Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

We need a ham green room to not scare newbies away with tec talk. Haha.

Hope everyone understands these are all great radios and it's 100% preference and opinions.

 

Agree with that. I sometimes want to go back to the TM-V71 all-in-one from the CS800D + dedicated APRS I have now. It's handy having a dedicated APRS station but it's just a lot of radio junk floating around and one antenna again would be nice. I don't suggest mobile digital should be a highly valued criteria but at the same time the point is to play with RF and as an curmudgeon mobile hot spot just irritates me, too much like I'd be streaming Pandora. I like using RF! ;-)

 

@DaveInDenver do you do any Parks on the air stuff?

 

I've done a couple of POTA and SOTA, not much lately though unfortunately. I had to sell my FT-817 a few years ago and since then haven't had the excess budget to really assemble a decent portable station.

 

There's never anyone on my local DMR repeater, and it only has a limited number of talk groups. The owner has some sort of odd disdain for certain ones, and he refuses to link to them. So I mostly use my Pi hotspot at home for DMR. If I'm out driving around, I'm more likely to find my buddies on analogue anyway. In my area everyone does Dstar.

3133996.....

 

If there was ever a more appropriate TW award....



Uhg. Image sucks. Here's the link

https://parksontheair.com/pota-awards/

 

Actually, being a newbie, I prefer to hear all the down n dirty to super spy stuff.
Helps remind me that hobby is vast and an ongoing learning experience.......

Just got to remember the key go this rabbit hole is similar to guns, off roading, wood working and many other hobbies.....
When the hole is deep enough, stop digging.

 

Digital ham modes are a Charlie Foxtrot to be sure. So he refuses to link them at all? Most repeaters are set up to use a limited number of permanent TGs (often on one time slot) and on demand on the other slot. So the various TGs aren't linked 24/7 and only link when you key up with it on your radio. Then it stays linked for 15 minutes and disconnects. That's not to say your guy is doing that, it's up to the owner/club how they want to do it of course. TAC310 was at one time linked on my local repeater and it was basically always on. Repeaters aren't necessarily designed to operate at 100% duty cycle and TAC310 does that. So it's sometimes blocked because of that. National 3100 has taken its place, though, so I dunno that anything is really solved.

 

Yup. Honestly a good mobile is all you need 99% of the time.

 

I was actually considering whether to put a single DIN radio in my first gen to share the factory double DIN radio slot with a single DIN head unit. I was wondering if it's a waste of money vs. a hand held?

 

How much do you think you'll use the ham radio?

 

Going on a few trips with friends communicating between trucks and (hopefully never) in emergencies way out in the desert.

 

Could probably do fine with a handheld and a mag antenna.

Or just get a mobile rig and toss it under the seat. Chances are you won't be changing frequencies all that often, and you could just program a couple of memories if you'd like.

 

The problem with handhelds is there's never an easy way to mount them unobtrusively. To make them easier to use and work better people add a hand mic, external antenna and a power cable so the whole thing becomes a mess. That's might be OK if you don't use it a lot though. Thing is a decent single band mobile radio isn't expensive and mounting it will probably be easier and safer. Plus you get ten times the power of an HT.

 

What's a good single din size unit that won't be overspending based on my needs?

 

For your uses listed above, something like a Yaesu 1900 or 2900 would work well

 

$130 on sale. Mil spec. Rugged.

https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-015771

 

It's too bad Yaesu discontinued the FT-1900. That series of radios (FT-1500, FT-1802, FT-1900) being so small were super handy. I once had an FT-1500 and regret selling it, perfect little APRS radios.

 

Should we try to get a TacomWorld DMR talkgroup? We could run a net...

 

This is generally a bad idea due to the two way radio not getting enough air circulation.