New to HF

[wildbillx]

Hello well I finally went out and bought a HF capable radio do to curiousity. I settled on a Grundig G3 do to it being under $100. I have read countless posts and been on websites and still dont quite understand. I live in South Jersey about 4 blocks from the Del. bay and 5 miles from Atlantic Ocean. I have not made or bought an external antenna yet. I want to listen to Military, USCG, and Government. Is there frequencies in my area that are commonly used? If so where do I find them, and yes I searched and found hundreds of frequencies just not labeled for my area. Lastly, I am running LMR400 to a discone outside, can I hook this G3 to it or just use a piece of wire running up the pole. Thanks

 

[ka3jjz]

Hello well I finally went out and bought a HF capable radio do to curiousity. I settled on a Grundig G3 do to it being under $100. I have read countless posts and been on websites and still dont quite understand. I live in South Jersey about 4 blocks from the Del. bay and 5 miles from Atlantic Ocean. I have not made or bought an external antenna yet. I want to listen to Military, USCG, and Government. Is there frequencies in my area that are commonly used? If so where do I find them, and yes I searched and found hundreds of frequencies just not labeled for my area. Lastly, I am running LMR400 to a discone outside, can I hook this G3 to it or just use a piece of wire running up the pole. Thanks

I would avoid putting any kind of big antenna on a little portable like the G3 - it's quite likely to overload it, resulting in you hearing stations where they aren't supposed to be. I would say 20-25 foot of wire is about all that will handle, if that.

But we may be getting ahead of ourselves - what is confusing you? Be specific - the better your question, the better the answer.

Let's start with some basics

* A good rule of thumb is to listen above 10 Mhz during the day, below that at night. However as we get closer to the summer TStorm season the lower freqs will start to get noisier, and due to increased absorption from the sun, won't propagate quite as well as it does during the winter. NEVER keep your radio connected to the antenna or AC during TStorms!

* Another weather related issue is the solar weather. I just saw there was a M1 class flare which is going to stir things up for a few days starting tomorrow sometime. Keeping an eye on spaceweather.com is a good thing to do for very basic information on solar weather that's coming our way. You should become familiar with how the sun and our ionosphere interact - and as I've said on many occasions, you don't need a degree in solar physics to do it. You can stick with the basics and you'll have a good grasp of what is and will be going on. The AE4RV primer mentioned in the intro to the wiki article below is a good place to start..

HF Propagation - The RadioReference Wiki

* I would try getting my feet wet on freqs like 5696 and 8983 (USCG rescue) and 11175 and 8992 (GCS) just to get a feel for what utilities sound like. These kinds of broadcasts don't have a fixed schedule, so you have to be patient. Always listen in SSB mode.

* Get familiar with some of the voice traffic reported on the UDXF Yahoo group. Keep in mind that since this is a world wide group, there are things reported there we can't here due to propagation differences (basically due to different daylight/darkness patterns, among other things). Research like this is cheap education

Mike

 

[wildbillx]

Thanks thats great info. One of my main questions is where would I find a list of frequencies that I should be able to hear in my area. I want to see how much the stock antenna gets and then experiment with external antennas. Do I just park on a freq. ie USCG and wait until I hear something? I know its asking a lot but what am I expected to hear with the $85 G3? Thanks again for all your help.

 

[ridgescan]

You can use your discone in this case, give it a try. Your radio is very touchy with too big an antenna like ka3jjz said, so at least the discone will "get you outdoors" away from immediate indoor interferences without overloading the radio. Before I installed a proper HF wire antenna up on the roof, I used the d130j discone on my HF receiver. I got quite a bit of stuff on it back then. Not near the stuff I get now but it did ok enough to make me content.
If you just connect the center lead of the coax to the antenna terminal, the coax and discone will act as one antenna to your radio. If you connect your center lead again to the antenna terminal, then connect the outer braid (the outer screw-on part of the connector) of the coax to a "ground" terminal on the radio, then the discone will be the antenna alone and the coax will now act as the feedline to the discone.
Experiment with those two options-having the coax as part of the antenna may be effective-or it may make reception worse by introducing interference from nearby electrical stuff into your radio. You have to try stuff out-trial and error. Let us know what's going on.

 

[wildbillx]

Thanks, at this time I am trying a 25ft. piece of 16 gauge wire with the jacket on with one end aligator clip to the stock antenna and the other side outside clipped on the siding.

 

[trap5858]

HF especially utility monitoring can be very frustrating. There is no set schedule of when they broadcast. In the case of the coast guard, if they have aircraft flying they will routinely check in with CAMSLANT at 15 minute intervals. At night park on 5.696, day time 8.983. Those tend to be the most active USCG frequencies. I have listened to them on the whip antenna on the back of my portable as well as enhanced reception using 28 feet of bell wire with an alligator clip.

It is mostly a waiting game. Have fun.

 

[ridgescan]

Thanks, at this time I am trying a 25ft. piece of 16 gauge wire with the jacket on with one end aligator clip to the stock antenna and the other side outside clipped on the siding.

how's your reception with it? like broadcast SW stations etc. -noise?

 

[ridgescan]

 

[MrQ]

Since almost all utility stations around the world transmit on a variety of frequencies to cover changing proogation conditions as each day progresses, you should select a utility type (i.e. USCG) and then look up frequencies they publish for their ops. Of course, military stations world-wide will often just pick a freq at random so it can be hard to seek out a "hot" freq(s).
Using WWVs signals to see what part of the spectrum is active, then tune through several MHz un USB - covering what part of the spectrum is open. Then you can repeat the tuning for another look. If you find anything interesting, post the date, time(UTC) and a brief dewscription of what you heard and someone should be able to tell you what it was you heard on this forum.

An old UTE slogan goes "they can be on (freq) and can be anywhere else, especially military comms.