CB Radio and Ham Radio

What's everyone using for mounting the antenna?

 

Opek NMO lip mount.

 

Mag mount.

 

Diamond K400 hatch mount for CB.
Opek NMO hatch mount for HAM.

 

NMO mount attached to the Hep's basket.

 

Went exploring Coast Range, Turned on the APRS radio. To track my Recon of coastal maze of Logging roads. 45 miles later, Picked up a bad Vibration while driving.. Eh just a branch dragging..Nuts, None seen.. Nuts.. something broke?. By myself & No Cell Service ZIP nadda.. Turn Cell phone off. BUT had my APRS on.. and Ham radio. 300 miles Comm's No worries..
Found branch on drive line rattling.. Whew.. easy fix.

Checked the APRS track Last night... one PING NO tracking ah Crap.. APRS is not working correctly.. ugh.. Bad wire, connections.. Now to trouble shoot that thing.

Maybe SANTA will Bring a New APRS Radio for Christmas.. If not?.. His flying Deer shall be Dealt with & are tasty!!!... ;-)

 

Found me a Free ICOM-2100. Now mounted to run APRS. 5watt,10watt or 50Watt's. My Cheap Kenwood from the 80's kept failing.

 

Those are good little radios. That was my very first amateur radio. Always worked great but sold it to a friend locally for his shack to help fund my TM-D710GA.

 

Well, that stinks.. Time change.. Now the Local HF State Emergency net I have been checking into nightly for the last 6 months.. Can't even hear them, The ones I do faintly hear in the noise, are pumping out 1,000 watts on Mega antenna.. Vs me the little Guy with 130 foot Horizontal Wire @ 95 watts.
Did pick up France faintly the other day. .. Was Just enough to Know they were ham's making contacts in the USA. Nice to hear.. darn french!. ;-)

 

New toy arrived. ALinco HT DJ-MD5GP ( on sale @ HRO $149.00 ). Boy nice screen bright easy to read..

DMR/analog Combo.. APRS/ Texting/ Etc..
software for programming.. OUCH.. this is gonna be a winter project! NO RT-System Software.. After 1 hour was able to plug in one Local Repeater.. Line one..
Might have stepped into a too fancy of a Radio... Learning the beast!.

 

Fancy rig!! I'll have to do some studying up on it tomorrow! I was looking at the Kenwood TH-D74A but I've had to divert some funds so not sure it's actually gonna happen.

 

Its fancy alright.. lots of menu's.. Using computer to program it, seems to be the Best way. So far.. learning curve is Vertical!!.

have least 128 Freq lines to enter.. and Lucky me Can't import to the file.. Monkey type line by line..

For the cost was worthy of getting.. Battery Charge time was 3 hours.. out of the box.. Book say's 3.5 hours.. Vs my Yasue 5 hours

 

I had that same issue with my 710G. Where Kenwoods program live Chirp would take 2 minutes to update after I entered a line and the Kenwood program wouldn't take the Chirp file format to import so one by one for my entire memory list...

 

Few of us now have this new Fancy Alinco HT (DJ-MD5) With DMR. Add few beers many strings of Modern Text messages. We were able to send a simple text Via the Simplex DMR mode.. So far. range is 9 miles. Funny have to use modern cell phone to send Friend send you Test message now.. On a ham radio.. hahaha.

NO instructions Either.. New frontier that Only Misfit ham's of the dark side may explore. ;-)

 

Sounds fun!

I've been looking into a TM-V71A for the truck but the IC-7300 is only $899 right now..... ugh....

I NEED MORE MONIES

 

Looked at how I've been using radios for the last two years and opted for a second 710G for my pickup over the 7300 right now. I think it's the right decision.

That leaves a few $$ to put into tires for the truck and an alignment.

Adulting is such a drag...

 

Well can not go wrong with the radio. Nice thing about the Kenwood is the Clear screen and orange Glow.. MY icom has white glow, its annoying during night driving. To the point I might add a Layer of Red Film or green film to tone down the dang light.

Radio's are nice.. Few of us with the Alinco's. are able to send Text between units.. And UTM's, Range of digital is Key, based on Antenna.. NO contact. No text.. Guess its like APRS. missing a T in the string.. kills the whole thing.

More beer more play time..

