{"id":12988,"date":"2015-07-14T09:14:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T13:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gars.org\/gars\/?p=12988"},"modified":"2019-12-14T09:15:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T14:15:57","slug":"beginners-corner-july-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gars.org\/gars\/beginners-corner-july-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Beginner&#8217;s Corner July 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Give Your Radio\u2019s Signal Some Air Part 1<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Most new hams will buy a small handheld portable radio as their first radio.&nbsp; This type of radio is better known as a Handy Talkie or HT. When a new ham gets that radio programmed, he or she will hopefully try to make contacts.&nbsp;&nbsp; Living in Gwinnett County, the GARS repeaters are a likely target for that first QSO (contact).&nbsp;&nbsp; Some new hams are ambitious and will program every repeater in the Metro Atlanta area.&nbsp; They will get on a distant repeater frequency, key up their HT, and become discouraged when nothing happens.&nbsp; It\u2019s not your fault, nor your radio\u2019s fault.&nbsp; It could be that that the signal from your antenna just isn\u2019t getting very far.<\/p>\n<p>Virtually HTs come with a stock antenna, called a \u201crubber duckie\u201d by many.&nbsp; The problem with these stock antennas is they are horribly inefficient.&nbsp; I read somewhere that they actually lose almost half of the power that the HT puts out.&nbsp; On high power, most HTs put out 5 watts.&nbsp; After going through the rubber duckie, only 3 watts normally gets out.&nbsp; Solution?&nbsp; First replace that stock antenna with a better one, called a \u201cwhip\u201d.&nbsp; Several companies make really good whip antennas.&nbsp; They are available at our local ham radio store or on the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>If you try using your HT in a vehicle, using a stock antenna isn\u2019t good either.&nbsp; You can get a magnetic mount antenna that mounts on the top of your metal vehicle roof.&nbsp; You can run the antenna cable through one of the vehicle doors.&nbsp; Just open the door, run the end of the cable into the vehicle and shut the door.&nbsp; Once the antenna cable is in the vehicle, connect it to your HT.&nbsp; The plug on your new magnetic mount antenna is called a PL-259 plug.&nbsp; Most HTs have what is called an \u201cSMA\u201d plug.&nbsp; The two are not compatible, and you will need to pick up a \u201cSO-239 to SMA\u201d adapter to hook between the antenna cable and your HT.&nbsp; Going to the ham radio store to pick up a magnetic mount antenna? Bring along your HT with you and the salesperson will help you get the right adapter.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It is best to get a dual-band antenna for your vehicle, even if your HT works only on a single band.&nbsp; Most hams will eventually own more than one rig, and your next rig might just be a dual band (VHF\/UHF) one.&nbsp; Just as radios need to be tuned, antennas usually need to be tuned, as well.&nbsp; You learned about standing wave ratio (SWR) before you took your technician test.&nbsp; If you know of a ham who can check your antenna for you, he or she should be able to tune your antenna for maximum performance.&nbsp; However, in my experience, it is not critical.<\/p>\n<p>We will discuss more about giving your radio\u2019s signal some air in future columns.<\/p>\n<p>73,<\/p>\n<p>David Harden, KJ4CMY<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Give Your Radio\u2019s Signal Some Air Part 1 &nbsp; Most new hams will buy a small handheld portable radio as their first radio.&nbsp; This type of radio is better known as a Handy Talkie or HT. When a new ham gets that radio programmed, he or she will hopefully try to make contacts.&nbsp;&nbsp; Living in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[17,18],"class_list":["post-12988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beginners-corner","tag-beginners-corner","tag-newbie"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Beginner&#039;s Corner July 2015 - Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gars.org\/gars\/beginners-corner-july-2015\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beginner&#039;s Corner July 2015 - Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Give Your Radio\u2019s Signal Some Air Part 1 &nbsp; Most new hams will buy a small handheld portable radio as their first radio.&nbsp; This type of radio is better known as a Handy Talkie or HT. 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