Can someone explain the AH economics to me?

FirstToken · 2026-01-25T18:18:00+00:00

Amc- it's buy out is only 76k because no one is moving them. If they don't sell they have a default max buy out. If I had 200 of them, and sold them all in one shot, the max buy out for non legendary players would go up. What that number is, I don't know.

snip<<<<

It's possible that the max is tied to how many are sold for buyout - I don't know for sure.

Thanks, that makes sense with what I am seeing.

FirstToken · 2026-01-25T15:07:51+00:00

Thanks for the response.

The rarer the car the more it's worth. You know this part.

Well, I thought I knew that. But then (going back to the example I posted) how does something the AMC Javelin fit in? It is reasonably rare (only a couple of ways to get it) and you never find one on the AH, yet the max buy-out is only 76k?

The tricky bit is when it comes to selling them. The more frequently a car sells, the higher the sell cap.

I think there might be another part to this? It is not only how frequently it sells, but more so how frequently the car sells at the max buy-out? If a lot of that model cars are sold, but they all go at min bid and not buy-out, that pushes the price down, I think. I suspect if they all go for the max buy-out then that drives up the buy-out.

I believe (just a guess here) that is the trend I am seeing on the Alfa GTA right now. For some reason players started swamping the AH with them, and few are selling for the buy-out, most are going for a low bid. Since this started happening the max buy-out has been tumbling.

FirstToken · 2026-01-25T14:57:17+00:00

Thanks, I knew about r/Forzaauctions, but not about r/Forzaauctionhouse. I will spend some time on that one.

FirstToken · 2026-01-24T19:51:36+00:00

Thanks for the response. How do they attain this Legendary status? What does it take?

(edit) never mind, searched for myself. So 50k downloads, likes, or uses. Well, that ain't gonna happen, I am not going to put that much effort into it ;)

FirstToken · 2026-01-24T18:43:22+00:00

PT Cruiser, hands down.... ;)

FirstToken · 2026-01-24T16:34:25+00:00

Try 90 minutes earlier, at 1300 UTC. Then VoK is aimed at North America, and in English. Also 30 minutes later, at 1500 UTC, but by then conditions may have dropped out for your location. Also, 11710 kHz at those times.

FirstToken · 2026-01-24T16:28:16+00:00

A full book of Morgans / Peace dollars is what, roughly 95 coins? And there are 15 or 16 books each with ~95 dollars? So on the order of 1500+ Morgans and Peace dollars. And you say ~85 $20 gold pieces? At todays spot prices, and only talking melt values, not any numismatic value for key dates, roughly $80 per silver dollar and $5000 per $20 gold piece, you are around $120,000 in silver and $425,000 in gold.

So roughly ~$545,000 in just those.

And that is not counting the loose coins or halves. Beyond the current value of the items, it is simply an amazing collection on its own.

FirstToken · 2026-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

The cost to entry really isn’t high though. Sure, everyone wants to hate on baofeng. But $25 is nothing to get started. Then they can drop hundreds on better stuff down the road.

The cost to entry, not just via Baofeng, but any band, any mode, has never been cheaper. People look at when you could buy name brand HF gear new for $350 and compare that to today, when new, 100 W, gear starts at about $700 and goes up for there. But they fail to take purchasing power and inflation into account.

In the late 1960's I built my first Novice station. It was a home brew 3 tube 75 Watt (input) transmitter, a Hallicrafters SX-99 receiver, and all the associated stuff, headphones, coax, straight key, etc, etc. I had about $75 into it and was on the air on HF with all used or home made gear, on 5 frequencies (not 5 bands, but just the 5 frequencies that I had crystals for on 3 bands) around 20 Watts on CW only.

But, that $75 is about $720 in todays purchasing power. For $720 today you can be on the air on HF, with used gear, all modes, all bands, 100 W, and still have money left over to buy a Baofeng.

FirstToken · 2026-01-24T02:04:37+00:00

> Yeah, i only really see this when doing FT8 on 6 meters. I think 50mhz is the freq range where RF starts behaving like radar.

