What is the absolute cheapest way I could get on 40 meters? In other words, the cheapest radio I could reasonably buy, new or used, that would accomplish the purpose? Forget kits or homebrew, I'm terrible with soldering and have no patience for tiny electronic parts.

First, let me say, I'm a licensed General, but I need help putting theory into practice. This will be my first foray into HF. Let's say I want to participate in a local slow CW net on 40 meters. Now, let's say I purchase a Yaesu FT-897D.

If I want to setup an antenna in my backyard, how do I know which kind of antenna is best for my purpose? Furthermore, if I make my own antenna out of wire or something (maybe an inverted-V dipole), must I also have an automatic antenna tuner? I'm thinking I should be able to trim and measure its performance without an auto tuner, but I just don't know how. I can pretty much figure out that if I do that, then that antenna is only good for 40 meters from then on. How can I figure out how to construct this inverted-V (if that's even the best option)? I'm very afraid of damaging my transceiver (that I don't even own yet). Is the choice to either have an auto-tuner or have a bunch of antennas erected for various bands?

I know there are a lot of newbie questions strewn about in my post, but I hope some wise Elmer will pick them out and help teach a new dog old tricks.

Yes, it was this weekend. I wonder why everyone would say "one hundred" and not increment the number if it was some kind of count? I obviously don't even understand what you mean by "count"  Sorry!

While making contacts on HF, I was given a signal report of "five nine one-hundred."  I understand the "five nine" part, but what does the "one-hundred" part mean?

What alternatives might there have been?

Good day,

Our public safety radio system (which is 800 MHz trunked) uses one traditional non-trunked frequency to transmit dispatch.

Radio pagers, in our case manufactured by Motorola monitor this frequency.  Read more about them here: http://www.batlabs.com/minitor.html   The pager, when it is in alarm mode, listens for a specific set of tones.  288.5 and 330.5 to be specific.

I desire to write a piece of software which will use the output of a scanner to monitor the frequency and listen for sets of tones. Unlike the pager, I would like to make the system dynamic enough to be able to monitor any ONE or more of the sets of tones our county uses.

I can handle the rest, such as, what action is performed when the tone is detected, but I need something to detect the tone and trigger an event.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?  Have you already run across a program that does this which you would like to share?

Thanks in advance,
Jason
KG4KLV & Volunteer Firefighter