HF Rigs - High Frequency - Going Global

If you want to talk around the world, and do long-distance communications for a disaster - i.e. contact the Bishop's Storehouse or Church Headquarters - this is where HF begins to take over the driver's seat.  This is also where the real fun begins!  This section is written with the expectation that you would have either received your General or Amateur Extra license, or are working on it and so would be familiar with some of the concepts presented herein.

My hope is to make this easy to understand and save you some money.  I would strongly recommend you get involved with the clubs listed on this page, and work with an Elmer as you get into your first HF rig. 

Main thing you'll want for an ERC purposed HF rig:

80m capable - the church uses 80m because it can be used at night as well as daytime. 

Niceties: 

Data - LSB (lower side band), Data - USB (upper side band) - this allows you to hook a laptop to your radio and you can start sending spreadsheets, emails, and such using programs like Winlink and FLDigi (more info later on these). 

CW - morse code, not really used by the church, but still very popular, you'll hear it used in maritime applications (ships) and aircraft in distress.  As you know CW is extremely useful because it has extremely narrow bandwidth, requires very little power, and requires very simple equipment (you just have to know CW to use it).  

100 watts output.  A good, nice, round number, fairly standard for most HF rigs, until someone puts an amplifier on it. 

Here are a few different types of HF rigs.

Base stations

These are the most commonly thought of types of ham radios, these are the type that typically sit on your desk and go to an antenna outside of your home. Realizing that your ham radio is what you're going to use when you can no longer use a computer or your cell phone, it makes sense that they would cost a bit of money, but given the fact that they don't need any other infrastructure to operate, that makes them seem relatively inexpensive.

These aren't recommendations, but just overviews of some of the equipment: 

There's the ICOM7300 - this is an HF only base-station.  A very high-end rig . They are expensive comparatively, but they are definitely very high quality. 

There's also the Yaesu 991A - a "Shack in the box" - meaning, this is an all band rig, it does UHF, VHF, HF, radio teletype, digital, you name it.  This is what you'll typically hear me on for the stake/regional exercises.  Yaesu is also a very high quality name-brand. 

Ham radios typically aren't designed to plug into the wall because they are designed for emergencies and disaster responses, they don't typically come with a three prong plug, but are designed to be wired into car batteries, car power systems, solar cells, emergency power packs, etc.  So if you wish to run on commercial power – anything plugged into the wall coming from public power sources – you're going to need a switching power supply.  You will need to look at the owners manual for your radio and make sure that whatever you purchase needs that radios specs so that you don't damage your equipment. But here's one that I purchased off Amazon, and I was very pleased with it: TP30SWII.  This plugged into the wall, and then your radio gets wired into the back of it.

Depending on the radio you buy, you may wish to buy an external tuner, You can get a remote tuner that sits at the base of your antenna, and radios like the nine then the one often come with their own internal tuner. I purchased an external tuner because it's even more capable than my internal tuner, because like everything when you have something dedicated to one specific purpose it tends to be more capable in that regards. My lack of space and capability for building a resonant antenna  meant that I was operating a little outside the parameters I would be comfortable with using my 991's tuner to compensate for, so I got an external one. 

And for when the power goes down, you definitely don't want to have backup or emergency power. One of the easiest ways to provide that power is through portable power pack. I would recommend getting as many watt hours as you can possibly afford because If the grid goes down you will need it.  One of these can power your radio and your tuner, or you can switch to an internal tuner just to save energy in a grid-down scenario.  You can find these on Amazon, ebay, etc. 

 

 

Now if you wish, you don't have to get the power switch or, you can just keep your powerpack charged and hook your radio up to the powerpack, save yourself some money on the power switch or, and now you got a portable power source for other radios. You can also just use the internal tuner in your radio if it comes with one and save yourself even more money. If you're going to go at this and feel inspired to learn everything about it, then you may want to get those other pieces of equipment so that you can operate as many different ways as possible and gain the knowledge and experience as well as freedom that comes with being able to.

Mobile rigs!

Mobile rigs are versatile in that they are not only mobile-capable, they are portable-capable.  Built to withstand the shock of driving over rough roads, they can also be adapted to a portable case and set up easily in the field and withstand a bit of rough handling.  

They generally just wire to your battery on your vehicle but can also be wired to a power pack; You will need an HF antenna suited to the bands you wish to operate on.  This will be addressed in a separate entry, but just getting the radio is a major step! 

One of the most popular ones I've seen is the Yaesu 891.  

Many of you might be asking why not just get one radio for your vehicle, rather than one for VHF/UHF and another for HF.  You can, that would be the 991a (up above). However, that's a large mobile mount for one, two, they are portable capable, but are more designed to be a base station, and others who work on them have told me they haven't handled vibration from driving conditions as well as some of the smaller HF units.  It's like a car, no one car does everything* - you want gas mileage, buy a hybrid, hauling capacity, get a truck, speed, get a sportscar, off-road, get a Hummer or a Jeep.  

 Portable rigs!

Technically all ham rigs are "portable-capable" but some are more portable than others.  

This is a Xiegu G90 rig.  It's portable (the brackets on the side and sticking out are to keep the knobs from getting slammed while it's being packed around), it is a SDR or Software Defined Radio - you can hook it to a laptop and update its firmware and program it to do different things.  This puts out about 20 watts and runs in the $400 range.  Extremely capable for the price, you'll need to get a battery pack for it, either a power pack, or an actual battery to hook to it.  You'll also need an antenna as well.  What makes a portable versus a mobile?  Whether you put it in your car or carry it around!

QRP Rigs!

QRP is one of the Q-codes for "low power" - generally defined as 10 watts or lower. 

QRP is its own specialty, it can listen very well, but may have difficulty getting out depending on the antenna you use and depending on your location (i.e. next to a transformer station) and conditions (bad band conditions make things difficult). 

This is a Xiegu X6100, one of the latest QRP rigs, about a mid-range radio.  It's also SDR, comes with an internal battery pack, and can hook to external power to double it's output to 10 watts, and of course, if you put an amplifier on it, you can boost it even more.  I have a tactical delta loop antenna and with the 5:1 binocular balun on it, boy does this thing perform!  

 

 So the question is, what are you planning on doing?  Operating from home?  In your vehicle?  In a go-kit?  Out while hiking?  

Best advice in all this is consult with your Heavenly Father in prayer (see Ether for a spiritual reference on working with the Lord on problem-solving and troubleshooting in keeping the commandments of the Lord as they built their barges). Also, go to club meetings and get on the air with others and ask their thoughts and experience.  Get a bunch of different opinions on these issues, and always, James 1:5.