[amatecha]

I use HF radio all the time from inside my home, in the middle of one of the densest cities in BC. Within the past few weeks I've made contacts with stations in Alaska, Belize, Costa Rica, Colombia, Russia and Japan with a radio inside my home in Vancouver, Canada. HF is 10000% usable in urban areas. It's not optimal or perfect, but it's just fine.

[jrockway]

Making the contact is easy (the interference you hear doesn't exist at the receiver), hearing the other end is hard. Most of my indoor QSOs are people running 1500W FT8 which is ... an unnecessary amount of power. (Meanwhile, I'm sitting here transmitting at 3W.)

I often look at the automated reports and look sadly at the 99% of stations that can hear me but that I can't hear.

[amatecha]

Yup, RX harder than TX in the city, that's for sure. I'm thinking to set up a "loop-on-ground" antenna[0] for RX which, from anecdotes I've heard from people I know, takes their S8 noise floor to like S1.

[0] http://www.kk5jy.net/LoG/

[jrockway]

I should definitely set something like that up. I have a patio now and this would be unlikely to annoy anyone above me looking at my patio and reporting it to the board. (Not that I think my neighbors would care, but it's a common complaint against hams.)

[NovemberWhiskey]

Sure. Right now, we're coming towards the top of a sunspot cycle that results in SFI levels not seen in 20 years. Let me know how you were doing in 2019. There's obviously a seasonal overlay here.

[amatecha]

I wasn't an op in 2019 -- got my certification in 2022. That said, I used to receive FT8 with my RTL-SDR and have a few screenshots. Here's a map of my received signals on 40m, overnight in May 2020, with a random-wire antenna: https://i.imgur.com/flfyIZx.png At that time I lived in an even more densely-populated area (a condo complex with over 100 units, on a main street, surrounded by other similarly-large condo complexes).

[jrockway]

Oh man, I haven't been paying attention to the sunspot cycle. I got my license at a low and committed to being depressed about it forever, but ... time fixes everything I guess!

[threeio]

its still doable in 2019... just not as plentiful ;) I was still able to get DXCC during the lows in a Silicon Valley downtown tiny lot (however, this isn't an apartment in a major city)

[asdefghyk]

Would not a persons specific setup have significant effect on the interference situation, - The radio would be in a completely shielded metal box? - so no interference that way directly , not via the antenna input. Outside antenna , with a shielded feed in cable would also reduce interference from these devices like small power supplies that just produce interfearance to a few meters distance ???

[kaishiro]

As someone who has always been interested in getting into ham radio - do you have any pointers on where to start or what to avoid?

[MandieD]

First of all, get your entry-level license. If you're in the US (or have someone who can receive mail for you), this is relatively easy and inexpensive, and can be done completely online.

Avoid sinking a lot of money into a transceiver immediately before you've been operating for awhile and know what you're really interested in doing. You also do not need a rooftop antenna for HF (3-30 MHz; the frequencies that most often travel far) - a wire across your backyard can be quite effective.

Since you're here, I recommend getting started with digital modes like WSPR and FT8. They require a lot less power to make some surprising connections, and will teach you a lot about how propagation works and adjusting antennas, and because of the low power requirements, can be done with relatively inexpensive equipment. Some "old timers" grouch about how they're not "real" ham radio, but ignore them.

Edited to add: A good starting point that doesn't even require a license is to get an SDR receiver like the RTL-SDR and hook a long wire to it as an antenna, then listen for WSPR or FT8 signals with WSJT-X, and whatever else (other digital modes, Morse Code) with fldigi.

[matthews2]

Join a local club!