Best short distance antenna?

What bands have you tried to listen for him on?

 

Hi N,
70Cm 2Mtr 40Mtr and 20 Mtr.
C

 

Sounds like a silly question. But, Is his mag loop antenna made to transmit on ?

HF, UHF and VHF ? Just sounds a bit strange to me.

+ How do you and him operate without a license ?

 

As others have said, almost any antenna should work on those bands. Yes, big obstructions like buildings between you could make that more challenging on the UHF bands and maybe even on 2 meters but on 40 meters just about any antenna should work regardless of whether there's buildings between you or not.

Do you hear other hams on 40 meters CW at all? I wonder if you have some combination of an antenna that isn't working well and very high local electronics noise that is preventing you from hearing other stations. What rig are you using and what does the S meter show for band noise on a 40m frequency with no active stations?

 

Disclaimer:
In the US what I am about to suggest is legal. I am not certain it is legal in the British Isles.

If you are able to have simplex communications on VHF FM with your friend, you can use a code practice oscillator to modulate the FM transmitter and communicate using Morse Code.

This is not technically CW, it would be F3A or G3A emissions.

 

on 2 meters, I've had good success with a 19 inch piece of copper wire as vertical antenna.
You can fashion a quick, effective antenna with a piece of coax: Strip back the jacket about 19 inches, exposing the insulated center conductor, secure with string or tape, and stretch the braid out and let it droop to 45 degrees angle or so... connect that to your 2 meter transmitter.. any receiver within 5 or 30 miles should hear that, depending on terrain.
..
For 40 meters I've had good QSO using an old fashion 75 watt incandescent light bulb over a 6 mile path.

 

Hi,
As mentioned, we've both been heard some distance away, and I spoke to someone 3miles away. I can receive Europe ok on HF.

Two of my friends are unable to work us on VHF 'over that hill' Friend '2' has a good quality co-linear antenna.

So far he's tried in a house room, next he's going to venture into the loft. I'll report back.
C.

 

Hi OM Don,

CAMERART has a licence. His call sign is M0HEH.

73,

Nandu.

 

Correct

 

My apologies if this sounds ridiculous, but are you absolutely certain you're both on the same frequency and have either of you tried tuning around during these failed attempts at short haul CW communication?

I ask because I've run into this a number of times with hams that may use different rigs and don't understand CW offset. Many modern rigs display actual CW transmit frequency. If you both have rigs that display transmit frequency in CW mode then you just have to tune to that frequency and it all works. But a number of rigs over the years like some classic Kenwood rigs displayed receive frequency when the rig is in receive mode even though the actual transmit frequency is 700 to 800 Hz away.

If one of you is running a rig that displays receive frequency and the other is running a rig that displays transmit frequency it's possible you wouldn't hear each other even if your signals were both strong because you wouldn't actually both be transmitting on the same frequency.

Yeah, it's a long shot but I've seen this a few times over the years when I set up a CW sked with someone that didn't fully grasp what their rig was showing on the display and the concept of CW offset frequency.

I've stumbled across this myself a few times when testing a couple of rigs on the lab bench where they both displayed receiver frequency but one used upper sideband CW offset and the other used lower sideband CW offset. In that case the rig's displays had to be set 1400 Hz apart to hear each other. In the end, once adjusted properly they were transmitting on the same frequency and heard each other just fine but their displays showed quite different frequencies.

Maybe this isn't the issue in your case, but an easy test is to have your friend call you on the scheduled time and frequency and tune up and down the band a couple of kHz from the agreed upon frequency. If you find him then zero beat appropriately (try to get the CW tone to match your rig's CW offset frequency) and then work him.