 

^^^^ Pretty... New fancy adult toy...

looks like a long night for yea tonight.. for install. and programming. ;-)

 

Not tonight I'm afraid. Gotta be at work at 4am. Gotta get the kids clean and packed and dropped off at the MIL's tonight and my butt in bed early.

 

The Alinco HT radio.. does good Texting and GPS Tracking Pings using SIMPLEX. In concrete jungle 3 miles Radius roughly. To send packets.
all depends on antenna. ( Antenna makes the radio ).
Did a Find other Radio Via the GPS Ping. Buddy was somewhere in town. Was able to see he was North West of my Location. If I ping his GPS, would give me his lat long. I could plug into my Garmin unit. That would be 10 Foot accuracy.

Odd Display?? shows Radar With red dot.. that would be target Radio.
Below that indicates NW:C12Ft BUT North WEST.. Numbers? No clue what that is.. accuracy? 12 feet.. But secondary ping gave me a NW:B38FT.
**** Did map it. .49 miles @ Bearing 328 North West of my location *** ( elevation: 156 feet is area).

Just a Mystery Do like the radio.. Very little information on how to do things.. Its Learn Via Monkey Push lots of button system.

odd. Just have to Get into the Deep dark Coast Range mountains & Valley to test this radio in a Real world use.. a excuse to get lost in the woods.. I like it! ;-)

 

Looks like a fun radio. There's no DMR local to me and I don't think any buddies have anything either. Wonder who I could get to buy one with me?

 

We have maybe 8 DMR repeaters With in reach of Ducky antenna ( maybe?) have not dabbled in Digital Repeaters yet..

Only 4 Ht's in area.. and we own them ;-) Being's this radio can Track I might have been tasked with Showing The SAR team how to use.. OH OH...

Plus, the Local ARES Going to ambush them for seeing this new system for Simplex Back up in the field. ( They Love Repeaters, but when it fails.. They are lost and texting each other).

Might check ARES slide bug under door for them.. It's a Part92 Radio.. both digital and Analog.. Whew..

 

Played more with my HT DMR radio. Cheated used cell phone texting to buddy to sync each other up on plans. OOP's.

We both tried Ducky antenna.. Failed.. Just not good reception. Low audio and static.
Added Longer ducky aftermarket antenna.. Simplex clarity improved.
Added ladder line. Used Analog Simplex.. Clear 5x5.. Perfect.

Ran Ladder J-pole antenna up 12 foot in tree. As he did same. Radio PiNG GPS distance.. 5.10 mile North East. ( mapped it, 5.200 miles roughly @ 7.4 degrees ) NICE.....

So. With good antenna Easy GPS pinging.. and texting back & Forth.. Ping his Radio, for lat/long.. accuracy 50 feet.

More Research, and play time in the woods.. waiting for Snow storm or something nasty type storm. before we up go play up in the woods.. For real word testing the Correct way to test radio's.. IN harsh conditions like Real men! ;-)

Would highly Recommend this little radio for Simplex texting and Analog.. good radio.. We are impressed. As we tend to Use simplex as primary, with Repeaters has Bonus. Radio software.. takes some learning..

I keep the Roll up Ladder J-pole antenna In the back of the xterra Near the hatch, driver side cubby hole. Mounted a Fire Extinguisher & Bungee cord to netting. coiled the Ladder line on top. Fits perfect.. It's my back up antenna for Main 50 watt radio to Jerry rig for tree antenna, OR HT for Secondary comm's.

Need to win the lottery.. My credit card hates me!!!.

 

Finally got the FTM-400 I've been wanting for years when HRO and Yaesu had the rebate deals at the same time a couple weeks back. And now.... the X is MIA. (Son has it for a few weeks.) No worries, gives me time to go look up install details.

Playing with it as a base station rig for now. Can't wait to get it mobile and try to figure out APRS.

 

Nice job.. least you can get it all Programmed and Ready just for the install. All bugs worked out. and how it works..

 

I've had a lot of fun with APRS! It's really neat when you're on a big group run and have others with APRS set-up. You can see the distance spread of the group and pass messages.

You can also send text messages and emails with it. I used the text feature a good bit when we went to Colorado to let my wife know when we made camp and there wasn't cell phone service.

The FTM-400 is a neat looking radio. I had bought one last year but they were back ordered for near a month so I wound up going with the 710 instead.