Here is who they should be going after

http://www.icamanufacturing.com/store/default.aspx

Jaime-KA3NXN

Don't waste your money on grossly over priced Japanese antennas that are poor performers at best. The best other than a Larsen is The Austin brand of antennas. The 500C is about $30.00 and is a great dual bander for 2M/440. I know HRO sells them and so does RF Wiz.

Jaime-KA3NXN

I built my own from discrete diodes that I took out of a large 200 amp charger/battery booster. They are quite large but just purr along at 70 amps. running a large 6 meter solid state amp.

Jaime-KA3NXN

The issue that I see here is that most if not all final amp transistors require a minimum of 12v for bias. with very few exceptions that are found in some VHF & UHF RF modules.


Jaime-KA3NXN

To me there is nothing more satisfying than working the world with a home made antenna and 2 watts. This tells me that my antenna designs WORK!!! And in case of an emergency I can get a signal out with the minimum of power sources. Unlike some folks who need 2KW to works across the street. What happens when you can't power your amp? and you have to turn your rig down to only a few watts to conserve battery power if you have battery back up. Better hope that you know how to work the world with a few watts and that your lossy antennas are up to the task.

Just my opinion.

Jaime-KA3NXN

The fire dept here used to use 46.46Mhz and the moved to 800MHz so they retired all their lo band VHF gear. I am friends with one of the chiefs so he gave me all their retired gear. The used to use Antenna Specialist antennas with a loading coil on the bottom and about a 3' whip. I found that these are awesome 6M antennas and all you have to do is trim the whip for the portion of 6M that you want to use. I have a few spares if you are interested in one.

My email is my call sign at comcast dot net.

Jaime-KA3NXN

I have a really nice Yaesu FT-290MKII that is all mode 2m and can be used either mobile or portable. It's a very versatile rig. I see them for sale all the time. You can pick one up complete with battery case, mobile linear and bracket for about $250.00. I also have the same thing for 6 meters with the FT-690MKII. Now if I can only find an FT-790MKII that will put me on 70cm and round off the collection.

Jaime-KA3NXN

Hi Gang,

I'm posting here because I'm looking for advice on whether or not to form a club because a group of us actually have something else in mind. We are a loose group of very technical hams that have gotten together here in central VA and have actually put up a really awesome repeater system on 220MHz We approached a local business that rents the tallest building in town and have gotten permission to put up another repeater on the building provided we can produce a $ 1,000,000 liability insurance policy. I saw that if we form a club and become an ARRL affiliate club that they offer the insurance that we need. Are there any other ways of providing this insurance that may be a little quicker and maybe cheaper? The insurance from the ARRL will cost us about $200.00/year.

Suggestions?

Jaime-KA3NXN

With Echolink you need a computer to access it. With IRLP you just need a radio with DTMF. Then you can connect your repeater to any other repeater in the world running IRLP or you can also connect to a reflector which is like a party line for IRLP. 

Jaime-KA3NXN
IRLP Node 8478

Go to Alan's website. It' a MUST READ for any operator who will be installing equipment in their vehicle. Running the negative cable to the chassis may or may not do any good. It won't help if the chassis is also not grounded to the battery. They both have to be at the same potential. So in comes bonding. Please read the part on bonding and understand it. Don't rely on the poor bonding that is supplied by the automaker. Also, if you are mounting the antenna on the trunk or the hood, I have found like in the case of my Ford Expedition the hood is not metal, so this explains why I had a soaring SWR on my 2 meter antenna. No ground. I can't stress enough about reading Alan's website. He even has sound files that you can listen to, to identify what ignition, alternator, and various other types of mobile nose sound like. Don't waste your money on any filters.

Alan's site can be found here: http://k0bg.com/

Enjoy,

Jaime-KA3NXN

The Hustler to get is the G6-440. It's a 440 only base antenna with about 6dbd gain. There are quite a number of them out there being used as repeater antennas. The only thing that might work better for you as an omni direction is a 8 dipole array. If you want more gain than that you will need to go with a beam.

I use Hustler single band base antennas for all my UHF/VHF work at home and they are good antennas.
For 2 meter I have the G7-144
For 220 the G7-220
For 440 the G6-440

Jaime-KA3NXN

Shoot working Europe from the Midwest with 100 watts should be a piece of cake considering that I worked into Russia and all of Europe from the East Coast with only 10 watts.

My setup is a portable FT-690 MKII with snap on 10 watt linear and a home brew 4 element quad.

Jaime-KA3NXN

Wanna buy a Bonsai tree? There was a guy at our last hamfest that rented 4 tables to sell Bonsai trees.

Oh well, I guess it's better that the guys that used to sell porn CD's & DVD's at the Tampa hamfest  back in the 90's

Jaime-KA3NXN

I remember this from when I was a kid, and it's pretty astonishing. We had a 62' Ford Falcon station wagon with the regular Ford AM radio in it. My father used to sit in the evenings during the summer and pick up radio Sutanensa from Colombia, SA all the way in Wayne, PA. This was back in 1969 when we first moved to the Philly area. This was one of the things that got me into radio. What a memory. Back then it was an incredible feat as it would be today.

Jaime-KA3NXN

Do a search here and you will find that this is SOP for this guy. I recently had a friend who placed and order and thankfully he used Pay Pal and when he didn't get his tuner he took up  the issue with Pay Pal. Once Pay pal got involved he had his tuner within days, but if it wasn't for this involvement he would still be waiting. It still took him over 2 months to get it too. Don't wait any longer make this guys life as miserable as possible.  

I have read other horror stories where he has charged other people's credit cards multiple times and he won't return their money too.

This guy is bad news. Just search the forums here and you'll read many others that have been screwed buy this guy.