Category: Ham radio

An OpenBeacon to play with

Thanks to Matthew/W2MDW, I now have an Etherkit OpenBeacon to play with.

Etherkit Openbeacon
Etherkit Openbeacon

It’s a kit that I’ve been thinking of getting to play with in the near future. The one Matthew sent me was one of the early beta models and has had some modifications done to it, but it works. He didn’t have much time to mess with it anymore and thought I could put it to good use.

I’ll need to get an antenna for it and figure out how to program it, but it shouldn’t be hard to get on the air.

It looks like a pretty easy kit to build, so I’ll probably pick up one of my own to assemble and get up and running. Looking forward to getting this one going and seeing who picks up the signal.

I wonder how hard it would be to modify to broadcast on 6m.

Looking for an antenna

Slowly gathering the parts to put the ham shack together. The space is going to be an office/ham shack where I’ll have my computer/workspace in one corner, the radio, power supply and maybe a laptop for logging in another corner, and a bookshelf or two. Still need to move my computer and desk into the room.

Need to find an antenna now and think of a good way and place to put it up. Then I’ll need to get the feedline into the house.

I think to start, I’ll just go with a simple multi-band wire dipole, like a G5RV or something. I’d like to start building my own antennas, but the workshop doesn’t quite have all the necessary supplies yet. Slowly getting there but it’ll take a bit of time.

Looking forward to getting things set up and getting back on the air.

Update: Got a lot of good antenna ideas from @W2MDW, @KQ2RP and @WB0LCW. All dipole variants and look pretty easy to build. Now I just need to work out how to put it up.