Ham radio amplifiers

Jack_Crow

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Feb 9, 2004
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417
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West Palm Beach FLA (for a while anyway)
Chris,
Im thinking in the 150 to 300 PEP range. Saw some 'kits' at communications concepts that don't look too tough. In an apartment the machine work is a problem. Drilling and taping a few dozen holes should not be too rough.

Keep it safe
 

redcar

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Jul 9, 2004
Messages
250
raggie33,

anywhere from across the street, around the world, or to the moon and back. No joke. Some people do earth-moon-earth where they bounce a signal off the moon back to earth.
 

KC2IXE

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Apr 21, 2001
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New York City
Yep - could work them tonight, but I was listening to some hams on South Orkney Island tonight from NYC. I've talked to Australia, NZ, The Cook Islands etc. Just depends on what freqency you are using, time of day, and sunspots

Higher freqency stuff (VHF/UHF) is very similar in range to what your local police and fire departments use. In fact, some of my radios are ex-police and ex-fire
 

Chris_Medico

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Sep 23, 2004
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Central, North Carolina
I took a quick peek and they look nice. I think you'd have no problem putting one of those together with pretty common tools.

Are you interested in the kit aspect or the amplifier itself?

Chris
KC4YLE
 

Jack_Crow

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Feb 9, 2004
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417
Location
West Palm Beach FLA (for a while anyway)
Chris,
Moslty im looking for others who have done this, rather than be a trend setter. Also im slightly cheap and don't want to buy 'factory built'.

Raggie,
As for range, like the guys said, it's all over the map. One day I was in my car in Hempstead New York, talking with guys going to work in Palmdale Calfornia on 6m FM (52.525 Mhz) with better clarity than most phone calls.

One magic night when I was working overnights at Hazeltine in Huntington Long Island the 'band opened'. I had an informal net of night owls from S. Carolina to Canada talking to each other on a ham repeater of 147.21 running perhpas 100 watts. The coverage faded out around 4 am but it was a fun night.

The world is an interesting place, not all of it happens on TV or the Internet.

Later dudes
 

dim

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Joined
Nov 26, 2004
Messages
345
Rags -

Amateur Radio, or what most call Ham Radio (we don't know why), is a GREAT hobby, perhaps the best in the world. It combines technology, nature, people, culture, counter-culture, earth, space...etc...

Here are some top sites to find out more about it:

www.eham.net
www.arrl.org
www.qrz.com
www.ac6v.com
www.qsl.net

Jack -

I have some NIB RM KL-200P 10 Meter mobile amps if you're interested. These are palm sized 100+ watts out with a switchable (on/off) preamp.

73
dim
 

Chris_Medico

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Sep 23, 2004
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Central, North Carolina
Well, just wondering. You can get some old low band commercial stuff and pretty easily make an amp out of that. Usually can pick up a whole radio for $25 or so. Most of those amps are laid out about the same. You might have to buy a set of coils depending on what freq it was originally set up for. I've had plenty of fun converting that old stuff over. We even made a UHF repeater out of an old radiotelephone. We had to mod the duplexer but even that wasn't too bad.

Anyway, just tossing out ideas.

Chris
 

dimwatt

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Jan 23, 2005
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Central valley, California
I would like to get a 2 meter mobile rig or possibly a base. Anyone have a decent set for not much bucks I could start out on? As long as I have procrastinated, I figure if I actually had a radio, I would have more incentive to get my License. I promise I won't transmit before getting license.

dimwatt
 

bobisculous

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Apr 12, 2004
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H-Town, 29.756641, -95.355320
This is kinda off topic I know, but I figured I would sooner or later be asking and since this came up, no need to start another thread:
Can you amplify FM waves? For christmas, I got this nifty toy that my iPod sits in while in my car. It then broadcasts whatever is playing into the FM air waves. Unfortunatly, you have to turn the stereo up pretty loud to get a decent amount of sound from it. Is there any way to amplify that? Does sticking some kind of metal, AL or something, around it help? Thanks,

Cameron
 

mattheww50

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Jun 24, 2003
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1,048
Location
SW Pennsylvania
You can, but that's not likely to do much good. The attractiveness of FM is that the relationship between broadcast power and volume is non-existent. The signal goes through a limiter before detection to insure that all signals that are useable reach the detector at about the same level.

That is why it is immune to all amplitude oriented interference. If you have a problem with volume level, it is far more likely that the FM modulator isn't doing a good job, and the modulation index is too low. If the modulation index is low very little of energy is going into music.
 
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