Base PortableCommunications Station
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- čas přidán 28. 01. 2014
- My plan was to build a base-portable communications station that will be used at home and can be transported to a location for remote work. Since I am part of Washoe County Emergency Communications, this will be useful for events. As a prepper, communication means information and that is priceless.
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Great video. I wish you’d make some more Ham prepper videos! Your so good at it
You really should have an swr meter on these radios, regardless if you’re making contacts or not, if the antennas aren’t tuned properly you will start to blow finals in those radios, and you should never rely on the internal swr meter like the 148 has, they usually are not accurate, but will suffice for the time being. All in all, beautiful setup! KG7VDN/ 320, snowman out in Texas 73
Like your shop Sir. Great video.
Great video. Thanks for sharing
Thanks Vic. Will rewatch in full later. Better half wants to come visit and stay overnight with you guys. :)
Well now Hawkins561, you are welcome anytime!
Hay great job not only on your rig setup but also it is great seeing Prepper go out and get his Tech. I did see one thing you might add to your case and yes I use the same case and setup with my FT-897. If you get a short ground buss like you would use in your house panel you can add that on the back to the upper left side mounted to your mounting rail and run out to your CB, UHF/VHF, and HF rigs to the ground strip and I carry about 20ft. of #6 green stranded wire and a short ground rod pencil point, so you can have a hammer and drive it in and ground your units. In the local ARES unit we end up anywhere and if pulled out alone side the road in a fire or flood a ground does help with getting out better at times. Great job again!
Kent in Willow, AK. KL7WTF
Very well thought out Sir!
Man, super cool video. I've been into two way radios since I could key up a mic. My Grandpa worked his whole life in the oil field and always had a C.B. in his pick up, that's where I first got hooked on it. I'm now in my 40's and am the "go-to-guy" in my area that fixes everyone's radios...lol. Been working on my HAM license for a few weeks now. Although I just recently got into the "prepping" area, it was always there growing up...my parents are Mormon and they always taught to keep a years worth of food, water and supplies stock up...I always wondered why until I got into prepping...that's when I figured it out...lol. I am also a musician...play guitar, bass, drums, keyboard...whole family are musicians, play bluegass/gospel...so I knew right away what that "SKB" rack case was. I am familiar with a lot of things, and again...great video!!
The Gator Case is the G-PRO-6U-19. There are a lot to chose from but this one seems to work fine.
Nice setup and video. Quality job. You don't need a freq counter, all your radios have freq displays. I liked the outro with the prepper net in the background. Lets see some antennas you use when portable. I will be doing some ham prepper radio vids on my channel. Good luck!!
Ah, the antennas! Good idea, will look into that. Will look out for your vids.
RV, good suggestion. Their seems to be alot of folks that want to get portable but there is not much good info on how to. Will be doing a video on my gear mast and some great extras that may help getting started. It's all personal so hope folks take what I offer and make it work their way.
Like your 'coverage philosophy ".... CB will be just as important as 2m & HF if society goes sideways. I have done something similar. I purchased my radios from distributors who offer the service of opening up the bandwidth of each radio... my Yaesu 891 covers 11m (CB) and my Yaesu 2980 covers to & ex on the emergency services frequencies (I am an emergency services dispatcher & have permission to use these frequencies) and my Yeasu 3207 (70cm) has been opened up to use GMRS frequencies.... instead of purchasing a dedicated CB radio that functions on AM only I've purchased a 10m/12m radio that has been opened up to include 11m (CB) in all modes (AM, USB, LSB, CW) Magnum 1. Something you can shoot for when you've grabbed your general license.
The only thing I've done different with my box is to put the power/battery in a separate box than my radios/tuners/antenna switches/SWR meters. If I am able to just plug into a wall outlet I only need my radio box.
73's stay safe, stay prepared!
Nice clean go kit. One thing I like about the PWR Gate is that if the 120v goes down or if the power supply fails, the PWR Gate will transfer to the battery instantly. btw I thought I heard a rooster in the background.
kd5you1, Rooster you bet but it's the neighbors across the road. We totally agree on the powergate!
Your radios are designed to run on 13.8 VDC. Bringing it down below 12V will may cause issues and one of your radios may shutdown unexpectedly.
Also, the Kenwood speakers onky work good at low audio levels. A Yaesu mobile speaker is a much better choice, especially if you plan on using your radios in noisy areas.
