Adventure into the world of hidden stations and invisible antennas! - Set up and operate a station without calling attention to yourself. - Successfully operate a low power (QRP) station. - Install safe antennas, including indoor antennas. - Build invisible antennas. - Install and operate a mobile station, to "get away" from radio-forbidden locations. - Operate a portable station from a campground, motel room, picnic area, mountaintop or other location. - Handle interference from your station to nearby consumer electronics devices as well as to your station from other nearby devices. - Enjoy operating from just about anywhere!
Get up and running as a ham radio operator—or just listen in on the shortwave bands! Ham and Shortwave Radio for the Electronics Hobbyist shows you, step by step, how to set up and operate your own ham radio station. It’s also perfect for those interested in shortwave listening, without getting a ham radio license. This practical guide covers communications modes, assigned frequency ranges in the United States, details on fixed, mobile, and portable ham stations, antennas, and much more. Ham radio will work even when the Internet and other utilities fail. So get on the air and keep the lines of communication open in any situation! Inside, you’ll find out all about: Radio waves and how they travel Shortwave and allwave listening Communications modes for ham radio operators, including using the Internet as a supplement Ham radio licenses and assigned frequency ranges (bands) used in the United States Wave-propagation characteristics and tips on the bands best suited for use at different times of the day, year, and sunspot cycle Selecting and installing equipment for fixed ham radio stations Setting up mobile and portable ham radio stations Antennas and transmission lines for various frequencies and station types How to operate your station using popular voice and digital modes Schematic symbols and Q signals for ham radio operators
THE DEFINITIVE ANTENNA REFERENCE--FULLY REVISED AND EXPANDED! Design and build your own antennas with the help of this unique guide. Updated and revised to provide clear answers to questions frequently asked by hobbyists and electronics technicians, Practical Antenna Handbook, Fifth Edition blends theoretical concepts with hands-on experience--requiring only high school mathematics Reorganized to flow logically from broad physical principles to specific antenna design and construction techniques, the book begins by covering the fundamentals. Then the half-wave dipole is discussed both as an excellent antenna in its own right and as a conceptual tool for predicting the performance of other designs. Transmission line impedance matching techniques--and a companion Smith chart tutorial--lead into "must have" accessories for tuning, monitoring, and troubleshooting antenna system performance. Other tools, such as antenna modeling software and network analyzer add-ons for PCs and Macs, are addressed, and concluding chapters offer fresh insights into support structures and installation techniques. NEW TOPICS COVERED INCLUDE: Characteristics of all-driven and parasitic arrays Beverages and small MF/HF receiving loops Top-loaded shunt-fed towers and other verticals Theory and design of Yagi beams Effect of real ground on propagation and antenna patterns, impedance, and efficiency Lightning protection and four kinds of ground systems Zoning and restrictive covenants COVERS A WIDE VARIETY OF ANTENNAS: Dipoles and inverted-Vs Quads, delta, and NVIS loops Wire arrays (bobtail curtain, half-square, rhombic) Verticals and shunt-fed towers Rotatable Yagi beams MF/HF receiving antennas (flag, pennant, K9AY, Beverage) Mobile and portable antennas VHF/UHF/microwave antennas And many more GO TO WWW.MHPROFESSIONAL.COM/CARR5 FOR: * Tables of worldwide geographic coordinates and antenna dimensions vs. frequency * Supplier updates * Author's blog * Additional photographs and schematics * Links to tutorials and specialized calculators
SolderSmoke is the story of a secret, after-hours life in electronics. Bill Meara started out as a normal kid, from a normal American town. But around the age of 12 he got interested in electronics, and he has never been the same. To make matters worse, when he got older he became a diplomat. His work has taken him to Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, the Spanish Basque Country, the Dominican Republic, the Azores islands of Portugal, London, and, most recently, Rome. In almost all of these places his addiction to electronics caused him to seek out like-minded radio fiends, to stay up late into the night working on strange projects, and to build embarrassingly large antennas above innocent foreign neighborhoods. SolderSmoke takes you into the basement workshops and electronics parts stores of these exotic foreign places, and lets you experience the life of an expatriate geek. If you are looking for restaurant or hotel recommendations, look elsewhere. But if you need to know where to get an RF choke re-wound in Santo Domingo, SolderSmoke is the book for you. SolderSmoke is no ordinary memoir. It is a technical memoir. Each chapter contains descriptions of Bill's struggles to understand (really understand) radio-electronic theory. Why does P=IE? Do holes really flow through transistors? What is a radio wave? How does a frequency mixer produce sum and difference frequencies? If these are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night, this book is for you. Finally, SolderSmoke is about brotherhood. International, cross-border brotherhood. Through the SolderSmoke podcast we have discovered that all around the world, in countries as different as Sudan and Switzerland, there are geeks just like us, guys with essentially the same story, guys who got interested in radio and electronics as teenagers, and who have stuck with it ever since. Our technical addiction gives us something in common, something that transcends national differences. And our electronics gives us the means to communicate. United by a common interest in radio, and drawn closer together by means of the internet, we form an "International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards."
