Amateur Radio @ DC15

[TheCotMan]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

Copied to Post DC15 here.

[bloofar]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

Similar for me, although anything that did come through on Thursday/Friday was just chatter from some lonely locals that lost my interest rather quickly.

I had an odd issue that, after talking to others.. seems to have been quite common. On seemingly random interval I would be able to tx but not rx ... my radio would show status but I would hear either nothing, slight drop in pitch, or outright static in place of the transmission. Someone would transmit _right next to me_ (or from afar) and I would get those results, but would properly hear any transmisson returned to them by responding party. dcs was correct, as well as other general settings, .. hardware was functional .. results were not consistent and spread amoung others on the freq. que?

That's kinda weird.

Very close TX (or extremely high output power) will usually overload the receiver. i.e. I have a 65 watt transceiver in my truck. If I'm sitting in the truck with my HT on and I transmit with the mobile rig at high power, my HT will show that it's receiving a signal, but there will be no audio. To the best of my knowledge nobody brought a huge linear amp but I may be wrong. I was in the Monaco tower on the 4th floor with a 1/4 wave whip in the window. It was turned on all the time and I never heard much of interestest. Figure it was all low power in the convention area (which I prob wouldn't have heard) or extremely high power right next to me (which should have triggered the RX leds on the front, which i didn't notice happening).

So it's possible that somebody brought, say, a 2 KW 2m linear and just ended up overloading every single receiver at the con so nobody heard him :)

[converge]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

Similar for me, although anything that did come through on Thursday/Friday was just chatter from some lonely locals that lost my interest rather quickly.

I had an odd issue that, after talking to others.. seems to have been quite common. On seemingly random interval I would be able to tx but not rx ... my radio would show status but I would hear either nothing, slight drop in pitch, or outright static in place of the transmission. Someone would transmit _right next to me_ (or from afar) and I would get those results, but would properly hear any transmisson returned to them by responding party. dcs was correct, as well as other general settings, .. hardware was functional .. results were not consistent and spread amoung others on the freq. que?

[theprez98]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

I carried around my HT on Thursday, but the simplex freq we chose was constantly being hammered by noise, tones, general RF mayhem that made the frequency unusable.

The rest of the weekend I was too busy to even think about the HT.

Maybe a different plan for next year...

[noid]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

Something of note, the head of hotel security is also a HAM. He told me that since last year he finally upgraded his license to Extra class. Gave me some good anecdotal stories of hang out on 20 meters talking to folks in the Marshall Islands using an antenna that all the other HAMs told him sucked. He also mentioned that there is a repeater on top of the Hilton that he says hardly gets used. He thinks it even had an autopatch running on it. Maybe we can make use of it next year.

[bloofar]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

i brought a 2m base rig and my ht.. neither one got a whole lot of use, but it was cool talking to people while i was staying in the venetian in the days leading up to the con. at one point a couple of locals got all high & mighty about the hobby going downhill since the code requirement got removed.. at that point i poured another whiskey and turned the radio off.

anybody have any good/bad/interesting/whatever experiences on the radio in & around the con?

the 'cq field day cq field day, er i mean cq defcon' call was amusing :)

[theprez98]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

It made it into the printed program, and I think I did an RSS last week. Good luck guys!

Thanks very much DT!

[theprez98]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

What about 70cm it allow for easy monitoring of some of the interesting things in the 400mhz ie the riv.

Anyone know of good repeaters in the area?

Not a problem using something additional in that band, however I'd like to stay away from repeaters since we don't really need them. With the space we're in, simplex should really work just fine.

[Dark Tangent]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

It made it into the printed program, and I think I did an RSS last week. Good luck guys!

[licutis]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

What about 70cm it allow for easy monitoring of some of the interesting things in the 400mhz ie the riv.

Anyone know of good repeaters in the area?

[theprez98]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

Don't forget the local frequency:

http://23b.org/gallery/Defcon14_astcell/aom

A nice addition. Perhaps we can continue this thread by putting together a small list of useful frequencies.

146.58 (FM Simplex) - unofficial DEFCON 2m freq
452.3375 - unconfirmed Riviera
462.0625 - Riviera
464.075 - unconfirmed Riviera

[theprez98]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

As soon as you guys decide I'll put something in an RSS feed and have the site updated.

DT,

I coordinated with your staff to ensure that our frequency is properly deconflicted from any official Defcon/goon/NOC communications. We will be using 146.58 MHz (FM Simplex). Anything that you could throw into the RSS feed and/or main page would be very much appreciated.

[astcell]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

Don't forget the local frequency:

http://23b.org/gallery/Defcon14_astcell/aom

[converge]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

ahhh! I thought that was a similar model to what you were sporting last year but I couldn't remember exactly much more than the fact that it was a uniden. I just might take you up on that.

[Chris]

Re: Amateur Radio @ DC15

Hah, and people wanting to play with radios should hop into the Wireless Village! I'll be monitoring again this year .. would be nice to have a BC-246T on hand as well .. but can't justify the expense :/

I will be bringing my BC246T out with me again this year. You can use it for a while if you want. It is quite the fun toy.