You will need an antenna tuner with a Forward/Reflected meter and a ballanced output for your HF radio. I personally prefer manual tuners. Most likely your radio will be used with a portable or field expedient antenna with a less than perfect SWR. Some antennas like G5RV won't even work without a tuner. Dont rely on your radio's internal tuner (if it has one). Most internal tuners will only tune 3:1 or better SWR and it may not be enough. Sometimes you may not have a choice but to usr a crappy antenna or a long piece of wire.
Ray, I have heard the same thing on the voltage. During many events my radios have done fine at 11.9 and 12.0 volts. Some of my assignments where I just used my batteries and watched the voltage. Using a Kenwood TM-217 for packet, Yesau 8900 for general comms and the Kenwood TS-480 HF. In noisy areas I switch to headphones so that I can concentrate on traffic and the kenwood speaker does fine for my use. I use the tuner from the 480 on the last trip and it tuned in just fine. So far have not needed the tuner although I have one in the gear case that I take and got some pretty good to great matches. Last outing, I put up an offcenter fed dipole for 20to80 meters and it did great. We strung it up between two trees and made contacts in Hawaii, San Diego and Colorado.
Job well done
9K2LT
Check out these two books "The Lost Ways" and "Peterson's Field Guide to Edible Plants". My son and I went camping with the Petersons field guide and found an abundance of food right around our camping spot. The Indians foraged, it is a forgotten about skill that is probably the most important one to have when SHTF. Your food stores will eventually run out, marauders might steal it, weather or rodents could destroy them, you never know. These two books will save your life. I'm not working for them, just trying help save lives when this stuff goes down.
Great job, I specially like your clean wiring! Couple of suggestions: 1. Add an external tuner, since most rig tunners tune to 1:3 swr and in a lot of cases you will need more matching. Most, tuners including LDG, match up to 1:10 ratio, 2. Grounding bus bar, as commprepper sugested is a great idea, 3. A SignaLink Usb or similar device, doesnt take much room, its light and will aid you in digital modes, and prob most importantly, 4. A good high end scanner. Monitoring first responders will alert you of anything going on around you, far before the news. Its like the "canary in the mine" concept. Oh, I forgot, In the front and back lids of my gator box, I have velcrowed in two large plastic filing folders (using industrial strength velcro from HD) where I keep copies of my manuals, emergency frequencies and a copy if the DHS field operations guide interoperability manual. If you are not familiar with it look it up, its extremely useful. Regards and 73.
Afshin,
Been on vacation so I am late in getting back to you. I am hearing the same thing from a buddy on the tuner, it sounds like you can add a tuner to a rig with a built in tuner, did not know that. Will look at the Signalink, have a good portable scanner that I use. Grounding bus bar is next as well. I have part of the rear shelf with a zip nylon bag that has manuals, cables, spare fuses and such. I can store a bunch in that space. 73's
@@TPPrepper I know this is is 7 years late but a manual tuner is better than a auto tuner! An auto tuner is just another piece of active electronics that can break down at the worst possible moment. I have been using manual tuners for about 20 years now (the same ones, MFJ-949D and the newer MFJ-949E and never had a problem! I did purchase an Icom AH-4 tuner back in the day and it would never tune my antennas to an acceptable match and finally just died. I will stick with manual tuners!
Great video! Could you tell us which Gatorbox you chose for this project? Thanks, 73!
you need a freq. counter for the USB / LSB. I would also shield your antenna wires to prevent bleed over. maybe add a scanner even if its old school.
Wildfire, I will have to educate myself on the freq. counter. I will look at shielding if that becomes and issue. I have a great hand trunk scanner, not sure I could fit another thing into this case! Thanks for the info and 73"s
Very nice setup. I think I have my next project now! I couple suggestions for your box. Consider adding a ground bus bar to bond all the radios together that can be tied to a earth ground. While grounding may not be an issue for VHF/UHF operations, it will become an issue when you start pushing 100 watts of HF (especially if you add an antenna tuner). You may also want to add an antenna switch that has a port to a simple 100 watt dummy load. Being able to push full power into a "known good antenna" can be a great benefit when trouble shooting problems (i.e. power supply/current draw problems). Congratulations on a great idea and setup. Respectfully - CommsPrepper.
Hey Commsprepper,
Funny thing was I just set up RMS express using your video, that was a huge help! Good idea on the ground bus. The HF radio has a built in tuner and pushes 100 watts, kinda why I chose it. The dummy load is a nice idea, will look into that. Love your site, keep em comin!
