Surveying Flood Damage From The Air With 2-meter Ham Ops

Hi Mike. It ended up being the shielding on the primary leads coming from both magnetos. The shielding had frayed and separated from the magnetos resulting in a loss of grounding. When that happened, primary leads each became antennas emitting significant electrical RF into the airplane. Once I restored the grounds on the shielding, the noise immediately went away.

 

Thank you. It’s been a real joy combining three hobbies. Flying, ham radio, and video editing. Each have their own challenges and merging them into one has been a blast!

 

Thank you very much. It’s been a lot of fun doing Ham Ops from the air and I’m glad I can share that experience with fellow hams.

73,
W7NY

 

Thanks much! I’m glad I can share the experience with fellow Ham operators.

73,
W7NY

 

Thank you very much. Well, Ham radio operations in the airplane has been very challenging. The first issue to resolve is cockpit noise. As you mentioned, that can be a big obstacle both in the earphones and in the microphone. With my 2 m radio, I resolved this by feeding the icom 2300 audio directly into the auxiliary jack of the intercom. I have a noise canceling hand microphone that resolved the cockpit noise challenge into the mic. This combination has proven effective and allows me to simultaneously record all incoming and outgoing audio. It took me a little while to get there, but I’ve managed to be able to maintain good clean audio both directions and into the recorder.

73,
W7NY

 

Glad you enjoyed the video. Honestly, I did not expect that degree of flooding when I went down there. I flew in there two days ago and the good news is the flooding had significantly subsided.

73,
W7NY

 

Hello Scott. Operating on the national call frequency for 2 m is my preferred way to operate from the airplane. Yes, definitely keep that in your scan. When the weather is nice there’s a good chance I’ll be up there putting out a CQ call.

73,
W7NY

 

w7ny, I need to get a pair of 11 elements up vertically pointed your direction and listen for you.

I have a 2 meter 500 watt Home brew sitting here that's never been used and it's time I fire it up.

 

I learned to fly out of BFI so I've seen a lot of that weather. Back then I was not a ham, so never thought of putting a ham radio in an airplane. I sold my 172 about 12 years ago or so, and haven't flown since. Seems it would keep you busy on the west side of the mountains. After crossing the Cascades, far less busy!

I used to fly BFI-SFF a lot, since we had family in Spokane, and farther east into Montana. With a long VFR flight like that you could make a ton of contacts I'd think. Cheers for you on meeting the technical challenges of yet another radio in the plane and getting a good signal while still being able to catch all ATC comms. Which of course would be the priority over ham contacts, although over a lot of the "empty space" east of the Cascades would give you a lot of time to make contacts. And being at 4000+ AGL gives you the highest antenna around!

73 KK7AWK PP/ASEL/AMEL/Inst/A&P

 

Outstanding job my friend. I always enjoy and look forward to our QSOs on DMR. 73s brother...W4OTS

 

I also enjoyed the video, and was impressed with all your communication aplomb.
Retired airline guy, still flying Cessnas. Would like to do more airmobile.
What antenna did you use, and what frequency?

 

I know nothing about flying, however, I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Well done, thanks for sharing.

 

nice video 73 de ta2irx