The amateur radio bands are generally broken into two broad categories: the high frequency bands and all the rest, including very high frequency (VHF) and ultra high frequency (UHF). HF bands are from 1.6 Mhz to 54 Mhz., the VHF band is 144-148 Mhz, and the UHF band is from 420 Mhz to 450 Mhz. This is a broad generalization and my ham colleagues will point out a number of missing bands, but we can ignore those for now. The VHF and UHF bands are generally short range and operate much like police or fire radios. They generally rely on radio repeaters for their range. The HF bands on the other hand, are very long range and I can use them to communicate virtually anywhere in the world. HF radio works because the ionosphere will (when solar conditions are right) reflect radio waves and allow us to have beyond line of sight communications. My personal best long distance contact was 11,600 miles away in Australia.
My HF radio is a Yaesu FTDX-3000. Its an older radio, no longer in production, but it has very good receiver sensitivity and transmit audio quality. However due to its age, I do use the computer to augment it a bit, as I outline below. At this time I do not have or use a high power amplifier. I am just getting 100 watts standard power out of the radio.
I use a lot of software with my HF radio. The picture above is my “panadapter” setup. A panadapter is a visual representation of the radio spectrum that let’s you find signals without having to search by tuning the dial and listening for signals. The Yaesu FTDX-3000 has an RF out port on the back of the radio that essentially splits the input from the antenna. I pipe that into a software defined receiver (SDR – in my case a RSP1A). The SDR connects to my computer with a USB cable. Using special SDR software on my computer (SDRUno), I can then see the spectrum in real time on the computer screen.
I also use a software program called Win4Yaesu suite to control the radio from the PC with mouse clicks. The FTDX -3000 is a really nice radio but it suffers from at least one major flaw: its menu system is not very ergonomic. Win4Yaesu suite solves that for my by making every control and every setting in every menu available as a mouse click.
Like all hams, I am required to keep a log of my radio contacts. I also do that on the computer. I use a program called Log4OM 2. It is a very slick program as you can see below
I tie my radio and all of these programs together using CAT control. All of my programs utilize CAT control to talk to the radio over USB cables. I then utilize a two more software packages to enable all this communication and to coordinate traffic so data from the different programs doesn’t collide or conflict. Com0com is used to create virtual com ports to connect all the programs, and Omnirig is used to control/coordinate traffic.
I have two antennas for this radio, and if you have been to my house, you have seen them. The first one is a DX engineering 43 foot vertical. This antenna is my go-to answer for the 80 meter, 60 meter, 40 meter, 30 meter and 20 meter ham radio bands. Basically everything from 3.5Mhz to 14.350Mhz
My other antenna is called a cobwebb antenna. It is basically a series of folded dipole antennas on a single frame. I have this mounted on my chimney. It is my go-to antenna for the higher bands: 20 meter, 17 meter, 15 meter, 12 meter, 10 meter, and 6 meter bands. Essentially everything from 14 Mhz to 54 Mhz.
If you have any interest in checking out my logbook to view my contacts around the world, you can see it HERE at qrz.com