The Practical Prepper Let me know when you have it working. I need to reinstall RMS here. My address is R3CU@winlink.org
Hi, definitely like to set up. I am also looking to get my license. For now I was wondering if you can give me any information on a short wave radio for emergency purposes only. This thing happening in Puerto Rico is an eye-opener I want information that I can use when I need it. I would also like to monitor any ham radio signals in my area or even further. Thank you
New FM CB authorized by FCC
I would consider 12ru as a base model and mounting the radios vertically between 2 trays pending on width of each radio, I would also look a panel solution for fixing the antenna too and the grounding wire...
Personally I would rather see a hardware option of 1 base unit model with user configuration of each unit..
I would like to see options with cb band cove raging within hf units as monitoring and reply units
There is a lot of things to cover though I find really big issue that most other parts of the world recognisea cb band within 27mhz and UHF though UHF outside of marine use is unheard of within the USA..
GMRS is UHF and is a personal licensed service in the US that anyone can get a license for (no test) and your whole immediate family can use your call sign like in the early days of licensed CB radio. Midland and BTech make some really nice radios. I personally prefer the BTech mobile rigs as they legally run 50 watts right out of the box. 50 watts is the max allowed on GMRS. And, you can also use repeaters on GMRS!
@@jfrphoto01 you can run 50 watts all day long though you do need to check your license whether you can legally transmit without being in repeater mode 1st..
which is another class of license...
my understanding any within he 50-80 watts uhf/vhf is typically used in repeater use.. your input to a repeater is often no further than 5-8 watts pending on service you are using..
and
you are still governed 5-8 watts pending on the radio service you are using..
also the radial physics of transmission of both mobile and hand held at the nominal 5 watts max mobile is 2.5km, hand held 1-1.5 km between mobile and hand held..
hand helds typically reception issues
to get 10 miles or more you most likely reflecting off a near by repeater assuming the repeater has enough output to ping you past the radial distance from mobile or HT.. you are using.
How much does the finished project weigh? And have you considered buying a small Li-Ion battery and mounting it in the case as well?
Patrick, I have two boxes, one for home and one for fieldwork. Both weigh in at 50lbs. The problem with a small battery is time. To small and it won't last to large and it's heavy. As far as li-ion, not my choice for radio work. The issue with these is that when their voltage gets low, they just shut down. With the type I use, they loose voltage slowly and you can monitor the reduction and make a change or get a charger on it before things go south. We often work 8 hours on the battery and sometimes several days so large capacity of a deep cycle is a must. I rebuilt the field box into a larger model, video coming soon, and I added a USB charger that gives me real time voltage so I can watch and get two USB's in the bargain.
Hi, Thank you for sharing this video. Great work. How you are holding the Alinco power supply on the shelf? I am in the process of making my Go box . I have Alinco DM 330 FX power supply as well.The only thing I can think about it removing the rubber feet underneath and use the screw to mount on the shelf. From the video it is not clear but I see piece of metal beside the power supply and it seems that you may have used brackets by drilling the hole on the side of the power supply to hold it with the shelf. Appreciate if you please provide some details. Specially the size of the screws you used, because a wrong size of the screw can cause safety issue if it short something inside the power supply. Thank you, VE3ITU.
+Sohail Anjum
Well that was puzzling at first when I was trying to figure that one out. So I made two 1" aluminum angle brackets, one on each side about 3" long. I use some of that tool box liner that helps cushion and help when you strap things down. Once the liner and angle pieces are installed, I used a large tie wrap, the blue one you see to strap it down. Works just great.
+The Practical Prepper : Thank you for replying. I came up with another idea. I have used the furniture brackets on the 4 corners of the power supply and using Alinco own screws to hold it with the shelf. I have almost completed my Go Box except few things left. Will post the video some time and let you know. Thank you again for replying. VE3ITU.
You wrong sir more people got cb than you think . I be on channel 6 and 28 all the time. Wideband 38 and 37 night time.
Dude, you have the best home steading/prepping channel. Why the hell are you not bigger than you are?
Anyway. I just got my first CB yesterday as kind of a gateway to radio. Im having a good time with it. Thanks for sharing.
Corbett,
Thanks for the comments, we are just poking along and folks are finding us. My first radio was a CB and I had so much fun with it! It can be a gateway drug you know...... more radios!
Nice setup but I see you don't have a volt meter or swr meter in your go kit. Is there a reason why you didn't put those in
those Peopl think cb radio is old,you wrong it can save your life and you. can make. new. friend s.