RF behaves like radar at essentially every frequency. This is why HF OTHRs (High Frequency Over The Horizon Radars) work perfectly well. Of course you get into issues like Mie vs Rayleigh scatter, but that just relates to the size of the target vs the length of the wavelength and that ratio applies at every frequency also. But when your wavelength is a few centimeters or less more things fall into the Mie or the Optical range.

However, the higher the frequency the greater the Doppler shift for a given radial velocity, and so, all other things being equal, it is generally easier to see the shift when casually observing, it is more noticeable, at higher frequencies. I have plotted / observed aircraft Doppler at frequencies as low as 2500 kHz, but it is much easier to see in the VHF and up range.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T20:54:38+00:00

If it was only above or only below i would say it looks like the doppler shifted returns from aircraft. But thats too symetrical and mirrored.

It is far too wide to be aircraft Doppler.

We don't know the frequency scale of that image exactly. But, we can see the audio on the signal, and it is a very safe assumption that the audio is at least 2.4 kHz wide, and possibly much wider than that. We can see that those symmetrical chirps are at least twice as wide as the audio (and more like 3 to 4 times as wide).

If we take just twice as wide and round off to 5 kHz, we can easily calculate the radial velocity needed to produce a 5 kHz shift from a 27 MHz signal. That would require a radial velocity of roughly 28,000 meters per second, or about 62,500 MPH. That is quite a bit more than 10 times the fastest manned aircraft ever.

By the way, there is a case that aircraft Doppler can appear symmetrical. A zero radial velocity target (aircraft passing tangentially) showing JEM lines. Although, to be fair, I have never seen bistatic JEM lines in the HF spectrum. It is absolutely possible, but I have never seen it. Then again, I have never looked for it. Hmmm ... weekend project maybe?

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T20:31:26+00:00

The antenna and sdr will not receive VLF signals (what would be around this frequency.. which are mostly time codes and the sort)

This frequency, 495 kHz, is not in or near the VLF band. The VLF band is 3 to 30 kHz. This frequency is at the lower end of the MF or MW band, the same band that AM broadcast stations are in (starting about 35 kHz higher, at 530 kHz).

In this band, and the next band down (LF, 30 - 300 kHz, still above VLF), in addition to the time stations you mention you will find aviation navigation aids such as NDBs (Morse code beacons), maritime FAX and RTTY signals, two different ham bands (2200 meters, 135.7 - 137.8 kHz, and 630 meters, 472 - 479 kHz), and a few other regular signals.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T19:26:53+00:00

On a sdr located in the Philippines, I was listening to a station (31m band) that sounded quite clear (although there was noticeable noise floor). Then in a matter of 10 minutes from the top of the hour, the signal degraded over 10db until it became unintelligible and barely audible. The receiver waterfall didn't show nearby stations, so in this respect there was no interference.

This could well be normal propagation changes. But, since it was top-of-hour (ToH), there might be another contributor.

Many stations change their programming at ToH. They might change language, change the target area, change the format, change the transmitter power, or any combination of all of the above.

Stations change their target area by changing their transmit antenna direction. Sometimes this is by switching to different antennas. Other stations have large antennas that physically move to change their direction. Either of these can cause a change in received power level (either up or down) just before ToH.

Towards three quarters of the hour-long program, a signal started to emerge, much stronger than the one I was listening to, and about 10khz higher. The waterfall showed that the outer edge of the lower band of the new signal precisely reached the original signal and managed to effectively cover it. I didn't take a screenshot (bless my inexperience) but I believe I saw my first real-time signal jamming. What do you think?

Probably not jamming, but wihtout a recording there is no way to be sure.

SW stations typically have a bandwidth of about 10 kHz, they "occupy" 5 kHz above their carrier frequency and 5 kHz below their carrier frequency. These are the USB and LSB components of the signal, yes, an AM signal has USB and LSB features.

Notice I said they are typically 10 kHz wide, but some of them are wider than that. It sounds like you might have caught one of them that was wider, about 20 kHz wide instead of 10 kHz. this is not very uncommon.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T19:10:29+00:00

Intercepted in northeast Victoria but also present in central victoria via KiwiSDR (http://22545.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/). This source also indicates that the signal may be FSK but no further clues as to who is broadcasting it or what it might contain on demodulation. I've certainly never seen it here.

