equipment and another good sources of fellow ham. If you know someone who has a radio and maybe they just bought a new one, you might want to ask them if they don't need that other radio than one they've been using and see if they might be willing to sell the one they have.
That's a very good one too. Now, where I got a lot of my radios over the years have been my grandfather, my grandfather was the original W3RAZ and he passed his radios down to me.
I have an as-then-PCS-62002 meter radio. It's an FM radio. I use it for a repeater work here at the house. And I have a Kenwood TR-7930 thing it is, which is also another 2 meter radio.
And I also have had, I should say, I had a Kenwood HF rig, which I sold at one point. But I have all had all those things that were passed down from my grandfather. So, if you have a fellow ham in your family, that may be a source of equipment as well.
Now, another source you might want to look at is clearances. If you see somebody that's going out of the ham radio business, you might want to check them. That's actually how I got my current 10 meter radio, which is an HTX10. This radio I picked it up off a radio shack for a grand total of $50. That is a very good price on the radio.
Like this, it doesn't have as many features as some of the big 3 radio companies would have, but it works just fine on 10 meters.
So, look at those used places and find the best radio for you. Try the radios out. And there's an event coming out that will actually help you get some time in with some of these radios.
Without having to spend a lot of cash and that's this event called Field Day. Now, what I will do is I'll do a separate HPR episode on Field Day before Field Day.
And I'll talk about what's the reasoning behind Field Day. But I want to go back to the discussion at hand here on setting up your first station.
So, I covered the radio pretty well here. You got your HF radios, you got your VHF and UHF radios, and there are some other various radios, 6 meters, so on and so forth.
Use your knowledge that you gained from taking your license and you had to test, I should say, that you had to take to get your license to figure out what you want to buy.
Once you figure out what you want to go buy, go ahead, buy it, and then work on getting the rest of this setup. And that would be the antenna, the feed line system, and accessories.
Okay. First is the antenna. The first thing I suggest for everyone is that you try to actually build your own antennas.
The first antenna I would try to build is a traditional dipole antenna. Now, die, meaning two, means there's two parts of this antenna or two legs of this antenna, otherwise known as poles.
So, at least that's where I think that how the name came up. We actually know the true origin, go feel free to contact me.
But a dipole antenna essentially is made out of two pieces of wire connected to a center feed line point. Now, the total length of a halfway of dipole for 10 meters is approximately 16 feet.
I will put a link to a dipole calculator out in the web in the show notes. But using this calculator, you should be able to figure out what you need to cut your antenna to.
But the first thing you probably want to look at is the center insulator or the center point of your antenna, which is also where the feed point will be.
You need to make this out of a piece of insulating material like, for example, plexiglass can be used, wood, ceramic, anything that does not conduct electricity can be used for this center feed point.
And then you measure out the appropriate lengths of wire for each side and go ahead and connect it to the center of the antenna.
You might want to go ahead and solder the center connections. And the way you connect it to your feed line, the very basic way would be to hook the center of your coaxial cable more on that later.
But you hook the center to one side of the dipole and the shield to the other side of the dipole and you should be able to get on the air with that.
With that said, because of the construction of a dipole, it is what they call a balanced antenna, which typically means you want to feed it with a balanced feed line.
The type of feed line that you could use to do this is a ladder line feed line. You can also make your own feed line with a series of insulators and a wire.
Almost nobody does this because it's so easy to actually make what I would like to call a bowling for this.
Now, to make this, you need a shape and really you just need a bit extra, a bit of extra coaxies in the end of your feed line.
Wrap that around and create an air core inductor that will then get the impedance at the feed point as close to 15 ohms as possible.
To measure this, you use something called an SWR meter, which I highly suggest that you buy this as an accessory.
An SWR meter will measure the standing wave ratio of the antenna system. Now, what does that mean?
Well, standing wave ratio is basically a ratio of the amount of power going out to the feed line versus the amount of power reflected back from the feed line in the antenna system.
Now, the closer you get this ratio to one to one, the more power your antenna will radiate.
Typically, though, you're going to look at trying to get your standing wave ratio or SWR between one and two, no higher than two.
If you go higher than two, then you really start to lose power in your transmission and you will probably, at some point, when the SWR gets so high, run the risk of frying your radio.
So, building a dipole is fairly simple.
You take the center point, just like I said, attach the wires, attach the feed line there, and if you go ahead and build the ballin, that also gets hooked in the line too.
Now, you can buy a ballin and build it, but it's really a lot of fun to actually try and construct your own antenna out of various parts.
One other antenna system that's kind of popular, but a little bit harder to build is the vertical antenna.
The reason why verticals are popular is because, well, they're vertical. They take a very little space.
The downside is you usually have to have a set of radials that are buried under the ground, and it could be any number of radials, but the basics is to get a good, what they call, ground plane, for your antenna to work against.
I don't suggest using a vertical for your first antenna, unless you are looking at maybe a handheld situation or a mobile situation.
In those situations, it's much easier to set those up at home. It's not quite as easy. It's much easier to just throw a dipole up in the air.
Like I said, with all this stuff, you can actually buy parts to build your own at home, or you can even buy completed antenna kits, if you would like.
In either case, you're probably going to have to trim the antenna or adjust the antenna somehow until your standing wave ratio is zero.
Now, one piece of rig accessories for your station that you may want to look at that will help you with this impedance match is something they call an antenna tuner.
