Field Day 2013 June 22-23rd

Field Day 2013 is coming up. I'm not a big DX extraordinaire, but I try to stop by a local field day event make a few contacts, check out some impromptu emergency power setups, and snag some pizza.

If you have no idea what "Field Day" is go here to find out more.

If you are in the Diamond Bar area check out the W6SCE group they are usually pretty laid back and open to new people who want to check things out, and they don't have too much ham stink. 

Your old BK's are Garbage!

Yeah, I know I haven't been posting for a while, and this news isn't exactly breaking, but Relm has finally ended support for al E series radios.

Several years ago the NIFC struck all EPH's from their approved list of radios after discovering compatibility issues with some straggling agencies that still had some in their cache. About a decade ago the USFS started phasing out the EMH and EPH radios in favor of the P25 ready G and D series radios, but up until a few months ago Relm/BK still supported these radios. Well, they finally pulled the plug on factory servicing all EPH, EMH and some early GPH radios. I guess when you can replace the radios for under $100 online their is no point in sending it in for factory service.  I bought my last EPH 5102X last year for $50 on ebay and it was in like new condition. The good thing for people like me, who still repair, rebuild and use EPH, and LPH series BK portables, the antennas, batteries, PTT buttons, knobs, and many of the other parts are interchangeable with the DPH radios so these frequently worn out parts are still abundant.

Happy Narrow Band Eve!

Just a few hours 'till we fall off the fiscal cliff and hit the narrow band deadline. Monrovia PD finally switched over last Friday, and now I am waiting for the mutual aid fiasco to begin.

The states "White" frequencies switched over to the nationally standardized V-Fire nomenclature a few years ago. White 2 became VFire 22, White 3 became VFire 23, and starting January 1st, the last holdout, White 1 will narrow band and become VFire 21. I have a feeling LA County fire will still refer to their VHF radios as their "White" radio even there will no longer be any "White" channels.

I have heard many local police agencies still use the "CLEMARS" nomenclature when post narrowbanding the label should now be CA LAW1. So I wonder, have they not narrowbanded their CLEMARS freqs, or did they keep the old CLEMARS label on their narrow band channels? Either way I'm guessing there is going to be some confusion and over deviation in 2013.

Have a great one and don't forget your spare battery!

LA County Fire, actually starts narrow-banding.

Well it was no April fools joke, I woke up this morning and noticed something was different, there was no 0700 "wake up call" on LA County Tac 19. That's because Tac 19 is no more.

For years there has been a daily 7:00 AM test of the old Quick Call alerting system on what was a remnant of the original VHF dispatch system for LA County Fire. In recent years the 154.400 MHz frequency, called Tac 19, has been used for communicating between LA County dispatch and various County Fire and LASD Air Rescue helicopters, not to mention by USFS, Cal Fire, and Search and Rescue personell on the ground during emergencies.

Mighty Fine Junk hack

So I went by H.R.O. today and picked up an inexpensive MFJ duplexer  diplexer. It is designed to split 2M and 70cm, but will work to split any high band VHF from UHF 430 to 520.

The first thing I did was pull it apart. At $24 it's the cheapest diplexer I have found, so I figure it can't be too hard to DIY.

Inside you have what you would expect to find, a series of inductor coils and caps. The VHF side uses a 100nF cap the UHF side 47nF. Unfortunately my Fluke doesn't do mH so I'll have to measure the inductors some other time.