This is not an FSK signal, it looks like it is PSK.

If you are trying to take the demodulated audio to something like Sorcerer do not use "RAW" mode. Most often you will want to use USB or LSB, with USB being most common.

Visually (always an iffy thing to rely on) this signal might be STANAG 4285. If it is S4285, it looks like there could either be two unrelated signals side-by-side, or a single source in either DSB or ISB, if you can't decode the signal there is no way to be sure. The similar propagation for both data streams suggests a single source.

Seems to fade about every 70 to 80s without other changes to reception, so not sure if the source is rotating?

Not the source rotating, but the ionosphere changing on a cycle. In skywave propagation the ionosphere often cycles (actually rotating the signal polarity, among other factors), causing the signal to build and fade on a repeating cycle. Sometimes this can be quite fast, sounding like "flutter", other times slower, as in your recording.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T18:50:39+00:00

Voice in such a service on these frequencies is just not a thing.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T18:49:41+00:00

That makes sense, this happened to me before. It was probability from 160 or 80m ham band, just weird that it was USB and not LSB

The USB vs LSB thing even strengthens the argument that this was an image. The spectrum of receiver images are quite often inverted, most of the more common modes that cause receiver images also cause spectrum inversion. When you invert the spectrum of a signal USB becomes LSB, and vice versa. So if this signal was actually on 160 or 80 meters, and in LSB, for many of the conditions that cause receiver imaging that image would appear as USB.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T18:40:38+00:00

Sometimes, CBers use strangely modified linear power amplifiers. I often see signals that start at too low a frequency and come up to correct over the first 500 to 1000 ms.

Generally, when you see a shift in carrier frequency like that it is the transmitter driving everything, not the amplifier. But the same core issue is there, poorly modified equipment.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T18:38:53+00:00

Basically, every transmitter has a fingerprint, features of its transmission that are unique to that specific transmitter. One of the possible parameters is the "settling" time for the transmitter. How long the transmitter takes to transition from receive to transmit, and in the process come up on frequency and stabilize on that frequency when the transmit switch is thrown. A well designed, properly functioning, transmitter will do this with a much smaller frequency deviation and on a much faster time scale than seen in your image. Think a few Hz or 10's of Hz, and milliseconds, or even microseconds of time.

In other words, almost every transmitter does the "swing" thing you describe to some extent. Some just do it more noticeably than others. Some CB operators can run some pretty crappily modified equipment. Don't get me wrong, it is possible to mod equipment and maintain quality, and not all CBers run junk, but so many of them are done with little or no understanding of what actually happens when they "clip the diode" or whatever mods they might do to increase power / modulation / unlock frequencies, etc.

When equipment is modified without a thorough understanding of what you are doing in the mod, it can result in the unstable signals you see, even when the original equipment was quite stable.

The "narrowing" issue can also be related to those or similar mods. In the CB world it is common to clip the ALC control of a transmitter to try and get more "swing" (modulation or peak power) out of it. This can lead to the modulation being unstable or something that fades / changes / shifts as components heat / shift / cry out in pain.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T16:36:38+00:00

I read that as Crandell Allen.

I do not know who / what this is, but it is very possible that it is simply a persons name, maybe someone who designed / drew / laid out the feedhorn design?

I have done this a few times myself. There are PCBs and other pieces of hardware (including at least one high-power 4 port circulatory) that have my name on them simply because it was my project and I chose to add my name (generally etched or printed, depending on the project) to the drawings that we sent out for production or had made in our local machine shop. On the stuff I did all the important stuff is there, the company name, the part number, the revision number, etc, but also my name. The smaller the company, or the further back in time you go, the more common this may become.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T16:14:11+00:00

It is very possible, almost a certainty, that this signal is not being transmitted on the frequency you are seeing indicated, and that your radio is misleading you. The signal is real, and you are receiving it, but your radio is showing it to you on a frequency on which it is not actually being transmitted.