Now, antenna tuners can actually be made full manual. That is you, the operator, are responsible for adjusting the inductor and capacitance that these tuning circuits have until you get the right match.
Or, in a lot of cases, there are what they call automatic antenna tuners. Some radios even have those built into them.
And those are basically push the button while you key up or send a signal through the coax and it will adjust the radio so that it is in tune.
Having the corrected impedance both at the radio and at the antenna feed point is very important. The closer you are to ideal, the more power you will radiate and the more effective you will have your station.
There's almost too many antennas for me to mention in this show, but the simple dipole is the one I highly recommend for everyone to start off with.
Now, for 2 meters and 70 centimeters, there is also another type of antenna that you can build out of a piece of twin lead that is typically used to hook up radios to traditional TVs.
Those ones are a little easier to build for a 2 meter setup and I will put a note in the show notes on how to construct one of those.
And that actually was my first antenna was I constructed a j-pole out of a piece of TV twin lead and that worked really well for what I needed for it. I used it for a lot of years.
Now that I covered the antenna, making it is definitely going to be the best deal. So I would definitely try to make your antennas. If you have the money, is it worth spending money on a good antenna? Definitely yes.
And then a couple accessories I mentioned was an antenna tuner as well as an SWR meter. Now you don't need all that stuff to set it up, but it's helpful.
Finally, the next and one of the most important parts of your system is a good piece of feed line.
Now I highly recommend using RG58U for I would say 10 meters and below or so 10 meters all the way down to 77 meters. I would definitely use the RG58.
That is a very good coax for that solution. And for HF, I would look at using RG8X.
There are as many different types of coax as there would be in different antennas that you can peel out there.
But those are the two that I highly recommend, RG58U and RG8X. There are many others and you just need to pick the best one for your solution.
Now other things that you might want to look at purchasing, there are devices from comment that you might want to look at purchasing, which will help you route your antenna feed line to the outside world.
And they work by having, they have like a little coax adapter on each side and it's a flat cable that actually will fit underneath your closed window.
And these work by helping you route this to the outside without having to draw a hole in your wall.
Are they necessary to purchase? No, you don't have to purchase these for your station, but they're nice to have. I did want you to know about them.
So I covered the antenna, I covered the feed line, I covered a couple accessories, and now you have a working amateur radio setup.
Now what's the best to buy? That depends on you and how much you have and what kind of modes you want to work.
Yeah, I can't recommend any brand over the others. I will say that Yazoo Kenwood and Icom I've used radios from all three companies over the years and they are both very fine products and you can't go around buying those.
So, you know, do you need to spend a lot of money? I think I kind of breathe well, not so briefly, but I kind of talked about that a little bit.
The answer is that depends. Most cases I say you don't have to. My current HF setup is an HTX 10 that I previously mentioned.
I purchased it at a radio check when they're closing out for $50. My hamstick and henna system probably cost about $40 or $50 altogether.
So I probably have a little bit less than $100 in my HF setup that I have here at the house. That's not counting the power supply.
The power supply is a very important piece that you need to buy as well if you do not have one.
Now, you can use a battery as a power supply, specifically a 12 volt battery like you would have out of a car that can power your radio or you can buy a power supply.
I would say probably less than $100 you can get a decent power supply for a lower power vape.
You might want to spend a little bit more or a little less. They have matching power supplies that will match the radios that you purchase.
But again, you don't have to buy the icon power supply or the Kenwood one. You just have to buy one that will produce 12 volt DC out at a sufficient power level for your radio.
If the power supply cannot produce enough power, then your radio may be damaged.
And definitely the power supply could be damaged or many of you probably would just blow a fuse.
Now, I was fortunate enough that I actually have my power supply that my grandfather had in his original station and I currently use it for all of my gear.
I would love to have another power supply so that I could have both my 2 meter and my HF rig up at the same time.
But for now, I just disconnect one and hook up the other whenever I need to power the other.
So, I covered the power supply, the radio, the feed line, antenna. That's pretty much all you really need for your first setup.
Different setups require different things. You'll have different sets of antennas for mobile installations.
Then you will have for home, different setups for portable installations, and you will have for permanent at the home and different home setups as well.
You can use portable setups at home. That's what I do now. You can use mobile setups at home as well if you're sitting in your car.
But the whole moral is you don't have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get your first amateur radio gear setup.
In fact, one last thing before I go, you don't have to spend any money at all to get on the air.
You can use a voiceover IP solution called EchoLink. Once you are an amateur radio operator, you can go to the EchoLink webpage.
Tell them that you are an amateur radio operator. Give them your call sign. Then you will have an account created for you by the Keepers of EchoLink.
Then they will give you a sign on and then you can sign on once you have the software installed.
Now, the way this works is it uses a voiceover IP protocol to connect directly to repeaters across the world.
Now, each repair that you connect to, you must have privileges on. But this is a great way that you can actually get on the air and get practicing using your radio skills without spending any money.
I will get more into EchoLink a little bit later in another HPR episode.
For now, I am going to go say 73's, which is the co-word in amateur radio, not co-word, but it is slang in amateur radio for best regards.
73's have a great day. This is W3RA's Id.
Joel McLaughlin from the LinuxLink Tech Show. I want to thank you for listening and please, please, please, please, produce some content for HPR.
I want to thank you again for listening and again 73's.
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