Walkies

Originally Posted By: DAAThis is the radio most of the people I know are running:

Yaesu 2980

I'm going to put one of those in my pickup. Doesn't do APRS stand alone, but for the money, it's a heckuva great little radio. Lots of range.

- DAA

what antenna are you recommending with this unit?
 
Originally Posted By: SlickerThanSnotdid a search for Baofeng radios. seems to be several different models. any suggestions?



I have the UV-5R that Bob mentioned and a couple of the UV-82 and one other I can't recall. They all work pretty much the same, small differences, the one I can't remember, is basically just a UV-5R with a double sized battery, for instance. But all pretty similar.

I just grabbed each of them while on sale at a too good to pass up price. About $25 each. For the UV-82s Amazon had them for $49 for a pair.

Strongly second Bob's advice on using Chirp. I'd have never got those chicomm bastages figured out without using it. But easy enough with it. I was able to ask the Hams in my area and get files from them to load into Chirp and have all the repeaters programmed with pretty much zero effort on my part. Hams are a very helpful bunch.

I would bet about a million dollars that Bob knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, too!

- DAA
 
Originally Posted By: steve garrettOriginally Posted By: DAAThis is the radio most of the people I know are running:

Yaesu 2980


what antenna are you recommending with this unit?

So the antenna most recommended by the Hams in our area, and the one I used on my Jeep, is the Larsen NMO 2/70B. I'm sure there are other good ones, but literally just about everyone I asked around here, said get that one, so I did, and I've been happy with it. It takes a beating on my Jeep and has held up well, SWR is pretty good, considering what a crappy mount location it has on my Jeep, seems to transmit well (given the mount location and SWR), receives well too.

Kind of too much info maybe, but Jeeps are terrible platforms for antenna mounting. I can get better SWR and TX by moving the antenna to the middle of my hood or putting it up on the dead coyote rack
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. So I have an extra magnetic NMO mount and cable in the bottom of my go-everywhere tote. If worse ever came to worse and I really needed to get every bit of TX I could get out of my radio, I can use that. Have tested it and it does work like gangbusters, SWR of about 1.2. Which for a Jeep, is amazing.

I'm using these antennas on my HT's. $20 antenna for a $25 radio
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. They are locally made and the proceeds go towards amateur radio in my area though. And they really are fantastic HT antennas. They really do increase the performance of a Baofeng significantly compared to the factory rubber ducky.

- DAA
 
good thing you are not a midget you wouldn't be able to see out, with too much more stuff hanging up there. which reminds me I need a tablet mount and get my maps sorted out on a larger mega card.
 
DAA, that's a sweet setup. I do something similar with the tablet but i'm missing the radio(s).

Since this tread i've been trying to rehash my past research into a license and portable radios for northern Maine, man is it confusing (and I consider myself good at doing research and figuring things out).

Does anyone know of a guide, or article, or forum for the basic guy looking to get radios for hunting purposes and how to do it the least expensive and smartest way? I don't know which radios to get on which network etc, it's not easy to figure out.
 
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