Equipment
Radio Astronomy for Hams
By OneShack Staff
Listen to Jupiter, the Sun, hydrogen clouds and meteors with ham-style gear, and meet Grote Reber, the ham whose backyard dish helped start it all.
Equipment
7 articles on this topic.
Equipment · Operating
How to Track Down RFI
By OneShack Staff
A step-by-step way to find the noise on your receiver, from the main breaker test to power-line noise, plus what to do when the interference is yours.
Equipment
Test Gear for the Shack
By OneShack Staff
A friendly tour of the meters and instruments hams use, what each one tells you, what to buy first and how to stay safe.
Equipment
Simple Homebrew Projects
By OneShack Staff
Proven first projects, from a wire dipole to a Powerpole power panel, plus the soldering habits that keep you safe at the bench.
Equipment
Receiver Numbers Explained
By OneShack Staff
What MDS, noise figure, dynamic range, intercept point and phase noise mean, and how to read a receiver test report.
Antennas · Equipment
Grounding and Lightning Protection
By OneShack Staff
Three kinds of ground, one bonded system: how to protect your station, your gear and your home from faults, surges and lightning.
Equipment · Getting Started
How to Program a Handheld Radio
By OneShack Staff
Load repeaters and simplex channels into a handheld, from the keypad or with free software, and save a backup before you start.
Antennas · Equipment
Don’t worry about high SWR!
By Bill Rinker, W6OAV
An SWR of 3:1, or even 10:1, costs far less than most operators think — provided the feedline is good and the tuner is doing its job. And the same fact gives you one wire that works on every band.
Equipment · History
Remember When? Crystal Calibrators and the Art of Finding Your Frequency
By Bill Rinker, W6OAV
Before digital readouts, knowing where you were transmitting took two dials, a crystal oscillator and a half hour of warm-up. How hams in the 1950s and 60s got onto the right frequency.
Antennas · Equipment
Ferrites and Common-Mode Chokes: Stopping RF Where It Starts
By OneShack Staff
RF in the microphone, a meter that reads differently when you touch the radio, noise that follows you from band to band — most of it is one fault, and a handful of ferrite cores fixes it.