Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

Springs were used on 10m steel whips to make them resonate on 11m... i see them still on some larson V/Uhf antennas

 

yeah, it seems that nearly all designs are towards mounting on roof tops or mag mounts. All the forums from QRZ, eham, etc, everyone only mentions NMO because they're going to mount it on a roof and it's better for water leaks, into the interior of a vehicle, which really have zero bearing to my use case. I want to mount my antenna on a 3/16" piece of steel, and when I get to a tree only a couple inches taller than my truck, I'd like for the antenna to bend out of the way, a spring seems like the best way. It's almost as if most of these elmers have never been off the road.

 

I have a spring mount on my 2' firestick CB Antenna.
The whip on the end of my HF antenna is more than flexible enough on it's own to survive a tree strike without a spring.

I haven't found many UHF mount VHF/UHF dual band antennas that are spring mounted, or robust enough to actually take a strike (I've broken at least 6 in the last 10 years.) As a result I recently moved to NMO mounted 1/4 wave whips, which have two advantages.

1. They're dirt cheap ($9 each.) so breaking one doesn't really matter to the bank.
2. They're super simple, and flexible. Unlikely to break because there aren't a whole lot of parts, and none of them are plastic.

 

but springsssss!!!!

 

I dont have my antenna on a spring. Its comet 2/70 and its been trough plenty of trees and scrub brush. It bends and survives well. If and when it breaks, Ill swap out with the newer comet that reports high gain and high flexibility.

 

I did more research on the FTM-100DR and I discovered that it's not possible to use different tones for tone squelch, and tone encode. I know it's rare, but some repeaters use different tones on the input/output. It seems silly to me because the radio does support unusual combinations such as: CTCSS / DCS or DCS / CTCSS when RX/TX.

I requested all the features below to be added to the radio. Yaesu tech support gave me very little faith for any technological improvements for this radio, and when pressed, they mentioned that it's all been requested by other customers before dating back almost a year and must go through "Japan". Oh well. It certainly doesn't hurt to ask.

Here are some technical details about the FTM-100DR I have learned after much reading and talking to Yaesu a few times.

• Single tuner, one band at a time operation.
  
• The radio does not support tone search.
  
• Not possible to use different tones for tone squelch, and tone encode.
  
• Modulation mode is not stored in memory. Only true with respect to digital mode, though. It does support (FM / AM / NFM in memory slots)
  
• The radio does not support a "Reverse" function. (Allows operator to listen to repeater input freqs to see if a transmitting station is within simplex range.)
• Radio includes separation kit for head, but not for mic, which plugs into the radio body. You can build yourself an extension cable (RJ-12 6-pin)
• Also noteworthy is the radio supports "Half Deviation" mode. 2.5 kHz, but only affects transmitting and not RX. This is weird to me, should be both RX, and TX...

The shortcomings and limitations I listed are only done so from my perspective of being a Kenwood TM-V71A owner and I contrasted the two radios to see if I were to use the FTM-100DR as my primary radio what I would be sacrificing.

I would very much like to play with one. Gigparts has a $10 off $200 purchase expires today. Would make this radio a $309 purchase. I think that's a great price for what it is.

 

Sounds like I should be considering the Kenwood TM-V71A then. What are the limitations from the flip-side? No digital mode and no APRS? I can probably live with those, you looking to sell it?

 

The TM-V71A is a very capable, fully featured, analog radio. Dual tuners, dual receive, cross band repeat, FM and NFM support, has 5-programable profiles (super useful for cross band repeat, or night driving). For the price, it is an excellent primary mobile radio IMO. It is dated though. LCD display, no digital mode, no built it GPS, no built in TNC. You can do APRS with it, but you need a TNC / GPS.

I lost self control and went ahead and bought the FTM-100DR for $309. lol

I think ultimately it will end up in my wife's car, but for now I want a 50W radio at home base.

 

TM-V71A, IC-2820H, and FT-8800R
Are all fantastic radios, dual band, dual receiver, cross band repeater, etc.

 

Wife's car has an FT-8800R, I bought when I first got licensed 10 years ago. It's still a fantastic radio, and a real workhorse.

 

Care to elaborate? My test is this Sat. Assuming a pass.... I will be in the market for one of these.

So far I favour the Kenwood as my first radio as it seems more friendly to program.

 

Lars, does your wife have her ticket? Mine is going to get hers this summer.

Clean install btw!

 

This is what I've noticed as a trend on reviews as well. I am also leaning towards this one for the nicer mic/handset, the TM-V71A comes with the same mic as the TM-281A that my brother bought for his 4Runner and it has a nice weight and solid feel to it.

 

I think the most important part of my choice of the TM-V71A over the other available offerings was data connection + automatic cw id.

These two were killer apps for me.

Being dated is only an issue if it's not meeting your needs.

 

Sounds intriguing. Is this for when transmitting in cw or for normal voice too?

Sent from my Oneplus One

 

I suppose it could be used for that, but it's mainly for identifying you when you're doing crossband repeat or when transmitting APRS on one transceiver.

 

I wrote up how I installed my antenna, in case anyone's interested:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/ham-radio-antenna-install.432754/

 

I've owned the TM-V71a now for three years. I like it very much. As you may have noticed from my prior posts I like to explore all options available to me in the radio and I can be critical with details when I think something falls short or is implemented poorly.

My one and only very small gripe with the TM-V71A is when in full cross band repeat mode, and repeater ID is active (Morse mode), the radio operator, can not control which side the CW ID is sent on.

What it does out of the box is CW ID on each side alternating every 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Where this was problematic for me is when I used cross-band to repeat a mountaintop repeater into my home. I very quickly realized that the last thing people want to hear is my radio CW ID'ing through the repeater. haha

IMO, the operator should be able to control that setting (CW on A or B or BOTH or NONE).

I've requested it twice to Kenwood tech support in the last three years and no dice. The answer I get is "We'll forward your request to marketing"

What I sometimes do to stay legal is use the locked-band repeat mode, where the radio will only TX one way. ie. RX on B band --> TX out A band or vice versa.

Another spectacular feature about the TM-V71A is it can be controlled remotely using an HT, and this includes activating/deactivating cross band repeat mode.

 

CW ID Broadcasting on both bands your repeater are transmitting on is the expected mode of operation in xband repeat. The reason being you have to identify your broadcast/repeater on any band you plan on transmitting. Otherwise you can get the voice recorder and identify via a recorded voice.

There should not be any change with how the TM-V71A operates, with regard to this specific feature, otherwise you would be out of compliance.

 

Come on Stanley! Your response is academic. Did you just recently get your ticket?

Trust me, I'm coming from a place of experience.

If you don't want to take it from me, maybe this old QRZ post from 2008 will explain it better than I can:

Kenwood dose in the TM-V71A and TM-D710A; however it ID’s both uplink and downlink so many people don’t like using it as they ID the uplink anyway when they give their call and they don’t want a CW ID going out on the uplink when operating through a repeater. Many people have been requesting to Kenwood that they make the ID selectable for just the downlink. The radios do have upgradable firmware so maybe they will offer this in a future firmware upgrade.

https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/auto-id-for-crossband-repeat.182666/#post-1397471



AB8ZL, Nov 16, 2008​