by Michael Martens | Oct 10, 2018 | Ham Radio Q and A
APRS, Buying used gear, and those illegal baofeng radios. I’ll dig into all of these and more in the October Your Questions Answered. I’ve had a lot of new viewers and subscribers of late, so for the benefit of everyone, every month I’ll crawl through all the...
by Michael Martens | Oct 2, 2018 | Reviews
I’ve done plenty of reviews on amateur radio gear, but sometimes there are times when you will want to use an unlicensed radio service. If other people in your group are unlicensed or you are looking for a more casual operating environment, the FRS or Family...
by Michael Martens | Sep 25, 2018 | VHF
With APRS or the Automated Packet Reporting System, we can control how our packets are disseminated in the system by choosing the appropriate path settings. Since APRS is a one to many form of communication: that is our packet could be picked up by any number of...
by Michael Martens | Sep 17, 2018 | VHF
The Automated Packet Reporting Service is a digital real time communications system to share tactical information and messages. The most common activity in APRS is to plot the location of moving objects using GPS information, but APRS can also be used for short...
by Michael Martens | Sep 12, 2018 | Reviews
Different applications call for different radios, and sometimes you may need a dirt simple radio for communicating between friends, family, or co-workers. The Olywiz meets that need with the HTD-826, delivering a 16 channel, 2 watt, UHF only handheld radio. Olywiz was...
by Michael Martens | Sep 7, 2018 | Ham Radio Q and A
I’m sure this has happened to you. You have a Baofeng handheld radio like the UV-5R and you set it down. The radio promptly falls over. If the radio has the extended length antenna, it’s even worse. The radios are so lightweight, that they just don’t want to stay put....
by Michael Martens | Sep 4, 2018 | Ham Radio Q and A
Last month I was celebrating hitting the 5,000 subscriber mark on the KB9VBR Antennas Youtube Channel and in the 30 days since then, we picked up another 2,500. Thank you for the explosive growth and welcome to all the new viewers. I really appreciate the support. In...
by Michael Martens | Aug 31, 2018 | Ham Radio Q and A
I’m a bit of a 220 aficionado, but decent 220 equipment can be hard to come by. The 1.25 meter band has some unique properties, blending the propagation advantages of the 2 meter and 70cm bands. So 220 radios and repeater systems tend to have better range and coverage...
by Michael Martens | Aug 21, 2018 | Ham Radio Q and A
Are you looking for a fun and easy antenna project? The 1/4 ground plane might be just the ticket. If you are just starting out in amateur radio, you may not have collected the amount of resources that a more seasoned ham might have. This would also include antennas....
by Michael Martens | Aug 14, 2018 | Operating Events
Rib Mountain State Park, is one of the highest spots in the State of Wisconsin. In addition to a commanding view, you also have an excellent perch to launch some RF energy. That’s why I’m using this impressive backdrop to talk a bit about Wisconsin Parks on the Air....
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