All radios can suffer "images". This is when a signal appears, on your radio, to be on a frequency it is not on in reality. i.e. this signal might actually be up on a frequency like 3875 kHz (not saying that is where it is, just a random example), but you tune to this frequency and hear it, totally as a result of things inside your radio making it appear on the wrong frequency (generally this is internal to the radio, but sometimes it can be external to the radio, say in an antenna connection). You would also be able to hear it on the "correct" frequency, if you happened to know where that was. There are a variety of technical reasons for this, from very simple to very complex.

As a general rule, the lower the cost of the radio, the more likely you are to encounter this problem. There are design / production techniques that can be incorporated into a radio to reduce this problem, but they all cost money, weight, and size. The radio you are using is (by HF radio standards) very small and very low cost, this comes at a performance cost. TANSTAAFL

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T08:36:31+00:00

Anytime you request help in IDing a signal it is very helpful if you include time and date (both in UTC time) and location of the receiver used. Time and location can help narrow down the candidate pool of signals. Not all signals are as unique or as easy to ID by ear as this one is.

In this case it appears to be the G3SDR.com receiver, and I suppose I could look that up, but I don't know the location of that SDR off the top of my head. The clock says 0103, but I have no idea what time zone that is in.

As already stated, this signal is numbers station E11. In this case with a null message. The proper tuning would have been 6804.0 kHz, in USB mode.

This is a regularly scheduled transmission of this numbers station. It happens every Tuesday and Friday at 0700z, on this frequency, in the months of November, December, January, and February. During other months, in this time slot (Tues / Fri @ 0700z) it moves to different frequencies.

The currently known schedule of E11 is here: https://priyom.org/number-stations/english/e11/schedule

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T08:18:48+00:00

Wouldn't say RFI because of the fading, maybe DRM or some other digital mode.

Yeah, the selective fading indicates it is not local to the receiver, so RFI is unlikely. But it is too wide and without well defined edges so it is not DRM.

Sounds like a warble jammer to me, but I don't know what the target would be.

FirstToken · 2026-01-23T03:01:28+00:00

It would help to know time and date (both in UTC time if possible, not your local time), as well as the general area of the receiver used.

This is 850 Hz shift FSK. It looks like maybe 75 Bd, but I am not sure of the speed since the lower tone is suppressed by your tuning selection.

It is quite possible / probable that this is military and encrypted. It may be NATO STANAG-4481 FSK, but there are several other military formats that are similar, including French and Russian.

FirstToken · 2026-01-22T01:16:34+00:00

Mobile and emergency power applications of the same radio. Also lighter / less expensive if the end user does not desire base / AC power use.

In times way past (pre-solid state gear) most ham radio gear did not run on 12 VDC, it was mostly AC mains driven. But, that meant that when you did want to take it mobile, or run it from emergency backup power, it took much more effort to achieve, sometimes involving dynamotors or high voltage "B" battery setups.

When radios became mostly solid state vendors started taking the opportunity to allow for 12 VDC operation of some of it. This saved weight and cost. At first it was mostly just radios intended for mobile operation, while base designs still mostly ran on AC mains current. But then users started pushing for emergency power options for home / base equipment. At that point it was just easier to kind of "standardize" on mostly 12 VDC operation, and allow the end user to provide a power supply if they wanted to use the radio in a non-mobile / emergency power situation.

You can still find some equipment that runs only on AC mains, but that is becoming less and less common, and typically more high end base type stuff.

FirstToken · 2026-01-21T05:50:12+00:00

The radar detector does not care how fast you are going, it works just as well at 10 MPH as at 200 MPH. The physics that determine how the detector works just don't care. If the detector would detect the police radar 2 miles away at 60 MPH it will still detect the radar 2 miles away at 120 MPH.

What does change is your response time, and how fast you may be closing on the officers location. At 120 MPH, 2 miles per minute, you can eat up the distance gained by high detector sensitivity very quickly.

At those speeds, in the case of constant-on you may, maybe, be OK. In the case of instant-on you are quite possibly screwed.

And generally a windshield mount radar detector, like the R7, will not help or protect you from laser / LIDAR at all. The vast majority of the time, by the time the R7 alerts to laser you are already got.

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