Ham Radio and Aviation

[J170 Owner]

Hi, I'm curious as to how many aviators are also Ham Radio (Amateur Radio) operators. Twenty five years ago I worked a few two metre repeaters while 'aeronautical mobile', it was good fun, amazing coverage when flying at 9500 feet. I'm not real active on the ham bands these days because Amateur Radio has degenerated into CB over the last ten or twenty years but never the less I am curious as to who else may be radio heads. My callsign is VK5KKS. I'm thinking I might trail a wire behind my plane and work some HF next time I am flying out in the sticks, maybe 21Mhz or 28Mhz as the wire would be quite short. Your thoughts...

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

When flying across Australia 20 years ago in the Twin Otter i enjoyed using HF and listening to other aircraft on the other side of the world. That's about my limit tho. I 'd like to hear your results as i find ham radio interesting. Each year Luskintyre host ham radio operators on the airfield and i go have a looksee. Sorry to admit i was a CB degenerate during the craze.

 

Ozzie

 

 

[ave8rr]

Hi J170 owner, I am a ham (VK-4DKI). I have held a number of callsigns of ALL grades since 1966.

 

I do not do alot these days and havn't done any aeronautical mobile for many years the last being during the eighties and on HF.

 

I know of one or two other Hams on these forums.

 

Cheers

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Hi J170

 

I have been a ham VK4KZK for some 33 years and recently also VK4OI as well but never been aeronautical mobile......yet. I have a APRS unit I just bought which allows realtime GPS tracking with height and speed over the ham APRS network which is now permanently installed in my Savannah VG XL I am building .The aeronautical APRS call sign will be VK4KZK-9 another local ham up here VK4TSB has a lot of tracks done in his Jodel he has been flying for a long time. Go to www.aprs.fi then on the right hand side put in his call sign of VK4TSB-9 and under that will be year dates then click on say the 2011 and there is a list of some of his flights on dates and you select one then you can see the circuit etc and tracks also if you put the mouse on the dots you can see which digipeater picked him up plus also height and speed. If you put my call sign in you will just see where I live as this is when I did its first on air test.

 

Depending on wether I am flying with a passenger or not I intend to use VHF voice and maybe experiment with a tuner and long wire for HF but I would expect the ignition system of the rotax to play havoc with HF. A lot of ferry pilots who are hams have IC-706 and IC-7000 radios with the AH4 tuner they use these for temp installs into the aircraft they ferry across the world just putting a 8 or 10 mtr wire off the auto tuner and up to the fin then out to the edge of the tailplane and trail the rest. They seem to work pretty well for those guys for ham and air band HF skeds.

 

Mark