Amanda Davis

I'm planning a 20-meter vertical dipole for my backyard setup where radials aren't really feasible due to concrete patio. Looking at elevated counterpoise options versus traditional radial systems. This vertical dipole configuration was chosen because my house and back yard layout (a full coverage concrete patio was already installed) do not lend themselves to the installations of a good ground radial system. The most efficient of these verticals are actually vertical dipoles. Yes, they are dipole antennas stood on end! What's been your experience with vertical dipoles? I'm considering center-feeding with a 1:1 balun and wondering about real-world performance compared to quarter-wave ground planes. My available height is about 35 feet total. Worth building or should I stick with horizontal options?

yeah this is a really common thing to get tripped up on when youre starting out, dont worry about it. so for getting INTO the repeater you only need encode on — that just means your radio is sending the 100.0 Hz tone along with your voice so the repeater knows to open up. decode (or tone squelch) is for YOUR radio's speaker — it means your radio will only open its squelch when it hears that tone coming back from the repeater. some people use it to cut down on noise if theres a lot of interference but its optional on your end. so check that your radio has encode turned on for that channel and the tone is actually set to 100.0 and not something close like 100.9. baofengs can be a little finicky with how they display the tones in CHIRP. the courtesy tone thing — basically after someone finishes talking the repeater usually plays a little beep or tone before it resets. you're supposed to wait for that before you key up, gives the system a second to reset and also lets anyone else jump in if they need to. its just good manners really. waiting a second or two after the courtesy tone is plenty.

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now mostly HF stuff and some 2m weak signal but a buddy of mine worked his first EME contact last month and now i cant stop thinking about it. i know its a massive rabbit hole but im trying to figure out what the bare minimum realistic setup looks like for 2m EME these days with JT65 and WSJT-X making it more accessible than it used to be. right now i have a yaesu FT-897 which i know isnt ideal, and a single 11 element yagi up about 25 feet. i realize thats probably not gonna cut it but i dont even know what the threshold is. ive been reading about guys running 4 yagi arrays with a kilowatt and even then its not easy. is there any realistic way to do this with more modest gear or am i just dreaming. also what does a low noise preamp situation look like for this, i know that the feedline loss before the LNA is like the most critical thing but im fuzzy on exactly how people set that up physically. not looking to work the world overnight just want to understand what a realistic first contact actually requires in terms of the link budget i guess